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

[Madjames]

Or like, as an example, a multiplayer FF VII, where you have to follow the story to unlock the world and can do the dungeon fights together with other players.

Again gating is fine.

Gating the expansion to level 50 or higher is fine. Requiring say level 20 to get the new jobs, is again is fine.

Gating the expansion to level 50 and the 20+ Hours EXTRA of time in irrelevant content before you can get any jobs, fly, or even go into the expansion is not. That forced issue here is a big problem and I have already seen a turnoff from friends and family because of this very reason which does nothing but hurt the stability of this game, hurts SE with a loss of funds, which in turn hurts development costs to make new content, which in turn hurts us.

I would rather allow new players to skip the MSQ entirely and give them that CHOICE in how they want to play the MMORPG then not get any players at all and have this game not grow to its full potential.

I would also like to be able to skip the MSQ on my alt so I can level it up and have fun and not have to worry about some story that is not relevant to my character as my character makes his own story and destiny in the game everyday wakes up to go out into the world.

I already had to downgrade my sub and my wife's sub due to this MSQ issue which in turn SE lost out on an extra $4 a month. Now imagine how many others have done the same thing. It is never good when players stop supporting the game entirely or partially.

[Luvbunny]

While true the MMORPH side of the coin is much bigger then the MSQ side. You can not advertise this game as a JRPG when it is an MMORPG in the first place, as it would not be correct advertising. This is not a regular Final Fantasy game. This is an MMORPG in a final fantasy themed Virtual World!

I do not quite get this... would you rather level your alts without doing MSQ, and instead having to run around doing mindless FATE, levequest, hunting log, and many more fetch quest - just like how WoW is set up? The MSQ is your main source bread and butter to get to 50 FAST ASAP, straight as an arrow, and you can mix it up with everything else to get there even faster now.

The MSQ 2.1-2.55 is a big of a let down to go through, I agree. It was great when you do it between each patches, but to go through all of them now at once can be somewhat annoying. But think of it this way, you want to do it anyway, because you want to see the rest of the dungeons they added in 2.1-2.55, as well as you want to get those 120 gears (which is far better than the crappy starting 115 gears) and last you at least till level 54 - if you upgrade them to 130, it will last you till level 56.

What they should have done is to let everyone with expansion access Ishgard if you complete the main story vanilla 2.0, but gate everything else outside Ishgard. So that all players at 50 (and finished with MSQ 2.0) can try the new jobs - and make the journey through 2.0 suddenly exciting again, at the same time enticing them to finish the rest of MSQ in between leveling the new jobs.

Although in all fairness, they have already given out all the information about Heavenward since March 2015, giving everyone ample time to come back for a month, finishing all MSQ and getting ready for the expansion. It's not like we are never being told that the expansion is gated behind 2.0. They are nice enough to let us start at 30 with the new jobs instead of having us to do it from level 1....

[Madjames]

I leveled from 30-50 doing fates because they were fun and I was at the same time getting flame seals for my GC. I was still in level 30 items when I hit 50 only to realize I had to do the MSQ. So I did the MSQ up to and including my magitek armor and vowed never to do it again.

I found out about the gated expac in the tail end of may having joined the game and started over completely on another server in march and leveled. So at the very end of may, and beginning of june I had to slog through over 40 hours of MSQ crap just to get to play with my friends in the expansion. Saddly, 20 hours of that was during EA. Between being an RN and having twin boys IRL, I did not have enough time to get it completed before the EA Started.

So to answer your question, yes, I would have liked the choice to level how I want to level and not be stuck on some rail story that has no barring on my character at all. As I said, I write books based on my characters in MMORPGS, I make their story's. Whatever SE comes up with is disregarded by me because my character is mine and I make his story, his personality, and decide what he would, or would not do in this virtual world, not SE.

S.E needs to trim the MSQ a bunch and give us the choice how to level, OR leave this decision up to us completely and leave this MSQ crap optional. For those that like it, it would be there for them, the story huggers. For those such as myself, we would level how we want.

This would make leveling a new character much more friendly and leave the story for those who are into that sort of rail story thing. People would not get pissed and leave the game due to this gating issue and more and more players would come to this game, it would grow and be good for everyone.

[Exotik_Legacy]

What they should have done is to let everyone with expansion access Ishgard if you complete the main story vanilla 2.0, but gate everything else outside Ishgard. So that all players at 50 (and finished with MSQ 2.0) can try the new jobs - and make the journey through 2.0 suddenly exciting again, at the same time enticing them to finish the rest of MSQ in between leveling the new jobs.

Why can they not allow us to enter ishgard at 50 to receive the new classes, without having to do MSQ 2.1-2.55 because it is all fluff of things to do mixed in with a couple relevant quest for patches to keep lv 50's busy until HS dropped, The new classes should have the pre-req of level 50 in a job, not level 50 + 20 or more hours of so called story quests/fluff quests.

[Felis]

Why can they not allow us to enter ishgard at 50 to receive the new classes, without having to do MSQ 2.1-2.55 because it is all fluff of things to do mixed in with a couple relevant quest for patches to keep lv 50's busy until HS dropped, The new classes should have the pre-req of level 50 in a job, not level 50 + 20 or more hours of so called story quests/fluff quests.

What reason would the Count Fortemps have to trust strangers and even allow them to enter Ishgard as his guests? Sure, they saved a friend of one of his sons, but will this be good enough?

The doors of Ishgard are closed for strangers since the battle over the Silvertear Lake. There have to be a reason why our characters are allowed to enter it and at the end of Ultima battle a reason for it still don't exist.

[polyphonica]

I don't mind if they created a sort of "digest mode" that covered the cut-scenes and minor quests, but I do think it's pretty important that everyone at least have completed the essential level 50 dungeons and trials before proceeding to HW content. Even if you were to set aside the story entirely, many of the dungeon and trial mechanics in HW expect you to already be familiar with these previous mechanics. Even from a gameplay point of view, HW carries on from that harder level 50 content, and not just Praetorium.

[odintius]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffyqabljSQ4

[Madjames]

What reason would the Count Fortemps have to trust strangers and even allow them to enter Ishgard as his guests? Sure, they saved a friend of one of his sons, but will this be good enough?

The doors of Ishgard are closed for strangers since the battle over the Silvertear Lake. There have to be a reason why our characters are allowed to enter it and at the end of Ultima battle a reason for it still don't exist.

Simple, in that trailer there was a massive army of dragons. Meaning that where they come from, something must have sent them, something that very well could be a danger to the whole world, not just one or two countries. My character would join with the ishgard people and be able to fight. Any country when attacked with a huge sizable force has always asked for help by neighboring countries when they knew they couldn't fend off said threat. It happened in WW2 and WW1. I do not see why this would not have happened or wont happen in Ishgard. Or you know, my character could just sneak in kinda like what happens on the boarders of mexico or Tibet.

OR Thee new job trainers could flee ishgard and I don't know, come to dragonhead to get away from the conflict and teach people their ways as to assure that their teachings live on. Its always the simple explanations that matter the most and I see no reason why any normal person could not think this way. This could have been a good gilsink. Pay 50k gil, learn the new job as the job trainers could leave for more money elsewhere. There are a number of different reasons or explanations as to why we could enter Ishgard without doing the MSQ or getting the new jobs without doing the MSQ.

[Felis]

Simple, in that trailer there was a massive army of dragons. Meaning that where they come from, something must have sent them. My character would join with the ishgard people and be able to fight. Any country when attacked with a huge sizable force has always asked for help by neighboring countries when they knew they couldn't fend off said threat. It happened in WW2 and WW1. I do not see why this would not have happened or wont happen in Ishgard. Or you know, my character could just sneak in kinda like what happens on the boarders of mexico or Tibet .

Ishgardians would still tell to you : "There is nothing to see. This is our war. Now go!"

Only after you saved them twice with defeating Shiva and defending the Steps of Faith they start to trust you enough.

[Luvbunny]

Gating the expansion to level 50 and the 20+ Hours EXTRA of time in irrelevant content before you can get any jobs, fly, or even go into the expansion is not. That forced issue here is a big problem and I have already seen a turnoff from friends and family because of this very reason which does nothing but hurt the stability of this game, hurts SE with a loss of funds, which in turn hurts development costs to make new content, which in turn hurts us.

I hate to tell you the story, but 3.0 is pretty much the same exact thing you have to go through from 2.0-2.55, with more quest chains (hide and seek is their main theme for 3.0, meaning you can get lost wondering what I need to do next if you skip the entire MSQ, not to mention, no access to dungeons). FATE is harder if you try to solo, not many players doing FATE in new areas since its far more efficient to do the old Coerthas bang a gong fate group. Older dungeons in 2.0 gives roughly about the same amount of xp - but then you are forced to relive the old content again and again to grind.

As far as for flying, LMAO, get ready for news flash, which is the biggest source of annoyance for me, especially if you have alts or planning to level alts. Can't fly until you gather all aether flows, some are hidden buried under myriad of chain quests, not exactly straight forward if you just focus on doing dungeons. There are only 6 dungeons, 2 endgame areas, 2 extreme primal for now. Pretty much everything you hate about 2.0, magnified three times bigger longer more annoying for people with alts to level like me.

On the plus side... doing it the second time around is faster for your alts, since you can skip all CS, focus on what matters and know where to find all those annoying aether flows. And the main missions give tons of xp, 25-68k or bigger. HW is generally a "harder version" of 2.0, supposedly, at least over world mobs are harder to kill. Dungeons are somewhat easy for the first three xp dungeons in new areas.

BTW, here is a tip if you have alts to level: instead of forcing yourself to finish all your 2.1-2.55 and have a seizure of "i am so sick of these dumb npc" - do it slowly. Log and do duty roulette for high levels, low levels, trials and guildhest, thats about 90 minutes or so. You can still get xp if you register the expansion - and do the MSQ a little bit at a time for your alts while you focus on your main character. This way your alts will be level 52 -ish by the time you unlock 3.0, which you kind of want this since the grind at lvl 58 to 60 is horrendous, so getting 2 levels ahead would be better.