All Purchasable Copies of FFXIV Should Have a Level Skip / Story Skip

I second this.

Include a level skip and story skip for 1 character per service account... The expectancy on newer players to wallow through 300+ hours of story content just to get to the relevant expansion is a bit too much.

When you're drip feed the story content (e.g., veterans or ongoing players) it isn't as bad, but as a newer player it's all completely upfront, and the developers have done very little to give care into older content..

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

And the idea that I have to use a level skip myself to get anything out of the game isn't an acceptable answer, and the skip might as well be a "I win, the end" button because why even bother to play the game AT ALL if 99.9% of it is considered useless fluff by the developers and community?

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Nobody's saying you *have* to use it. But there's people who would, and they should not be forced to pay extra for that.

Also LOLOLOL if you think endgame is the MSQ. It's fashion, duh.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

Nobody's saying you *have* to use it. But there's people who would, and they should not be forced to pay extra for that.

Also LOLOLOL if you think endgame is the MSQ. It's fashion, duh.

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I still don't see what the big difference is that would make it something that needs to be compulsory with your purchase of the game.

The only thing I can think of you would want to do with a friend at end game is raid... and gets to a point you're simply logging in only to raid. That's a lot of commitment to place on a new player, even if they are good at other MMOs.
And raid logging, paying a sub to play the game maybe once, twice, three times a week based on how hardcore the group is for hours... for weeks or months potentially. Sounds like a good way of getting burnt out.

But that's the only thing that comes to mind you could specifically do together that would necessitate skipping to the end.

Everything else is just the same experience in reverse.
NG+?
Old Dungeons, EX Trials and raids?

I don't see how you couldn't already do that content together. Field Operations? The Quizzical Open World leveling content? I mean you just skipped leveling why would you do content that is about leveling?

Why exactly does our friend need to be at the end to have fun?
Every expansion has basically the same content more or less... is that all shit now in comparison? (and if the point is "NoBoDy Is DoInG ThE OlD CoNtEnT" Why don't you do it with your friend? Does friendship end at modern raids only?)

Are duty roulettes exciting to people?

I don't really think the devs do need to give you a free boost. Just do it yourself if you want to and spend the money.
I can't think of anything that a friend be missing out on.

You yourself put (Ugh) in captions in reference to Dawntrail. It's not a mystery that Dawntrail is hated by a large percentage of the community what kind of sadistic person would willingly thrust someone into that?

Like I don't see what the justification is other than MSQ takes a long time to get through... as if you're not playing an MMO.

I'm with you on this.

I recall watching a video of a veteran WoW playing making an alt and discovering, to his horror, that the game is not balanced at all for natural leveling and newbies will slam into a difficulty spike a good chunk of hours into a new character, implying that Blizzard fully expects everyone to buy skips if not borderline forcing these new players to do so. They absolutely do not care if you want to progress "normally." And to me, it says a lot about how much they care about the world and lore when they can't care to make exploration and basic progress a fun time and just assume no one would do that.

FFXIV has the opposite issue of having 1000 hours of story SE wants you to experience, overly generous EXP rewards for required and side quests, but a really terrible experience for anyone that chooses to buy a story-skip or level-skip. And I personally don't see how SE can "fix" that. I mean, buy a skip to 8.0 but you walk in with so little context to the world and your companions that a player will be horribly lost.

Unless we see more MSQ fat trimming across all old expansions (with a lot of work towards shortening ARR) without compromising those actual plots, I don't see this ever NOT being a wall that new players will have to climb. It just sucks that FFXIV starts on what is considered the worst, most mid at best part of itself.

Yeah… no.
They already came up with a better solution when they launched the Traditional Chinese version.
For new pre-order accounts, they included a 90-day 100% bonus to progression across the board.
That alone makes leveling faster and smoother, giving new players plenty of room to experience the story naturally while progressing their jobs.
Because of that, there’s already a built a way for new players to go through the lore at a reasonable pace without feeling stuck or left behind.
So why would they need to offer a story skip?

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Yeah… no.
They already came up with a better solution when they launched the Traditional Chinese version.
For new pre-order accounts, they included a 90-day 100% bonus to progression across the board.
That alone makes leveling faster and smoother, giving new players plenty of room to experience the story naturally while progressing their jobs.
Because of that, there’s already a built a way for new players to go through the lore at a reasonable pace without feeling stuck or left behind.
So why would they need to offer a story skip?

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We can already do this by making a character in a preferred server. Without a story skip, it will still take a long time to catch up to current MSQ even if they skip all cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

We can already do this by making a character in a preferred server. Without a story skip, it will still take a long time to catch up to current MSQ even if they skip all cutscenes.

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This is for new players coming into FF14
Why would they even offer a story skip when the game’s main selling point is the story?

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

This is for new players coming into FF14
Why would they even offer a story skip when the game’s main selling point is the story?

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Because they want to do the latest raids with their friends

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Originally Posted by Bubert

Final Fantasy XIV is a story driven game and let me tell you if you are not into it then this game is not for you nor your friend. Do not come here and try to ruin the game for others that actually play it and knew what they were signing up to. There are plenty of other games that offer 0% msq, combat only. Go play those!

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If all people who don't care about story would quit, you'd really not like the outcome of that. So be careful what you wish for, it may come true.