New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[Gralna]

I am happy the new jobs start at 30 though because leveling this game outside of leveling with the storyline is amongst the worst leveling experiences I've ever had in an MMORPG. Doubly so for 5-30 ish.

Guessing then that you've never played EQ, AC, DAoC, FFXI, or even worse, any of the many Korean MMO's that require pure grinding to get anything accomplished.

The first few MMO's I listed all required you to lvl up primarly through just sitting at a camp of mobs, and killing them as they respawned, you'd be lucky to get 10% of the xp you needed to lvl up from doing all the quests at your level available to you. They also took a LONG time to lvl up, with most people taking 8-12 months to reach max lvl for the first time.

Edit: Lvling in this game is so trivial it's hardly worth mentioning it as an accomplishment.

[Felis]

And after 3.0 you wont be able to go to any of the old zones, except Coerthas central highlands. Because your a fugitive. Otherwise the story won't make sense.

EDIT: Now that i think about it, that whole scene with Yugiri is gonna be really awkward if your playing as an Au Ra lol!

You should talk more to NPCs. The majority are behind us and the syndicate is too afraid to go against us in the puplic. So long you stand away from empty alleys you should be save ^^

[silentwindfr]

I am not even someone who minds gated content, but gating jobs behind the main storyline is just a poor way of doing it with no good reason for it. I will say exactly what you did, this is an MMORPG, don't expect lore to be a good reason for anything like this considering there are so many workarounds as well as the fact that every other adventurer will be running around in every part of the world as the new jobs.

it's a reason itself, because this jobs are into a city we can't reach until we complete the story explaining of why we can enter this city. is not gated poorly, its link to the lore, the jobs we will get acces are directly link to ishgarde.... ignoring this and giving this jobs to anyone that haven't the right to step into ishgarde is bad in too many way.

[Kallera]

it's a reason itself, because this jobs are into a city we can't reach until we complete the story explaining of why we can enter this city. is not gated poorly, its link to the lore, the jobs we will get acces are directly link to ishgarde.... ignoring this and giving this jobs to anyone that haven't the right to step into ishgarde is bad in too many way.

I'm just hoping this isn't like the classes/jobs issue where these jobs have a marked stat increase and mandatory utility over the other jobs.

[LineageRazor]

it's a reason itself, because this jobs are into a city we can't reach until we complete the story explaining of why we can enter this city. is not gated poorly, its link to the lore, the jobs we will get acces are directly link to ishgarde.... ignoring this and giving this jobs to anyone that haven't the right to step into ishgarde is bad in too many way.

The thing is, the new jobs are in the city of Ishgard because the devs decided to PUT them in Ishgard. They didn't have to. They CHOSE to. They could have put Astrologean in the Observatorium, Machinist in Mor Dhona or Limsa, and Dark Knight pretty much anywhere. They could even have put them in one of the other new areas, assuming that those new areas can be accessed without passing through Ishgard.

The devs had every opportunity to make the jobs accessible; they didn't have to be gated behind the entire 2.x storyline and 90+ ilvls worth of gear, but for some reason the devs decided that was a good idea.

I argue that this was NOT a good decision to make. If you want to sell more copies of the expansion, you need to include stuff that both new and current players want to have. Right now, the expansion isn't offering much to new players, and in particular alternate jobs are one of the biggest possible selling points for new players. Less incentive for new players to buy the expansion means less sales. Less sales means reduced revenue. Reduced revenue means we current players get less love since there's less money to spend improving the game for us. Everyone suffers from the decision.

It is certainly possible to use lore to defend the gating of the new jobs - but the devs WRITE the lore, and they could have written it in such a way that the jobs could have been accessible. But they didn't. I'd like to know why.

[Edellis]

I'm just hoping this isn't like the classes/jobs issue where these jobs have a marked stat increase and mandatory utility over the other jobs.

I seem to recall the devs saying the HW content would have skills and abilities nearly mandatory for completing new content. But they don't need new jobs for that, it can easily be crammed into the remaining 10 levels and inbetween job quests.

[KarstenS]

I argue that this was NOT a good decision to make.

Actually we do only know, they decided to do it this way. We do not know, what is their reason to do it this way. So before we can say, which arguments are better, we need to know their arguments. Actually we don't.

[Mugiawara]

FF13 had a lot of issues. Turning Shiva into a freakin' motorcycle was one of them!!!!

Just wanna hop onto the 13 train real quick.
The main issue of 13 was the "one way street" gameplay with lackof exploration, it was almost impossible to miss anything before the ending chapters where you gained more freedom, and that's not saying much
and you're stuck with the same team until the end still...
After replaying it myself, I've gotten bored a bit because of well...the game essentially played itself...when I said played itself...that game
is cutscence haven, you guys think Prae is riddled with scene's...you have no idea on 13. Literally you could not go maybe 5 to 10 minutes without being in a CS.
Having it now on Steam, it's a...I believe 60gb game? Because of the amount of CS's they were.
The battle system were one of the lesser complaints....You basically had to switch Paradigm's on time. [I loved it...I mean I LOVED it.] which was fun to me. More fast pace.
The summons were a hit or miss: Shiva was very cool...She had the better of the designs if not the best, and being sisters was cool, motorcycle got me nodding my head a bit...
Odin was a nice twist. It's basically Odin and Slepnair in one. Alexander, my favourite was decent...but the rest were horrible. They tried to do something different so you can applaud them for trying...
but never do it again...unless you wanna do the Odin thing again, now he was the best design in terms of "vehicles" because of what I said above about him.

13-2 was great! 13-3 is the worst FF game I've ever played. Sorry I actually liked 13 so I wanted to have my 2 cents. ^^;;

[Ayrie]

Why are we so worried about how many copies SE sells? If everyone here does their part, the health of the game is a non-issue. If you really want to hit a gated job at the expansion... I guess you should turn off Hello Kitty Island Adventures and get on Steps of Faith.

I swear, so many busy-bodies afraid someone else is going to miss out on something. Enough championing ethereal entities already.

This is what it is, so this is how we play it. Total non-factor to most of us.

[Bluevann]

...

If you want to not care about the game and the direction it has taken with the first expansion (which, for an MMO fan, should always be a big deal. It is to me.), that's your decision. No reason to be so nasty to people who do.

The thing is, the new jobs are in the city of Ishgard because the devs decided to PUT them in Ishgard. They didn't have to. They CHOSE to. They could have put Astrologean in the Observatorium, Machinist in Mor Dhona or Limsa, and Dark Knight pretty much anywhere. They could even have put them in one of the other new areas, assuming that those new areas can be accessed without passing through Ishgard.

The devs had every opportunity to make the jobs accessible; they didn't have to be gated behind the entire 2.x storyline and 90+ ilvls worth of gear, but for some reason the devs decided that was a good idea.

Thank you. I have been intending to point this out all night last night, but couldn't because I had reached my posts-per-day limit (seriously SE, why is this still a thing? I'm using a lv50 account on these boards..). To say "it makes sense because Ishgard is locked" is a dead point, because the NPCs, de facto, did not HAVE to be in Ishgard, just as Dragoon was not in there.

It's not too hard to put an NPC out of the gate and say something applicable at any point of the story regardless of the PC's MSQ progress, such as:

"The current situation with the Horde is calling for drastic measures, such as recruiting despicable sellswords and adventurers such as yourself. I do not expect the devotion of an Ishgardian soldier from you, but perhaps you could still prove yourself useful. Take this sword, hone your skill, and return to me for when you'll be ready to do our bidding."

Now that's not hard, is it? Yet the developers decided not to, and after 50 pages we still haven't been told why.