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

[LineageRazor]

These types of customers ruin MMOs. There are games out there for such people. FPS and Facebook games. Why does SE need those types of players again? A game of instant gratification = no sense of reward, accomplishment, or progression. Despite popular belief, this game does not need 7-10 million subs to flourish. Hell, they don't even need 1 million, though if I recall I think the subs are around 2.5 million now.

A game does not NEED 7-10 million subs to flourish, but guess what? If you have that much money rolling in, you can do some pretty incredible things to improve the game. And, has been said, a game's perceived popularity will entice more new people to join, both of the story-loving and the story-skipping varieties.

The vast majority of folks in this thread who are posting in favor of condensing the main scenario are NOT folks looking for an easy ride into Heavensward. We're already there, because we love the game, story and all. We are, however, fearful that the daunting amount of work - even if it is enjoyable work! - will discourage new players from joining. New players are the LIFEBLOOD of the game. We need at least as many new players coming in as there are old players who get tired of the game and quit. If that doesn't happen, the game will shrivel, and the more it shrivels the FASTER it will shrivel as word-of-mouth spreads and more people gain the perception that it's just not worth the effort.

We're well aware that FFXIV is doing very well right now - but just because it's not happening yet is no reason not to prepare for it, and to take measures to prevent it.

[RichardButte]

However, in FF14 we're both kinda disinterested in the story because it pulls us away from each other. So I'm having to rush to catch up to her or vice versa. I wish the story content would've been coop with difficulty sliders based on if your friends join. It would also be interesting to see the story from other perspectives.

See, this is the other thing that's the problem: while FFXIV is trying to "be a FF game", it's busily ruining the MMO aspect of it.

I frankly don't know why anyone would play an MMO unless it's to play it with friends. If you want a story, there are INFINITELY better videogame stories out there in single player games that aren't bogged down by the issues of MMOs.

I've seen these kinds of players in numerous MMOs and I can't understand why they do it. If all they wanted was the MSQ, wouldn't it be better to just watch the cutscenes on youtube and save themselves $60?

Yeah, the story pulls us away from our friends, which is the real reason to play any MMO. What's worse is that the themepark nature of XIV's story means that we know it's insincere (it's hard to get involved in a story that lauds you for being "the warrior of light" when you know there are millions of other players who are being told the same exact thing).

So the storyline just winds up becoming this "thing" that we have to do in order to get to the parts of the game where we can actually play with each other.

suck it up and play the MSQ to get there.

If you have to describe anything in an entertainment product as requiring the user to "suck it up", then we know there's a problem.

Mandatory "tutorials" suck, and ARR's story actually sucks as a tutorial as well because it teaches you very little about how to actually play the game.

Rather than forcing players through countless hours of single player content in an MMO, you could let them instead level how they want to level and then everyone would be happy.

[Tuathaa]

A game of instant gratification = no sense of reward, accomplishment, or progression.

I know I am going to regret this.
How is asking to have the non essential or non main story line quests removed or made optional instant gratfication?
What if some one doesn't want to be over leveled by the time they can go into HW does that make them lazy and have no sense of accomplishment or progression?
The 2.0-2.55 msq issue needs needs to be addressed

[Havenae]

The same in FF14

In fact NOT the same in FFXIV. If you notice this poster was saying it would be beneficial is players could do MSQs together, which FFXI does let you do and FFXIV strictly prevents you from doing.

Regardless, MSQ is not "fine as it is" SE is losing new and returning players left and right BECAUSE OF the massive amounts of MSQs required to even see the expansion content. I wouldn't call that 'fine'.

And I honestly do not see what benefit people who are against altering the MSQs stand to gain. If anything you stand to lose if something isn't done to help allieviate the problem. Less subs = less money = less paychecks = less content addition = = =...

This is what I'll never understand why resident MMO players always seem to be against new ones coming to their game. Especially when it's a sub base.. that just more money going to the pocket of your favorite game's developer. Money that can be spent on giving you more stuff.

[Strywin]

Yeah, they really should abridge the 2.0 - 2.55 MSQ.
I really enjoyed the Heavensward MSQ because it did not have so many filler quests like the ARR MSQ did.
They kept the filler content within the side quests mostly, which ARR should have done imo.
Yes, I also agree that it would be nice to do MSQ with friends however.

[Erepio]

Regardless, MSQ is not "fine as it is" SE is losing new and returning players left and right BECAUSE OF the massive amounts of MSQs required to even see the expansion content. I wouldn't call that 'fine'.

ppl keep saying the game is loosing sub has there been announcement somewhere from where u are getting this from? cuse since the expack hit i havent been able to log in once without having to go in a que first

[Atrayl]

It's becoming increasingly obvious that it's impossible to reason with the dissenters here. I'm starting to realize that it's because, simply, they are FFXIV hipsters:

1. They only like something because it's exclusive. The more people who get to do content, the less they like that content.

2. They were into the game first. Any new player is an undesirable.

3. They shun the mainstream success of WoW, not realizing that this game is 95% WoW as it is.

[RichardButte]

3. They shun the mainstream success of WoW, not realizing that this game is 95% WoW as it is.

Yoshi-P was (and may still be) a WoW player and based a huge number of ARR's designs on WoW.

Hell, XIV's endgame is a carbon-copy of WoW's...

ppl keep saying the game is loosing sub has there been announcement somewhere from where u are getting this from? cuse since the expack hit i havent been able to log in once without having to go in a que first

You know, maybe someone can help clear this up for me because I'm not even sure what to make of it...

I've heard SOME reports that say that FFXIV has 4 million active subs.

I've heard other reports that say that XIV and XI have ~1 mil active subs combined.

Which is true?

Also, I'm not trying to spell doom and gloom for the game: I'm not trying to pedal the idea that FFXIV won't survive without these changes, but that's no reason to not make suggestions on how to improve things.

Given the number of people in the thread having the same issues, it'd be nice if they fixed this up a bit. And as I said, Yoshi-P has acknowledged the problem, but he only seems to believe it'll be an issue in 5-6 expansions when it's actually an issue right now.

[Tuathaa]

Yoshi-P was (and may still be) a WoW player and based a huge number of ARR's designs on WoW.

Hell, XIV's endgame is a carbon-copy of WoW's...

End game, gear levels, raid tiers, and different raid difficulty is pretty much a WoW copy. SE took what they thought was the best parts of WoW and incorporated it into XIV but what they failed to realize is that with an expansion there is re work that needs to be done on previous content other than adding xp to the msq

[Erepio]

snip

the 1mil is an old number think from year 1 of FFXIV...the 4mil is baiscly ppl bought the game, not active subs...i dont think we had a "sub" number for a while

side note: i agree that needing to do everything in MSQ is gonna be a problem for the game unless they streamline it but i consider story and gating stuff with story as a result, a core aspect of the game and how the devs wanted the game to be....what im totally against is making it complete optional

and chancing some of the gates isnt as easy as ppl think it is, in MMOs things break just by chancing a dam colour of a npc somewhere, can u imagine needing to lift requirements etc

ps: so just as the whole "make story optional" is your opinion mine is "keep it like it is".......heck one of the reasons i stop playing Swtor was because aside from the "class quest" your choices etc had no impact whatsoever on the rest of the game, and it felt more like two games rather than 1 to me