Forcing us to the entire story quest to unlock the new classes is just bad business

[AdamFyi]

Lol, i was wondering what that /s meant. lol anyway, the last part of my post was more directed to all these people posting here who moan and wail about things in this game as though they will NEVER change.

No worries. Apologies if I sounded rude.

Things will change over time to make it a lot more easier. That's pretty much a given. It's just the mentality that they have to get everything immediately and right now that is the problem. It irks me whenever I see that kind of attitude. Please, just trot through the game at your own pace and enjoy the game. Seriously. There isn't any point in rushing anymore what with the recent changes they made to ARR content.

Edit:

Plus, Heavensward isn't going anywhere. You didn't pay for the base game and the expansion to only play the expansion content.

[Raist]

I want all the people who think gating the entirety of an expansion behind all of ARR's Main Quest to think about how it's going to be for people in 4.0. Are they going to have to complete all of ARR/HW just to play it? That's a really damned high wall to experience new content.

I would hazard a guess they will follow their previous IP and branch out off another aspect of the main ARR story. There are several plot lines still left open that trace back to events in ARR they can build off of. They could easily follow precedent and break off down another story arc linked to something that happened between 2.1 and 2.5, and the requirement would be that they have progressed through to that part of the story--which most of the existing player base already has done, and any new players will still have the extra benefits recently implemented to aid them in getting through to that point in the ARR story arcs--they may even get more of a boost, who knows. There is already a bit of foreshadowing going on in 3.0 that hints that we will be going back and dealing with issues in the three city-states eventually, so it isn't too unreasonable to expect future content will involve those old plot lines.

EVERYTHING you are seeing done here has been done before...and quite successfully at that. Don't see any reason to be worried that they won't continue with those successes in the future.

[MageBlack]

No worries. Apologies if I sounded rude.

Things will change over time to make it a lot more easier. That's pretty much a given. It's just the mentality that they have to get everything immediately and right now that is the problem. It irks me whenever I see that kind of attitude. Please, just trot through the game at your own pace and enjoy the game. Seriously. There isn't any point in rushing anymore what with the recent changes they made to ARR content.

Edit:

Plus, Heavensward isn't going anywhere. You didn't pay for the base game and the expansion to only play the expansion content.

No worries! That was my fault for not picking up on the sarcasm. But I agree. Take your time, enjoy the game. I'm quite pleased to see this gating to be honest. I wish more games and other mediums would do that. I was reading a book series (Sword of Truth) and a friend skipped the first 5 books then started giving details away and was very confused about some things so he kept asking me cause I was reading them in order. Same with TV series, If you skip the first two seasons of Game of Thrones then you miss out on lots of juicy details.

Gating a game like this is something I used to stress on my kids, Beat the first game first then go to the next one. They got the Jak and Daxter 3 game combo pack and I made them go through each game. in the end they thanked me for it. After that they can pick their favorite and replay but the series makes so much more sense if you play them all through. I have dabbled in many other MMORPG's and they all felt the same to me, empty and pointless. Sure there was content but nothing drew me in to the world and made me feel involved in the lore or its characters. What story and lore they had was all in walls of text and completely skippable and irrelevant. (with a few exceptions, like SWtOR but they died off.)

Keep it up SE, Keep the RPG in MMORPG!

[Chukkaque]

Being a beta tester, and being on the opinion of "Welp thats too bad for you" I took the time to read a lot of these comments from new(er) players.

So my opinion has slightly changed as I gave it a little more thought. The new jobs start at 30, like most of the jobs. So I don't see why it would be an issue to allow access to Ishgard at 30, and thus have access to the new jobs. Hell you can still keep everything else gated and the Cs that plays when you first walk in locked until you walk in with the pre-requirements.

Hell the Machinist's job quest giver is in the 2.0 zone. Dark Knights just hangs out on a walk way.
I dont think this is too much to ask nor is really breaking anything. The only major flag it violate is the whole "Can't go to ishgard blah blah gates of judgment blah blah" hell if you opened it up at 30 that means folks would have to actually make the trip through Coerthas to hit Ishgard. Which isn't even that hard especially with mounts.

[Mintyfresh]

Being a beta *SNIP*

That should be the logical thing to do. As soon as you reach 30, instantiate some part of Ishgard where the quest givers are, let them give you the quests to initiate the jobs.

I don't mind Ishgard being gated behind story, but the new jobs being gated behind the story, totally duhhh..would love to understand the reasoning behind it from the developers...but like I always say..2 years later we still can't queue with our chocobos out...so keep your expectations low

[Luvbunny]

WoW has no story line or main story line mmkay. Being a player since vanilla I can tell it has way more lore and in depth story than FF has. WoD is, and the direction the game went is the only reason I am playing ffxiv.

WoW has lore, but only if you take the time to find out and read and immerse yourself in the role play aspect of it. But the game is designed to be more open ended, you are not being put on a roller coaster straight to the finish line level 50 via MSQ like FF14. In WoW you are free to roam, picking up quests in each areas you visited, wandering around and just "get lost in the world". No "Dominatrix Bikini Chick" ordering you around to do her errands and her band of merry useless NPCs who cannot do anything right lol.

As cheesy as FF14 story may be, I like how the game is very structured, extremely linear, and put a big huge training wheel and strap you on a roller coaster ride that you MUST take if you want to unlock the game contents. No OPTIONS. It makes sure that everyone has to experience the same thing as the game creator has intended. Even if you are in favor of SKIP every single CS. We all know most North America player can barely read, even when everything is pointed to you ON SCREEN how you should defeat the boss. And a big HUGE red circle pretty much telling you to MOVE out of AOE range...

Still don't get all these uproars. If you are already play FF14, all you have to do is measly patches MSQ which goes super fast to complete. You also DO WANT to get all level 120-130 gears to better prepare you for 3.0. And why cheat yourself out of the rich amount of content that 2.55 edition has? Every new player has to get to 50, instead of wandering around getting lost, the structure of the game make sure you can get there with minimal effort. Though you will be surprised how many of them reach level 30 without doing any single dungeons (not even aware those exist lol) - or unlocking jobs (they never do any class quests from level 5-30 either). Just to show you, SE can explain everything RIGHT in your FACE till you are BLUE, but you can't do much when players just SKIP everything.

[AdamFyi]

I don't mind Ishgard being gated behind story, but the new jobs being gated behind the story, totally duhhh..would love to understand the reasoning behind it from the developers.

That's because you're only taking into consideration from a lore perspective. They could have done something different. So why did they restrict them to Ishgardian areas? You'll have to turn your thinking around. Instead of, "Why did they gate it behind Ishgard," you should be thinking, "Why restrict it to players who have completed the 2.55 MSQ?"

Not going to too much into it, so here's a link. Anyway, from a design perspective, there could have been some restrictions and problems when they wanted to implement the jobs. Mainly because they are classified as jobs and not base classes, nor do they even have a base class to begin with. They are also unlocked at level 30 so you can equip the soul stones. Newer players may get confused when thrown with all those skills in one go. Implementing it in a way that a new player can understand it, would require them to change the level you obtain the job to level one so as to ease them into the job. This is currently impossible as they don't have a base class. That's probably why the developers did so.

The other option I can see is that they put in base classes, but that wouldn't make sense because they wanted to avoid the class system altogether.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

While I understand the rationale behind gating Ishgard and the new classes with the MSQ, it sort of surprises me that the developers didn't include something that wasn't gated.

For instance, a smallish new zone with no MSQ gate. Some part of Thanalan or Gridania that was recently rediscovered. Or that one of the cities decided to try to tame in order to have somewhere to send those darned refugees. Nothing huge like the new Ishgard areas. Maybe include a smallish dungeon.

Some playable content available more easily than that behind the MSQ gate. That could have been done in a way that maintained the story integrity and offered something to new players.

It would be nice, but then people would have even less of a reason to buy the expansion. Square's goal is to make the expansion enticing enough for people to want to buy it cause money. They can't keep constantly making patches for old stuff for free forever.

[Squats]

Plus, Heavensward isn't going anywhere. You didn't pay for the base game and the expansion to only play the expansion content.

Actually I didn't even buy the expansion because as someone who is not currently max level there is almost no benefit in me doing so. So I will have to play a class that I'm not wanting to play to level 50+ so that I can unlock a job that I want to play. Maybe I will get bored before that and I'll just end up not purchasing the expansion. How many people will end up doing just that? Missed opportunity on SE's part.

[Seif]

There are SO many trash quests between Ramuh and Before the Fall that they honestly could just put as optional quests without affecting the story. On the other hand I do enjoy the continuity but my god does the 2.0 story get boring as hell at times.