New player feedback (AKA reasons why FFXIV has seems troubled keeping newer players)

[lordoftheapes79]

I finished the second set (and the scene after) yesterday actually.

To reiterate for hte tenth time: I like the story. I do not like gating content behind the story, because this, to me, translates to not being able to do it at my own pace, in order to experience some of the missing, gated content.

I started to post this in another thread on my phone, but it got, um, longwinded. Anyway, I believe the thought behind this is simply to distribute people and reduce the server stress at launch. I believe this is only temporary, but will probably at the least be the standard for each expansion. It wouldn't be fair for those of us who have been playing loyally for 2 years to have to deal with 90ks because 10,000 people who are sick of WoW decided to try it out and probably won't even stay more than a few months.

[E-Zekiel]

You are likely going to deal with this anyway, regardless of how many people will be of Ishgard, because they are expanding how much space characters take up on their server by, among other things, increasing inventory size. This has a significant impact on server load, so I really don't think alleviating server load is the reason. I think the reason is because they're used to silly obligatory things mostly on account, I think, of not being super-experienced in the way of MMOs.

[Niwashi]

I believe the thought behind this is simply to distribute people and reduce the server stress at launch. I believe this is only temporary

You mean the gating of going to Ishgard (and therefore the vast majority of Heavensward content) until after finishing the full 2.x storyline? From what I understood, that gating is pretty fundamentally built into the story itself. It's there to stay and has nothing to do with temporary issues surrounding release day.

[lordoftheapes79]

You mean the gating of going to Ishgard (and therefore the vast majority of Heavensward content) until after finishing the full 2.x storyline? From what I understood, that gating is pretty fundamentally built into the story itself. It's there to stay and has nothing to do with temporary issues surrounding release day.

yeah, I'm not convinced it'll stick in the long run, atleast not for all the areas, I think a few of them are in La Noscea, north of Outer La Noscea. And I don't think Ishgard will be a bottleneck to all the new areas either. so yes, entrance into Ishgard will probably always be restricted to the story, but not necessarily the new areas. That said, if I'm right, we probably won't know until the second expansion is released. I'm not saying I expect this to happen in the first six months, I'm talking long term.

[SinR]

FFXIV seems EXTREMELY alt unfriendly. I can't seem to send anything from one character to another at this point (high teens). There seems to be very little incentive to roll a new character in a different starting city/state, outside of a different scenario quests.

[Blanchimont]

You mean the gating of going to Ishgard (and therefore the vast majority of Heavensward content) until after finishing the full 2.x storyline? From what I understood, that gating is pretty fundamentally built into the story itself. It's there to stay and has nothing to do with temporary issues surrounding release day.

The gating of content occurs at all levels and not just for the expansion. It causes a lot of problems for new players due to the high number of players at the level cap with fewer people at the lower levels. You must do the story quests in order to unlock some of the dungeons and then beat those dungeons to proceed. I spent nearly 1/3 of the time as a DPS while I was playing the main story up to 50 waiting for there to be enough people in queue to attempt one of the trials or required story dungeons. At some point, I just gave up and started going in queue for other dungeons just to pass the time. On average, I was 10 levels above the story quests until I hit around 46. I caught up due to taking forever to find groups to finish Garuda and Cape Westwind. Luckily, this is not as much of a problem on Tanks or Healers, but it can still take a while to find groups for those.