A serious discussion about abridging the story quest 1-50 (discouraging new players)

[MortalWare]

I've mentioned this in other threads on the topic and been shot down for it, but for the two friends I had convinced to try out this game neither of them are still playing due to the 'compulsary' content block.

One didn't even get past Sastasha as they got bored with waiting in que with no other quests to do.

[Luvbunny]

I've mentioned this in other threads on the topic and been shot down for it, but for the two friends I had convinced to try out this game neither of them are still playing due to the 'compulsary' content block. One didn't even get past Sastasha as they got bored with waiting in que with no other quests to do.

You can now power level them through all "must do" main story quest with your level 130 character, just the two of you. So your friend can speed up to 50 ASAP (doing those MSQ "how fast can you press the skip button", FATEs train bang a gong, power level them via levequest, or killing lower level bosses in dungeons over and over). Can't do much in 2.1-2.55 though, since SE decided to throw more of those in and it is painful to do in one sitting. But on the other hand, he now have 20 dungeons endgame to go through collecting poetic tomestone and gearing up for 3.0. And those dungeons are fun full of actions and mechanics that will prepare you for 3.0 encounter.

[Voltyblast]

I've mentioned this in other threads on the topic and been shot down for it, but for the two friends I had convinced to try out this game neither of them are still playing due to the 'compulsary' content block.

One didn't even get past Sastasha as they got bored with waiting in que with no other quests to do.

Speaking of that, my sister once told me that she was once playing with her thaumaturge and she was having a blast levelling and playing the quests up to level 20, until she realized that she still couldn't do the dungeons yet. I remember how she felt very annoyed that "she had to stop, go back to the main quest and finish those three dungeons" in order to queue for the future dungeons.

The same happened also when she was almost 50: she loved to queue for dungeons and she was almost finished to level up until she had to check her main quest and saw that she was still stuck to lvl 40 MSQ. Again, she had to stop everything and go back to recover the story or else she wouldn't even be able to do the level 50 dungeons like WP or AK.

Suffice to say, she quit before even finishing the MSQ and she didn't even reach level 50.

[Fleur]

Confession: I don't play this game for the story. I find it mildly entertaining at times, and the lore is pretty neat, but that's about it. Some main story quests are interesting, but others are something to the extent of and NPC saying, "Do me a favor that is largely unrelated to what you are trying to accomplish right now." Having the latter type be optional would not harm my gameplay experience, and I can't imagine how it would harm anyone else's as this filler could be available still as optional side quests.

For me, though, it is still the DF queues that are the biggest roadblock, since there are so many darn DF requirements in the MSQ. I queue'd up for SM Garuda last night (prime time) and after 45 mins in the queue it was at 1/4. It is really frustrating and discouraging to me.

[RichardButte]

You can now power level them through all "must do" main story quest with your level 130 character, just the two of you. So your friend can speed up to 50 ASAP (doing those MSQ "how fast can you press the skip button", FATEs train bang a gong, power level them via levequest, or killing lower level bosses in dungeons over and over). Can't do much in 2.1-2.55 though, since SE decided to throw more of those in and it is painful to do in one sitting. But on the other hand, he now have 20 dungeons endgame to go through collecting poetic tomestone and gearing up for 3.0. And those dungeons are fun full of actions and mechanics that will prepare you for 3.0 encounter.

In a perfect world, sure, but you can't always guarantee you'll be there to help.

I had another friend who quit the game around 30 because the story wasn't grabbing him, but I don't even mention him because I have no ideas on how to fix that...

[Luvbunny]

In a perfect world, sure, but you can't always guarantee you'll be there to help. I had another friend who quit the game around 30 because the story wasn't grabbing him, but I don't even mention him because I have no ideas on how to fix that...

I totally understand, this is why I said that if 2.0-2.55 MSQ is not doing anything for them, 3.0 is not going to magically solve anything. The slow slog is even extremely noticeable here in 3.0, not to mention the amount of gated content, as well as quests you NEED to do but buried under chain of quests so if you skip most of them focusing on main story only, you can't even fly in any areas and must navigate beyond annoying huge amount of terrain constantly assaulted by enemies (which you can outrun thankfully). There are not that many dungeons available only 5, plus 3 for endgame. And the amount of XP needed is insane amount, you better love redoing those dungeons plus daily roulette, FATE, quests (hide and seek fetch type across huge region with barely any indication of where things are), levequests...

If any of your friends just want ACTION dungeon grinds, they will be in for rude awakening. 2.55 contents have more of those but they don't reward any xp unless you do daily roulette (which is a big huge oversight mistakes...). You mainly use it to farm tombstone to gear up for HW (and endgame gears level 170). But yeah, this game is kind of made better to play with friends but still give you plenty of options to solo through with so many variety of things to do.

In conclusion, they should let everyone into Ishgard to unlock all three new jobs by only finishing 2.0 MSQ, but lock them out of everything else till they finish 2.55 MSQ. Flying should be easily obtainable instead of forcing you to find ALL aetherflow.

[RichardButte]

I totally understand, this is why I said that if 2.0-2.55 MSQ is not doing anything for them, 3.0 is not going to magically solve anything. The slow slog is even extremely noticeable here in 3.0, not to mention the amount of gated content

It's nowhere near as bad if the player A) has you around to help, B) has the benefit of knowing that they're not stuck in "old" content or C) is playing the class they actually want to play.

It doesn't sound like much, but cumulatively, this can make a HUGE difference in motivation.

But yeah, I agree with your idea of 2.0 being the point where they can get into Ishgard.

[PocketFox]

I totally understand, this is why I said that if 2.0-2.55 MSQ is not doing anything for them, 3.0 is not going to magically solve anything.

I don't know, it might. I was underwhelmed by a lot of the story, up until about 2.5. The original 2.0 story seemed very patchy and not very cohesive, and I absolutely hated the entire white auracite storyline. But the climax in 2.5-2.55 actually got me interested again, and I've been loving the 3.0 story. So you never know, people might be able to slog through the ARR story and fall in love with HW... which is exactly why I agree there needs to be a more streamlined way to get through the former.

To be clear: I'm not talking about leveling and the pre-50 story. I'm talking about everything after finishing 2.0 and before finishing 2.55. It's story, yes, but it's also filler now, because it has become a wall. So I'm entirely in favor of streamlining the ARR post-2.0 MSQ.

[Vlady]

No point in arguing with Luvbunny. If you do not see it her way you are automatically wrong. For now everything should stay the way it is suppose to be. You should not try to conclude the reasoning to remove half of the original ARR content because you want to get to end game now. In all honesty fully strengthening one job to its BIS should take 2-3 months with alt toons being under your main in gear. That is the pace the game seems to have gone and people being 180 i level and 60 in 4 days lets me know something is badly wrong.

Grr at hunts also being only source for upgrade components.

[Madjames]

Alrighty soo here is my take

I left Arr around 1-2 months after it released to go back to my friends in world of warcraft.

Upon learning that Ninja was added into the game on 3/15/2105 (which was the main reason for me quitting FF14 in the first place, I joined right up with my wife.) We resubbed and quit wow indefinitely on that very day.

So I had to start completely over on a new server so we could join my wife's sister. After a total of 20 days we both hit 50. I started mining and saving up for a house. So after getting my magitek armor we both stopped doing the MSQ.

I learned sometime in the tail end of may that it would be a requirement to do all of the MSQ stuff. So between work IRL, twin boys, mining, and getting gil together (currently sitting on 2.5mil ugh with no homes available.) I did the MSQ. I was on the quest called Fireworks and Fish don't mix. I started doing this the day of early access. I started at 11:00am and did NOT get done with the MSQ until 7:00am....the next day. Now, I did take two 1 hour breaks in between this as well as a few 10 minute breaks, roughly 7 of them total. Other then that, I was doing the MSQ nonstop as well as skipping everything.

I am in no way interested in the story (Sorry I played FF6 and FF7 for their story and nothing has been able to compare. ) I have been playing MMORPG's since September 1997. The one that was like FF14 that was story driven was SWTOR.

I have been playing MMORPGs for 18 years STRAGIHT. I have never missed a subscription payment nor have I ever taken a break as an MMORPG is a virtual world that you get into. Your character makes his own story as he goes through the world. He makes his own decisions and has his own personality. I owe Ultima Online and more so Dungeons and Dragons (The pen and paper one) a lot in showing me how to create a whole new unique person that is different from myself. Instead of asking myself how should I respond to something, I ask myself how my character would respond based on the personality I have given him and other things about them.

Enough on that, back to the point. This is the only game I have EVER encountered where it completely 100% locked a whole expansion behind a level requirement wall AS WELL AS 20+ hours worth of quests and crap. In wow, Every single new class was not locked behind a MSQ. You just had to be of required level to get it (Hello level 55 death knights for example) You also had to do some 5 minute or less quest in order to go through the dark portal and be the required level. That is it.

In this game, not only do you have to be level 50, you also have to complete over 20 hours worth of quests and crap just to get into the expansion. Gating is a good thing but gating even the highlights of this expansion which is the jobs is totally a slap in the face of new players getting in this game for the first time.

Gate the new expansion with a level cap, every mmorpg does this, even SWTOR that is also heavily story oriented. However Bioware does NOT totally and utterly lock a whole expansion behind their story.

Some can argue that this is a story MMORPG but lets not forget that this is also a MMO. The story to someone such as myself is secondary as I make my own story as my character goes along. Being on some rail story when I myself know my character would not even participate at all in any way as his personality would clash with it in the first place is, to say it nicely, not good.

I play an mmorpg to have and make friends and to designate what my character would and would not do and participate in and what story he himself would make, not how SE perceives it or anyone else.

Just because this is a story MMORPG does not mean that in order to make this the "right game" you have to play the game, like its story and follow it to a T and agree with it totally. There is plenty in this game that I do like which is mining, fighting monsters and doing dungeons with friends, and above all progressing my character and going through all of this based on the decisions he would make himself, not me and in the very end write an actual book based on his life (I am a nerd I know).

Now, this MSQ debacle which it is, is an issue, sorry but this lackluster story is not the main reason to play, nor is it the end all be all of this game. If it were, we would be doing 100% story raids that work more like a movie or the story decision making in Star Wars The Old Republic then what we have here currently in game. We would have little to no input in the end game progression stuff and would be watching a whole lot more then interacting and after said movie raid thing was over, we would be given a choice in a piece of gear that our characters can use.

I also play MMORPG's to raid. I raid to have fun and fight monsters because my character would want to do that to make himself more powerful with the weapons and armor said monster has. He could not give two craps about anything or anyone else as that is not how his personality is. He works much like Raislin Majere in Dragon Lance. He goes with the group for his own gain only. He has ulterior motives.

My other character who is a Bard is quite the opposite but I do not play him much as he seems more goody too shoes to me.

So do I believe that this whole thing is a problem for new players? Absolutely!! Yes!!! I have tried to recruit 5 friends off of my facebook, 5 co-workers, and 5 family members and ALL of them have turned me down and the very reason is the issue currently at hand in this thread. Some like the story but on principal will NOT give SE any money when they gate a whole expansion behind a lackluster story combined with forcing you to stay within outdated and irrelevant content when you are level 50. More over, they also do not agree with lockout of the jobs as some wanted to start out as a mechanist and cant due to it being locked behind 40+ hours of MSQ as well as being level 50+ required to get them when they are a BIG feature in said expansion.

I hope SE sees that by gating this whole expansion out as well as the new jobs it is hurting them by people NOT picking up the game due to this very reason. Thank you.