Possible level/story jumps....really?

Ultimately they will need to address the issue of leveling and gated content like all mmos do as they age. The better solution imo is to remove the filler quests in the MSQ by turning them into side quests or outright deleting them.

They also might want to stop increasing the level cap after the next xpac and start releasing expansions as side stories that are not sequential (ie similar to what FF11 did with many of its xpacs)

Regardless introducing a leveling potion (especially at this stage) is a lazy and honestly greedy solution that will cause more problems than solve.

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Why play a story driven game if you have no intention of watching the story in the game?

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If I was to play a game for the story, it WOULD NOT be this one. The 1-50 story in FF14 is substandard at best, unbearable at worst; it's mostly padding and the characters are as flat as a board. The job stories are... okay-ish. It's an MMO story, it has no choice but to be weak because of the medium. This game shines on ambience, setting, and gameplay complexity. I'm sorry, but if this game is your idea of a story-driven experience, you should probably think about raising your standards for story in games.

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Originally Posted by Zadocfish

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That's fine if you don't like the story and would rather do without it then go ahead. But a large portion of the player base do enjoy this game for the story and story based content. If it weren't for the story then I probably wouldn't have been subscribed to this game for 3 years now without missing a single month's sub during that entire time frame. When a new patch comes out it's the first thing I look forward to doing and I enjoy discussing story elements of this game with other players and coming up with future plot theories and soaking in the Lore the game offers.

Do I enjoy this game for its gameplay and complexity? Sure and I always strive to be the best at any Job I play at. But without that story I wouldn't care as much about what I'm doing within the games world.

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Originally Posted by Zadocfish

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FINALLY SOMEONE WHO GETS IT. Its mildly infuriating to watch people respond with 'but ffxiv is a story driven game' because ... the story that drives it isn't very good. The MSQ 1-50 is good enough with the filler quests, it gets you through the area and explains the world. But right now its the 2.xx quests that are required for HW that are bringing me close to quitting the game. If the story was really good, or if the df instances weren't 'gogogogogo' where you had to skip the cutscenes and dialogue to avoid being locked out of fights, then ... maybe. But its all just filler for the sake of being filler and is a huge hurdle to getting to more interesting content.

You're right about the characters too, they're deadly boring. Its impossible to describe their personalities because they have none.

I'm gonna toss my 2¢ into the bucket.

I would favor streamlining over skipping.

1. The 2.0 MSQ was chock full of filler. Pointless "go here and grab these items" quests. Going back and forth from the Waking Sands a billion times (seriously, just put a dang aethyrite in there: it'll save new players multiple hours). The friggin BS of the Titan quests. Honestly, it felt like the 2.0 story was designed to waste people's time through pointless quests and unnecessary travel. They could probably cut 50+% off the time it takes to complete the 2.0 MSQ without compromising the storyline.

2. Level progression could be sped up rather than skipped.

Jumping people to 50 is a bad idea. Anyone remember in the early days of Heavensward the influx of lvl 30 ASTs, DRKs, and MCHs flooding into Haukke who had trouble functioning? Keep in mind these were veteran players who got at least one class up to 50 the hard way. Imagine starting a fresh newbie at level 50, especially with the garbage default system of assigning abilities to buttons. Dusk Vigil is not an easy dungeon. Do you think you could queue up DV, hand your controller to someone who has never played this game, and expect anything other than disaster?

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Originally Posted by Talligan

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I think your reply misses a point as well. Saying that you or others don't enjoy the storyline doesn't negate the argument that FFXIV is fundamentally about the player's storyline. The main scenario quests are required because the devs have put considerable resources into the storyline and cutscenes and they want players to consider those an important part of the experience.

Blithely allowing players to skip that is insulting. I think the argument you're putting forward is that FFXIV should not put as much time and as many resources into the storyline as they do, so that it can be made more optional and easier to progress without it. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the game, imo. the 1.0 - 2.0 revival was successful exactly because of the amount of attention that was given to the storyline and integrating the player's experience into the story.

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Originally Posted by seraf

But without that story I wouldn't care as much about what I'm doing within the games world.

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I always find this situation funny because, I always want people to do this test when it comes to Final Fantasy: try removing the title and insert a generic mmo name like "Eorzea Online" or something.
I would like to know how many people would still consider the game's story great - or even the gameplay for that matter.

What I mean with this is that I understand if people enjoy the game's story and gameplay, but I also don't understand why people are constantly defending it. For example - and how blasphemic it is - I actually love the lore of Warcraft (my sister even reads the books) however I do understand if some players don't care about it and don't follow it: you won't see me complaining or bashing them for disliking something that I do. On top of that, a lot of the moments in the game are actually somewhat important to understand what's going on so while the story isn't vital, it is good to understand it in order to know the situation.

For the matter of FFXIV's story, while it's not ENTIRELY bad it makes me wonder if it's the name that actually makes people follow it and enjoy it, rather than actually having a good story (not to sound too offensive, I do think it's a very badly written story, especially due to the pointless olde english writing that really feels forced in). Infact I had similar issues with FFXIII: I had people defending its story in many ways, such as how Lightning isn't supposed to be liked by everyone (then how am I supposed to immerse myself into the world?), how the game gets good after X amount of hours (why can't it be good from the beginning? Because of the plot?), and how the story is deep and complex...if you read the datalogs (which leads again to the fact that story shouldn't be work: it should be enjoyed and easy to follow). There are flaws yet they're heavily defended, just like now people are defending the MSQ of this game.

So my point is, I understand if you (and many others) like the game and its story, but to the point of not caring if this game (and all FF games) had no story??
I might even suggest to play visual novels or read a book at this point...

we don't need people skip the story it wonderful. for goodness sake yoshi P. don't do those who skip in warcraft are done game one it come out and few months in

also the mls help player figure out they character job and it written well. look i play wod when it drop it become pointless. ffxiv is game you your self said is niche game sometime not everyone is going enjoy a game that has it own niche they just move on or go back game is like games they like such warcraft

The story by itself can be skipped if the player wants it. However, the content is designed around the main scenario as a prerequisite to unlock more content, as well as serve as a way to level your first job. The world changes with your character (Alexander and Sephirot does not become an issue until after you've resolved the main scenario which stirs up the respective plot to begin with, especially the warring triad), versus something like Wow where the world changes/evolves with or without you (content becomes available as soon as it's released). Both works, but the way I see it, arguing to make something like MSQ completely optional is essentially removing pre-reqs on all content, something that FFXIV isn't designed for.

Okay. I haven't been playing FFXIV for that long (since the release of 3.1--that's when I started playing), I have never played XI (though I want to!), and my WoW experience lasted 1 week because I just didn't like the game. So I don't have as much MMORPG experience to go on as some of the other posters here, but I am completely, 100% against any sort of magical level-jumping potion.

I know that new players brought into this game by their friends will be annoyed by the post-2.0 MSQ--I was kind of in the same boat because my friend that got me into FFXIV already had three level 60 jobs and was working on endgame content when I joined (though she made an alt and helped me through the MSQ all the way up to the end of 3.0, and I went on from there with her main, and she is just an amazing person for doing all that for me). I know that they will want to jump right in an join their more-than-likely lvl 60 friends. I understand that. My fiance just recently started playing, and he wishes he could do stuff with me and my friends, because we're all sitting at endgame while he is only at Copperbell Mines. But, I think that not only is the story important (hello, Final Fantasy game here), but also learning your classes/jobs is as well. I know that if they implement a Pay to Get to Level 60 Magical Potion, people will eat that up, especially if they want to join their already-at-in-game friends. But that just promotes laziness, like others have said. Even all the buffs and nerfs they've done to older content promotes laziness (example: farming T13 for aetherstones/Answers scroll, and people just kept ignoring mechanics and causing us to wipe because hey! We're doing this unsynced--all lvl 60 in full Lore/Midan gear! Let's just ignore everything! Stand in everything! Ignore the towers! Tethers and tornadoes, psh! Who cares?! It's actually extremely annoying because my Coil clear was unsynced and rushed and I am kind of miffed I didn't get the "full" experience--but I guess I'm just a weirdo who actually wants to see how things used to be.)

I agree a lot of people want into the expansion right now just for the new jobs (particularly DRK based just on what I've seen). I was different because I really wanted to just focus on my starting class/job and not switch to any new ones until I had Bard up to 60, but I know now on my alts, I'm dying to play DRK again because 1. I love that job, and 2. favorite job storyline that I've played so far, and I've done quite a few. I wouldn't mind if for 4.0, they unlocked DRK/MCH/AST (with some prerequisites like a base class to 30 since DRK/MCH/AST are jobs, not classes), and made Ishgard assessable to those just starting out, or for people that main crafting/gathering and want to progress past 50 without having to do the MSQ first. I don't have a problem with that. But I don't think people should be allowed to just skip ARR, patches 2.1-2.5, and 3.0 and its patches just because they want to be at endgame, be it for raids or to be with endgame friends.

I don't see an issue with making 2.1-2.5 optional or shortening the patch storylines (though, the transition from 2.5 to 3.0 should probably be mandatory because all the events in Ul'dah leading up to entry into Ishgard is pretty important storywise, I think, especially since it continues to tie into Heavensward now, and even some of the new jobs reference those events--lvl 50 DRK quest does, and the lvl 45 quest references Leviathan...I mean, at least do a cutscene compilation of it or something). I'm excited to do the patches again myself because I'm a sucker for story/lore, and I really want to take my time enjoying it again since my first run through was a bit rushed in some areas (because my friend was balance an alt and a main and I didn't want to keep her waiting), but my fiance groaned when I told him he had 100+ quests to do before he could get into Heavensward expansion.

But a magical potion? No. Just, no. Like others have said, it will just create more laziness, and more people whining for nerfs on current content because they can't just ignore mechanics and get a clear. I haven't even done Nidhogg or Weeping City yet because I promised a friend we would do them together when she gets back from her trip she's on, and I don't want a nerf. I want to experience them as they are. I want a challenge.