New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[Blueyes]

From http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/...d-new-details/ on Mar 07, 2015.

Will we have to finish the main campaign or reach a certain level to access Heavensward's main content?

Editor’s Note: After publishing this story, we received clarification from Square Enix for this question. The updated answer follows, but we’ve left the original answer in the story for transparency’s sake.

Naoki Yoshida: You will have to already own A Realm Reborn, plus complete all of the main story quests up through Patch 2.55. After that, an introductory quest for Heavensward will become available; accepting that quest will then guide you through the gates of Ishgard. All of the job quests related to the new jobs will be in Ishgard as well, so the condition to access those will be the same. If a player had stopped playing around Patch 2.2 or 2.3, it would be best to revisit the A Realm Reborn main story quests to get back into the groove as you head towards Heavensward!

Original Answer: If you already own A Realm Reborn and you get Heavensward, you’ll be able to at least enter Ishgard. The new jobs added in Heavensward are not tied to the main story, so those are accessible as well. In terms of the story, if you want to enjoy the Heavensward story arc, since it’s tied to the upcoming 2.55 patch, it’s a prerequisite to have finished that content. If a player had stopped playing around patch 2.2 or 2.3, I’d recommend choosing one of the new jobs and leveling that up while catching up on the story, then transitioning into Heavensward.

I'm surprised this hasn't been a more talked about subject. Based on the clarified answer to the above question, it would seem that it will not be possible to play any of the three new jobs unless all of the 2.0 story is complete. If that is the case it strikes me as an odd decision considering any new players drawn by the expansion will be locked out from playing any of these jobs until they level a different job to 50 (contradicting the supposed "level 30" requirement that was stated in a Massively article) and complete every quest in the main scenario. Any existing players who want to level a second character would also need to fulfill those same requirements.

Even if people were to say that it's "easy and doesn't take that long" I still don't understand why the new jobs would need to be gated like this. The Dragoon story has ties to Ishard, yet we don't have to meet such steep requirements to play that job. I don't see why these new jobs should be treated any different. If by any chance the information provided in the above article is incorrect or misinterpreted I would like to know.

To add a little clarification to keep things on track, this isn't about needing 2.0 story to access Heavensward areas. I'm okay with that. What bothers me is that SE felt a need to lock the new jobs behind that gate as well when the job quests could have been made available in existing zones (still requiring a Heavenward purchase to access those quests, of course) thus making them more accessible to new players.

[Fuma]

Not to give spoilers but you kinda do need to complete 2.55 to enter Ishgard, so if the new job guilds are located there it doesn't make much sense to be able to access that area before completing 2.55 questline.

[Mistoltin]

Because why just get Expansion sales when you can force people to grind through the entire story and rake in that sub-money.
They know that Dark Knight is a highly desired class, why would they just hand it out willy-nilly?

Still can't believe that they're tying in 2.0 into 3.0 though, gotta love having everything gated off even though you paid for it. All those newbies going through the ropes, means they're going to continue forcing us to repeat older content to get new things as well, like the roulettes and the relic grind. Oh-boy...

[Fuma]

Because why just get Expansion sales when you can force people to grind through the entire story and rake in that sub-money.
They know that Dark Knight is a highly desired class, why would they just hand it out willy-nilly?

Still can't believe that they're tying in 2.0 into 3.0 though, gotta love having everything gated off even though you paid for it. All those newbies going through the ropes, means they're going to continue forcing us to repeat older content to get new things as well, like the roulettes and the relic grind. Oh-boy...

That is all a good thing... it keeps old content relevant so that way if someone was leveling their BLM for the first time in say... 3.2 there would still be some people queuing for it through roulette to help them out.

[Ecks007]

Old news is old.

Seeing as the new jobs are introduced in the expansion and new areas that you can only get to by doing the story, yes they are "gated" if you want to call it that. The story is pretty darn easy to complete though, in fact the only difficult/semi-difficult story trials to complete were just recently added in 2.5 and 2.55. Everything else that is required for the story is a breeze.

It may be a bit time consuming but this game's story IS the reason why the new areas even open up to Adventurers (ie. us player-characters) and it doesn't make sense as to why Ishgard would be open unless you've completed the story to the point where the Gates of Judgement would be opened for us as they have remained shut the entire time beforehand.

I see no problem here. These new jobs are not jobs you can start out as, they are unlocked via story completion and purchase of the expansion. There is no problem here. Story is essential in a Final Fantasy game. Don't like it? Play something else then. *shrug*

[Bluevann]

It has been brought up in threads before (including one I made, which I let go at one point because the flaming was getting just too bad). I'm personally really disappointed at this; FFXI expansion jobs were never gated behind main story requirements (or if they did, it was only very brief progression in the EXPANSION's story, not the base game's story, like Aht Urhgans jobs requiring aht urhgan pass (obtainable at lv30), and Wings of the Goddess jobs requiring you to go through the Cavernous Maws (again, doable even under lv30, but lv30 is the base requirement to unlock any job). I can understand the MSQ of heavensward requiring MSQ progression to some degree, but even jobs? Meh.

Oh and before someone points fingers again, NO, I'm not comparing to FFXI because I think FFXIV must be like FFXI. I compare it to FFXI because FFXI is the ONLY videogame with an expansion that I've ever played before FFXIV. I can only talk of stuff I know, no hard feelings.

(Also, how comes we need the MSQ progression to access Ishgard when the Derplander enters the gate without even a single guard stopping him to identify him? Not fair. I want to find the gate wide open too.)

[Blueyes]

Not to give spoilers but you kinda do need to complete 2.55 to enter Ishgard, so if the new job guilds are located there it doesn't make much sense to be able to access that area before completing 2.55 questline.

That's honestly my question, though. Referring to Dragoon as another example, the main NPC you interact with is found out in Coerthas. Currently jobs don't really have "guilds" to begin with, but they decided to use those for the new jobs while also placing them behind the gates of Ishgard. They could have placed the job quest NPCs out in Coerthas like they did with Dragoon, but they chose not to and for reasons that haven't been explained.

[LineageRazor]

I personally think it was a bad decision. It puts WAY too much of a gate between new players and the expansion content. A player might be super hyped about machinist - and be totally let down when they realize they need to level a job to 50 AND slog through thirty hours worth of cutscenes before they can even TOUCH it.

Actually, with this news, it seems there's pretty much no incentive at all for a new player to fork over money for the expansion until they're already deep into the game. That seems like a bad design choice from a bloodsucking coporate point of view - you WANT players, even ones who might give up and quit after three weeks, to buy both base set and expansion because, duh, money. Right now, any new player who buys the expansion and isn't sure that they're in for the long haul is only doing so because they don't know pretty much all the content is locked away.

FFXI handled it much better: all the new jobs, and most of the new areas were pretty much accessable from the get-go. You'd still need a high level job to access some of the missions and such, and the monsters in the new high level areas would rip you a new one if you weren't careful, but the job unlock quests were carefully tailored to be completable even by a level 30 player with no other jobs at a higher level (all other extra jobs in the game also require a level 30 player). Get a job to 30, and you could unlock any job in the base set or any expansion.

The current situation doesn't bother me, because I'm all set. I've done all the prerequisites (with the exception of a handful of mission quests I'll get to shortly), so it won't affect me. But it's strange, and a rather questionable move in terms of profit, for them to be taking such a giant dump on new and future players...

[OMEGA_HACK]

I should note, that that Massively article about the level requirements be taken with a grain of salt. There have be no such announcements stating that the new jobs will unlock at thirty. In fact the only thing they said was you won't level them up starting at level 1, and they were thinking about having the jobs start at level 30 (the job itself will start at 30, not the required level needed to unlock the job is 30; that being said even that is not set in stone as Yoshi-P said that its still being talked about)

Secondly, I don't see a problem with this. In FFXI you had to purchase Treasures of Aht Urhgan to unlock Blue Mage, Corsair, and Puppeteer. It's expansion content, and these are Advanced Jobs (as Yoshi named them) so yes, they should be a bit more difficult to get to unlock.

Thirdly, you have to remember that Dragoon was somewhat forced to happen, in the beginning (1.0) Dragoon was not something that was going to be considered, it was Lancer and they were from Gridania. However when Jobs were implemented there was already lore that Ishgard was fighting dragons and well Dragoons <-> Dragons go together so they were somewhat forced on that, as Dragoon really didn't 'fit' anyway else in the current world at that time. Also, while Dragoon has ties with Ishgard, you are not really recognized by Ishgard (as they didn't even know I was an Azure Dragoon just like Estinien) as one, you are trained by an old ex-dragoon mainly because of your proficiency in using their weapon of choice (the lance). So its not like you waltz up the gates of Ishgard demanding to be taught their ways, in fact very little of Ishgard is revealed in the Dragoon story line save for the bits about the Azure Dragoon protects Nidhogg's eye in Ishgard.

[Fuma]

That's honestly my question, though. Referring to Dragoon as another example, the main NPC you interact with is found out in Coerthas. Currently jobs don't really have "guilds" to begin with, but they decided to use those for the new jobs while also placing them behind the gates of Ishgard. They could have placed the job quest NPCs out in Coerthas like they did with Dragoon, but they chose not to and for reasons that haven't been explained.

Technically Coerthas could be treated like how South Shroud is to Gridania. Ishgard even has 2 large forts in Coerthas, Camp Dragonhead and Whitebrim Front. The first quest talks about a mission just outside their walls. Also, I'd just take anything they say with a grain of salt until about a month or so from the release date, things are still subject to change.