New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[Gralna]

Yes, why should we have to wait for anything, they should make it so we start at max lvl, have all jobs/classes unlocked, highest tier gear in our armory, a large plot with a house on it, and 100 billion gil.... then we can make threads complaining about there being nothing to do.

[AdamuKun322]

WoW does this with each expansion. It releases a new job, but gates it behind a few requirements. I think the DRK in that game you need to have a character at 55 and the right expansion as well.

[Garlyle]

I'm just going to note this isn't unusual by my knowledge of MMORPGs. Those that have had class unlocking mid-game (eg XIV style job swapping, or promotional branches, or whatever) have always required you to reach whatever location in order to be able to access them.

That's not to say I always agree with it, but it is what it is.

[Calypsx]

WoW does this with each expansion. It releases a new job, but gates it behind a few requirements. I think the DRK in that game you need to have a character at 55 and the right expansion as well.

WoW did it with only 1 class.

They understood it was a mistake and let Monk be playable from the get go.

[Stormrider]

What does this have anything to do with gating jobs? A new player isn't going to do anything in Ishguard because everything there is level 50+! Them having a DRK or not isn't going to change that lol.

WoW gated content and they didn't seem to have the problem. Heck, TBC was probably one of the most gatey (besides vanilla) and was where their playerbase grew them most. Then they gated a job in the expansion after. FFXI also gates jobs and didn't run into problems.

This isn't a new thing.

See you see it as Death Knight I see it more if they required you to finish Molten core or some other content to go through the gate to be able to start a Blood Elf. The dark portal might have had a level requirement but it couldn't have been very high since you couldn't start any quests before going through. Memory is vague but wasn't the quest just click a few NPC's?

Any Gate in WoW was 100% soloable there was no dungeon you couldn't do yourself just raids and the top level dungeons. Which were possible after the cap was raised and you could grind and do the content. Within the current system gates that affect new players will force them to make old players do that stuff over. That is the point.

If the new classes start at 50. I will personally PM you and apologize for thinking you aren't seeing the big picture and being an apologist.

[Viridiana]

See you see it as Death Knight I see it more if they required you to finish Molten core or some other content to go through the gate to be able to start a Blood Elf.

That would be if SE required you to finish Coil. Which they aren't. Because that would be dumb.

[File2ish]

Kinda late in replying to this, but yeah.

I think I have posted this a hundred times now, this thread included, but I'll repeat myself once more.

DISCLAIMER I have only played FFXI before this game (forgive me, though I don't get what's so sinful about it, everyone gets angry when I say I have...), so I will compare it to FFXI because it's all I can do.

The first expansion's story was tied to the base game's story, much like Heavensward and ARR. But the jobs? No. The new areas (excluding endgame areas of course), no. They were packed with dangerous high level monsters, of course, but it provided still chances for exploration for the sneaky newbie to take a look around. And all the following expansions after that one (CoP, ToAU, WotG, ACP, AMK, ASA, SoA) did not require the base game's completion, but rather provided new stories, new ambientations and new things to do, "expanding" what can be done in Vana'diel and what stories could be told. Areas were easily accessible after one or two of the EXPANSION's quests, not the base game's quests, at any level. Sure you needed high level survive the content, but jobs and exploration were always allowed to the newer player as well, with only a lv30 requirement to unlock the jobs (much like we have with all jobs excluding Heavensward's so far). So point one, no, not all MMOs have done what SE is doing now, there is at least one who didn't, and I'm sure if I knew more MMOs I could find more.

Looking back at FFXI, yes we had access to the new areas and the expansion stories without completing the original FFXI main scenario (which was pretty bare bones unlike XIV:ARR's story). Rise of the Zilart was merely tied into the main story of XI, in order to progress through it past a certain point you had to have defeated the Shadow Lord in the main quest if I recall.

The other expansions were not tied directly into the main story (Promathia kind of was I think, but not to the extent that Zilart was), and as such were able to allow you into the new zones unhindered by anything other than enemy monsters that will aggro you. They were not tied to the death of the Shadow Lord, and were completely separated from the main scenario. The cities added by the expansions were also not tied to the main scenario, so heading to Al Zhabi and the Tavnazian Safehold had no affect on the original FFXI story.

Heavensward, however, is tied directly into very specific events in 2.0-2.55. Before those events you can not enter Ishgard despite the city existing within the main scenario. The story states that they closed themselves off to pretty much everyone. Being able to travel to and fro Ishgard before the point in the 2.55 story would be a huge plot hole when the main story has characters like Alphinaud stating many times that Ishgard has closed off itself from outsiders. Therefore it makes perfect sense to gate off access to Ishgard (and by extension, access to the 3 new jobs) until players reach that point in the story.

I don't think we know if new zones in Heavensward will be gated off (aside from Ishgard and other story gated stuff). Coerthas will likely be expanded and I'm sure people who have the expansion, but have not progressed through 2.55, will be able to wander into those zones much like we were able to head to Altepa Desert and Rabao in FFXI without doing the main story (used those because they were accessible only with the Zilart expansion if I recall, it's like a zone with a hamlet like Western Thanalan and Horizon).

I'm not going to be surprised if the expansion after Heavensward will do the same for story reasons (we still have Ala Mihgo, Sharlayan [or whatever it's called], and other continents like where Garlemald is to travel to). I also won't be surprised if they pull and FFXI and make an expansion not tied directly into the main story that everyone can get access to.

[WHS]

Final Fantasy XI gated advanced jobs behind a level 30 gate and some of them were not available unless you bought the expansion and had access to the corresponding areas. Why should FFXIV be any different? I don't mind the gate.

[KisaiTenshi]

This will be amusing to see how this plays out. All the people who defend the story gating of certain content. Will you all be happy when at 60 you have to run Toto-rak for the 1000th time.

Here's the real issue:
"New" players who want to play with their friends who have already played the game for a while. So while the new players are stuck on the 2.x content, their friends are roaming around the 3.x content, possibly keeping spoilers in check. Will such friends want to "never" visit the 3.x area while they drag their 2.x MSQ friend through the storyline at breakneck speed? Hardly.

Just from experiences in other games. "Gating Content" vs "Gating Skills/classes/jobs" are different mechanisms.

If you do NOT own Heavensward, then you do not get to experience the storyline or select these jobs/classes/skills for yourself. But it is inevitable that the assets used by the players (gear mainly) has to make it's way into the 2.x content otherwise people without the 2.x content simply will not be able to play with 3.x players. That only gates people without the expansion from actually going into the 3.x area.

This the first statement of "Only available inside Ishgard" , meaning that you can't select these unless you have a class at level 30, much in the same way you need to get a class to level 30 before the Jobs for that class are available. How these Jobs are accessed however we aren't given any information. Is it going to be a another Soul Crystal, or is it going to straight up be another weapon that starts at level 30. It would seem absolutely silly to have a player complete the MSQ, and then if they want to play any of the new jobs they have to start back at level 1 again.

That leads to the next statement of "Must be level 50 and complete the MSQ to get the introduction to Ishgard" ... yeah but that still doesn't mean Ishgard is locked away without it. It's a new area, not a new dungeon. It's far more likely that if you haven't completed the MSQ, you don't get the introduction (cue your character riding in on the cart like in V2.0 with Alph), no tutorial messages, and no quest markers for the Storyline. The guild quests were never part of the storyline, and unless you hit level 30 in a certain class, the Job quests weren't available either. So I speculate that if you are "only" level 30 DoM/DoW, and you somehow get into Ishgard... eg walking, there will be a quest marker for the new three jobs, but nothing else, so none of the dungeon content will be unlockable. If you complete the MSQ, then the main storyline for 3.0 unlocks all the quests for unlocking the dungeons and such. If you have a level 50 DoL/DoH there will likely be quests for you regardless of your progress in the V2 or V3 MSQ.

The last statement goes back to the actual race selection. Players being able to pick Au Ra right out of the gate seems problematic if they don't start in the Heavensward area, as nothing in the game lore has really hinted where they come from. I'll assume there is a storyline reason for it, and there will be a different starting area for them that leads back into the V2 MSQ, but even if there isn't, there is bound to be changes to the lore to give a retcon to this.

Just based on other games, storyline content tends to require linear progression but unless it's really daunting there is no reason to offer a shortcut through the storyline. It's far more likely that a shortcut through the V2 time-sinks will be pushed through (eg the Relic weapon) so that a player isn't spending a month chasing Atmas, Alexandrite just to get their Relic weapon up to par with the craftable gear in the V3 area.

[Ilitsa]

Because we meet the people that teach them IN Ishgard, what's not to understand about it, really? It's fine, everythings gonna be fiiiiiiiine