Over the past couple of years, but especially in Endwalker, the Final Fantasy XIV team has made a lot of effort to adjust the onramp for new players into FFXIV. They’ve added Duty Support as an extension of the Trust system, allowing players to do every story-required dungeon alone with an NPC party, adjusted the questlines that are a part of the MSQ to remove and consolidate some of the fluff quests that were there for flavor and condense those story beats into other quests to avoid some of the perception of running around headlessly as you reach the end of the A Realm Reborn experience, stripping a lot of dead-weight ferry quests out from the old “horrible hundred” that separated the ending of base-ARR from the start of Heavensward, and generally tuning up the game to make the experience nicer. It’s still a lot of gameplay to catch up to a friend who is firmly at endgame, but it is a more enjoyable experience that doesn’t feel as padded anymore.

For dumb reasons involving a lot of moving and poor organization, when I resumed playing FFXIV in ARR, I made a new account that I use to this day, instead of my old legacy 1.0 account. I didn’t qualify for the legacy rewards in the first place, so it didn’t really matter, but as I’ve gotten progressively more into FFXIV in Endwalker, including multiple raiding characters, a thought invaded my brain about having a third, different-account character that could move things between the two raiding characters but would also afford me a chance in this downtime in both FFXIV and WoW to just kind of try the MSQ again through that new lens, to start from the beginning and just go for it. So I rolled two characters with the idea that one, once I move next month, would be a stream-exclusive character where I would play the MSQ for the sake of the MSQ, watching cutscenes and experiencing it start to finish again, and a second that I would play in my free time, skipping most cutscenes and fast-forwarding story to just see the gameplay and move through the tweaked story route but primarily as a way to see the gameplay side, to put my focus and energy into seeing how the game felt under these new rules and routing through all of the content.

So I set out, as a fresh-faced Viera Gladiator on my legacy account, to play through the full experience on story fast-forward. As I write this, the character is now a level 67 Paladin on the latter-half of the launch Stormblood quests. I put forward a few “challenges” for myself that guide how I play this character:

-Only MSQ, class, job, and Aether Current quests
-Duty Support for every MSQ dungeon, only running group content for trials as needed
-In order to look good, I did precisely enough PvP upon hitting level 30 through Frontlines to get the Late Allagan fending set and the Lionliege sword/shield

-No other classes or jobs until after I finish the full MSQ
-Attempt to do Aether Currents fully while doing the MSQ in a zone
-No tomestone farming for gear – only what comes from the MSQ including using tomestones granted for that content

So how’s it going?

FFXIV Is Gameplay Light In MSQ, But Only Sort Of

By eliminating and consolidating a lot of the fluff quests, the MSQ is much-more gameplay focused than I remember my first trip through it being. The gameplay is still sometimes deserving of air quotes as you move between cutscene points, but it generally feels more action-focused and interesting than it used to. Even skipping cutscenes and fast-forwarding through text dialogues, it still took me around 25 hours of gameplay to get from character creation to Heavensward – certainly not bad considering that most of that was engaged time doing something.

By removing and consolidating those worldbuilding quests so you still get the flavor of them without the gameplay tedium, the experience of leveling through the MSQ feels a lot more upbeat and enjoyable. You do get to engage more with combat and the pacing of dungeons in ARR feels better for these changes, because they hit at hour counts that feel well-spaced and don’t keep you from waiting too long to do a dungeon and get to really sink your teeth into the combat. Had I watched cutscenes and read quest text more, I’m sure I might feel slightly differently, but even based on just what I remember and the context clues of the content, it doesn’t seem like it would be much worse.

Also? The revamped story fights at the end of ARR are substantially improved and really cool setpieces that are worth doing New Game+, at least, to see.

Gear Grind? No, Gear Glide

In the past, one of the chief issues new players would often hit with the MSQ was in post-patch story content between expansions, where the game would have more rapid dungeon pacing and require you to meet minimum item levels for those new dungeons without offering much or anything in the way of gear rewards. You could be smooth sailing through the MSQ until suddenly, BAM – stop the MSQ, stop everything, do roulettes for gear. Because the game doesn’t explain tomestone vendors very well or the fact that there are vendors with high item level gear for gil you can just buy to start moving, that would often be a big friction point, and because it would often cause players to lose momentum, it was a stopping point for a lot of people I’ve seen, who just start to lose interest because the story is pulled out of focus for the MMO gameplay framework to invade.

At some point in these changes, and I’m not sure fully when but I assume recently having watched friends play through the older MSQ, this was adjusted in a really good way. Doing your job quest at the expansion level caps (50, 60 so far I can speak to) gives you an Artifact armor coffer, but unlike the past where these were bare minimum, start of expansion item level, they now start a lot higher – ARR gear at ilvl 90 and HW gear at 210. Then, as you do post-launch patches in that content, at least for ARR and HW so far, you are given accessory pieces and then new armor that matches the second-best tomestone from a given expansion’s content, so ARR rewards the item level 110 gearsets and HW rewards the item level 240 gearsets. Because these rewards outstrip the item level requirements for all MSQ dungeons in that expansion’s content, you have a smooth onramp with no stops now, provided you pick the right gear (because the game still lets you choose and early ARR stuff is still flagged for all jobs or War/Magic which means you can corner yourself with bad gear). Where before the post-patch MSQ would stutter and stop while you ground out gear, now it graciously swoops in to ensure you have good-enough gear, still have the option of going a tier up to the final tomestone gear option in each expansion, and it means that early-expansion quests in the next chapter of the game still have rewards with value for you.

It’s a really elegant design decision that removes a lot of frustrating friction from the gameplay and keeps you immersed in the story being told but has that overachiever value that you can still get better gear for each given tier if you really want to grind. Choice is a good thing, and removing the forced nature of the grind while still letting some of it be there to pursue is a fantastic way to play it.

Travel Friction

In Shadowbringers initial questing revamp of ARR, you get a handful of benefits, and Endwalker’s further adjustments have added up to a better overall experience. You get teleport tickets to go straight to the Waking Sands so you no longer have to teleport to Horizon and then mount up and run over to it. You unlock flying in all ARR zones at level 50 upon finishing the base ARR MSQ. Quests that used to have steps involving movement will sometimes now just bring you to a place when it fits with the story, so instead of a quest telling you to go a place as an objective, you just end up there and can then go do the next, actual objective in the quest. Updates to map indicators to help you identify how to find transport NPCs like the House Fortemps guard or the Lotus Stand escort make those quests much clearer and easier to follow. Endwalker’s launch saw the number of Aether Currents in pre-Shadowbringers zones dropped drastically, and it helps the flow of leveling and traveling through those zones so much easier. Before even finishing the HW MSQ, I already had flying unlocked in all 6 HW zones, and as I’ve moved through Stormblood, I’ve been able to chip away at those too (although this is where they start segmenting some zones into an early-expansion area and a gated late-expansion area so you cannot fully finish until the MSQ brings you back for the round trip). A lot of the feeling of wasted time and padding in the MSQ before was down to these things not existing – needing more Aether Currents, quests including steps to just teleport some other place, the annoying lap between the Waking Sands and Horizon – and without those, the game feels a lot better!

The Duty Support Dungeon Experience

Duty Support, an evolution of the Trust system added in Shadowbringers, is designed to make solo gameplay rewarding by allowing those of us with social anxiety or who just play at weird hours the ability to run dungeons with NPCs, with a prefab party ready to go that will help you through the content. Duty Support isn’t the best dungeon experience, and I think that has been one of my few frustrations with the self-imposed rules I have for this challenge thus far.

I’m playing Paladin on this charracter, so I’m always tanking, and while Paladin is pretty sturdy, especially post-redesign, you can’t exactly slam through stuff alone. Duty Support’s biggest failing for me is one that perpetuates a problem in the community – little dick energy tanks doing single pulls. In a party of players, you need just a half-competent tank and healer and you can wall to wall every dungeon from Heavensward forward. Duty Support healer NPCs are paste-eating morons and ingrain bad gameplay behavior on tanks who skill up this way, because they play poorly in a way that feels like a person playing a bad healer. When the healer is Alphinaud and he’s supposed to mimic a Scholar for the pre-EW Duty Support, he casts Physick. Physick, more than any first-rank healing spell in FFXIV, sucks ass and heals like a limp noodle, but he spams it like it’ll save you. When the healer is a Scion nameless nobody, they’re usually a Conjurer, not a White Mage, so they heal like one – Cure II spam (at least they’re not Freecure fishing!) and an occassional Medica II, but they don’t get lillies, Benediction, or Tetragrammaton, and so you’re at the mercy of their AI and how fast they can pull out the Cure II spam. This makes them feel kinda bad, because when the health totals are getting urgent, they can only use cast-time, GCD heals and so they’re not particularly good at topping up a party.

Likewise, the DPS have a fatal flaw which is that they do not AoE, the same as the initial and EW rounds of Trust NPCs. While this makes sense at low levels (most DPS jobs don’t get a scrap of AoE DPS until mid-30s or 40s), the fact they still do it in Heavensward and Stormblood is kinda bad! Their DPS is also pretty lousy – I run ACT just as a habit when I play and I consistently, as a tank, beat them all. It’s not until Stormblood Duty Support that any of them start to even be better than me in even single-target bosses, and on trash, they always lose because they refuse to AoE!

The last major issue with the Duty Support NPCs is that their idea of responding to movement mechanics is to stop everything and move, back facing the boss, and wait without doing ANYTHING until the mechanic resolves. Lancers won’t throw spears, casters won’t cast, everything just stops until the orange circle is gone. This hurts even more because their overall performance is already lousy, and this mode of mechanic resolution hampers that even more.

Now on the plus side, if you handle things very carefully and are super skillful with getting them to move, cycling cooldowns, and managing threat, you can sometimes still force a Duty Support party into wall-to-wall action and live, and if you die, it resets your cooldowns, so you get another chance to just take a run at it. They also have some kind of force multipliers for attacks, because while they suck at DPS overall, you’ll also sometimes see one of them wind up an attack and chunk a target for like 40% of their health in one shot, which is kinda nutty. You get all the gear (although a reduced number of drops) and you still get first-timer bonuses for running with the NPCs, so that’s nice. One thing I’ve heard but don’t have solid confirmation of is that Duty Support DPS levels are based on your play and designed to keep a dungeon moving to a target amount of time spent, so if you AFK mid-pull, allegedly the NPCs will suddenly become godly at their jobs, but I haven’t really tested that myself because I, shock and horror, am playing to enjoy playing the game. I might see if that’s accurate at some point though, because I do genuinely want to know!

Overall, Duty Support is a great system and I’m glad it exists to help new players find their footing. I do wish, however, that it worked better as a training ground for good habits for group play and didn’t incentivize poor gameplay like single pulling or teach players that stopping everything to resolve an AoE mechanic or spamming GCD, low-rank heals is an optimal way to heal – but it sets a foundation that has a smidge of difficulty to it, and admittedly, having to find the ways to “solve” it to play how I would with players is actually kind of an interesting, enjoyable brain teaser.

Gameplay Teaching Perspective

I do still think that a key challenge of this experience is that the game doesn’t do a good enough job teaching new players the essentials, like how the Tomestone system works, where to spend those, or the fact that you can take on multiple jobs. For as much as the game has improved a lot of aspects of the baseline, first-time MSQ, I think some things still need more dummy-proofing, signposting, and general help getting players to them. My wishlist would be Aether Current sidequests marked with a unique indicator, Tomestone vendors marked clearly on maps, the Tomestone system getting some manner of explainer through narrative when you first hit 50 and are able to use it, and a better overall Duty Support playstyle that helps players learn the actual ropes. But a lot of the changes made reduce the friction from these issues enough to be enjoyable and an improvement – Tomestones were a bigger issue when you chafed against the need to upgrade gear to progress the MSQ, but now that’s not an issue so you don’t need to learn about them until much later, and the other wish list items I have are more of a time-saving/annoyance-saving request.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the experience so far. Leveling an alt in FFXIV feels like a sort of mania, a crazy endeavor, such that when I started a raiding alt, I used every means available to truncate the experience – story skip, job skip, skipping cutscenes and speedrunning the EW MSQ – but I’ve actually been having a fair bit of fun just running back through that old content and experiencing the little differences in zones and content as you go. It’s chill, low stakes, and enjoyable – and the fact that it helps me move stuff around my characters as well as having a third character I can level omnicrafting on for the benefits that offers is a nice side benefit that I’m probably crazy enough to puruse when I get there. The gameplay changes make it an enjoyable ride that feels pretty fun – with far fewer dead-ends, road blocks, and speed bumps in the way, you can just kind of glide through the story and enjoy it for what it is, which is something that plays to the strengths of FFXIV over its genre contemporaries.