New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[silentwindfr]

seriously.... new player have other stuff to do than simply rush for try the new jobs :x

and i will be blunt, expansion are not means for new player.... like said it's an "expansion" of the current content, the expansion are means to be humongous patch, generally they will change tons of stuff.... but if they have wanted, it was possible to simply call it the 2.6.... since it's what is it. the continuation of the story and the content.... then normally you need to complete the previous story for get acces to this.
by the way, be happy that ninja was given like this, because if it was me, i had gated it behind 2.2 story quest.

ps: i wonder how people will react when the 4.X will begin hehe, they will whine that they can't get acces to the new area because they need to finish the 2.x and 3.x story.

[ThusFarJay]

I personally like the idea and agree wholeheartedly that 2.0 MSQ should be prerequisite for both 3.0 content as well the newly released jobs. Is my stance subjective as someone who has completed 2.0? Maybe. You can't sincerely expect my interest to be for someone who has not even booted up FFXIV yet.

So much Q.Q for what's to be an EXPANSION.

expansion [ik-span-shuh n] - the amount or degree of expanding.

[JimboTCB]

I'm way behind the curve, only started playing the game a couple of months ago and pretty much ignored the main scenario after hitting 50. So now I'm going HAM this weekend to try and catch up - did the entirety of 2.2 and 2.3 in one day yesterday, and planning on bashing out the rest over the next day or so.

It's an awful lot to expect brand new players to go through just to get up to speed and start playing the expansion, especially if existing players are going to be ditching everything 50 and below, it's going to be hell getting those trials and stuff completed - it's fine while there's still loads of overlevelled people doing roulettes, but who's going to still be doing that when 3.0 hits? There's a lot of impassable roadblocks in main quest progression which require duty completion, and without making sure existing players are incentivised to keep doing them through the duty finder, it's going to make for a horrible experience for any new players.

[Haibel]

Why is this even a surprise? You could only start XI as one of 6 jobs. All other jobs were gated to lvl 30 and some quest. Rouge isn't a starting class. It's pretty safe to say all jobs for this point forward will be gated.

[Lemuria]

Okay, I'll chime in. My first question is... so what? It's locked behind a story mode and it makes sense to do so as there's no significant reason you should have access to Ishgard unless you were born there.

If you look at most expansion content on other games, it's the same deal. The shocker here is that the clue is in the name. Expansion, as in making something bigger. The core game is being expanded with new areas and story quests. FFXI may not have been 'gated' in quite the same way, but there was a significant jump in much of the expansion content. Try running around Aht Urghan with your level 30 weakling and say hi to the deadly level 70 Chigoes!

That's before I mention how Rise of the Zilart was locked behind the main bulk of the rank quests which involved taking down the Shadow Lord.

See? This stuff HAS been done before, it's not some alien concept. And to be fair to FFXIV, many of those new jobs also involved quests which were in very dangerous areas. Good luck surviving it if you don't already have a level 75+ job or some heavy duty mercenaries to help. Sneak and Invis doesn't work on everything!

I'm fairly certain the people complaining about it loudest simply don't want to play through the story. To which I'd ask 'why'? After all, story is central to a FF game, isn't that why you picked up the game in the first place?

[Haibel]

I'm fairly certain the people complaining about it loudest simply don't want to play through the story. To which I'd ask 'why'? After all, story is central to a FF game, isn't that why you picked up the game in the first place?

Well there that and the one that bitch about the localization team using English. You know like actual English, not, "Yo Son, why u be bow up? steps off b4 weeez b fi-ten".

[JimboTCB]

I'm fairly certain the people complaining about it loudest simply don't want to play through the story. To which I'd ask 'why'? After all, story is central to a FF game, isn't that why you picked up the game in the first place?

Because requiring brand new players - which one can only assume they're desperately trying to attract by selling XIV/Heavensward bundles - to grind through an entire game's worth of obsolete content in order to access the expansion they've just bought the game on the basis of is a horrible, horrible way of keeping people playing.

I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting people should be able to skip the 1-50 grind and go straight into Heavensward. But all the busywork after hitting 50, which will become increasingly pointless as the game goes on, is just slapping a massive roadblock in front of people. It'd be like if WOW made you take a time-out when you reached the end of each expansion area and forced you to grind out all the raid content before letting you move on to the next zone, ain't nobody got time for all that shit.

[LunaHoshino]

Because requiring brand new players - which one can only assume they're desperately trying to attract by selling XIV/Heavensward bundles - to grind through an entire game's worth of obsolete content in order to access the expansion they've just bought the game on the basis of is a horrible, horrible way of keeping people playing.

It's not as if the game takes that much time to complete. I have two friends who just started playing last week and already they're almost done with the main 2.0 story-- which is the longest part of the game. Once you've completed that, you can get through 2.1-2.55 in just a few days of playing for a couple of hours a night.

[Bluevann]

If you look at most expansion content on other games, it's the same deal. The shocker here is that the clue is in the name. Expansion, as in making something bigger.

Right, but this is not making the game "bigger". It's making it "longer" (I guess they should've called it an Extension instead?); it does not expand the content of the game and your options with what to do with it, but only adds more "available after all the rest". Many old players (including me) have expressed the feeling of wanting to re-do 2.0 as one of the new job, and some new players (like my friend, who isn't going to get the game till June) will be joining JUST because of Heavensward. He did not buy FFXIV or ARR up to this day because he did not like it. And now it turns out he's gonna have to play a game he doesn't particularly enjoy before he can get to what he really bought it for (Dark Knight, he's obsessed with DRK, has only been playing FFXI for it so far).

Forgive the ugly paint skills! XD


Personally I appreciate more when I am given the choice of what to do in the game and when to do it. Now, this time they wanted to tie Heavensward's MSQ to the base game's story, and I guess there is no argument here. But I just hope future expansions won't be tied like this. A player shouldn't be forced to go through something that he might have intended to do later, on a more enjoyable class. It hurts both the player and the game imo, because now I know there's many who are just rushing through the cutscenes without a care for it, just because of Heavensward's jobs. Maybe, had they been given the choice, they would have gone back to do the 2.0 MSQ at a later time, and maybe they would have enjoyed it and took interest in it, who knows?

I just think it is very bad service to the playerbase, is all. SE should keep in mind that there might be a reason why some non-XIV players are buying the game JUST NOW.

[Lemuria]

Right, but this is not making the game "bigger". It's making it "longer" (I guess they should've called it an Extension instead?); it does not expand the content of the game and your options with what to do with it, but only adds more "available after all the rest".

Increased level cap, new skills, new dungeons and areas. You're right. How silly of me, none of this sounds like it's expanding on the original game. And absolutely none of it will be available outside of Ishgard. Nope, not at all. We're all shackled to the storyline like it or not.

...I think the sarcasm meter broke.

But honestly, if you're so bent on not completing the (very easy) storyline, then you only have yourself to blame for not getting the full enjoyment out of the game. You can also feel free to ignore every single expansion pack ever released for virtually every MMO in history, since almost all of them require a strong level of game progression to play.