Quote Originally Posted by Snugglebutt View Post
Not sure what you mean by completely different thing, the other person was talking about new players being left behind stuck on old low level content, the mercenary system is designed for the sole purpose of helping with low level content like dungeons along side the fact there is a lot of other elements which makes worrying about new players and old content less worry worthy.
Er, you sure about that? The only type of "mercenary" system I've heard SE talk about is one that helps players without FC airships get to the FC airship areas.

My major concern for gating expansion content behind story completion isn't necessarily how it affects Heavensward, but rather how it affects expansion #5 six or so years down the line.

Think about it this way:

FFXIV is a steady success and keeps releasing new content and new expansions as the years go on. Someone decides they want to pick the game up because a job in expansion 5 caught their eye. Now do they have to go through ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the story content between 2.0 and 6.5 just to get to where the job they actually want to play lives? That's not entirely reasonable.

Now it's possible that job unlocks and things like that would be available in Realm Reborn zones, and that could be a way around this exact problem, but you still run into the problem of such a player needing probable years to catch up to where their friends are playing in the new stuff. Player turnover at that point would be a massive issue as new players can't replace old players quickly enough.