this game is NOT friendly for those who return after long absence

[Madjames]

The reasons why clearing the 2.55 MSQ is necessary are valid. Other than that, the game is actually very friendly for people who've take a break - every new tomestone and tower has meant that catching up on hear becomes extremely easy. I took a break between 2.2 and 2.4, came back and went from i88 to i125 in a couple of months.

Ilevel is not relevent as you get Ilevel115 in ishgard for nothing.

The exp from the MSQ pre-hevensward is also not relevent as 4800exp per quest is stupid compared to ishgards 48k.

[Madjames]

mmos generally aren't.

That is a lie. SWTOR, Wow, Ultima Online, and Eve online are ALL nice and friendly to new players as well as returning vets. This game is FAR BEYOND nice to downright MEAN.

[Madjames]

It's actually more like wanting to wanting to watch a show starting at season 5 when you stopped watching at season 2.

but.....I already skipped the whole story anyhow. If SE did not allow us to skip this would be a perfect counter argument. As they already do then this should be optional and NOT mandatory. SE allows us to skip seasons 1-5 total anyway so this is a moot point. i am in ishgard and still skipping everything.

Lastly, this is NOT a tv show. We play the game and pay for it. We interact with it and play with other people. That is what an MMORPG is all about. Taking the MMO away from us to force us to do a stupid solo MSQ story is not a good business model and is keeping new coming people from playing the game or even try it OUT because of this issue.

[CGMidlander]

but.....I already skipped the whole story anyhow. If SE did not allow us to skip this would be a perfect counter argument. As they already do then this should be optional and NOT mandatory. SE allows us to skip seasons 1-5 total anyway so this is a moot point. i am in ishgard and still skipping everything.

Lastly, this is NOT a tv show. We play the game and pay for it. We interact with it and play with other people. That is what an MMORPG is all about. Taking the MMO away from us to force us to do a stupid solo MSQ story is not a good business model and is keeping new coming people from playing the game or even try it OUT because of this issue.

While there are ways to watch TV shows for free, matey, many legitimate avenues for shows actually cost money too. (E.g. Cable TV, services like Netflix...etc.)

[Pulsahr]

That is a lie. SWTOR, Wow, Ultima Online, and Eve online are ALL nice and friendly to new players as well as returning vets. This game is FAR BEYOND nice to downright MEAN.

You can add FFXI :
I played it for 8 years, and when a new expansion was released, usually just ONE quest was required to gain access to new content (town, exp areas, jobs, story). No need to clear everything that existed before. I started 3rd expansion before clearing the second for instance.
Some "dungeons" or high-level challenges were story-locked, and I think that's ok, as everything else was not (combat and craft classes, areas, features as large-scale battle, ...).

[Chihaya]

I tried to go through first few pages of General Discussion and Quest sections of JP forums and I cannot find threads complaining about this =/ I guess different games for different people.

I'm guessing SE did this as the main story was directly connected with ARR.
Looking at some of those games listed like FFXI (as I have not played others listed) - each expansion had it's own story, new characters, new areas with very little to do with old content. Occasionally you see old characters showing up but in no way spoils or reveals any significant story line events in previous installments. SE designed HW to be relatively story heavy - you pretty much level your first class to 60 using the MSQ which contains a lot of connections and spoilers to ARR. You are not going to do high-level challenges or raids without doing the MSQ (it was the same case for ARR) which is going to spoil ARR if you haven't done it.

I personally don't have any problem with what SE did, but by now I think SE probably get the message with all these EN threads popping up complaining about this and will compromise some for future stuff.

[cfStatic]

I don't much mind grinding; t'is an MMO after all. That said, there were more than a few times when my eyes started to gloss over and I thought to just start spamming through dialogue to get through it all quicker. I know not of how the JP players deal with heaving to go over so much content. However, I hope that SE learns this lesson well that mimicking Ishgards gates will not win them any friends in the west. I feel like there's a fair bit that could be cut out for tl;dr and the story would experience minimal losses. SE need not water the game down to WoW levels of accessability, but it's a tad unweildy coming back after so long hoping to tool around in new areas.

[Dreadkaiser]

I think the problem was brought up quite well earlier. It's not so much that you have to go through a quest line and see the story or that it's mandatory for access to Heavensward content but the fact that those quests?

they're absolutely f******g tedious, make tea for people? Come right off it... Who put that idea forward at a meeting as a suggested quest and wasn't laughed out of the room?

[Chajava]

They really could make an effort to streamline all the level 50 story stuff a bit @_@. There is a lot of useless fetch quest nonsense going on that takes up a lot of time. I only had one patch worth of stuff to complete when I came back at early access, and that took several hours. I was pretty ticked myself, and I didn't have that much to do.
But on the upside, since you'll probably be 51-52 by the time you actually get to Heavensward content, you might not run out of quests at 58! (Unless you're like me and roll one of the new classes)

Really though, there's no reason to rush. There's not really any endgame stuff going on right now. Just two dungeons and two primals. There's no 450/week cap on the current tomestones. You can get decked out in 160-170 ilvl gear in two days easy.

[Blanchimont]

The story in Heavensward could stand on its own as well, but it was boring as well. The first 4 levels worth of story quests felt like they were just repeating pre-expansion quests to me. FTo make things worse, the story felt like it made a full circle and ended exactly where it started with the threat of Ascians and Dragons over the horizon.

It felt like they forcibly crammed in ties to the pre-expansion content with one or two quests here and there in order to at least resolve some of the leftover story. There's literally no mention of what happened until like 1/3 of the way into the expansion where you finally have to go back and help some guy from pre-expansion in one duty. Then it is back to expansion content for another 1/3 before they cram in 2 more things to solve. If they had just skipped over those 3 quests, there would have been almost no ties to pre-expansion content.