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

[TankHunter678]

They could do what WoW did and make it so that HW is combined into the base game and the next expansion takes its place for being purchased.

I mean really, look at WoW right now. ~20$ gets you everything from Vanilla to Warlords of Draenor.

The thing I would say to not take from WoW is a free character boost with the latest expansion purchase. THAT right there just ruins everything.

[Velisra]

That's the problem, sorry if I'm generalizing but a lot of WoW players do move over here and expect WoW 2.0, like I said before, I don't know what rock these people live under and not know what FF is about when they hear about XIV.
<snip>

Just so you know... There are probably at least a few others like me who really have no idea what "FF is about" at all. Call me a clueless gamer, whatever. I've never been into consoles and while my kids played other FF titles when they were younger, I didn't pay a lot of attention to what it was all about. Why would I?

For the record, I did come here from WoW during Blizzard's "maybe we'll let you fly in WoD, but wait, no we won't let you fly... oh okay fine then, but you have to do x, y and z, AND a, b and c before you can fly, and it will be weeks, not months, before you can" BS, but I LIKE the story in FFXIV. I didn't expect anything necessarily and I was put off initially when I looked at FFXIV some time before the flying kerfuffle in WoW because in FF you MUST do group content to progress and level your character--and I HATE group content. I decided to try it out anyway after reading about it on the WoW forums.

So, the story is fine, I just wish they'd make it so I could do the story but the dungeon/trial bit was optional. /shrug

Different strokes for different folks.

[CodingSquirrel]

1.) I don't know what to tell you then. Most people typically enjoy talking to the people they call their friends.
ʅฺ(・ω・。)ʃฺ

If all I wanted to do was talk with my friends I would call them instead of playing games with them. Challenging cooperative content is what we have fun playing together, hiking back and forth across Eorzea picking flowers and harvesting 20 moogle spleens isn't.

No, the point doesn't still stand because that "specific scenario" is the only scenario in which your point (if it were true) would have been relevant. You claimed that unlocking the first dungeon leaves you with only one dungeon you can run until much later in the story. The truth is that you unlock four dungeons and a trial in very short order and always thereafter have at least that many to choose from. Obviously, the further you go, the more other choices you also have, but you're never stuck at only one or two options.

My point is being lost in trying to pick apart the specifics of me referencing those first few dungeon quests. I wasn't interested in nor trying to give specific examples of when and where you unlock certain dungeons. I made a poorly worded reply to someone else who mentioned the first dungeon and I continued by referring to it instead of the more general concept I was trying to convey. And that is: you are drip-fed these dungeons over a long and drawn out questline. When you just want to get to the "fun part" (in this case, playing group content with friends) going through all that story is a chore, especially when it drags on during the post-50 quests. Saying, you can get a few low level dungeons early on isn't really an answer when so much of it is locked behind many hours of content. There are tons of trials, dungeons, and raids in this game, but you're telling me that if I don't want to spend so much time on the story that I should be satisfied with just a couple because those are the ones that can be unlocked quickly? Sure...

[SDaemon]

While I suppose that's possible, I certainly hope they don't. It would totally spoil the story for anyone who doesn't have HW yet at that point, but might want to play it at some later point down the road. It's better to just branch off and keep the two separate.

I've never heard of any game that required purchase of past expansions before you could play the latest one, and I really can't imagine that happening here. Designed for post HW levels and gear, certainly, which would be plenty to make playing HW first the preferable way to get there. (Anyone who skips HW would have a lot of level grinding to do in place of it.) But they can't very well require HW unless they switch to giving it away for free, and I can't see them giving up the revenue on it.

I would imagine the cutscene would be only for those wishing to skip the story regardless and would be an in-game selection not something imposed like an opening cutscene.

Also I honestly can't imagine them just letting people buy 4.0 and leveling from 50 to the new cap from that without needing to have purchased HW to be able to reach 60 first. It makes sense that they would require you to purchase HW and then the 2nd expansion. They already offer both ARR and HW in a bundle that can be purchased together.

I don't think the devs said that they would require 3.0 to get access to 4.0.

They won't require 3.0's main story to be completed is the only word I've ever seen on the matter. I'm positive they will still require you to have HW on your account as Heavensward is required to reach level 60 and 4.0 is likely to increase the level cap from 60 onward and be designed with that increase in mind.

[Lexia]

Hmmm...if this is true i wonder how they will make the classes that were introduced into HW...AST, DRK, MCH available to those new players who opt to skip 3.0, will they be made available in a different way?

That just sounds like people being cheap, cause by the time 4.0 comes out HW will be like $10. I have already seen it selling for $15-20 so really no reason for a person not to pick it up so I agree with others if they don't buy HW then none of the HW jobs should be available to them.

[bass9020]

That just sounds like people being cheap, cause by the time 4.0 comes out HW will be like $10. I have already seen it selling for $15-20 so really no reason for a person not to pick it up so I agree with others if they don't buy HW then none of the HW jobs should be available to them.

Yea I'm sure they will have some type of bundle that includes both games. XI used to do that with each expansion it would just add the next one to it and it was fairly cheap.

[Yasuhiro]

Just so you know... There are probably at least a few others like me who really have no idea what "FF is about" at all. Call me a clueless gamer, whatever. I've never been into consoles and while my kids played other FF titles when they were younger, I didn't pay a lot of attention to what it was all about. Why would I?

That's fine, but you'll always be the minority though a lot of people and I mean a lot, play this game because it's a Final Fantasy title. I'm not even being elitist about it there's no rule stating which FF to start with but it just seems really pointless to complain about FF tropes/staples and for the record I do hate all the BS WoW tier quests in ARR that I wish were cut down like Titan's quest chain seriously that reminded me of why I played WoW for an hour.

also lol, got a bit of deja vu :P

Different strokes for different folks.

[Velisra]

I've never heard of any game that required purchase of past expansions before you could play the latest one, and I really can't imagine that happening here. Designed for post HW levels and gear, certainly, which would be plenty to make playing HW first the preferable way to get there. (Anyone who skips HW would have a lot of level grinding to do in place of it.) But they can't very well require HW unless they switch to giving it away for free, and I can't see them giving up the revenue on it.

The entire World of Warcraft series is like that. You always have to purchase all of the prior expansions before you can purchase and play in the current one.

When I started playing in mid-late Wrath of the Lich King, I had to purchase the base game, Burning Crusade (the first xpac) and WotLK (the second xpac) so that I could progress to max level. The franchise is still like that today; the only difference now is that the base game and all five xpacs have been bundled together for $20 (or if you're really smart, you can get it on Amazon for $5 right now).

Blizzard started bundling it all together sometime in the early to middle months of Cataclysm (the third xpac), and they've been doing it ever since. As soon as a new xpac is nearing release, they bundle the prior one with all the others. You still have to play through them all in order to progress to max level.

[Musashidon]

Hmmm...if this is true i wonder how they will make the classes that were introduced into HW...AST, DRK, MCH available to those new players who opt to skip 3.0, will they be made available in a different way?

they will most likely take out the storyline requirement to enter ishgard so people can go there and get the jobs.

You don't own HW you don't get the jobs. Most classes/jobs are always linked to expansions

sounds like they meant storywise since you can't enter ishgard without doing all of 2.0

[ohmRICE]

If all I wanted to do was talk with my friends I would call them instead of playing games with them. Challenging cooperative content is what we have fun playing together, hiking back and forth across Eorzea picking flowers and harvesting 20 moogle spleens isn't.

Well I guess if that's how y'all roll that's how y'all roll. More power to ya, man.