Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

MMOs are before everything a social experience, and filling the servers with obnoxious players will only send the game rock bottom.

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My experience in WOW since early 2005 is that it's had a toxic 'community' for most of its life, getting worse post-BC, and yet it hit 10+M players at the start of WOD and Blizzard claim to have hit that number again with Legion. Yes, numbers halved over the life of WOD but at 5.5+M it was still bigger than FFXIV, whose claims of 6M+ players is hard to believe, frankly, given the server populations and other evidence.

As for this thread, I speak as someone who's spent the last 2 months slogging through the ARR MSQ simply in order to be able to even SEE Heavensward zones, it wasn't fun (I'd done up till 2.1 3 years ago) and frankly I'd not do it again if the next expac comes gated by Heavensward content.

And having literally just finished watching the end of ARR videos I'm left with the impression leveling anything else from 1 is impossible, the 'immersion' that content was destroyed by ARR's ending, but it would be too spolier-filled to go into here.

In FFXI only RoZ was gated by having to complete the base game and nothing was gated by RoZ (the final COP/ROZ 'raid' excepted), FFXIV should follow that model.

You're very specific again with which exact communities to deter but these are communities of games with very opposing views and styles. Anyone as evil and toxic you want to believe will invade our precious little game would probably become uninterested before their trial even ended, and if they stay? Well, congrats, those kinds of people already exist. They always will. Story gate isn't the magical filter that works all the time, and causes harm just as it helps.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

If you want to embrace a mainstream audience you'll get mainstream players - the LoL/CoD crowd. The devs stated again and agaun they are commited to a vision - And that's the best thing they can do. And keeping the story gated does WONDERS on shunning off players who won't have much to add to the game but toxicity and ill-behavior.

You say I'm advocating for shunning off people who don't agree with my vision - Well, it so appears that my vision is in line with the devs vision, so it's not what I agree on, but rather what THEY agree on. And again... that exact same discussion occured before HSW launch, and it ammounted to NOTHING - Same as this discussion will not. MSQ OR BUST.

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Mainstream audience has merely been a by-product of the real target audience, and they will always co-exist with each other. And the scope of the dev's vision falls under providing, not restricting. Again, there are those who already exist that in your belief are actively going against their vision because they do not put in the time to listen to every bit of dialogue and read every text box. It exists for those who want it, but that doesn't mean it needs to be a detriment to those who would gladly enjoy every other aspect of the game. The devs have shared their wish that everyone enjoys the story provided, but they do not shun anyone uninterested, telling them to leave. You are taking their vision and instilling your own, actively wanting to push away these people if they are not in it from the get go. Gates should exist to an extent as they do filter out certain undesirable entities, and the story gate for HW has served to push against the flow of RMT into HW territories. But over time it becomes a compounding problem and that gate grows higher and higher. It's an issue/non-issue now because from ARR to HW is a week tops of efficient effort. Not desirable to everyone, but tolerable, but this was after HW was released. They did not trim the ARR story at first, and it was still as fat and unappealing in its entirety. Community feedback led to them trimming the fat and streamlining it, making it more what it was meant to be: An introduction to everything, if nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Dorander

As a new player, everything is new to them. So, having to do all of ARR and Heavensward MSQ shouldn't be a problem. FFXIV is not now, and never has been about end game. It's the journey and the story. If all they want to do is rush to the end for the raids, WoW is that way.

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This isn't just a story though. MMOs are a social game to some degree. It's a problem when you join a game and can't play with the friends who asked you to come.

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Originally Posted by Pells

This isn't just a story though. MMOs are a social game to some degree. It's a problem when you join a game and can't play with the friends who asked you to come.

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But you can though. You can still socialize, meet up, trade and do many other things with them. We help new players through content everyday or whenever we have new members join. People act like just because they aren't doing the last tier alex RIGHT NOW there is nothing to do. If you join a game and your friends can't be bothered to help or the FC you join can't help well that is some crappy friends/FC right there.

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I didnt really mean msq alone in itself they, I thought wat the post was discussing was something for instance like me as a new player going right into hw. So in this case a new player being able to go straight to level 60 and the new expansion. With msq comes more than just open world content, if you skipped both expansions you would miss the whole learning curve of the other things that come with the msq. A jump to an instant level 60 I dont see how that would work at all I didnt mean that the msq alone made you a better player cause its a diff in soloing content and doing things in a group.

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Originally Posted by Pells

This isn't just a story though. MMOs are a social game to some degree. It's a problem when you join a game and can't play with the friends who asked you to come.

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This^

This is the reason games like WOW, LoTRO, GW2 and others have 'catch up' mechanisms and 'boosts', so that new players don't feel there's a massive mountain to climb to get to the 'real' game as it is now .. no, not the 'end game' just the content everyone else is playing.

It's a problem all MMOs have, and FFXIV is no different, and like all other MMOs many FFXIV 'vets' have the attitude 'it was a grind for me so it should be a grind for newcomers', trouble is those newcomers are needed to replace the 'vets' lost through attrition and if the initial prospect of having to play 'obsolete' content is too unattractive they won't bother.

I can see why people would want players to play through the main scenario, it helps you to learn your class and the in game systems which is no small thing.

That said, having recently come back (end of July) and gone through it myself with a fresh char on a new server, there are a few things which could be looked at I think:

1 - The 2.X patch quests - these were sooooo long and this portion dragged terribly. The majority of these quests feel exactly like they are - filler - and I wouldn't be sad to see this trimmed down to 1/3 of what it is currently, it was such a grind!

2 - When you first hit 50, sooo much stuff unlocks that needs doing that it's actually quite off-putting. Seriously it's very daunting to a new player. All of the lower level hardmodes (primals, raids etc) and it can be tricky to know exactly where to begin. We're getting to the point now where there's almost too many lower level dungeons and primals. As a levelled player mainly doing roulettes, it's easy to miss this, but as a newbie, it's one LONG to do list which can be very demotivating. Especially when you consider the wait times on a lot of this stuff.

3 - We'll soon face the same issue at 60 as there is at 50 (point #2). Not sure what can be done about this, new dungeons are always fun, but as the majority of players level further and further beyond them, it just leaves newbies with an almost insurmountable to-do list. If anything could be done to remove any quests and requirements for dungeons that aren't crucial to the central story, it could make this journey a lot more newbie friendly.

I am not following some of this logic I am a new player myself only been playing three months I thought mmos was suppose to last for years , like I hear lots of vets say they have been playin sense 1.0. I came into this game with the long haul mindset why would I want to pay for something that I can finish within a weeks time , I get the fetch quest stuff it can be annoying. But also like why cut everything down to the bare amount and you are literally payin for a sub to do nothing. This game and I thought all mmos was for the long haul approach to get players enough content for years worth of playing so what is the problem with doing all the msq. Dont gate the jobs, or certain dungeons, just let them be like the optional dugeons like aurum vale , or cutters cry but still require the msq to an extent.

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Originally Posted by Lewtskie

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Well, but they did not get rid of the gating, and that says a LOT.
They have no intention of offering any option for players to skip the MSQ, and it is a welcoming choice. You are ery contradictory in saying that gating the content does not keep certain kinds of players from playing, and you still advocate for an option to skip the MSQ so more players could play the game.

But now I ask you... why do you want that specific kind of player inside Eorzea? what would they bring of positive to the community?
And don't say "money", because Stormblood will have TRIPLE the budget than HSW, so it's not like FFXIV is operating on the red. You talk about what a dev vision SHOULD be in your opinion, not what the devs themselves think of what their goal is. Every game who tried to turn itself into a money-making machine forgetting the original vision and where it came from went down - Name the franchise! Assasin's Creed, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft - Today they are only a bunch of money-sucking SCHEMES who are a shadow of what they set out to be. There's more to game development than just making money, and things made out of love and passion are just as successful, if not more. I don't believe SQEX has any intention of taking WoW's place as the crowned king of MMOs. And it's a good thing they don't.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

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Vanilla was pretty OK, actually, at least on Warsong. Can't say however how the band was playing on Illidan or other more "pop" realms. It steadily declined from WOTLK onward, tho. And I really didn't understand what you mean that people cannot immerse in ARR story now. Why not? It's not like there are spoilers aloft everywhere.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

I didnt really mean msq alone in itself they, I thought wat the post was discussing was something for instance like me as a new player going right into hw. So in this case a new player being able to go straight to level 60 and the new expansion. With msq comes more than just open world content, if you skipped both expansions you would miss the whole learning curve of the other things that come with the msq. A jump to an instant level 60 I dont see how that would work at all I didnt mean that the msq alone made you a better player cause its a diff in soloing content and doing things in a group.

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It would work quite well, given Square puts good introductory instances and tutorials into it.

The Hall of the Novice is a great tool they added which can be used specifically for this. It'd be easy for them to make it so that any player who used a jump potion to have to go through a series of challenges that introduce the player to each of their abilities and their expectations as the role they chose, then one final challenge they must clear before they'd be allowed to use the DF to make sure they understand the basics of their job. Bam, you've just given the player more knowledge of their job than the entire MSQ combined in a miniscule fraction of the time.

WoW has the proving grounds(?) which forces players to complete it before they're allowed to sign up for specific types of content, a similar system could make sure players are brought up to speed and understand the basics of their job and role without having to sludge through literally hundreds of story quests where they may not even pick up on any skills period (Just take a look at expert roulette to see how little the game does to teach people their jobs lol)