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

[Luvbunny]

To cut the story short, after 57 pages of beating dead horse: the conclusion is simple. SE LEARN how to trim the FAT from 2.1-2.55, and LET THIS BE A LESSON for future patches. I rather have 5-8 main mission per patch that is in grander scale with 3 minutes CS on each one of those, with spectacular jaw dropping conclusion and a few challenging battle - rather than having to deal with 25 inane borderline insane fetch quests. If they want to add a bunch of optional fetch quests that people can do to flesh out backstory, etc, by all mean they should do it - but make it optional. This way they can still keep the FF spirit intact, have meaty content (and optional ones) - and everyone will be happy.

If you look at the entire 2.1-2.55 mission structure, 70% of them are NOT needed at all, they can be made optional where if you do all of them, you get nice rewards. They don't have to even delete any of the quests, just no longer make them part of the main quests, and purely optional side quests that rewards you XP, money and items. While still keeping the MSQ intact, and still gating people to 3.0, new players just don't have to plow through bazillion hours of fetch quests. 2.0 MSQ is totally fine, you need it to get to 50 fast anyway.

[Neuflune]

Spoilers ahead but you should already know that.

Actually, with regards to the quest content, many of the "fetch quests" lead up to a more natural way of being introduced to characters in the story. Take for example, Cid. Would a guy who lost his memory warm up to a complete stranger in just one quest? Probably not. The Titan quest line explores the lives of NPCs from 1.0 and also Y'Shtola's background as a Sharlayan scholar, and as we can see in Heavensward she was capable of great things because her mentor was one of the best.

But I don't mean to say that adjustments do not have to be made:
- The suggestion for warp points is a sound one.
- Also, there could be an option to "Auto-skip all cutscenes" for people who just want to move on without caring about the story.

However, I feel that the quests in Heavensward were a lot less tedious than 2.0 quests. I'm inclined to believe that SE learned (somewhat) from their mistakes.

[Zabuza]

It doesn't mean that SE isn't wrong about what they did to the new players. They didn't even have the balls to tell people that Heavensward would be completely unaccessible UNTIL you complete ARR. Because of course, that would have affected their sales and subs.

Wait, what? I wonder how so many people knew months in advance then?

[Madjames]

Wait, what? I wonder how so many people knew months in advance then?

15 friends of mine didn't know until I told them after the expansion came out as not EVERYONE keeps up with this game. Upon learning this, they all refused to play end of story.

[Zabuza]

15 friends of mine didn't know until I told them after the expansion came out as not EVERYONE keeps up with this game. Upon learning this, they all refused to play end of story.

This makes no sense to me. So they wanted to play the expansion of a game, but not the game itself? Did they expect something vastly different about the expansion? It's still FFXIV. Somehow playing through ARR content that would be new to them is not ok, but they were all excited to play through HW content which would again, still be all new to them. This really leaves me scratching my head.

Why are people nowadays not able to just enjoy the journey? Why must they have their shinies now? Why must they receive instant gratification?

[TessaJalloh]

i'm all for cutting the filler that doesn't really drive the narrative. But... that's a lot of quest exp they'll lose. Granted they boosted the exp gain considerably and that should make up for it. but... be careful what you wish for.

[Madjames]

My last response to this thread A video of me

https://youtu.be/0bLYc4BwmjA

[Erepio]

My last response to this thread A video of me

https://youtu.be/0bLYc4BwmjA

so our reason that its an FF game isnt good enough but saying that no other MMO has done it like this so FFXIV should not do it is a good one lol at that

guess what this isnt any of those MMOs its FFXIV, you want this to become like one of those, guess what most of the you can still go and play them

how is it so hard to understand "i dont like a game, i dont play it..i dont try to chance the whole game to fit my playstyle"

ps: also lol at the "who are we to tell other ppl how to play they game"....erm we dont the game makes it very clear that its main focus is the story, u can do next to nothing without advancing the main story so my question is "who are u to tell the devs how to make a game"

[Zabuza]

so our reason that its an FF game isnt good enough but saying that no other MMO has done it like this so FFXIV should not do it is a good one lol at that

guess what this isnt any of those MMOs its FFXIV, you want this to become like one of those, guess what most of the you can still go and play them

how is it so hard to understand "i dont like a game, i dont play it..i dont try to chance the whole game to fit my playstyle"

Then these same people denounce me for saying that WoW conditioned them to be this way, when the very reason they site to complain about this is "other MMOs don't do this." Guess what MMO molded the way MMO models work today? WoW. Because FFXIV deviated from the model in this instance, people are unhappy because "other MMOs don't do this." The minds of people such as that are so tunneled, so trapped inside of a conditional box, the thought of innovation or change scares them, and must be a bad thing.

[KisaiTenshi]

^^^^Dude, I read the whole damn thread.

No you didn't or you'd have realized that this thread was garbage to post in, being on the third page. There are more votes agreeing this thread topic is just trolling than there are thinking it's an issue. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/245096-I-wanted-a-game-and-all-I-got-were-cutscenes?p=3104927&viewfull=1#post3104927 = 88 to this thread's 74.

I don't care that they were "Locked" behind ishgard. My point is they didn't have to be. Why lock them behind ishgard but im running back to Limsa Lominsa to continue MCH job quest?

Because the MCH and AST jobs are fetch quests, just like all level 30 jobs are. You don't join a guild to get a storyline from level 1-30 as the skills are unlocked. You get them all right away. If they don't lock them behind Ishgard, that means players will just level one character to 30 and then get these 3 bonus jobs for free and never consider the other jobs at all. They're are a reward for completing the 2.x storylines.

I also wanted to point out, having lvl30 jobs locked behind finishing huge, main game, then telling people that to lvl those jobs, they have to go all the way back to lvl 30 areas and dungeons...doesn't make any sense. Why not just start the jobs out at lvl 50 then.

Because job stones all start at level 30. You'd know this if you've been playing the game. The quests for the jobs aren't unlocked untill that class is level 30. Hence you get a quest that sets the "invisible base class" to 30 so the Job stone can be equipped and all the pre-30 skills are given automatically. Again, if they set it to level 50, people would just level ONE class to 50 and then unlock these for free. Every job has it's own storyline and quest chain to unlock each post-30 skill. If you notice all the skills still have levels attached to them, so you can still do the pre-level 30 content, otherwise you would not be able to do ANY of the pre-30 content.

It sounds like you are playing because you left WoW because of some cash shop stuff.

See you didn't read the thread at all. I've never played WoW. Everything I know about WoW comes from WoW asshats trying to turn whatever game I'm playing at the time into WoW. "EVE-style gold buying" = WoW, "Buy level 90 character" = WoW, Duty Finder = WoW, Party Finder = WoW, RMT = WoW

Everything that people hate about WoW and why players pick this game... and then they have the gall to suggest adding stuff "because WoW did it". People need understand that WoW is hemmoraging subs quickly, because they keep adopting "Freemium" whale-baiting from companies like Zynga (Farmville) and Nexon(MapleStory/Mabinogi) and it's quite insulting to subscription players to have this kind of nonsense in a subscription game, the entire reason we are paying for a subscription is to avoid being treated like a money pinata by unlocking "the fun parts" through cash shops.

Go look at the App store on Google Play, all the freemium shovelware. Go look at the Apple App store, less shovelware, still a lot of Freemium nonsense. Everyone jumps on the freemium bandwagon because people aren't willing to buy the game (thanks pirates) because the game is BAD, so somehow making the game FREE and then charging money for the "optional bits that speed things up" is supposed to make it better. Hell no.

And yet this is what people are doing in this thread. Advocating that SE let people skip the main storyline, so they spend less time in the game. When ARR was released, it took at least a month to get from level 1 to level 50 on one class/job. That's because you didn't get armory bonuses, and all the other players were incapable of "speed running", and a lot of waiting in the Duty Finder was needed to level a DPS class. That will never be the case again because there will always be experienced players on and all the dungeons are considered for roulettes.

Then these same people denounce me for saying that WoW conditioned them to be this way, when the very reason they site to complain about this is "other MMOs don't do this." Guess what MMO molded the way MMO models work today? WoW. Because FFXIV deviated from the model in this instance, people are unhappy because "other MMOs don't do this." The minds of people such as that are so tunneled, so trapped inside of a conditional box, the thought of innovation or change scares them, and must be a bad thing.

WoW has conditioned players to be extremely entitled and toxic, and we don't want those players here. The only thing worse than ex-WoW players are ex-freemium game players who advocate the same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtvrPTbQ_c
"The Skinner box"

"The reward systems of these games (Farmville and WoW), are conditioned keep you repeating those actions, long past where it's lost it's novelty, and long since become tedious"

"It's a lazy and cheap way to get people to believe they are enjoying your product."

So a game with no storyline is little more than a skinnerbox. Skipping the storyline just so you can get your reward now... like why even spend money on the game in the first place? Sunk cost fallacy?