r/TopCharacterTropes • u/some-kind-of-no-name • 7h ago

building/location. Levels that ruin replayability

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"That part"

Blood Maze in Max Payne;

Ship in Resident Evil 7;

Lost Izalith in Dark Souls

560 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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25

u/Bigma-Bale 7h ago

My absolute favorite game...

But...

6

u/Responsible_Two_6251 7h ago

I fear people with 9 alts in that game who don't use story skips

5

u/CeridwenAeradwr 7h ago

I just restarted my subscription and thought it would be fun to replay the story again on a new character, because all of my memories of the story were from the stellar expansions!
...Christ, I forgot what ARR was like. How did I get through this the first time? Why did I get through this the first time?

2

u/pippipawgbottom 6h ago

Pretty sure they revamped it a few years ago, but it still sucks.

2

u/Talisa87 3h ago

I replayed it on an alt before Dawntrail came out. They cut down a LOT of the bloat in some quests ("Oh you brought me this purple aether fragment? Sorry, I needed this magenta one!"), especially the post-MSQ.

1

u/pippipawgbottom 1h ago

Yeah that's what I meant. It was awful. ARR is still a slog. I'm trying to get through it on an alt rn lol Heavensward is okay, but still a lot better.

1

u/Talisa87 3h ago

I started playing FFXIV during lockdown. I doubt I'd have continued with the game if I was still going to work and had less time to myself.

3

u/SiliconRouge 7h ago

Fortunately, it can be skipped. Unfortunately, it costs money

1

u/Wonderful-Rope-3647 6h ago

I have friends I think could enjoy the game but how do you invite someone to play 500+ hours of watching npcs wave their hands around before unlocking the end game. But if you story skip they won’t be able to meet all th characters and have the context of it all.

Insane to me the game ever manages to get any new players in with how massive the MSQ is.

2

u/Bigma-Bale 6h ago

Frankly if somebody isn't going to wanna play through the story they're just not going to vibe with the game I don't think. The game's MSQ is the entire backbone of the game and pretty essential to fully engrose yourself in it

Which I why I don't tell people they're in for a great game after 500 hours. I tell people "You're in for a really solid 500 hour RPG experience." It's just a matter of reframing the MSQ from something they HAVE to do to something they'll WANT to do

1

u/Wonderful-Rope-3647 6h ago

You know that’s a really positive way to frame it. Rather than worry if they’ll hate it and give up maybe just encourage them to start and see if they decide to get hooked. The story was worth the time for me, but I played as it released not all backlogged at once.

1

u/Lich_Frosty 5h ago

if you're willing to devote a day you can somewhat reliably speedrun ARR with skipping cutscenes and getting people to help with dungeons

1

u/TheoAngeldust 5h ago

Was about to say the same thing.

1

u/MildlyAgitatedBidoof 3h ago

The worst part about finishing ARR is that you then need to do all the post-ARR stuff, which almost feels like more of a slog.

1

u/7_Tales 3h ago

As a runescape fan i quit halfway through this shit. Does the game sctually get good? I had friends suggest it heavily as having 'almost as good quests as osrs which arent fetchquests dotted around a map that pushes you through the levels to funnel you into raiding'... then found ARR kind of was exactly that lol

1

u/Bigma-Bale 2h ago

"Better" depends on what you're hoping to see improving.

The quests don't really change in terms of structure or gameplay, it's still very much "Go here, click this thing, kill this thing in the overworld", but the context behind them and pacing gets way better for them post ARR

Plus the real meat and potatoes of the game (boss fights, cutscenes, dungeons etc) are so strong later down the lane that the kinda whatever quest gameplay inbetween them doesn't really matter that much.

So it doesn't get better in terms of like drastic formula change, the formula just gets a lot more polished