Please Allow 50's to Enter Ishgard w/o having completed MSQ

[Radacci]

No, I'd rather not. It wouldn't make sense in the story and if you want to skip the story in a game then final fantasy is not the series for you.
Furthermore it lock away a lot of content that would be too difficult for inexperienced players. Currently the bears in dravania pose a threat to people who cleared steps of faith, which has a minimum item level of 100 I think? or maybe 110? I don't think fresh 50-s with artifact armor and a below 50 item level would enjoy the scenery that much
And there are the classes. I have ran ex roulette with people I wouldn't trust with the responsibility of handling a complex class like machinist or astrologian.
So, no I think the lockout is fine the way it is.

oh but you trust everyone who cleared Sof? cause we know that no one got carried.
being locked out or not, doesn't change a thing; those that can handle ast/mch, can do so without being locked out, those that can't, wouldn't even if they got past SoF.

And by your logic, we should lock out Hunts behind 2.55 story, cause it's to challenging for inexperienced players?

[Reynhart]

Hunts [...] challenging

Best joke ever !

[Sylve]

The problem that i see is simple.
People are familiar with WoWs way of handling Expansions.

What do i mean by that? Simple, Each WoW Expansion is a standalone "Story". Nothing in those expansions really tie into any content that came before. Hell, even Classic WoW only made sense if you played Warcraft 1/2/3.
The Quest dialogue in WoW simply assumes that you defeated every piece of content. Characters of mine that never saw the inside of SoO get hailed as Heroes that liberated the city.

The new player experience in WoW is incredibly broken. Vol'jin is Warchief when a brand new character walks into the city, yet when you get to 90, suddenly, its Warchief Garrosh? Who is Thrall? Why is he so badass and important?
Add to the general confusion and lack of story cohesion the fact that you must purchase the base game and then 5 Expansions, but only the latest expansion is the one that you do any content for. Hell, with how much they've boosted low level XP gains in WoW, you often reach the next expansions level break by the second zone of any given Expansion.

And lets not forget that you can make a Draenei Monk (Monks were added in Expansion#4, Draenei were the first Expansion) who freshly crawls out of the supposedly *just* crashed Exodaar at level 1.

As such, even though those prior Expansions are literally side stories, you still have to purchase and own them ALL before being allowed to do the "Stuff that matters".
With XIV, a new player will recieve the 50+ hours of Main Story from ARR and THEN the 50+ hours of Main Story in Heavensward.
When we get a second expansion, we will likely need to have 3.xx Main Story finished to go there.

As a result, assuming we get an average of 50 hours of Main Story per expansion, by the time XIV gets to 5 Expansions, a new player will have 300ish hours of pure Story to represent the cash they just blew on getting the latest versions of the game.
Not counting the Side Quests, Hildibrand, Job Quests, DoH and DoL Class Quests.
Whereas WoW literally has you purchase 6 games and then give you a shortcut to NOT play 5 of them!

TL;DR, It is good for the game to have a cohesive storyline for new players. It extends the experience for them, as they get to play all the content a veteran player got to do when that content was relevant.
Just because a veteran player making a fresh character has to do the MSQ to get to the expansion content does not mean a brand new player will find that same process boring or a waste of time.

[sirDarts]

oh but you trust everyone who cleared Sof? cause we know that no one got carried.
being locked out or not, doesn't change a thing; those that can handle ast/mch, can do so without being locked out, those that can't, wouldn't even if they got past SoF.

And by your logic, we should lock out Hunts behind 2.55 story, cause it's to challenging for inexperienced players?

There will always be people who got carried, who are bad. But there will be way less of them if you lock out new players from challenging content.

Also Hunts? Maybe A and S, but "elite marks" are easy as hell, I have soloed those with sub-lvl 50 gear.

[kyuven]

snip

With the additional good part that the story is cohesive and doesn't require you to have read the freakin' patch notes for that particular expansion to know where to go to get to that expansion's content. Since it's all linked to the MSQ, you're never lost but nor are you barred from exploring the content that's currently relevant to you.
This is a problem in the following games:
WoW ("How do i get to Outland?" "Why do you want to go to Outland?!"), EQ1 (I have to go to WHAT zone to take a boat?! Wait, did I just outlevel 4 years of content in 3 days?), EQ2 (Here's a vague mail telling you that some guy is doing a thing in a place. Oh, and since you're 3 expansions behind, you have like 6 of these and we're not going to be clear on which is which), FFXI (I need a WHAT to get to Whitegate?) and DCUO (Wait, this is expansion content? I thought it was just a normal mission!)
Meanwhile games like SWTOR and STO (both sci-fi MMOs...huh...) gate their content and basically don't let you do it til the previous content is finished. STO even uses the game's quest tracker to not only list the "Episodes" involved, but since someone at the company has a brain, you don't initially have to track down an NPC and can just...y'know...use your space ship's communications to give em a call.

[Radacci]

Best joke ever !

There will always be people who got carried, who are bad. But there will be way less of them if you lock out new players from challenging content.

Also Hunts? Maybe A and S, but "elite marks" are easy as hell, I have soloed those with sub-lvl 50 gear.

Yes i meant S ranks mostly
I'd like to see a party of inexperienced players take on Bonnacon or Hellsclaw for that matter.

AST and MCH don't count as challenging content. Locking them out behind entire 2.X MSQ, is just silly.
There's plenty of better reasons to lock them out. Throughout pretty much every FF title, with multiple jobs, there has ALWAYS been jobs that you can't start off as, for different reasons. In FF-Tactics, there's tiers of jobs you need to unlock, and hidden characters you can get on your team; some are hidden behind side-quests. So it's not a problem that they are locked out from new players, but the whole "prevent them from doing it cause they must first learn how to clear SoF" is just ridiculous - you don't need to clear SoF, to be able to AST. Shitty AST is still gonna be shitty, regardless.

[Dererk]

Sigh another of these threads no just no this is just one big thing we have to keep bots out of the expansion not to mention there will be grade 5 matieria that can be converted from higher level gear one of the reasons they made it so you can't spirit bond higher level gear from level 40 mobs is to make it harder on bots so they would have to go to the new areas to spirit bond it just no the gate is fine.

Not to mention the gathering bots don't remove the gate people.

Its high time they make it so you can't level a crafting or gathering class higher than what your highest discipline of war or magic class\job.

[Reynhart]

I'd like to see a party of inexperienced players take on Bonnacon or Hellsclaw for that matter.

They can...since they're s a whole bunch of people joining them to roll over S ranks in under a minute.

I actually managed to earn seals and tomestones (Not full benefit, of course), with a level 10 CNJ on an S rank.

Throughout pretty much every FF title, with multiple jobs, there has ALWAYS been jobs that you can't start off as, for different reasons.

In FF III and V, pretty much all jobs are tied to the main story. Not a big deal.
Besides, theses "new players" already have a lot of content to do, it's not like Heavensward will be the only thing to wander from them.

[kyuven]

They can...since they're s a whole bunch of people joining them to roll over S ranks in under a minute.

Saying an encounter is "easy" because 100 people can dogpile on it is like saying climbing a mountain is "easy" because you can just take a helicopter to the top.

[Reynhart]

Saying an encounter is "easy" because 100 people can dogpile on it is like saying climbing a mountain is "easy" because you can just take a helicopter to the top.

Except when that encounter is always done the same way.

Climbing a mountain is easy if a company made a cable-car service available for anybody for free