Friends of mine, new to the game, becoming discouraged by STORY QUESTS

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

The fact that access to areas, trials, dungeons, and so on are based on the story of how and why you get there is a core aspect of Final Fantasy.

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Primarily, it's a core aspect of linear single-player games, not just final fantasy.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

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Congrats, you've found a specific scenario where unlocking a series of dungeons is only done in a short period of time. Well done. Point still stands.

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Originally Posted by ohmRICE

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You don't have to beat the elite 4 before you can trade and battle your friends. In an MMO not everyone comes for the story, or is interested in the story first. Some just want to get to the content they want to play with their friends. And just playing low level dungeons over and over isn't going to keep either of them very entertained for long.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

After I unlock that first dungeon, no matter how much I play it or how far I level I can't do anything but that single dungeon unless I do hours more of the story.

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???
"hours more of the story"? It's literally the next quest. Talk to one person to turn in the sastasha quest, then talk to another to start the following quest which gives you Tam-Tara. And once you finish that second dungeon, the very next quest after it gives you Copperbell. Now once you unlock all three of them, if you aren't high enough level to unlock Halatali yet (though you probably are), there are a few quests before you get to the Ifrit trial but even there it wouldn't take hours.

EDIT:
Double checked, and there actually is one quest in between each time. I forgot that asking you to go to the region where the next dungeon is located is implemented as a separate travel quest rather than the first step of the quest that asks you to clear out the enemies in that dungeon. Functionally, it amounts to the same thing, though.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

You don't have to beat the elite 4 before you can trade and battle your friends. In an MMO not everyone comes for the story, or is interested in the story first. Some just want to get to the content they want to play with their friends.

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You can't control traded Pokemon over a certain level however unless you have the proper badges, correct? I'll have to go through hours of story to get better native Pokemon and moves unless I want to battle using the same few Pokemon I could only catch in the grass right outside the starting area.

And I do really have to ask why do none of these people complaining about not being able to play with their friends....ask their friends to run through the story with them? I mean, I've helped my friends through old content in order to get them up to speed and we still had fun playing together even if it wasn't in the newest freshest content.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

If we wanted to bring lore into this then why are you able to go back and replay those zones once you've beaten them. Based on lore, those enemies should be defeated. You can either handwave it or assume the player (not the character) is time traveling. Gaining access to places you shouldn't yet is effectively the same thing, but in the other direction.

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That's actually explained in the lore too. It's the Echo allowing you to re-experience your "memories" of the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by ohmRICE

And I do really have to ask why do none of these people complaining about not being able to play with their friends....ask their friends to run through the story with them? I mean, I've helped my friends through old content in order to get them up to speed and we still had fun playing together even if it wasn't in the newest freshest content.

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That may be fine for you, but I don't find having a bunch of over leveled friends accompanying me for simple single player fetch quests all that fun.

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Originally Posted by ohmRICE

That's actually explained in the lore too. It's the Echo allowing you to re-experience your "memories" of the dungeon.

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Why do my memories have different people in it?

In vanilla WoW you had to "discover" dungeons either by getting to the entrance or by doing quests to gain entry. The only reason they changed it is cause people were whining about entry into dungeons not being handed to them on a silver plate.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

That may be fine for you, but I don't find having a bunch of over leveled friends accompanying me for simple single player fetch quests all that fun.

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Then that's on you. All instanced content are level and/or item level synced anyway. If you don't want your friends helping you because of that reason, then I dunno what else to tell you.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

That may be fine for you, but I don't find having a bunch of over leveled friends accompanying me for simple single player fetch quests all that fun.

Why do my memories have different people in it?

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1.) I don't know what to tell you then. Most people typically enjoy talking to the people they call their friends.
ʅฺ(・ω・。)ʃฺ

2.) A lot of stuff has happened to the poor WoL, give them a break if they can't remember if the healer was a Miqo'te WHM or a Roegadyn SCH.

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Originally Posted by CodingSquirrel

Congrats, you've found a specific scenario where unlocking a series of dungeons is only done in a short period of time. Well done. Point still stands.

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No, the point doesn't still stand because that "specific scenario" is the only scenario in which your point (if it were true) would have been relevant. You claimed that unlocking the first dungeon leaves you with only one dungeon you can run until much later in the story. The truth is that you unlock four dungeons and a trial in very short order and always thereafter have at least that many to choose from. Obviously, the further you go, the more other choices you also have, but you're never stuck at only one or two options.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Primarily, it's a core aspect of linear single-player games, not just final fantasy.

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It's a core aspect of linear games, a category which includes Final Fantasy. (I didn't mean to suggest it was unique to FF.) There are both linear and non-linear single-player games, as well as both linear and non-linear multi-player games (though in the later case, non-linear seems to be more common).

Some players like non-linear games because those can give them a lot more flexibility in choosing what they want to do. The cost of that flexibility, however, is that such games cannot contain the depth of storytelling that's possible in more linear games. SE is good at incorporating storytelling deeply into their games, and in order to do so they tend to stick with a quite linear organization with just a few offshoots into optional content. That's what fans expect and want from the FF franchise.

A player can like both styles. When I want a more open-ended non-linear game, I might play Elder Scrolls (either Oblivion or Skyrim, I don't have ESO). When I want a more linear story-focused game, I might play Final Fantasy or similar ones.

Each approach has its own advantages. But the advantage of the more linear approach is the power it gives the developer to create a deep storyline. The Elder Scrolls games do have a story, even a fairly good story IMO, but most of the gameplay doesn't really relate to it very closely, which makes the story far weaker than it would be if it were a Final Fantasy game with more linear gameplay.

The importance of the story is a huge deal in the popularity of the whole Final Fantasy franchise. In asking SE to make FFXIV less linear by not gating the content on the story, that's essentially asking them to disassociate the story from the game in a way that would prevent them from telling the sort of stories its fans are here for. A game can't tell as deep and involved of a story if the game isn't tightly linked to that story. A little offshoot story that's demoted to being optional content isn't going to be powerful enough to attract FF fans.