New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[Jandor]

Ah, pedantry. A fine spice to terrible posts.

I said class instead of job, my point is invalid .

[Rgbg]

I don't seem to understand the problem at all. When FF 14 2.0 started you did not have access to all the other Classes, you had to at least reach level 15 to get access to the airship and then you could travel to the individual schools, no? Like I said, maybe I'm not understanding this right but what exactly is the problem? So someone who starts the game does not have access to ALL of the classes that are in the game, is that it? I don't see why that is bad, isn't it like that in many other games :O? Also, makes you look forward to things And it's not like the existing starter classes will be outdated or "uncool" just because there are 3 new ones
For all we know they will tweak the new jobs anyway, just like they did almost every other job, so all of us who swarm them will likely first get a little patchhammer after a few weeks and wouldn't THAT be depressing to a new player?

[Ecks007]

If you skip all the reading and cutscenes, play as a tank or healer for faster queue times, and have gear waiting at level 50 that's unreasonable to expect a non gil-buying noob to have, then the time through the end of the MSQ would still be longer than going 1-30 in XI ignoring everything but leveling.

That is simply not true. I started out as an Arcanist (dps) read every quest, watched cutscenes, did nearly every side quest I found, leveled Thaumaturge (dps) and Archer (dps) to at least level 15 (I actually think I leveled Thm to 20something or 30), leveled up to 50 Smn (dps)and completed the MSQ that 2.0 had to offer which at the time ended with Praetorium basically, and that took a month roughly. Every single new update that added MSQ after that it only took a few hours to complete and sometimes I would stretch that out just so I didn't zoom through it all and made it last a few days doing parts here and there, but they only took a few hours at most. 2.55 took about 5-6 hours with all the cutscenes, roughly, though perhaps slightly less. And that's reading and listening to everything and sometimes rereading lines to make sure I read and heard it correctly. - ((Not to mention I never had any issues with gil. I hadn't even started leveling any crafting jobs until 2.4. We didn't even have the challenge log or duty roulettes that spew free gil at you for just playing the game. Nor did we have retainers that go off and basically give you gil when they return. There are so many ways to get easy gil these days it's not even funny.))

In FFXI it took me probably about 6 months to a year from NA launch to level up Warrior to 40 (because I wanted to) and Monk to 20 before I unlocked Dark Knight initially while questing and completing some early rank missions. It took roughly another year before I hit level 75 on Dark Knight finally (add in leveling thief to 40 and ninja to 20), actually it might have taken longer. I remember I finally hit 75 in a ToAU zone so that expansion (#3) had already been out. So after looking up some info that means it took me actually over 2 years to finally hit 75 on my Dark Knight, and I played A LOOOOT.

Don't give me that "You didn't have to level subjobs" bs either. Anybody that actually wanted to be invited to an exp party leveled subjobs that were desirable so that they could be useful in a party and so that party leaders would actually choose you over someone else who didn't have what they were looking for. Initially starting out as a noob, you'd think Warrior would make the best sub for Drk, at least I did because it looked like that would give me great buffs that would be useful and help me do more damage. Imagine my surprise when /thf eventually became the required sub if you actually wanted to be useful or invited to a party at all. Later on I leveled Samuria and just happened to try it out as a subjob and fell in love with it's utility (imo the best SJ there was for Drk).




At that point I still had not beaten RoZ (though I eventually did). Sadly RoZ was the only expansion story I was able to fully complete. When CoP came out people started using the Static mentality to beat the difficult content and much like BCoB,SCoB, and FCoB without one you pretty much aren't going to complete it.

The main point I'm making here is that XI required so much more time to get things done. Can you imagine if the new jobs were gated behind completion of expansion in that game? It would have been unfeasible to have a requirement like that because the game was set up in such a way that it required enormous amounts of dedication and time to accomplish anything and everything.

Honestly, I've played a huge amount of varying MMO/MMORPGs and leveling up normally my first time through as a fresh character in XIV took me roughly 1/3 of the time to level up to the level cap and complete the main story as it had taken me in other more relatively recent MMORPGs (WoW - Cataclysm era, Tera, SWtOR, GW2). I think the only MMO I ever played that I beat all the story in faster than XIV (and I wasn't trying for any kind of speed completion in any game) was Defiance. I think it took me 2 weeks to play through that game's whole available story after it launched... I was highly underwhelmed with that one to say the least.

Personally I'm not a fan of how all MMORPGs are trying to be super casual, quick and easy things these days. I mean, I get it that it make sense with how fickle a lot of gamers are these days. But if I'm paying a subscription to a game I'm darn sure going to be playing it as often as I can. Which for me is pretty normal. I play almost whenever I have time off and am not doing something else like watching movies, tv, anime, playing another game or hanging out with friends.

I kinda wish there was a /playtime command to see how many hours you've logged because I know I've got a lot.. I like to get my monies worth and play as often as I can.

I wonder if they will ever treat us to fun info like this:

(No idea when that was.)

[StouterTaru]

snip

And again, you ignore the time spent between the major patches gearing up.

How long it took you to get to 40 in XI has nothing to do with how long it would have taken a new player to get to 30 when CoP came out (which is essentially where we are in XIV at Heavensward).

[KagatoAC]

The only real problem i see with gating it behind the story completion, is even right now on Famfrit it is difficult to get people to do the "Steps" trial. and god forbid if someone says they are new.Imagine how its gonna be in 2 months.

one of my friends has had a group abandon 3 times in the last 2 days when he has tried to put a group together after just 1 wipe.

[Alberel]

Has it occurred to anyone that SE may well be reducing the amount of XP needed to level 1-50 as well as adding new equipment rewards to the old quests to assist new players in gearing up?

I've never seen an MMO that didn't ease the previous progression curve when releasing a vertical expansion. For all any of you know getting to 50 and clearing the main scenario may be far far easier to do once 3.0 launches. It's useless arguing over this as no one yet knows how it's going to be handled. Hell the whole 'jobs gated in Ishgard' thing is even in contention as the statement is characteristically vague and gives no real specifics.

[Verdan]

I don't seem to understand the problem at all. When FF 14 2.0 started you did not have access to all the other Classes, you had to at least reach level 15 to get access to the airship and then you could travel to the individual schools, no?

There is a massive difference between leveling to 15 and leveling to 50 and doing a large amount of story content post 50 in order to play the class you want. If someone joins the game because they want to play one of the new classes, they're not going to want to level something they didn't want to play up to 50 and gear them up just so they can play the class they actually wanted to. They're going to want to play that content with that class, not play that content to get to that class. I understand a lot of you people are at a point where all this is behind you, but you gotta think about how daunting it will be for a new player to come in, exited about the prospect of something they added, only to realize that they'd have to play an enormous amount of stuff in a class they weren't interested in playing just so that they can try the class that got them interested. This is not a proposition that will fly.

[Velhart]

It looks like SE is just doing their own interpretation of the Hero Class as shown in WoW. In WoW, to unlock Death Knight, you have to be lv.55 on a class and have purchased the WoTLK expansion, then the class was open to play. Looks like SE's method of gating it is the expansion itself, be lv.50 and complete 2.55. Also, yes 50 because you have to be at least lv.49 to participate in Praetorium and have ilvl requirements for the main scenario. So in a sense, at least one lv.50 job to unlock these.

I am cool with this. A lot of MMO's have practiced this in the past and the reward factor for unlocking them feels pretty great. My guess is they will start at lv.30 to start alongside other jobs. What I do wonder is how you are worked into the job. My guess is there will be a questline at the level it starts to teach you the abilities you have on your bar then let you go from there. Have a hard time imagining SE would throw the job at you and expect to figure it out on the spot.

[MageBlack]

At a bare minimum you will need to have level 30 and that is IF they decide to put the job trainers in the ARR areas. Why such pushback anyway? Heaven forbid you actually have to work towards something you want in an RPG... (ya, that last part is something so many people seem to automatically drop off the MMORPG acronym, glad to see SE bringing it back!)

[ZanzhizExaverion]

As FFXIV is a lore driven game. I accept this completely.

I commend them for gating content behind old content.