Quality of Life Improvements and MSQ Gating for New Players

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

In this game that has constant complaints of "but there's nothing to do!", reducing even more content to trivial skippability would be a bad idea.

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If people aren't interested in the story, forcing them to partake in it won't accomplish anything. All they'll do is spam numpad zero/escape to speed through something which simply doesn't appealing.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

Its a Final Fantasy game first and for most. Why does every game ever have to be exactly the same? XIV does things differently, not all good but not all bad. They gave players a way to get to current content in the form of story skip potions. They did this because its not easy to chop up the main story and still have it make sense and it is also the way they expect people to level there first class/job. The only thing I agree with is allowing access to all areas regardless of where you are in the story, just let NPCs react to you differently, they already have that feature now.

Cohesive story telling is a warm welcome compared to random main quests here and there broken up and not really giving any substance.

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Yes, because The Company of Heroes questline was integral to defending Titan. And collecting flowers for Minfilia's mother nearly saved the world! Let's be honest, when people complain about the MSQ, it's primarily on the boring fetch quests which litter ARR. I wager quite strongly, you'd see far less complaints if the game began at Heavensward due to how much better paced everything is. Jump potions were implemented simply to make a quick buck over players leveling their alts and not wanting to spam through the story again. Even WoW offered one for free with their latest expansion.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

If a lowbie enters an area with high level mobs, that's their problem.In WOW, as a lowbie, I can sneak into high level areas;it's my fault if I get one-shotted by an aggro mob. To me, it makes the world more realistic.

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This isn’t WOW, I wish people would stop trying to make this game into that one. Most zones in FFXIV have multi level areas, so you are perfectly capable of going and getting one shot to keep your “realism”

I am fine with the content being gated, there is plenty to be learned, gameplay wise along the way to stormblood, doing the old content will literally make you a better player on the way to the new content, unless of course a person is completely dense.

Story is terrible, people dont like to read and the poor choice in character voices isnt great to hear either (NB im not talking about voice actor but high pitch voice of Alphinaud and even the overly complexed names detracts from the experience). The beginning of stormblood was decent everything else might as well be skip able most ppl as in the MMO community that will be looking to join dont care about story and just want to get into the end content as painlessly as possible. Being held back by a long droning story while your friends are at max lvl isnt fun, hell even skipping the cutscenes is painfully long at points. I understand that fans may enjoy it but the story is just impeding accessibility at this point. I've recommend the game to 20+ friends at this point and its always the same thing, story is boring and the leveling experience is way too slow, you dont need a tutorial (which is essentially all the leveling process is in a mmo, to be THAT LONG)

Why do you need to skip everything to socialize with people? The starting cities and people's homes are more social than any endgame city... there is no reason at all for a level 10 sprout to be in rhalgrs reach... you can't access the npcs, quests, gears... can't even do that in mor dohna (which you can walk to from uldah or gridania around level 10)... I'll compromise tho... let players go wherever they want but everything unlocked content wise via the msq should remain behind the msq... ;)

OP keeps using "casual" and "social MMO"... I don't get why a "casual" player looking to socialize needs to have access to every area? I'm sure that once they gain access to those maps they will inevitably end up hanging out on the starting cities/housing areas just like everyone else
EVERY WORLD MAP IS A GHOST TOWN... only gridania, uldah, Limsa, kugane, and to a lesser extent rhalgrs reach are the only really populated maps...

Why are people defending this practice? Gating content behind story only makes it that much harder for newer players to jump into the game. Also clearly SE knows this is an issue since the new jobs are not gated behind story like the HW ones are. Time will only make this issue worse and for those that claim FFXIV should not cater to everyone. The reality is allowing for more options of play is not a bad thing and they are losing out of potential subscribers. This would be an investment in the future of the game.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Yes, because The Company of Heroes questline was integral to defending Titan. And collecting flowers for Minfilia's mother nearly saved the world! Let's be honest, when people complain about the MSQ, it's primarily on the boring fetch quests which litter ARR. I wager quite strongly, you'd see far less complaints if the game began at Heavensward due to how much better paced everything is. Jump potions were implemented simply to make a quick buck over players leveling their alts and not wanting to spam through the story again. Even WoW offered one for free with their latest expansion.

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I swear every time I've brought up these awkward batches of filler quests that slow down the story people crawl out of the woodwork to defend the most mundane fetch quests. Fixing earrings, gathering flowers, setting tables- there are plenty of quests that can be condensed without snagging continuity.

I've been trying to make my friends play FFXIV, but ARR MSQ is a big collosal turn down. They are not going to pay for any cash shop skip potion that was suposed to be free for at least once.
I hate all the filler MSQ from ARR with my whole heart, it's all dev fault that my friends got unmotived by all the no voice acted cutscene, non skippable cutscene, all the forced solo content, DPS queue, braindead dungeons, they can't make a single laught in the entire play.
I unsubed when I reached 50 for over exaustion.
I subbed again for HW, I cryed when I knew that I would need to complete all the 50's MSQ just to be able to play DRK, it took too much time.
But when I reached HW I was finaly motivated, and I'm here untill today.

Say to me, is it patience? I'm super patient. And ARRMSQ is super bad design and a colosal turn down to new players. The buyable skip potion is also a turn down. I shouln't need to spend more money just because the old content is dated and bad design to be able to go to the content that actually represent FFXIV. ARRMSQ is obrigatory, and so, it needs a fix out of "buy it buy that", that's lazy and leads bad reputation.

I'm tired to tell my friends that FFXIV gets better latter, while the ARRMSQ keep hitting them with stupid fillers. That's not SE quality. I shouldn't need to keep telling my friend that FFXIV will got better latter, the game needs to show that, not me. It's wrong, no matter what anyone says.

I want to know which npcs these people are so I NEED TO MEET THEM NOW that are in the newest zones? Do you really need to meet Arms mender #507? And what about zones like sea of clouds and Yanxia? You can't even access all of them when you first get to them. One of them there is no land way to get to the other side of the map. You would have to change how you unlock flying in a zone to change that. The other one is a barrier that yes is tied to the MSQ and I'm not sure how you would untie it from the msq. I guess you could have it not be there if the msq was optional, but once you finally went back and got to that point Idk how many people would be irked if they could no longer get to a part of a map because they finally chose to go and do the story. There are actual level gates to new zones in XI you have to be at least level 30 before an npc will allow you to hop on a boat to go to SoA n ToAU

Also I was a player that stopped playing until after story jump potions were a thing. After I did ultimate weapon in hopes of unlocking DRK only to find out that I have hundred more quests to get through, which even prevented me from learning new skills as I leveled. I resubbed when story jump potions were a thing. Oddly enough the advice I was told by the players when I brought up this issue. Next time should not buy the expansion packs until I get past the previous MSQ to prevent myself from over leveling and missing out on new skills. Yeah that makes prefect sense.