Friends of mine, new to the game, becoming discouraged by STORY QUESTS

[cammi]

I don't see how they could or even would do what most are asking here OP without pissing off a good massive chunk of the player base... me being one of them. I have my issues with some of the story, mainly a huge part of the stuff in the beginning until 2.5 or something. - The last part before HW honestly is where I got invested. - But I wouldn't want that cut, otherwise what'll end up happening is people will be rushing to endgame with no idea how things work. Not saying the story is prefect and teaches you everything you need to know. But on the other hand all shortcuts do is hurt the experience if experience in other mmos have taught me anything.

If the story grind is that bad just skip everything, I have a friend who got to the end in a week. And he didn't skip anything, and works a fulltime job. You can do it. Just enjoy the ride. Cause once you hit endgame it's nothing but a grind, with no movies either. Just load, punch, heal, stab, flash, shoot, poof, target and loot until the next patch. Which drives people away cause noone likes the grind. Want proof? Look at the relic quest.

[Lexia]

The story requirement to get into HW is a blessing as far as I am concerned, not just because I enjoy the story but because it keeps RMT and RMT bot armies out of HW zones and that alone makes it worth doing.

Yes this is one of the reason almost a year after heavensward release that gathering items still have good value.

[Lexia]

There is a massive difference between having options while playing a game, and being forced to do specific content in order to get to the items you want to do in game. I'm always shocked by the amount of people who don't seem to realize people enjoy different things in games.

Speaking of Archeage - I loved the game. And I hate PvP. CRAZY I KNOW! But I found other things that I absolutely loved, like farming, and raising mounts, making music, and just exploring the beautiful world. But with the logic in this thread, I had absolutely no business playing the game since I hate PvP, which is the core of the game. MMOs have to be diverse since their players are diverse.

XIV is not a sandbox MMO, as you said there a certain way the game tells you to do stuff and on top of that the community will go further to tell other how to play on top of how the game tells you how to play.

[Metalwrath]

Also in terms of raid content there hasn't been any decent raid content since they finished with Coil.
Alex Savage isn't worth powering through the game for.You'd get more interest from watching paint dry.

[Felis]

I skipped the story, I didn't even know half the people died unless they said something in forum, the voice acting is soooooo painful to listen to, the side events and quests are more interesting, but guess everyone to their own.

Just choose one of the 3 other voice languages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhWWh_t_LUc

[Chiramu]

To get new people into the game fast the devs will have to think of a way to get the story out to the newcomers and let them start with everyone else straight away. A "story so far..." would be an idea they could use.
The story is not good to sit newcomers through if SE wants to keep them. I know you guys are saying all sorts about how it's a "story-driven" MMORPG but the fact is, this will not keep new customers if new expansions are revealed. How tedious is it for those new people will it be if they have to slog through sets of story content just to get to where everyone else is?
The longer the story gets the less likely new players will want to start up unless there is a "story so far..." recap.

[bass9020]

To get new people into the game fast the devs will have to think of a way to get the story out to the newcomers and let them start with everyone else straight away. A "story so far..." would be an idea they could use.
The story is not good to sit newcomers through if SE wants to keep them. I know you guys are saying all sorts about how it's a "story-driven" MMORPG but the fact is, this will not keep new customers if new expansions are revealed. How tedious is it for those new people will it be if they have to slog through sets of story content just to get to where everyone else is?
The longer the story gets the less likely new players will want to start up unless there is a "story so far..." recap.

They still need to level up so regardless they have to do ARR. Do people actually purchase games thinking they can skip almost the whole thing? Why is this brought up every single time. What are we going to hand out level 50 characters to people and call it a day? This isn't wow or any other stupid game that does that(its bad enough the new jobs started at level 30). They will get to where everyone else is WHEN THEY GET THERE. The amount of entitlement in this thread is horrible.

Also do you speak for all new people? Are you the voice of the new people like a bunch of others on this thread? You guys should form a little group together I think that would be cute.

[Snugglebutt]

To get new people into the game fast the devs will have to think of a way to get the story out to the newcomers and let them start with everyone else straight away. A "story so far..." would be an idea they could use.

They better not and I feel extremely strongly about this because any idea which allows RMT and their bot armies to skip through into HW and beyond...infecting and infesting those zones/cities is not something I would agree with. Most new players I have personally met actually like the fact this game is so story centric, has such investment in main story questing. Especially fans of FF in general out of them who get to feel partially like they are getting the benefit of the single player games focus on story and characters while at same time containing MMO features. Some of them would like it if the fetch quests were streamlined but in the sense of taking less time to do them rather than cutting them from the game. The truth is there will always be people who want things faster and without putting in same effort as everyone else (WoW does this with their paid for leveling service option aka P2W), however it doesn't mean they should always get what they want.

I would be very much against a "story so far..." then straight into HW zones and future new zones. It would allow RMT to get a stranglehold once more doing the same thing en masse instead of remaining trapped in ARR zones like they are now. Any changes SE makes to this aspect must be minor (reducing quest items need to collect from 20 to 5 as an example I gave earlier cutting down time takes to do them but still existing), the current main story gating along with it's long list of dungeons and trials must remain to keep bot armies and RMT out of new content/zones in my opinion. For example if they add any new zones from this point on then that should require completion of ARR main story and getting access to HW, from that point on it doesn't need any additional gating because no RMT or bot armies will infect those new zones just from the HW gating alone.

In the end you can't please everyone but I can guarantee it will annoy a lot more people if removed that current gating and by proxy allowing RMT and the bot armies to infest newly added content like they have with ARR cities and zones. I have not seen since HW came out a single RMT city chat spammer or a single RMT bot army in any HW zones or cities thanks to the current ARR>HW gating. New classes, features, items, mounts and other such things does not have to be behind that current gating but in terms of new zones and cities I think it does. Let's also not pretend that everyone is away in HW or doing endgame raiding, that new players are all alone trying to catch up since between alt classes, alt characters, SE incentives for doing older content, FC's helping out and other new players around there is no shortage of people to play with along the way to enjoy the journey with. This isn't candy crush or flappy bird, the journey actually matters in this game and should continue to do so.

[Belhi]

What they said back when it was being discussed at HW's launch is that for 4.0 they would probably allow people to start the 4.0 content without having to go through all the HW patch content and such. Instead they would have to create some kind of 'the story so far' so people starting the 4.0 story without going trough all 3.X will know what is going on.

That said, they aren't going to let people just jump straight to lvl 60. Your still going to have to level up a Job to 60 and get enough gear that you don't get oneshot the moment you step into the new zones. Being able to get to the new zones and having the required lvl and gear are two entirely different things.

That said, the lack of bots and such in the HW zones is a very nice bonus of the system.

[Xellos2099]

Think back in XI, COP and TOAU don't really share the same time framr but COP certainl;y take place right after ROZ ending.