I wanted to thank the PA team for revamping the Balenos questline. While I've played it through previously many, many times, this new take is refreshing, well presented and well voice-overed. It's also structured well and logically, and a LOT easier to follow lore-wise than the Mountain of Eternal Winter questline.

The only problem with the new Balenos questline is that it ends at Balenos and the rest of the MQ is as crappy as it has always been. New players will be surely disappointed.

Anyway, can't wait for the revamped Serendia questline! Hopefully it's well underway by now :)

I have just finished the play through, and noticed a little quest at the end that says I can now skip cut scenes in the future!  I think they have been listening to our concerns, guys!

And, yes, I think the story is SO much more improved, and as I like game stories, I'm glad they are working so hard at this!  I also appreciate that they try to keep things light hearted and humorous, and I'm glad that it is not done at the storyline's expense.  Still, there are some logical issues, as in things being contrived and working to make the story flow, but WHAT TV show DOESN'T fall into that need to "fix" plotholes?  Still, they have put a TON of effort into this, and I appreciate it.  Voice acting was GREAT when they used the original voice actors, though I am bummed that Igor, Islin, and Clorince got completely new voices, which to me was a severe down-grade.  Also, some of the lines were obviously recited, and some voices were obviously altered to sound "convincing".  They should hire professionals to do the acting, as they originally did.

Also, the Boss Fights were tough: I hope they are scaled.  I had 100 AP and 150 DP at lvl 33 and the best heal potions, not the crappy quest ones, and had to fight very hard to win.  Hopefully it's the same difficulty for new players with quest gear of 20 AP and 40 DP at lvl 18, otherwise they'd probably quit due to the impossibility of completing the quest.

Anyway, I hope they continue improving the storylines, (not CHANGING- there's a big difference.  The lore and story are already established...don't regret the course it has taken, just flesh it out and make it MORE interesting and logically flowing).

Good luck, PA and players!

Peace

You can skip it now? Huzzah! I'm glad our voice was heard. I will make a new season character and see then. Hopefully you're right. It's what was preventing me from creating a new season character since I don't want to waste 2hrs. The story isn't terrible, it's presented just fine but I just can't stand the idea of being forced to go through it all over and over and over again whenever you create a new character. I'm glad they are actively developing the story and lore of the game, it's something that was severely lacking in the game.

EDIT:

OK turns out this wasn't the case, I misunderstood and you can't skip once you reach velia and you can't skip the cutscenes either. You still have to go through a lot of extended hoops before you're allowed to skip which means completing the entirety of balenos which is at least twice as long as it was pre-winter patch. Gimme back my huzzah.

Well, concerning the skipablility, I think it's triggered when you clear the last quest of Balenos.  If you've cleared it before they fixed it, you might still have to watch the scenes until you trigger the last quest.  Time will tell, as I doubt I will be playing this quest until next season.  

Anyway, based on the latest patches, PA has been listening to our posts and improving many things.  A profound "THANK YOU" to the developers!

And THANK YOU to all the players that make this game a thrill to play!  Y'all bring the world to life!

New Balenos isn't good, its what its should be from the start, nothing special compare to other games. Reworking it ~6+ years into the game that sinking in mass exploiting and bugs means that developing team have zero intentions to fix exploits and bugs and "pretend" to be working.

Oh then that's not fun at all. It takes like 3hours to get to the end of balenos now. Too many unskippable cutscenes and the questline had been extended by a lot too. I was hoping you could skip all those cutscenes and skip the entirety of the story like you could before once you reach velia. Shame. Pearl abyss, give me back my "huzzah" it was recklessly given away.

I kind of understand the whole idea of making people watch it 1 time, but at the same time I have been through the Balenos questline about 20 times before it was updated and quite frankly I don't care about it anymore.  If they allowed people who had completed the old Balenos questlines to skip the unskippable stuff that would have been a much better approach in my opinion.