100+ old quests to access expansion content...?

[Kuwagami]

That wasn't the main point I was trying to make but if you are really concerned I'm sure you could confirm this in a few seconds by googling something like "ESO guild summit zbtiqua"

That was not my point when I talked about authority argument (though I did go check and saw you did attend to that event. gratz, that's some great once-in-a-lifetime occasion ).

"I know what I'm talking about cuz I predicted the downfall of an other MMO before". THAT is an authority argument. What happened to TESO won't happen here because FFxiv doesn't have the innerent problems TESO had (and most likely still has). That also means your experience in TESO is meaningless here. Because the games aren't handling the MMO part and the "new players coming" part the same way.

FFxiv may fall one day, but that won't be because Heavensward was locked between lore reasons. That one is for sure

[zbtiqua]

FFxiv may fall one day, but that won't be because Heavensward was locked between lore reasons. That one is for sure

Whether or not a bad idea causes a game to fail does not change the fact that it is bad and it would be optimal to improve it. Using lore to explain the need for this soul-crushing quest chain is not a valid argument considering both the lore and the quest chain were created by people and can or could be designed any way they want. There is no way around that simple fact.

[Kuwagami]

snip.

I'm going to do a TL,DR version just for you so that you understand why at least a great part of this quest chain is necessary by design.

=> first off, Ishgard has refused strangers in its walls for many centuries before the events take place. The events from 2.4 and onwards are the sole reason why they made an exception for you.

=> 2.1 and 2.2 bring some political baseline for future development in the story. If anything, those patches could get a shortened questline but not by a lot. The domans and Yugiri are introduced.
Also, Elidibus. Super important guy for Heavensward, as he is likely to become either a super villain or a controversive ally.

=> 2.3 brings ALL of the basis for the development of the story onward. Uldahn political mess, the fundation of Alphinaud's Grand Company... the grand finale bringing you in Ishgard starts now.
You also make contact again with Haurchefant de Fortemps. He is the guy bringing you to Ishgard.

=> 2.4 patch brings Aymeric, Ishgardian general. You help Ishgard by taking care of their problems with heretics. That makes you appear as an ally rather than a stranger.

=> 2.5 : Ul'dah is more and more in troubles, but the Crystal Braves are too. Nasty stuff kicks in, you lose the benediction of Hydaelyn, the Scions are attacked (and one is killed), we kill a dragon to save Ishgard's ass and we finally reach the climax where the sultana intends to abdict during a feast made to celebrate our victory.
Boom, the Sultan drops, and you're framed, accused for her death. All of the scions go missing at best, or worse, so that YOU can flee. You end up alone, without anywhere to go as the Crystal Braves betrayed you and try to kill you.

That's when Haurchefant and Aymeric (respectively son of one of Ishgard's leader and general of the fighting troops of the city) manage to get you a special "3 people only" (you, Alphinaud and Tataru) authorisation thanks to your help against the heretics and the dragons.

For this sole reason, you are now the first and only strangers allowed to come in Ishgard in centuries, and thus you can enter the extension.

Please bear in mind that I am by no mean a writer and did this without putting much in narration. This is just a poor quality, fast written short version of a well made quest chain bringing in many elements together to reach a conclusion which was really awesome.

There is simply no way you could have ever entered ishgard without going through those quests.

[zbtiqua]

There is simply no way you could have ever entered ishgard without going through those quests.

I'm going to pretend I am a writer for this game and create a different scenario to show you why this makes no sense.

1. Ishgard has refused strangers in its walls for many centuries before the events take place.

2. One day, the king of Ishgard decided to venture outside of his city walls. He was suddenly attacked by a dragon. You saved him. He came to trust you greatly.

3. You can now enter Ishgard.

There is no lore argument because the "lore" exists within a system created by the people making decisions. It is like trying to prove to someone that "god" exists because he is written about in the bible. It is a logical fallicy. There is no way around this... sorry.

[Lambdafish]

I'm going to pretend I am a writer for this game and create a different scenario to show you why this makes no sense.

1. Ishgard has refused strangers in its walls for many centuries before the events take place.

2. One day, the king of Ishgard decided to venture outside of his city walls. He was suddenly attacked by a dragon. You saved him. He came to trust you greatly.

3. You can now enter Ishgard.

There is no lore argument because the "lore" exists within a system created by the people making decisions. It is like trying to prove to someone that "god" exists because he is written about in the bible. It is a logical fallicy. There is no way around this... sorry.

Actually the lore argument is a fairly valid one, the story you laid out is not the one that happened and it directly contradicts the characterisation and plot development that takes place AFTER you enter ishgard (the new story that SE is trying to tell). Kuwagami has it right by condensing it down as much as he can, but even then a few VERY IMPORTANT plot points are missed out, such as the ascians plans, as well as explanation of the echo (which you might not find important, but it is key to future storytelling, see below as to why this is important).

The main point, logistics aside (I.e this would be a lot of effort on the devs part for very little gain, and a lot of loss), this would mean that there would be a lot more players being tempted to miss out on story (lol I want endgame now) and would mean that there is a growing number of players that SE needs to take into account of not knowing the story, so every detail would need to be repeated constantly so everyone is on the same page, or the story would need to be mind numbingly simple that anyone can pick it up from anywhere.

I will agree that some of the irrelevant quests can be taken out, but that's about feasibility which I think even you would rather they put resources into the content you are actually interested in like raiding, rather than making worse content to make this content shorter

[zbtiqua]

Actually the lore argument is a fairly valid one

I will give you an exercise to try that will show you why there is no lore argument.

Sit down with a pen and paper. Write any combination of words you want for as long as you want, and try to create a story on the paper that makes it physically impossible for you to write the following words: "You can now enter Ishgard."

If you are successful, I will delete my character and leave this game forever.

[Lambdafish]

I will give you an exercise to try that will show you why there is no lore argument.

Sit down with a pen and paper. Write any combination of words you want for as long as you want, and try to create a story on the paper that makes it physically impossible for you to write the following words: "You can now enter Ishgard."

If you are successful, I will delete my character and leave this game forever.

I don't want you to delete your character, but I want you to also understand the core of how this game functions, and that the context of everything that you do is grounded in the world building provided in the story, certain NPCs change depending on your actions in the story, and you can see the world subtly change as time moves forward (2.3 especially), HW in its entirety requires the world to move forward up to that point, which I get it, for most was gradual, for you its rather quick, but still necessary to retain context (read: not necessarily plot).

As for whether the devs could have made it easier, I don't need to write the story for you, because it has already been done, its the story of Yoshi P being given the job of cleaning up 1.0 and its already established lore. Its an unfortunate situation to be in, but the gates of Ishgard have been locked since well before anyone who started in ARR have been around, and since it wasn't part of ARR they couldn't just say that the calamity caused the gates to open. Also you could say "why didn't they just open them in ARR levelling story" because then they would be open for the 2 years before the expansion that was in the very early stages of development at that point, and people would want to go to a place they should be able to get to.

I understand why you are upset, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done at this point, just be thankful that they have acknowledged it for 4.0 and you will get your summary of HW, as it has been designed that way from the beginning.

[Kuwagami]

Kuwagami has it right by condensing it down as much as he can, but even then a few VERY IMPORTANT plot points are missed out, such as the ascians plans, as well as explanation of the echo (which you might not find important, but it is key to future storytelling, see below as to why this is important).

Actually, I just tried to condense the storyline leading you to Ishgard, as that is really the point bothering OP (can't access Ishgard, aka extension, without this part). There are quite a few other things going on at the same time about the true essence of primals, what the echo is and what it means to be a warrior of light, but none of these are deemed interesting by OP so I skipped them.

I'm going to pretend I am a writer for this game and create a different scenario to show you why this makes no sense.

1. Ishgard has refused strangers in its walls for many centuries before the events take place.

2. One day, the king of Ishgard decided to venture outside of his city walls. He was suddenly attacked by a dragon. You saved him. He came to trust you greatly.

3. You can now enter Ishgard.

I understand what you're saying, but really, that wouldn't work. Firstly, because you can't really shorten all the stuff that takes place so easily. You could get rid of a few FedEx quests maybe, and some "let's become buddies" quests, putting them as optional for rushers, but that's all.

Not to mention that your scenario bears no sense for various reasons :

=> there is no king in Ishgard

=> except for a few warriors and outcasts, noone from Ishgard ever leaves Ishgard. The heretics fled in central Coerthas because they could avoid Ishgard's eyes there. Haurchefant is an outcast, he decided to leave Ishgard on his own and would most likely not return if not our situation at the end of 2.55. As for Aymeric, he came only because we were famous primals slayer, and he needed to deal with Shiva (then Vishap)

=> even IF you were to save the pope or whatever in a 3 steps quests, the only reason why they granted you a pass is because your situation was a life-or-death matter, and they were left with "let us come or Ishgard's saviors are dead with your honor shamed eternally". This kind of scenario takes time to develop, you can't just put it as simply as you did.

There is no lore argument because the "lore" exists within a system created by the people making decisions. It is like trying to prove to someone that "god" exists because he is written about in the bible. It is a logical fallicy. There is no way around this... sorry.

I wanted to discuss about it but I can't find words to express all I want to say about the subject.

I'll just say that games, and J-RPGs in particular, tell you a story. If you don't like the story, that's fine, but you aren't entitled to the end of the game if you didn't beat the scenario first. FFxiv may be a MMO, but it's also a J-RPG and a FF game. It is focused a lot on storytelling. And I don't think that's a bad thing considering the amount of crap in many other MMOs when it comes to scenario. Despite the fact that it bother people like you who just care of the top end game raids.

Just remember that your category of players represent less than 5% of the players in FFxiv.

[zbtiqua]

If you don't like the story, that's fine, but you aren't entitled to the end of the game ... Just remember that your category of players represent less than 5% of the players in FFxiv.

I never claimed I was entitled to skip to the end. That is the point of leveling and it takes however long it takes. If this storyline were built into the leveling process, I wouldn't even complain about it. The only problem here is that you have to basically stop playing the game for 3-4 days to do this quest chain.

I understand what you're saying, but really, that wouldn't work.

Sure it would, it would literally work. The complaints you have about the specifics are easily written away. It wasn't the king, it was the pope. He never usually leaves, but he had to for xyz reasons. If you don't like the dragon attack substitute for anything: foiled assasination plot, resembled a foretold prophecy hero, provided critical resources, etc etc.

[Kuwagami]

I never claimed I was entitled to skip to the end. That is the point of leveling and it takes however long it takes. If this storyline were built into the leveling process, I wouldn't even complain about it. The only problem here is that you have to basically stop playing the game for 3-4 days to do this quest chain

This is not true. The storyline at lv50 is now a part of the levelling process. You get exp AND the gear to survive more than 10 seconds once you enter any extension zone. Sure they could boost the xp gain a bit, but that's still levelling content now.
Also, they'll add xp in all of the lv50 dungeons next week, so even more levellign stuff.

All in all, you just don't like the fact that you have 100 quests at level 50 rather than them being lv50=> 52 or something. Then trust me, you'll hate the 0 quests part at level 57 (because there is no way to level up faster than quests, no matter how anoying they are) (may not be true anymore now with the FATEs xp upgrade).

Sure it would, it would literally work. The complaints you have about the specifics are easily written away. It wasn't the king, it was the pope. He never usually leaves, but he had to for xyz reasons. If you don't like the dragon attack substitute for anything: foiled assasination plot, resembled a foretold prophecy hero, provided critical resources, etc etc.

The city has lived secluded for a millenia, with no contact at all with other people for many centuries. They do not need anything that their land cannot provide. They have never contacted anyone outside their wall (as a city) and most likely wouldn't have without that Shiva incident. The pope has NEVER moved out of his city. Ever. Only low-lifers ever went out of the territory to "defend dragonhead and whitebrim". Usually never to return again.

The highest rank people to leave the city before Aymeric came to us are knights, who are higher ranked than the commoners used for fodder but don't have any importance politically and wouldn't grant you an access in the city.

Haurchefant left the city on his own and wouldn't have returned ever if not for the scenario you don't want. Aymeric only came because of this scenario you don't want.


Try to find even ONE reason that has even a tiny bit of sense as to why you could enter a city refusing strangers since centuries ago with these conditions. Just one. and then I'll look seriously in a way to shorten the story around that. If that can make sense with HS story, that is.