Discuss : Have boosts been detrimental to the playerbase

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Well what is meaningful content? whats actually worth it?

The Lala in my Profile Pic is the 2nd char i did all the story all over again - and id gladly do it again if id had more time lol

This game is story focused, if people dont like it, its just not the right game. We really dont need those ppl who skip every cutscene, rush to endgame, finish the patch and return for the next even numbered Patch or even expansion...

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Well that much obviously varies from player to player, but the fact remains that a vast majority of the content is locked behind an exorbitant amount of story.

Yes, well done, good for you I guess? It's a lot easier to do it, twice, three times or even four than what it is to do it for the first initial time when you don't have a fallback main character that you can simply whisk into a plethora of content to fill the void. A lot of players' only choice under this system would be to trudge through a few hundred hours of story to actually play with their friends in a lot of the games content. It's not a realistic expectation. This would be entirely different if the game did not lock everything behind the story.

I think you can like story-oriented games, but still take issue with the current predicament that this game is in, especially with how long the game itself has been running, and the amount of catchup that people are required to do. But whilst we're on the subject of saying "We really don't need those players" -- What this game could do a lot less with is players feeling like they have some dictatorial position on how others should or shouldn't consume the game for that matter.

I leveled 11 characters manually with 4 in ShB and EW and the rest is in post ARR. I never boosted any.

But I also understand no one is as crazy as I am. I also understand there are people who only have limited amount of time to play the game due to work/irl stuff, and maybe they have money to skip all the tedium or have no interest in the story. This game is a nightmare if you try to speedrun or rush it- it literally works against you. If a player isn't interested in the MSQ and just wants to get to endgame to play with their friends....I feel like SE will lose potential customers there, and I guess there will be a barrier for people to get their friends in.

I'm not a huge fan of boosts and I don't think boosts should be just 10 levels only, perhaps 20 levels is fine....but eh. It's not aimed at me. I don't like it, but I know why it's there and I understand in this day and age not everyone has time.

I think the real money cost of boosts discourages a lot of people from using them, which I think is good. The story is meant to be played, and if you want to skip it...

https://media.tenor.com/3HWc4hIGDUYA...me-give-me.gif

I haven't noticed boosted players who don't care to learn how to play being any worse than regular players who don't care to learn how to play.

Not an issue at all. To be honest most players are biscuits regardless if they boost or not. It's just the way the game is designed. There is no challenge even in casual content so there is no reason for the average player to improve. Honestly I'd take boosted players in my instances over people who played since level 1. There's a chance boosted players might actually read what their skills do.

Overall it doesn't really matter and I think trying to blame boosters is just sad really.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Well what is meaningful content? whats actually worth it?

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That's up to individual preference.

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This game is story focused, if people dont like it, its just not the right game. We really dont need those ppl who skip every cutscene, rush to endgame, finish the patch and return for the next even numbered Patch or even expansion...

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The story being mandatory is contributing to the rush to endgame to a degree. FF14 is a multiplayer game and the story seems to try as hard as possible to make playing with friends difficult. Loosening content restrictions may even be a good thing for story appreciation since people would only participate when they were willing to. You can make something mandatory, but that doesn't make enjoying it mandatory too.

I do think boosts are harmful, but not because of new players.

They're harmful because it financially incentivizes SE to never resolve the actual issues: it takes 300+ hours of MSQ or whatever to get the current content and the low level character experience is pretty poor.

They had actually claimed in the past they would eventually stop making each part of the story require the previous one, and this new expansion was the time to do that. It doesn't seem like they went through with that, and I'd wager the fact they sell story skips on the mogstation is at least part of the reason why.

FFXIV is getting harder and harder to get friends to play because it's a massive caveat to say like "you have to pay more money or play for hundreds of hours before we can really enjoy the new stuff together."

I think boosting pretty much kills the ability for players to be patient, it's probably helped lead us to this point where everything is just extremely easy to acquire, if you can't get through one of the best stories around, which is the legitimately easiest part of the game, then how can you handle relics, hard fights or anything else that takes a bit of time?

I mean sure there's content that's just fancier ways to acquire tomes and materials but the devs built systems and environments around them that was interesting enough to keep players going, aka hw relics which people still go for cause they look badass and eureka/bozja, although I consider eureka the better implementation.

But apparently that all took too long or was to darn complicated, probably because the stuff that used to season a player was skipped, so the devs pretty much gutted the middle tier of the game, said "use the tomes for whatever ya heathens" and just decided to make the game prettier instead.

Like, how do you even make a game better when all the new players are hellbent on blasting through it just to get to the end, see there isn't much and then complain?

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Originally Posted by Acelyn

I think boosting pretty much kills the ability for players to be patient, it's probably helped lead us to this point where everything is just extremely easy to acquire, if you can't get through one of the best stories around, which is the legitimately easiest part of the game, then how can you handle relics, hard fights or anything else that takes a bit of time?

I mean sure there's content that's just fancier ways to acquire tomes and materials but the devs built systems and environments around them that was interesting enough to keep players going, aka hw relics which people still go for cause they look badass and eureka/bozja, although I consider eureka the better implementation.

But apparently that all took too long or was to darn complicated, probably because the stuff that used to season a player was skipped, so the devs pretty much gutted the middle tier of the game, said "use the tomes for whatever ya heathens" and just decided to make the game prettier instead.

Like, how do you even make a game better when all the new players are hellbent on blasting through it just to get to the end, see there isn't much and then complain?

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It's like 300 hours. It is way too long just to get to current content.

Making people play through 10 years of content in an MMO is a lot to ask, especially when the starting story stuff is middling at best for like 50-60 hours and the early game skills have been pared down so much.

I been in this game 10 years. The use of those was for people's alts. However I've genuinely seen actual new players with way more skill who use those then players who been around longer.

I've also seen players who just aren't good at the class either.

As for story skip. Not everyone cares about the story.

If you think of expansions as separate games, then it's a requirement to play e.g., Mass Effect 1 before you play Mass Effect 2. While there are people who wouldn't dream of playing 2 before playing 1, it's not insane to just let people start with 2.

Asking someone to invest 300 hours before playing with friends is really difficult. No other medium has a requirement to consume earlier parts of the story before consuming current ones. Sometimes a summary of what happened is enough.

I've always failed to see the point of a new player skipping to end-game, whats the end goal? to become a raid logger? That's depressing if so
Nothing stops friends from playing with each other using level sync content

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

I've always failed to see the point of a new player skipping to end-game, whats the end goal? to become a raid logger? That's depressing if so
Nothing stops friends from playing with each other using level sync content

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That didn't really work out in practice when I played through the game for the first time and level sync doesn't work on MSQ quests in the overworld while instances disable parties completely. You don't know when you're going to get a dungeon going through the MSQ and your friends may be busy doing something else when you do. It's not impossible to coordinate but there is nothing about the MSQ that makes it easy. As far as raid logging, the story is a one and done event and it's not going to keep everyone invested all of the time. Progressing further and finding more and more challenging content was the thing that convinced to spend more time with the game. You can't fix content issues by gating player progress.

Skipping doesn't prevent a player from experiencing the story anyway, especially now that NG+ exists. It just provides more flexibility as it allows players to engage in more content while progressing the story at their own pace if they choose to do it.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

I've always failed to see the point of a new player skipping to end-game, whats the end goal? to become a raid logger? That's depressing if so
Nothing stops friends from playing with each other using level sync content

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A lot of the time it's because they have heard of the game from their friends and want to play with them. Unfortuntately if you don't skip you can't play with them in the new game. Yes they are missing out on a lot but I'd rather play with my mates than play alone.

Personally the Story never bothered me anyway, been playing since ARR and I have skipped every cutscene. I couldn't care less about the story. Just give me good fights, good grinds and a load of nerds just running around playing together. Story to me is the worst part of the game. I just wanna get stuck in.

I find the MSQ particularly antagonistic towards playing it in groups. Lack of shared progress, having to ungroup frequently, etc. It was one of my bigger frustrations in the game.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I find the MSQ particularly antagonistic towards playing it in groups. Lack of shared progress, having to ungroup frequently, etc. It was one of my bigger frustrations in the game.

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Not to mention it completely disrespects your time, and disrespects its own canon. How many quests could've been cropped down by everyone having a linkpearl and actually using it? This is how FF14 quest structure works at times.

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"Bake a cake!"
- Get flour from the store
- Report to the chef
"Baking a cake!"
- Get eggs from the store
- Report to the chef
"Let's bake!"
- Get milk from the store
- Report to the chef
"Baker died of old age!"
- Buy a cake from the store
- Give it to his wife
"Oh I'm diabetic, you can have it"
Reward: Cake
Note: Quest's minor detail about the diabetic leads into another minor detail two expansions later where the wife asks for sugar in her tea and turns out to be an imposter.

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Imagine just how many quests could be speedran or outright skipped if there was a hidden way to just give someone an item or just go to a specific spot and kick someone's head in. I mean, you could probably have hidden routes throughout the main quest that let you jump straight into the actually-important dungeons and trials and just murder the eikons and then rush the castrum, wham, bam, ARR done.

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It sets up plot points later on

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The Scions are trash characters and you know it.

Imo most of all we need proper tools for skippers to catch up. A very advanced and mandatory Hall of the Novice or so, so they get a crash course in mechanics and their job skills before being able to queue into any duty. Yes, not every body cares about the story, but by skipping to Lvl 80 (soon 90) you also skip any possibility for learning the gameplay whatsoever. And this results in duties full of people who stand in orange because they think the animation is the thing that matters. With healers who don't DPS at all. With tanks who keep attacking big groups of mobs with single target attacks and have Provoke as a pointless main part of their rotation and spin the boss like a fidget spinner.

I am a lore nerd, so I might find it sad if someone skips the story, but in the end it doesn't affect my game experience whatsoever. You do you, mate. We also got this journal thingy with 6.1 where you can look up brief details about people and places and all, not to mention the Unending Journey and NG+ should you skip and have regrets.
However, when someone buys the game, skips to 90, then runs to Narnia with their stack marker, eats uptime stacks like smarties and then rants and insults the party for being shitty because that's how they know things go in whatever other game they played before... This does affect my game experience, in a very negative way, and the one of the skipper as well. I can ask them if they'd like advice and teach them a few things, maybe throw a youtube link for a guide into their direction, but in the end the responsibility for teaching how to play the game lies with CBU3, with the game. If they include a thing like a skip to almost endgame level, they need to provide an option for skippers to get the necessary info to play at endgame level. As long as this doesn't happen I'd say yes, boosts are detrimental to some extent and create a bad experience for many (not all) people who buy a skip and for the people already playing. At least in my personal experience. And CBU3 is to blame, not the skippers.

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Originally Posted by Tint

We had this discussion long before they added the boost features.

Back then it was people who where leveling with Fates which had no idea how to play their job, then it was people who where leveling with Palace of the Dead and now we have the people who are using boosts.

It's a scapegoat.

People either want to learn how to play their job and spend the effort doing so - or not. What method they used for leveling doesn't really matter in the end.

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Yup. If anything we had more bad players back in the day since classes were harder to play. I remember when Dark Knight came out in HW you'd often see players not using Darkside (a stance at the time) because they didn't want to deal with the mp management.

Boosts are almost irrelevant for the player skill when vast majority of the time leveling is spent on content so easy you don't need to use most of your buttons in first place.

Boosts are fine. Let people play how they want to play. I just assume most people I end up in groups with that are terrible are bad natively and not someone who skipped to the end and can't play.

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Originally Posted by Tint

We had this discussion long before they added the boost features.

Back then it was people who where leveling with Fates which had no idea how to play their job, then it was people who where leveling with Palace of the Dead and now we have the people who are using boosts.

It's a scapegoat.

People either want to learn how to play their job and spend the effort doing so - or not. What method they used for leveling doesn't really matter in the end.

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Yep, pretty much this. It's never been about how someone got to that level. It was their commitment to learning the class.