Please allow players to purchase starting level HW jobs

There are so many times when I'm making a new alt with a job in mind, but it's a Heavensward job, so I have to fight through ARR/Post-ARR to get to Ishgard to unlock the job, then I have to grind 20 levels for it to be able to progress that character's MSQ. That's multiple days of playing for me and a lot of other people.

I know you can buy level 80 boosts or an ARR story skip, but I don't always want that. Sometimes I just want to be able to unlock a job as it starts, with it's default weapon and armor, and no job quests completed.

I understand this might seem strange to some, but let me explain. With Heavensward jobs you have no way of unlocking them until you're around level 50-54 in most cases. That means you have to get to the point at which you can unlock the Stormblood jobs before you can unlock the Heavensward jobs. You're simply locked out of these jobs until that point. And worse yet, you can use the Stormblood jobs immediately to progress MSQ from the instant you reach level 50, unlike the level 30 Heavensward jobs. Heavensward is the only expansion like this and our current/only workaround makes you skip the story for either ARR or these jobs, including the amazing Dark Knight story if you do go for the level 80 boost. That rings of a problem to me.

So, what then is the easiest solution?

• Just play through ARR until you can naturally unlock the jobs in Heavensward? That is literally what I'm trying to advocate against.
• Buy a boost and a skip? That's massively expensive, especially on a budget.
• Buy just a skip and grind from level 1? That's just an unpleasant thought.
• Get to level 30 as a job you don't actually want to play and then skip ARR to unlock the job? That's already a third of the effort of just running through ARR, and it costs half as much as the starter edition for the game itself.
• Have the devs move the Heavensward jobs to ARR Coerthas? That's a lot of work and I don't think they'd ever go for that unless everyone who played demanded it...

No, none of that works. But a cheap $5-$10 unlock option on the Mogstation store? That might just work. It's inexpensive, not too much work to program into the game or online store, and you could make the jobs way more attainable to people who would otherwise have to wait forever to unlock them.

But, I admit this is a highly personal request, and it's only an issue if you want to actually do the story on the alt and/or don't have the best grasp of the jobs in question. But I'd say having access to them from the get go through a small purchase would be the better way to learn them, since you'll be using them from the start of ARR through to Heavensward (where you would normally unlock them).

One thing I enjoyed in FF11 (and unfortunately will never happen in 14) is that the starting jobs and advanced jobs were not mutually exclusive. So you could start playing a Warrior to lvl 30, get bored/fancied a change and then go unlock any other of the advanced jobs you had access to (some of the later expansions did require story progression to get the unlock quests, but you could go unlock them on any job you had at level 30). All jobs also started at lvl 1 - yes it was a grind, but you certainly knew how to play the job when you hit the 99 cap. :)

It would be nice having the option to have more starter classes available (even if it was just ARR + HW classes) but with the job quests tied into Heavensward locations/NPC's, I'm not sure the devs would be open to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZodiacPrince

Have the devs move the Heavensward jobs to ARR Coerthas? That's a lot of work and I don't think they'd ever go for that unless everyone who played demanded it...

---

This is the main issue I see with what you are requesting, which is that something like the above would probably need to happen to make what you're requesting function at a level the devs would consider passable. The level 30-50 job quests are in Ishgard right now, so even if the devs gave you a level 1 MCH in ARR, you wouldn't have access to Hypercharge, Heat Blast, Rook Autoturret,or Ricochet until you got to Heavensward and binged the quests that had built up. Several of those skills are fundamental to the the Mechanist experience.