Naoki Yoshida's Comment in Regard to Jump Potions/Boost Potions

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Originally Posted by Greven

I can already see frustration of both new and veteran players due to the skill gap and eventual rude awakening in DF.

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The massive skill gap is already here tho, it can't get much worse...

My fears have nothing to do with story:

- New Player skips to Level 60, expecting WoW.
- New Player frustrated at leveling multiple classes, inventory management (WoW players have ridiculous inventory), doesn't understand which buttons to press, requires an FC or random parties to teach them and nobody wants to do so because Old Players feel they "cheated" to get to this max level. Too late, no backsies.
- Old Players begin seeing Medica II spam in top dungeons where they only seen these careless mistakes in early levels.
- Old Player feels inexperience/mistakes are too much to bear, Old Players quit because Roulettes are too hard. Imagine worse than Steps of Faith.
- Primary income of FFXIV begins to dwindle from the subscribers since 1.0 or 2.0. New players play game for a month or two, get bored, and quit.

The real issue is that old players will hate the success rate of roulettes decreasing and the shifts the developers will need to make to keep content easy for them.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

My fears have nothing to do with story:

- New Player skips to Level 60, expecting WoW.

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There's always ready tons of that already without the skip, people telling their friends "It's just like WoW, bro!" and then mentioning after their friends frustration that it's also a Final Fantasy game first. You see it heaps on this forum too.

It's often why the term WoWfugee is thrown around

In response to "Wait and See".

You can't, and I feel that's why the community devs have put this to discussion.

Once the damage is done, it's done. There's no flipping the switch to turn it off. This decision is far more challenging than housing or dungeons or even tweaking stats. This affects the core community.

That's why everyone here feels so passionate on both ends and we see over 94 pages in a short period of time. A decision like this could affect the game and the actual RL jobs of everyone involved in FFXIV. Having been someone who has been laid off by companies, I know that level of fear and anxiety.

The only reason why I dislike the idea of a jump potion is how unimmersive it is and that's what I think is the most important, immersion, since this is an RPG after all.

I personally think it's better if the developer allows new player to choose whether to start at the beginning or jump straight to the Stormblood arc when they create the character.
If they choose to jump straight to the Stormblood story, then they will receive a few unique main-story quests that kind of teach them the mechanics of dungeons and raids, before the story then merges with older players and continues to the Stormblood arc.

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Originally Posted by Aleydis

The only reason why I dislike the idea of a jump potion is how unimmersive it is and that's what I think is the most important, immersion, since this is an RPG after all.

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You mean like the fantasia? or the glamor system combined with the cash store items that make you look exactly like some characters already in the game? Or the fact that you can have some very lore unfriendly mounts?
This reply is a bit tongue in cheek i know. Thing is not everything needs to be immersive or explainable in-game.

As to your other point: there's 2 potions
1 potion one skips 2.0 story (before ST comes 2.0 and 3.0 story) and gives you a review of the story up to that point. Previously on Final Fantasy XIV
the other potion levels you to 50/60 without skipping the story.

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Originally Posted by Yasuhiro

It's often why the term WoWfugee is thrown around.

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We also have an active WoW guild with thousands of members, literally on Blizzard record as the 2nd largest WoW guild in history, we need multiple guilds to fit them all. But the problem is that the WoW people finish the XIV story and head back to WoW. Every time. I've traveled to San Fran, Boston, Toronto, and other places to meet and hang out with them. But once they hit cap level, they're gone.

I've created FC events, holiday parties, guild photos, raid groups, dungeons, crafting parties, airship groups... but the core XIV players stay in XIV after trying a WoW expansion, and the core WoW players head back to WoW after our expansions.

WoW and XIV people are very different. A lot of people stop playing once the experience bar is full. Hell I've done it in WoW, I started doing dailies there I got bored and unsubscribed. Raiding was ridiculous there. I'm sure they say the same for us.

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Originally Posted by Accelerating

The massive skill gap is already here tho, it can't get much worse...

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Sadly there is no limit for the worst

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Originally Posted by Accelerating

The massive skill gap is already here tho, it can't get much worse...

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(Medica II) (spam) (Expert Roulette)
(Please look forward to it)

But in all seriousness, it's basically like having your never-played-XIV friend jumping into a roulette at your capped level, and saying:
"Here bro, give it a try."
"Aren't these three real people? I don't know what I'm doing."
"Nah, s'all good. They'll understand"
*Player performs poorly as expected. Tank rage quit after DPS waited an hour to get into that queue.*
"You gave me the hardest dungeons and I didn't understand what I was supposed to do! They trash-talked me the whole time! Screw this, I'm not gonna play this game."

I love this idea. My friends want to play with us but are put off by all of the gates between them and us with content. As new players, They will have to play for weeks to reach the required level and be at the right part in the story to do any content with us. And that really puts them off.

I do understand that people are concerned about the skill gap but there is very little reason for anyone to buy a story jump potion unless they want to catch up with their friends. No solo player would want to skip all of the story and dungeons just to get to end game on their own, there would be no reason for them to do that unless other people are waiting for them to catch up so they can play together and then, if they do, their friends will be there to teach them how to play when they arrive.

It would be a good idea though to have a 'boosted' icon for players, the same way that new players have the 'sprout' icon next to them.

I hope this helps your decision and tweaking of the system!