Completely botched character progression after account restoration

Here's the gist of my story:

- I've played a character off and on with each major release of FFXIV. When A Realm Reborn was released, I created a new character.
- I got that character up to a 50 WHM with a significant number of MSQ completed.
- I had a non-trivial amount of gil and teleport points, as is expected from playing the game up to a certain point.
- I got bored with the game and suspended my character/account.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago:

- I purchased Heavensward with the intent of continuing my character and picking the game back up.
- When I restored my SAME character (Ureu Mono on Hyperion) successfully, I logged back in.

Here's what I had:

- My character was a 50 WHM, and I had all my items.
- I had about 4k gil, which was completely wrong.
- I had a few of my mounts.
- My retainers still existed and they seemed to have had all their items.

Here's where things got messed up:

- I had SEVEN MSQ quests completed. That's it.
- I had ONE Conjurer class quest completed. I had ZERO WHM job quests completed.
- I had a handful of teleport points available to me.
- I could NOT use the airship, duty finder, or ANY of the other things that are unlocked as you play through the game.

I basically was a level 50 WHM character with practically zero story progression. Which is impossible. I could use my mounts...but I had not even unlocked that capability in the storyline yet. I had all my 50 WHM and CNJ spells...yet I had only a single CNJ story quest finished. Which is impossible.

Here's the CNJ quest I had completed:

Way of the Conjurer Lv. 1

The game requires the ENTIRE CNJ quest line to be completed before the WHM job can be obtained, correct? Well, mine wasn't.

The very unhelpful support agent I spoke with on the phone kept insisting that I never completed these quests in the first place. He said it was quite possible to get 50 WHM without doing any CNJ OR main story quests at all. He clearly doesn't actually know anything about the game.

So that's it. Both GMs and customer support agents are unwilling to do anything despite several individual attempts to contact them. No, I don't want to replay all the same crap again. I bought the game and paid my monthly fees with the intent that my character's progress would be maintained when I continued again.

Every single person I spoke to both in game and friends in real life admitted that my character was messed up, doing stuff like watching a 50 WHM walk up to the first-available Aetheryte in the game to attune it. Or not being allowed to ride an airship since I hadn't "gotten to that point in the story", according to my character's messed up quest line. I had two retainers, yet the game wouldn't let me create any, because, again, "I'm not supposed to have retainers yet."

SE, I just want you to know how disappointed I am that your support didn't actually listen to my problem or investigate my character's account AT ALL. Even the newest employee could INSTANTLY realize that my character is messed up just by taking a few looks at my quest journal. But they didn't.

Thanks for nothing.

In case anyone at SE actually bothers to look at this, here's my most recent ticket number: 6170502...

Here's some screenshots of my character page and my completed class/job quests page:

http://cld.tiz.ma/1t2Y1C2S1s2S/1.jpg

http://cld.tiz.ma/3u0D1D3j1U1X/2.jpg

Note that since I reactivated my account a couple weeks ago, I went ahead and did more stuff (leveled a bit, did some quests again so I could use the the air ships). I wasn't going to sit around and wait 2-3 days at a time for SE to get back to me with each contact incident. So the state of my character right this moment doesn't match what it was two weeks ago when this all started. Still, those two screenshots alone are enough proof that my character is messed up and should have been looked into.

This is where I'd likely just hang up the call and redial, and hope for a better rep. I think technically it is possible to have a fully leveled character with no quest progression if you started in 1.0, but I would think that the rep would be able to tell if this is the case with your character of not. Otherwise, not possible from what I'm aware.

Sorry it's worked out this way for you.

Yeah. :( I mean, I REALLY want to like this game. I was excited about Deep Dungeon and stuff. But I just feel so helpless since it's hard to contact them. Phone support said contact a GM. "We can't actually fix anything related to the game itself. Just SE accounts." GM ticket guy gave me a generic reply. "GM has determined that this is not an issue we can fix. Please contact SE Support at..." Back and forth.

The guy on the phone basically said I was lying. As I was replaying some of the main quests again just so I could get to other major cities, I remember seeing ALL that stuff before, back in 2.0. But he wouldn't believe me.

Maybe I'll try calling again and hope I don't get the same guy...

SE customer support is notoriously bad, always has been. Even in XI 10+ years ago it was atrocious. So it's not likely SE will do anything about it. Just have to redo it.

The perk is with the dungeons/trials, you can just enter solo with no level restriction and burn yourself thru at least brayflox solo with no issues at 50, maybe more.

I suppose it wouldn't be THAT bad to just move on. It sucks that SE doesn't care, given how huge their reputation is.

I did start blazing through the main quest line again, but it's so tedious. I guess I can do the same for my class/job. *sigh* I sure hope Deep Dungeon stuff is worth it. That's the reason I got back into the game again...

Why the problem occurred is actually easy to pin point. You said you had 7 MSQ done which would've put you on "Eft for Effort". This particular quest, and the one that follows underwent a swap in order as of the most recent patch, meaning the quest data structure changed. Since your character was deleted at the time, the database restructuring wouldn't have been applied to your characters info, meaning broken quest completion flags. Maybe when speaking to the reps, this info will help. As far as the conjurer quests go, I have no idea if pre-reqs have changed, or if maybe the msq change effected them in some way. I would assume that anything that had a msq quest pre-req after the broken flags would also be effected though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

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This seems highly likely to be the cause. As for fixing it, I would use the In-Game Support (not the website or phone support) and ask to be escalated to a Lead Game Master. These guys are 100% guaranteed to actually play the game (not a requirement for regular GMs) so they'll understand what you're talking about. I can't guarantee that the GM tools will be able to actually fix it, but if they don't, they'll have the ability to submit a bug report directly to the dev team identifying the cause as discussed here.

EDIT: Actually, according to this, it does seem that your symptoms are entirely consistent with being a legacy character. Your only mounts are from legacy sources and preorder bonuses. In the transition from 1.0 > 2.0, everyone's gil was divided by 10, which would by why your gil amount is different from what you remember. Also, all main story, job quest, and teleport point progress was reset. It's extremely likely that you restored the wrong character because this character is absolutely not a new character.

Your a 1.0 player. Looking at your achievements you played a total of 2 days at 2.0, ARR launch. The rest of your achievements are for the last few weeks.

What this means is that, they transfer the 1.0 character over, but thats it.

You need to do every MSQ. Every Class/Job quest over again.

You will have all your level 50 abilities, but you need to do every quest over again. You need to do the MSQ to unlock anything in the game anyway. From what I can tell you just unlocked your level 15 MSQ where you leave Gridania.

I fully understand that if I had left my character on 1.0, the transition to 2.0 would have broken things. However, I already went through that way back when 2.0 was released. I had my WHM, but all my stuff was reworked for 2.0.

That's fine.

I played through much of the game's main story and specific job quests after that transition, however. THEN I deactivated my character. Reactivating it now, however, I should not have things this screwed up again. I left off at 2.x, main story quest line and job quests significantly advanced. So now, why would it be messed up?

I'm confused. Now you're saying you did transfer a character from 1.0 to 2.0? Please get your story straight before trying to convince the GMs or the internet about the specific symptoms of your alleged problem.

Well, given you stated you levelled CNJ to 50 and gained WHM in 1.0, then it's clear what has happened is when you deleted your character in ARR, and reactivated it a significant time later, SE seems to have defaulted to restoring your character from the 1.0 save state rather than the last save state for your character when you deleted it. Whether the ARR save state still exists or not I can't say as I have no idea how SE handles archiving character data - although data corruption or bugs might have caused this action. Either way, as others have said, try seeing if you can reach a Senior Game Master and see if they can try and find out what has happened.