Thoughts on Isgard Lockout.

I really don't think this will be a problem. The game already encourages multi-classing due to cross-class skills and Job unlock requirements, if it's really too much of a deal-breaker then perhaps the game isn't for them.

I seriously question someone's interest in the game as a whole if there isn't a single one of the existing ten classes that looks even slightly interesting to them.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

At no point has SE called these "advanced" jobs. As far as anyone knows at this point, the new jobs are neither more powerful nor more complex than the jobs we have currently.

This is a very poor argument.

As for "players who won't try because they can't play DRK" meaning they're flaky players... So what? Flaky or not, that's money not going into SE's pockets that could be going there. Strikes me as bad business. Even if they don't stick around to keep the subscription money flowing in, that initial investment shouldn't be taken lightly.

I don't like the idea that a game that I'm so invested in is being head by folks with poor business sense. I want the game to thrive, not fail.

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If you really think sacrificing creative freedoms (and thus affecting the existing player base negatively) for a few thousand dollars of profit (compared to MILLIONS already coming in monthly) is good business sense, you're destined to fail lol. You might be drastically overestimating the amount of people this affects negatively.

I can understand why people would consider locking jobs behind a large amount of leveling and story content to be an "okay" thing to do, but what continues to baffle me is why people think that decision is better than allowing these jobs to be accessible at level 30. (Please note that I'm not saying Ishgard at level 30. Just the jobs.) How would that in any way harm the game? If the answer is to motivate players to play though the Realm Reborn story, that incentive is not removed by allowing earlier access to these jobs. There is still plenty of other content that (reasonably) follows the completion of that story to motivate players.

Also I'll add a link to where this topic had been discussion at length. The topic died and I'm okay with that. I mostly wanted to reach Dev attention and I'm sure it succeeded at that despite no response. Many people voiced their opinions and as it turned out most people on the forum could care less. Supposedly that makes the decision good business practice. In any case the planned requirement is likely to stay and I hope in the future they think very carefully about the way they implement new jobs.

i got a friend who only played a month when brought ARR hes been excited about dark knight that much hes planning to come back a month b4 heavenward is released so can catch up on content so ready for heavensward... so why doesnt your friend do exactly the same??

honestly only problem i have with new jobs is they arent starting from level 1 being locked behind story content is fine with me.. its silly people want it to be available outside ishgard cause they start at 30 ._. so inotherwords get level 10 --> go to area dark knight trainer is located --> get free level 30 job with no effort involved lol

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

I can understand why people would consider locking jobs behind a large amount of leveling and story content to be an "okay" thing to do, but what continues to baffle me is why people think that decision is better than allowing these jobs to be accessible at level 30. (Please note that I'm not saying Ishgard at level 30. Just the jobs.) How would that in any way harm the game? If the answer is to motivate players to play though the Realm Reborn story, that incentive is not removed by allowing earlier access to these jobs. There is still plenty of other content that (reasonably) follows the completion of that story to motivate players.

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I'm ok with it because we don't actually know how the new jobs play yet. For all we know these jobs are in fact advanced jobs and could be harder to play. Will they be? Probably not... but SE hasn't really shown us anything on them. I'm hoping they go into more detail on the new jobs in the upcoming LL.

I can understand locking Ishgard out for lore reasons, so perhaps I shouldn't have brought that up in the original post. I don't think it's a good idea to lock out the jobs tho since you can unlock every other job at lvl 30. But that's just my opinion.

I don't expect a game change or anything like that. I just started the thread as a discussion over weather it "should" be that way or not.

It's possible experience gains from 1-50 could be increased, cutting down the time to Level 50 down to a week possibly, making it easier for new players to access Level 50 story quests.

To me, it's just like being locked out of expansion content in any game. You had to be a certain level or complete a certain quest in order to enter the expac zones, use expac items, etc.

Though i don't like the fact i won't be able to go through with re-rolling, running over to ishgard at 30 and moving on up...i'm okay with it.

just means i won't make a new character.

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Originally Posted by Dalvy

To me, it's just like being locked out of expansion content in any game. You had to be a certain level or complete a certain quest in order to enter the expac zones, use expac items, etc.

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Agreed, reducing handouts. A good thing.

Instant gratification has already gotten out of hand.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Which still is an anti-social stupid feature that doesn't allow you to play with friends.

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How is going out and meeting new people in the DF queue anti-social?

Seems like the definition of social to me. o.o

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

How is going out and meeting new people in the DF queue anti-social?

Seems like the definition of social to me. o.o

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I think it is actually a very social feature, with the downside that if you're a tank or healer it may make you anti-social due to the 'speed run now' crowd, dps who don't attack marked mobs, tanks and dps that stand in all the bad because 'the healer will take care of us', etc. :P Joking post...but kinda true >.>

Considering how integral the story is to getting into Ishgard and the lack of Ishgardian presence throughout the ordeals against the primals, Garleans, and operation Archon up until Shiva shows up, it makes perfect sense to gate it behind story.

Sucks for people who want to start off as DRK/AST/MCH and those who care little for story content, but that's how it is. Tough cookies.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

How is going out and meeting new people in the DF queue anti-social?

Seems like the definition of social to me. o.o

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Because you never meet those people again, ever. Which also seems to be the reason for many to have poor attitudes when taking part in a duty.

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

Because you never meet those people again, ever. Which also seems to be the reason for many to have poor attitudes when taking part in a duty.

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You never meet them again if you choose not to DF frequently. You're on the same Data Center. Chances are much more likely that you will see them again than not. I've seen the same people numerous times in DF. It just falls upon how often you're spamming X content.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

You never meet them again if you choose not to DF frequently. You're on the same Data Center. Chances are much more likely that you will see them again than not. I've seen the same people numerous times in DF. It just falls upon how often you're spamming X content.

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Same here. Just the other day I ended up in an ST run with a member of my friend's static.

I think my record is running into someone in DF three times.

Last time I checked, this is a GAME, people pay a subscription fee to play it. Like an arcade game, you pay a quarter to get attempt at meeting the game's winning conditions (or objective), putting in the quarter does not entitle you to a high score. It entitles you to play the game, you have to actually EARN the win.

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Originally Posted by Kalandros

People saying they want fights to be more random are just not seeing the bigger picture

It makes progression hella longer with unpredictable encounters that on one night you will one shot, and the next 3 weeks you will wipe for hours on.

No thanks.
You basically play a prediction game by than instead of a memory game.
I prefer relying on memory than to try to guess whats going to happen next.

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You are part of the problem big problem in the MMO industry, preventing it from innovating.

To be honest, the game needs more ways to progress that aren't "slam your face against this boss by team jump-rope repeatedly until you get the gear you want." It also needs fights that are challenging because of smart AI, not scripted, patterned arena fights with enrage timers/insta-kills. Memorizing patterns and then repeating them over and over and over is so incredibly *boring.*

Also, "It makes progression hella longer:" GOOD. We shouldn't be seeing people reaching level caps in the first week, or people completely clearing all of the content in an expansion in the first few weeks.

It's becoming increasingly clear as I read these forums(which I don't know why I do) that so many of you just don't understand like, the fundamentals of human behavior. Having new classes locked behind a year's worth of post 50 content is a mind-numbingly stupid decision that I guarantee will make a lot of really bad waves once Heavensward hits. This is a 4 million sub game, bone headed moves like this will get noticed.

Now, WHY is it bone headed? Because expansions are made to expand the content and bring back old players who relapsed and new players with the excitement of what's added. They added two VERY popular new classes, which would get a lot of people talking and thinking "hey maybe I should check out that final fantasy game. You know, the one built off of the ashes of an MMO so bad they burned it all down and made a new one." If they have to get through all this and then all this to try out one of the Cool New Classes that were added, they're not gonna be happy! I don't care if you grumble like a country-club stereotype about "ENTITLEMENTS" and "HANDOUTS," this is how humans behave and they're going to be disappointed that they can't try the stuff they wanted to try from this cool new expansion pack they bought.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

words

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A year's worth of story content. It equates to far far less than the total sum of content released since re-launch. So please try and not make it sound like some astronomical amount. A new player can level to 50 and complete the main story elements up to 2.55 in a very very respectable amount of time.

Also just wanted to add, the main story quests you linked, several upon several of them take less than a minute each to complete.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

This is a 4 million sub game

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[citation needed]

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Originally Posted by LunaHoshino

Same here. Just the other day I ended up in an ST run with a member of my friend's static.

I think my record is running into someone in DF three times.

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Yesterday I ended up in Expert Roulette with someone I've tanked T13 with. :D

I've ended up with people from my own server frequently.

I suppose it bothers some people a lot (it seems to by this thread anyway), but to me it just made sense. I probably didn't give it much thought though since I have already completed 2.55 and have no particular ambition to try out one of the new jobs. I might pick them up, but it's a very low priority. I haven't bothered unlocking rogue yet.

While all of the combat classes are fairly distinct I feel like there's an overall 'tone' to the game such that if you don't want to play any of the classes that are readily available right now, odds are you won't be a fan of anything this game throws at you anyway.

Also, I find it weird that there'd be very many people who feel 'punished' by having to go through all of that story content. I'm almost envious of the proposition to run through all of 2.0-2.55 (for the first time) without very long breaks in between. For players starting with Heavensward it's like there's a ~100 hour story campaign right away. That's gonna be one Hell of a wall when new players finish up all of 3.0's content, lol.

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Originally Posted by Landonian

[citation needed]

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Not to mention probably 1 million of those subs are gil spammers... *Cough.*

I think the 2.55 lockout is both good and bad.

The good: Most current players will already have the quest chain done or at least finished up to 2.0. It won't be hard to finish the questline, and it is pretty cool that it will continue to follow you all the way to 60.

The bad There are a LOT of quests at level 50. A new player who is leveling would quickly hit a wall of quests and find that they will have to grind countless quests before they can continue to level past 50. Unless they are going to change the level requirements of some of the story quests or let people continue past level 50 without completing 2.55, this will become an issue.

i rememer when wow WoL came out had to have 1 max level class to play death knight how is this any different?

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Originally Posted by Rendecrow

The bad There are a LOT of quests at level 50. A new player who is leveling would quickly hit a wall of quests and find that they will have to grind countless quests before they can continue to level past 50. Unless they are going to change the level requirements of some of the story quests or let people continue past level 50 without completing 2.55, this will become an issue.

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If I remember correctly there was something about non ilvl synced dungeons having a cut off of lvl 53. I myself have been assuming that players will continue to lvl even between 2.0-2.55 and 53 was where I was thinking ilvl 90 would be...so if its true I can see the future!

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Originally Posted by Dualblade

If I remember correctly there was something about non ilvl synced dungeons having a cut off of lvl 53. I myself have been assuming that players will continue to lvl even between 2.0-2.55 and 53 was where I was thinking ilvl 90 would be...so if its true I can see the future!

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In which case all will be good! They just need to make the leveling transition from 50 to 51 smooth. Right now about a third of the quests are at 50. They need to continue to allow people to level past 50, otherwise they will piss people off if they get stuck at 50 and have to do 30 more quests to continue to gain xp.

I think locking Ishgard is fine, the story would be completely nonsensical and pointless if you could access it before doing the appropriate quests.

The jobs, eh. I understand why they did it, but I don't think it was necessary. The jobs could easily be in Coerthas or somewhere accessible from level 30, not sure what the harm would be in that.

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Originally Posted by Rendecrow

In which case all will be good! They just need to make the leveling transition from 50 to 51 smooth. Right now about a third of the quests are at 50. They need to continue to allow people to level past 50, otherwise they will piss people off if they get stuck at 50 and have to do 30 more quests to continue to gain xp.

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What? You don't need to finish the 2.55 story to level past level 50. Once the xpac is released, you can level past 50, period. (Whether or not you need the xpac, I'm not sure, I didn't pay THAT close attention to the wording... but it was explicitly said you don't need to do any quests or anything special to continue to accumulate xp once the xpac is out.)

Long story short, all those level 50 quests will end up being really good, assuming they add an xp reward to them.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

It is different, its probably a completely different playstyle, and aesthetics as well. I play a Scholar and Warrior and Paladin. They are all completely different, I can't play them the same. If you can't understand this your pretty ignorant.

I didn't like White Mage, loved Scholar. They are both healing classes. They play completely different.
I might not like the new healing class, I might love it.

I hated Arcanist, loved Scholar. They are similar, but different.

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It's natural to play the stronger of the two healers. Most people prefer scholar.

Lol. 200 hour storyline to have to play through? I started a new toon about a month ago and if you skip the dialogue i was caught up to keeper of the lake in about a week of play. It is not that big of a deal. The only issue might be how queue times will be in 2.0 MS content.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

It's natural to play the stronger of the two healers. Most people prefer scholar.

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Still sipping on the kool-aid huh dude. Tsk Tsk.

Does the healer debate need to be brought into every discussion? Right now having both equals best times, debates can be had once people can play Astro as to what needs various nerfs/buffs.

As for MS que times, atleast from 30-50 the new jobs will still need exp, and the low level rol will still be an option that I know I will be using. The post 2.0 content might be a little more iffy but there will still be players going through the trials, if I remember right SE is indeed allowing players to go into dungeons with less than 4 players which will probably affect things like trials as well when it comes down to it...I still entertain the idea that the current primals that only have Hard and Extreme modes will have a "normal" mode for the story come Xpac.

I'm neutral to the requirement since I completed the story, though simply getting a character to level 50 may have sufficed instead of locking it at the end of the story. I can see why it's locked through story by virtue of the classes being in Ishgard, though class trainers could have been moved elsewhere. *shrugs*

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Originally Posted by XgungraveX

i rememer when wow WoL came out had to have 1 max level class to play death knight how is this any different?

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The main difference is that 1.) it wasn't level cap, it was level 55, so that's 25 levels under the cap that came with WotLK and 15 under BC, hell, that's below cap for Vanilla. 2.) you could simply get to level 55 and there wasn't much shoehorning of content in. You didn't need to unlock instances per se (I couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to instance to level though), and it wasn't like you HAD to do required quests to unlock it access to it. The only requirement was have a level 55 leveled through any means and then doing the starter DK quest line. For all the game cares you could have just gone from zone to zone killing spiders, boars and wolves.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

What? You don't need to finish the 2.55 story to level past level 50. Once the xpac is released, you can level past 50, period.

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Good! :D I'm glad that you can continue to level past 50 without having 2.55 done! (can continue past 50 but cant go in the new areas). I was not sure about that, but now that you explained how they are doing it, it seems they are taking a step in the right direction!

That being said, I've never heard of an MMO expansion being gated behind a 250+ quest chain before! O.o I understand building off of the previous content and keeping it relevant, but there will be a lot of new players with the expansion, and I get the feeling that they may feel a bit annoyed at the quest line. You reach 50, but then can't go to the new areas and got to keep running around the "old world" for a week could really burn some people out.

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Originally Posted by Rendecrow

That being said, I've never heard of an MMO expansion being gated behind a 250+ quest chain before! O.o I understand building off of the previous content and keeping it relevant, but there will be a lot of new players with the expansion, and I get the feeling that they may feel a bit annoyed at the quest line. You reach 50, but then can't go to the new areas and got to keep running around the "old world" for a week could really burn some people out.

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The 2.1-2.55 storyline is still new to those players, though. Yeah, it's old content for us, but I don't really see how they would get burned out on something that is still new and exciting for them.

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Originally Posted by LunaHoshino

The 2.1-2.55 storyline is still new to those players, though. Yeah, it's old content for us, but I don't really see how they would get burned out on something that is still new and exciting for them.

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It's because I think most new players will want to get to level 51+ zones and will feel awkward when they are level 52 to 54 and still running around level 50 zones. I've seen it in WoW tons of times, new players always want to go for the higher level zones even when there is still quests and content that they have not seen in a lower level zone. These players may feel "trapped" in the old world and this could discourage them from continuing to play the game.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Chances are, they'll eventually find reason enough to remove this story lock if it gets out of hand with difficulty to complete as time goes on.

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this will not happend, they will make faster to complet some dungeon and trial, but don't hope them to change this. why? because it will ask to change the whole story of the 2.X!! from the fist quest that bring you to coerthas to the end of the 2.55, everything say..... stranger are not allowed into the city!!!!

people need to get over it and accept this, do i feel it's a bad idea? nope.... because a new player still have all the content of ARR to enjoy before think about the expansion. a player that do begin to play FF14 only for play the expansion miss the whole point of the game. it's a world, a story, a whole! you can cut a part....

about friend that will start with the expansion, you an still help them to complet this content faster! then the new player is not that much screw... because it will be easier for them to get gear a lot of the equipement that are selled at very high price will be sell for nothing with the expansion. people need to stop to complain for nothing.

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Originally Posted by Rendecrow

It's because I think most new players will want to get to level 51+ zones and will feel awkward when they are level 52 to 54 and still running around level 50 zones. I've seen it in WoW tons of times, new players always want to go for the higher level zones even when there is still quests and content that they have not seen in a lower level zone. These players may feel "trapped" in the old world and this could discourage them from continuing to play the game.

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seriously the game is not only the expansion.... if they only want to play the expansion i feel they miss the whole point to have a game like FF14.