New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[dice137]

Just get good and complete your story quests. It ain't hard.

[Alistaire]

It's funny the complaints in a thread on a forum that requires you to have an active account to post. There is literally nobody here that's affected by this.

[Mistoltin]

It's funny the complaints in a thread on a forum that requires you to have an active account to post. There is literally nobody here that's affected by this.

So only people affected by an issue are allowed to complain about it?

As for the topic, personally, if you haven't ever played ARR and you decide to pick it up with the expansion upon release and can't play the new classes from the very start then I'll be very disappointed. Unless you unlock the jobs at the same level you are, so at whatever point you are in the storyline you can just swap over, because if anything is majorly wrong in this game, it's the leveling the second time after finishing all the quests, and even with them it got very tedious many times.

[Aeyis]

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.

If your two friends got to level 50 in one week and did most of the 2.0 story, then they certainly played a lot more then a couple of hours a night.
As for the 2.1-2.55 I actually did those quests last week. Took me most of the week to do, while playing a good many hours each day..doing only that. (I did not skip text or scenes) It is not as fast as you claim it is for a newer player. Doing it in a few days requires quite a few hours of doing nothing but MSQ.


That said, due to its story driven nature; the entire expansion is locked behind the MSQ. That makes sense. A bigger question would be if they intend to make sure that the duties of the MSQ can be completed in a reasonable time. Currently it can take a bit of time to find a group for certain duties.

[Airget]

If your two friends got to level 50 in one week and did most of the 2.0 story, then they certainly played a lot more then a couple of hours a night.
As for the 2.1-2.55 I actually did those quests last week. Took me most of the week to do, while playing a good many hours each day..doing only that. (I did not skip text or scenes) It is not as fast as you claim it is for a newer player. Doing it in a few days requires quite a few hours of doing nothing but MSQ.

The point is that if you are x person who doesn't care for the story it's easy enough to skip it and spam through content. What adds to the time it takes to complete 2.1-2.55 is all the CS. Heck if I get bored maybe I'll lv a healer and clock in how long it takes to complete the story if I spame through all the CS and text from 2.1+ cause it isn't as long as you might think. What makes the process long is taking the time to enjoy the story and for those who enjoy the story they will have no issue with Ishgard being gated by 2.55 completion because 3.0 is a continuation of those events rather than a full standalone story.

And again those who don't care for the story can just skip skip skip and it's pretty much.
Temple of Qarn NM, Bunch of Guildhest, Moogle, Levi, Ramuh, Snowcloak, Shiva, Keeper of Lake, Trial, Trial, and a bunch of single player instances and a bunch of open world "instance" fights sprinkled about and a lot of running around.

[Lexia]

Whats wrong with gated content? If it is gated behind storyline then it pretty simple gate to unlock just, not like it saying you have to beat all of coil or something.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

Well, if some people want to compare other gamers...

WoW, when WotLK was released, introduced the first Hero Class, the Death Knight. In order to use said class, you had to, at least, have a level 55 character. With that being said, you were completely unable use that class if you started the game as a brand new player. The level 55 content was half way into the Burning Crusade content, which is the first expansion. Even though WoW is not tied to a story like FF, you can access to any raid/dungeon whenever you can, the class was gated behind these pre-requisites.

SE's idea is not crazy and I don't really mind. A player who started ARR will still have 9 jobs to play with, with the motivation of getting the new classes when they ding 50 and run through the mainstory content. If you don't finish the main-story, you'll have some dungeons/trials unlocked even. We can't be 100% sure if all the ARR content will become obsolte when the expansion hits, so we'll see when the time comes. Now, this will be easier for SE, since they will not design weapons for pre-level xx (The starting level of the new extra classes). We also don't know if they're going to include a "power level" service in the Mogstation for brand new players that send them to level 50 with all the content unlocked. Maybe we can expect that in future expansions.

As a personal experience: Again, I created an alt, and when I got to level 50, it took me 2 days to finish the main-story up to 2.5. Obviously, skipping all the cutscenes, since I've watched them already. Now if you want to watch them, then enjoy them! You have no reason to complain if you want to watch them. About the new players, the "Think of the children" call... let them complain by themselves. Let them voice THEIR opinion when the time comes.

[Viridiana]

If your two friends got to level 50 in one week and did most of the 2.0 story, then they certainly played a lot more then a couple of hours a night.

Or they're skipping cutscenes. You can make it to 50 in one week while watching all scenes, if you have a lot of free time.

[KodiHivaer]

It's normal for things to be gated behind expansions:

WOW: want to experience this awesome stuff? TOO BAD! get WOTLK <some other expansions> and level 55!
GW1 wanted to get to Elonia? TOO BAD! Get GW: Eye of the north!
FFXI: Wanted to get to these snazzy places with new jobs? TOO BAD! Get COP, TOAU, WOTG <insert other expansions here> and get level 30 to unlock the quests

I don't know if you're new to the mmorpg scene but this has been the norm since MMORPGs existed.

It doesn't even take that long to get through the main story nor level, at least a month 1/2 or so.

[FoxyAreku]

Yeah, that's really stupid. I even have a friend who really wanted to play a gun job, but he's probably not even going to play the game now if he can't do it from the beginning.

It's really not that hard to just let you go to ishgard if the guilds /have/ to be there.

Also some of the posts in this thread just appall me. Requiring a month and a half of work for new players to get to actual relevant content or to get to play the only class they may care about doesn't strike you as bad design AT ALL?

Honestly it makes me worry about this game's future. There's no way it'll last as long as say, WoW, with this design choice.

It's normal for things to be gated behind expansions:

WOW: want to experience this awesome stuff? TOO BAD! get WOTLK <some other expansions> and level 55!
GW1 wanted to get to Elonia? TOO BAD! Get GW: Eye of the north!
FFXI: Wanted to get to these snazzy places with new jobs? TOO BAD! Get COP, TOAU, WOTG <insert other expansions here> and get level 30 to unlock the quests

I don't know if you're new to the mmorpg scene but this has been the norm since MMORPGs existed.

It doesn't even take that long to get through the main story nor level, at least a month 1/2 or so.

No other MMO has ever locked a new class behind anything. Once you bought the expansion you could go right away. Only exception being classes that didn't start at level 1, but even then that didn't require you getting to level cap, just whatever level they started at.