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

[KisaiTenshi]

Exactly what in the MSQ teaches us how to play?

I think they meant the Class/Job storylines.

If the MSQ was optional, what would happen is very simple, you'd get people who feel ripped off for spending 80$ on a game, that can be completed in 2 days. FFXIV has 12 dungeons that take 90 minutes to finish. 12 x 90 = 18 hours. If you just sat outside the dungeon and level grinded until you hit the levelsync point instead of playing the story, of course it would be boring. The MSQ and all the sidequests provide enough experience that you only need to play most of the dungeons once to clear them. People would completely ignore the "hard" dungeons because the game ends at level 50, thus no experience and no point to doing any of them. I need to bring up the point that the level 50 dungeons didn't exist at launch.

HW adds 8 dungeons, that's essentially is 2/3rds of the same amount of release content for 2.0

MSQ-ARR, if you look at the lodestone has 246 possible quests under Seventh Umbral Era, of which all the quests up to level 15 are in triplicate due to the three starting areas. So remove 22 from that number and you get 224. Those are the Main Scenario Quests that get you to the "A Relic Reborn" section. The Seventh Astral Era quests, there's 100, All with NO experience if you played them before HW.

Now look at the Optional quests (443):
121 in Limsa
116 in Gridania
130 in Ul'dah
44 in Cortheas
32 in Mor Dhona

And the class quests, 223 of them. You have to only do one, but if you don't do any, you don't get your level 30 skill for your combat class, nor do you get your "relic" weapon for the crafting classes.

Nothing in the storyline actually requires you to do any crafting, only that you get to a certain level in a combat class to enable it. There is no MSQ storyline tied to crafting. So...

No opponents of making story content optional have answered the question "how would it negatively affect you?"

Because there is no answer. They are objectively wrong on this issue.

No. Anyone asking for this is being an entitled brat who wants everything handed to them without working for it. If someone wants to create a second character and not slog through the storyline again, they do not want it bad enough. There's a Fantasia potion if you just want to change your character's appearance. This isn't other games that have punitive class/race locks.

I'll only give you this. It seems unreasonable to have characters created on the same server and account have the same MSQ lock for HW. One point of view is that maybe the other characters are someones spouse or kids, and you don't want their storyline spoiled by actions taken by the first character. But the other point of view is that "yeah but they probably shoulder surfed that content already", in which I'd suggest taking the approach that a few other games have and simply do a "Is this your first time playing FFXIV?" followed by "Another character on this account has completed 'A Realm Reborn', if you wish to automatically flag the storyline as done on this character, you may do so now. All the storyline quests will be flagged as completed and no experience rewarded. No quest rewards from the storyline will be available."

In which all the 7th Umbral and Astral era quests will be marked as completed, but no experience rewarded. This doesn't accomplish what the OP wants, but it would leave all the level locks in place. (eg level requirements for retainers, dungeons, jobs, etc)

If you answer YES to "first time" it will give you all the level 1 tutorial junk. If you answer "No" it will only mark all the tutorials as completed, specifically the "how to move, speak and emote" ones as well as skipping the opening cutscene. If you answer "I want to mark the storyline complete" to the second question, you still start at level 1, and still have to do the Job storyline(s).

[Exotik_Legacy]

MSQ-ARR, if you look at the lodestone has 246 possible quests under Seventh Umbral Era, of which all the quests up to level 15 are in triplicate due to the three starting areas. So remove 22 from that number and you get 224. Those are the Main Scenario Quests that get you to the "A Relic Reborn" section. The Seventh Astral Era quests, there's 100, All with NO experience if you played them before HW.

Explain to me why you think it would be ok for a brand new player to be forced through thee *324* quests to reach heavenward content if they infact purchased heavenward to play 1 of the 3 new classes. As well as forcing them to complete *Primarily 100-150 quests that tie to the actual story and the rest are all fluff when in fact by the time you reach around 180 quests your already level 50 with the current exp increases?

[KisaiTenshi]

Explain to me why you think it would be ok for a brand new player to be forced through thee *324* quests to reach heavenward content if they infact purchased heavenward to play 1 of the 3 new classes. As well as forcing them to complete *Primarily 100-150 quests that tie to the actual story and the rest are all fluff when in fact by the time you reach around 180 quests your already level 50 with the current exp increases?

Those new jobs starting quests are all inside Ishgard, even if it were possible to start a new character with those jobs, the design mechanic around it is "automatically level 30", so they would in fact need their own level 1-30 storyline as if they had started ARR as that class... which for storyline reasons doesn't work. The AST's first quest is in the East Shroud, the DRK's first quest is all over Ishgard. Both of these, the first quest gives you a new Job stone. That is why they start at level 30. You only need ONE class... ANY class leveled to 50 to get these jobs. The only reason it's 50 is because that's what unlocks Ishgard. Otherwise switching the job itself, you can take DRK without having any Tank classes at level 30.

And if you got to level 50 long before completing the MSQ, then you spent way too much time grinding for no reason.

The Astral Era quests which are all level 50, still have ilevel progression attached to them, So just buying whatever the current tomes gear is gets you there with no effort.