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

[Darkstorms]

I guess i just don't get it. I play FFXIV for the story and everything else. I've yet to see the HW content, even though i bought the CE. I just killed Ramuh, last weekend. I don't have any issues with this. I like the story. I like feeling accomplished with my character. I know everything is "gratification NOW!", but c'mon, really?? Why do people keep seeing a decent story as a grind? Maybe this MMO just isn't for you or your friends.

You like story that's cool so do I , but how would you enjoy being forced to do mountains of content you have no interest in just to be eligible to do the stuff you want to do. The way the game delivers the msq for a fresh 50 is poor and for someone who is interested in lore and the story a giant clump of quests many being tedious fetch quests does nothing more than degrade the narrative.

I love the game and want it to remain viable to do that their needs to be less barriers of entry to new players.

[RichardButte]

I just killed Ramuh, last weekend.

Hey, no one kills Ramuh. He just willingly goes away after you hit him enough times.

It's quite hilarious to see you make making a personal attack at me just because I gave you the answer to your question.

Well, he's technically right.

Also, I would use modern WoW as an example of how gating should be handled: WoW's storyline is longer and more intricate than FFXIV's, to be sure. It spans back to "Warcraft" and even before then. Mind you, that's not to sat the story is any good, but we're not speaking subjectively because many people don't find FFXIV's storyline to be very good, either. (personally, I think ARR's storyline was so so but HW's is absolutely gripping me)

But the point is, for the sheer amount of story it has, WoW forces you to see very little of it, and it's a much better game for it. Note I said "game", because that's ultimately what an MMO IS.

Now, as I've said numerous times in this thread, no person has any right to tell any other how they should play the game. The storyline itself is not a test of skill of any kind. The raids and dungeons themselves are the challenges (and they're very well designed and executed, for the most part).

That said, I'm sure we're only seeing a small percentage of the number of people who have opted to not play FFXIV because they're forced to play through the entire story. Until I posted this thread, I figured that number was actually quite small, but after seeing all of the other folks who have had similar issues, I think this is a much bigger issue and one that SE needs to address.

How many subs have they outright LOST because of the MSQ? Thousands? Tens of thousands? ...Hundreds of thousands? I would never have suspected this to be the case, but the sheer number of people who have unsuccessfully attempted to recruit friends in this thread alone suggests that this might be a very big number.

And is it worth it? In the end, a paying customer is a paying customer (as long as they're not a goldseller, I mean). If a person wants to do nothing else but sit in Ishgard and craft stuff to sell (thus ignoring the story entirely), who are we to tell them they cannot? And who is SE to tell them, either?

The argument against it is self-defeating, actually, because if you insist that people should HAVE to see the story in order to progress, you're basically admitting that it's a "rite of passage" and is therefore some kind of ordeal.

So what would happen if FFXIV had a progression system where your level was the ONLY gate to accessing content? Upon hitting 50, you could walk right into Ishgard and pick up the three new classes, leaving all of the story quest undone if you so desired. Dungeons and trials would become available in your duty finder the moment you were high enough level for them.

And yes, the story quest would STILL be there, and it would still grant exp and money, rewarding those who opted to do it but not punishing those who didn't want to.

And who CARES if quests reference the story that a player hasn't done? These people aren't going to know what they allegedly did because they mashed esc the entire time anyhow.

So that leaves us with the following question: if FFXIV's story is entirely optional, what's the downside? Are players going to quit over it being optional? I doubt it. Once the crying stops, they'll realize that they're not actually losing out on anything as a result of the story being optional, and if they're smart, they'll realize that all of the extra revenue SE is bringing in as a result benefits them, too.

WoW still has lore nerds of its own, FYI, and they're no better or worse than FF lore nerds. There's absolutely no sense in gating content behind copious amounts of storyline. SE could easily use a different quest symbol for quests that you can take but haven't done the story for yet (and there could certainly be an option to turn off quests you weren't ready for, story-wise).

The end result would be that players who wanted to could enjoy the story and players who didn't want to could just play the game, and both sets would be paying SE a monthly fee, contributing to future development all the same.

[Atrayl]

It's quite hilarious to see you make making a personal attack at me just because I gave you the answer to your question.

I did not personally attack you. I attacked the point you made. If you can't see the difference between the two, then I don't think this is worth my time.

To address the only real point you made, I am also against the notion that raiding is appealing because it's exclusive is similar to the MSQ gating other content. Raiding is appealing because it's challenging. Exclusivity is merely a byproduct of challenge, it's not the goal. There's a difference between building yourself up (achieving something) and tearing someone else down (being happy because they can't achieve it). I would be perfectly fine with and even prefer a game in which raiders did not have exclusive access to the best gear.

[KisaiTenshi]

Please nuke the storyline because I don't want to play Final Fantasy.

That's all you've been saying in this thread.

[KisaiTenshi]

How many subs have they outright LOST because of the MSQ? Thousands? Tens of thousands? ...Hundreds of thousands? I would never have suspected this to be the case, but the sheer number of people who have unsuccessfully attempted to recruit friends in this thread alone suggests that this might be a very big number.

The answer is Zero. It is NOT the game for them. You don't sacrifice one part of your subscriber base just to appeal to a subscriber base you don't have. This is why all the WoW-clones are awful, because they are trying to offer a WoW experience in a game that doesn't have the WoW lore, and doesn't have the WoW subscription model.

You don't win the market leader with a carbon copy of the last market leader. The sheer number of failed freemium WoW-clones tells me enough that you don't produce a game to appeal to WoW fans if you aren't WoW.

Make your own game, and people want to play your game, will play your game.

MMORPG's are not flavors of soda with fierce brand loyalty. There are plenty of people who are generally neutral on the brand, but have their preference for "Dr.Pepper" or "Root Beer" when handed dozens of choices. You can't come into the market with "Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr.Pepper" and expect everyone who drinks Cherry Coke or Dr.Pepper to like it and replace their favorite with it. Many people will try it once, find they don't like the taste, and that's the end of it. You can't reformulate something once someone gets a bad taste, because they will remember that bad taste. Likewise you can't reformulate the existing product (see Coke II) and not have the loyal fanbase go hostile. Which is what you're seeing in this thread at even the suggestion of nerfing the storyline.

And this is the thing about FFXIV, is that there is a free trial, if the free trial doesn't make you want to subscribe, you haven't lost anything. Square Enix hasn't lost anything either.

WoW has a boost to level 90 that basically lets you skip everything in the game to the most recent content. That IMO is an admission that playing the old content never mattered.

Customer churn (people who leave) is often calculated by Revenue per customer. Hence a Free-Trial player, unless they contact customer support costs them nothing. Solving RMT has a bigger effect than any perceived losses by free-trial players not converting. Players will more readily leave from the constant harassment by RMT first, before they will leave because the storyline seems too tedious.

[Tuathaa]

The answer is Zero. It is NOT the game for them. You don't sacrifice one part of your subscriber base just to appeal to a subscriber base you don't

So what you are saying is if they make the story line optional or streamline it you and the others who are against the idea are going to cancel their subs.

[LineageRazor]

So what you are saying is if they make the story line optional or streamline it you and the others who are against the idea are going to cancel their subs.

That's a good point: exactly what part of the subscriber base is being sacrificed in order to appeal to this theoretically non-existent other part of the subscriber base?

Let's assume that SE makes the storyline optional. People can skip it, or save it for later, or whatever, and delve into whatever content they choose, whenever they choose to.

Who, exactly, are we losing as a result of this? People who like the story, still have the story. People who like the story, but have other priorities, can save the story for later. People who don't care about the story at all, have the choice to bypass it. I'm not seeing a lot of unhappy people here.

As near as I can tell, the ONLY people who could possibly be unhappy about a change like this are people who endured what they see as a horrendous ordeal, and are enraged by jealousy at the thought of others catching up to them without having to endure the same ordeal. If they've endured the ordeal, it doesn't sound like these people are exactly what you'd call lore-hungry storyline fans. I'll take the story-haters who don't make a big deal over it over story-haters who are spitefully jealous any day.

[Atrayl]

That's all you've been saying in this thread.

This is 100% false. You're only further proving yourself to be an inconsequential voice in this discussion.

Do these forums have an ignore feature?

[RichardButte]

The answer is Zero.

This thread alone has already proven otherwise at least thirty times over.

FFXIV's raids, trials and endgame are actually pretty damn good, by MMO standards. The people I've been trying to get to play FFXIV are the same people I've raided with in previous games. These are people who will stay subbed to a game for a LOOOONG time, so long as you keep challenging them with new raid content.

And Coil was a really solid, challenging raid, one I would've very much liked to play with these folks.

But the problem stems from the fact that no one has much time these days. In the precious time they have to set aside for entertainment, they don't want to spend it doing something they don't enjoy with only the potential for future enjoyment possibly somewhere on the horizon.

Really, there is content at the end of FFXIV that people would pay to play for months on end, but they're not willing to grind through the mountain of boredom that comes before it and I can't really blame them.

Folks need to accept the fact that XIV has content that can be appreciated by people who don't give a crap about the story.

Seriously, do you think hardcore world first guilds in WoW are doing it because they want to see Garrosh brought to justice for his crimes against Azeroth? :P

Let's assume that SE makes the storyline optional. People can skip it, or save it for later, or whatever, and delve into whatever content they choose, whenever they choose to.

Who, exactly, are we losing as a result of this? People who like the story, still have the story. People who like the story, but have other priorities, can save the story for later. People who don't care about the story at all, have the choice to bypass it. I'm not seeing a lot of unhappy people here.

As near as I can tell, the ONLY people who could possibly be unhappy about a change like this are people who endured what they see as a horrendous ordeal, and are enraged by jealousy at the thought of others catching up to them without having to endure the same ordeal. If they've endured the ordeal, it doesn't sound like these people are exactly what you'd call lore-hungry storyline fans. I'll take the story-haters who don't make a big deal over it over story-haters who are spitefully jealous any day.

You win the internet. Seriously, this is absolutely spot-on...

If you enjoyed the story quest, you'd look at others skipping it as "Well, it's THEIR loss..." and not "NO!!! THEY SHOULD HAVE TO DO IT BECAUSE I HAD TO DO IT!!!!!"

Funny how even subtle things like this betray so much about these people...

[ThanMazus]

the ONLY people who could possibly be unhappy about a change like this are people who endured what they see as a horrendous ordeal, and are enraged by jealousy at the thought of others catching up to them without having to endure the same ordeal.

This is absolutely the case. If you check any of the dozen or so threads on this, several people come outright and say that since they had to do it, so should everybody else.

A question though, to all of the people who cite Lore as the main reason to keep this gating in place: Are you against the skip cutscene option for the MSQ? People get to fly right through the plot without having any understanding, and then they're caught up to you that much faster. Those filthy casuals don't even appreciate that ol' what's her face suddenly disappeared from the story because of something.