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

[Halisstra]

I really don't get the complaints. If you haven't finished 2.0 don't buy the expansion. There is plenty of content for you to do in A Realm Reborn and all of the Heavensward content will still be there in a year. Not only that you'll have more stuff to do. I get it that a new expansion is out and you're hyped but like others have stated, if you didn't care enough about 2.0 to finish it you won't care too much about 3.0 either. FFXIV is a subscription based MMO. Getting a few hundreds of thousand people to pick up the expansion and play for a month then quit again isn't as profitable as keeping subscribers and getting tens of thousand of new recurring subs indefinitly.

[stardrifter]

The classes are in Ishgard because there is LORE to the classes, which is what FF is all about even if it is an MMO. Do you even know the lore of your character being a warrior of light? You can't just have one becoming a DRK without going through the steps. Go play another MMO, Plenty of us like stuff being locked behind the story, It's called progression.

[Rustyhagun]

You actually had to be rank 6 in your starter nation to start RotZ--as in Shadow Lord fight (remember how that tied into DRK's back story? Oh wait...you had to complete most of WotG to fully appreciate it's back story...).

XI's content releases were not "separate"--parallel past certain points in the main story maybe, but not separate. All the other content you mentioned was also gated as well. Most everything in XI was gated behind something---any combination of 1 or more things would deny you access: reputation, nation rank, level, job, imperial standing, allied standing, mission/quest track, time of day (real life or in-game), season (real life or in-game), weather, moon phase... May be more. Those are just things off the top of my head.

Gating is far more common than I think some if you may realize. At least they were up front with Heavensward. Not like there wasn't any disclosure/disclaimer out there telling people they needed to progress to a certain point in the main story for access.

This.... people complaining or whining must be little children or something, as they are not making sense.

FFXI - had Fame points for each nation that you couldn't even see but every quest you did went towards it. To unlock ninja you had to have a certain fame combination between nations.. and you had to have had a certain part of the expansion completed to access Norg to unlock Ninja and Samurai ( which also had other pee-requsets to unlock).

This isn't WoW or any half arsed game company. This is Square-Enix... the grandaddy of all RPG/game studio. They are known for delivering top notch story telling, visuals, music and art.
Everyone complaining about gated content, grow up, as its not going to change, the story is very important for this game and having new jobs unlock, as a new player, would makes little too no sense... where would dark knight and the 2 Jobs skill missions be, if SE just allowed access from the log in screen?....

Are you going to do them all in Uldah,, Limsa and Gridania...?? Does that even make any sense, or have any logic to it.....?

This is not some 2nd or 3rd rate company putting out some bubble gum MMOrpg for the year, "before we go free-to play".(Square Enix does not do free to play with major triple AAA titles (expressing those A's).

You all should have be with us(Final Fantasy fans from the start). Instead of all this childish whining that I'm hearing.... all of you that had no love for this game, complaining and saying this game sucked.. Now its coool and awesome.... and you want to join in.

Well guess what? You have to play from the start and enjoy the ride and the story, lore behind the world. Just think of FF14 as one big single play RPG and there just happens to be others sharing the same world as you. There is no skipping or never will be any skipping of the main arc as it will not make sense to new people. And all we would get are these new people asking stupid questions on the forums.


....* sheeesh*

[Allyrion]

Not sure if this was already posted but ZAM had an interview with Yoshida.
Story was the given reason for the gating.

ZAM: Why the choice to have players complete all the old main scenario quest to start the expansion content?

Yoshida: I think of Final Fantasy 14 heavens whereas the second season to a television program, where as a realm reborn was our first season. So when you watch a television program, you don’t watch it from the second season, you watch it from the first season so they know what’s going on. Heavens word that’s the second season. You have your first episode of that second series is heavens word breathe right now. We talk about the story, but story is important part of the Final Fantasy series and experiencing that story is something that we want the players to do and that’s why we decided this way.But I’m as you mentioned before, we understand that it takes a while to get to that 2.55 content and play through it, and that’s why we’ve lowered the hurdle with all those things we mentioned before. We want players to see it, but we’ve allowed players to watch that first season on fast-forward, binge watch it, and get the second season.

There are shows like CSI where people can start in the 7th season, and they’ve made it so that people can start in the 7th season and not be lost. But for us it’s still our second season and we want our players to follow the story. Maybe in the future when we release our 4th or 5th or 6th expansion we can have a shortcut so the players can get to that piece, but that’s way out there – for now we’re focusing on the second season.

Video source
Text transcription of the interview

[FallenArisen0990]

If there's one thing I give SE, they are very adamant in their cause which I highly respect them for it.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Let's say the restriction to these classes weren't there. Ok, now what? You can only level up to 50 and all of Ishgard would still be locked off to you. There'd be nothing to do.

[Tyrphis]

Im going to play devils advocate and take the side of OP given that when you buy a product you expect to get said product once transaction is complete. what HS did was basically sell you a candy bar then tell you you cant eat it until next month.
you still get the candy bar but your stuck waiting a month to finally taste it which was the whole point of buying it to begin with...anyone seeing my point.

[Allyrion]

Im going to play devils advocate and take the side of OP given that when you buy a product you expect to get said product once transaction is complete. what HS did was basically sell you a candy bar then tell you you cant eat it until next month.
you still get the candy bar but your stuck waiting a month to finally taste it which was the whole point of buying it to begin with...anyone seeing my point.

But it's not a standalone thing. It's an addition to what's there.

Also, the information was readily available that you had to go through the MSQ.
So it'd be more like the shopkeeper told you you could pre-order your "candy bar" and eat it in a month.
Or I dunno, hold off buying it till next month when you can actually taste it.

There are plenty of better analogies for this where you buy something that requires something else.
Refills, extensions, add-ons. That's what this expansion is, expanded on the base game.
So you can buy the bundle, but you still have to set up the base before utilizing the additions.

You can talk about how much you may or may not like that design, but it's not like they did some bait and switch.
Again, the information was readily available.
Even other MMOs that don't tie the expansion to the story will still level gate the expansion areas.
Though that's less strict, it's still the same idea that you can buy the expansion but you have to do things in the base game (level) to experience what you paid for.

Really a very basic concept.
The difference is that this game has a vision of how the game's priorities that don't just include levels.
And that's what you part and parcel with theme park MMOs, the content is developer driven rather than player driven.
Not understanding that is just Buyer's Remorse.

Let's say the restriction to these classes weren't there. Ok, now what? You can only level up to 50 and all of Ishgard would still be locked off to you. There'd be nothing to do.

Though I agree with the gating, I think they should've made the new Jobs start at 50.
They're the Ishgard related jobs and they require you to do 50 content to get them unlocked.

Like a new players wants to play X Job. They have to get to the point of HW to do it.
That seems fine to me, they're HW Jobs.
But then you go back to ARR stuff with the HW Jobs and you're back to 30.

I, also, sort of empathize with people who really need to identify with a Job to play it.
I don't think it's too much to ask them to be open to other classes enough to get through ARR.
I think it's a bit much to ask them to do that then lose 20 levels and climb back up to get back to where you reached in the story.

They should be able to continue the story after unlocking their new Job, at 50.
That's the only thing I think they should've done differently in regards to the gating.

[MageBlack]

Not sure if this was already posted but ZAM had an interview with Yoshida.
Story was the given reason for the gating.



Video source
Text transcription of the interview

Excellent. Its almost exactly what I figured they would do. Makes sense right now and will make sense to adjust in the coming expansions.

[Eye_Gore]

The problem with comparing it to tv shows though is that if you want to start watching the second season, you can. You're not locked out until you watch the first,that would be ridiculous. And really what would be missed in the story, its mostly mindless missions you could sum up the actual story in a few minutes. I could probably do it here in a few sentences.