Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Kosmos992k]

"This is a Final Fantasy" game is a bad excuse nowadays: I've played RPGs where story and gameplay were perfectly balanced. And again, this is an MMORPG: gameplay is above everything else. Yes, even story, and I'm pretty sure this is why 2.0 was a success. It wasn't broken at least...

No, I disagree completely. Gameplay is not above all else. and yes this is a final Fantasy game, and it's a perfectly valid reason to object to eviscerating the story in the game to satisfy lazy gamers with the attention span of a Goldfish.

I agree that the potion is bad but, excuse me for my ignorance, why would "skipping the story" hurt the game?

Because it would create a cadre of people among the playerbase who don't understand the world, nor the situation they are in. This is a virtual world we play in, not just an assembly of boss battles one after another.

They'd still play for the gameplay. Infact there are people who only play for the gameplay and probably never cared for the story whatsoever (hello!). Maybe you mean it would hurt the game's STORY...ehm how?

I doubt very much that any significant proportion of the players are playing because they like the gameplay, but don't care at all about the story, world, etc. I didn't mean that it would hurt the story, however it would in fact hurt the story too.

If by chance they made story optional, you'd still be able to follow it like you do now, but those who don't follow the story now won't follow the story anyway: the situation won't change really much. Infact making optional would actually allow players to follow the story by their own means and pace.

No, it allows players who don't care to cheat their way through the game skipping story and levelling. While players who follow the story fall behind immediately. It's paid cheating sanctioned by the game maker, pure and simple.

I can only see win-win here honestly: people who want story get their story, people who want gameplay get their gameplay, and it's not even that hard: just don't make the story lock content and you're done, allow everything to be unlocked with a simple quest or level.

It's not a win/win is a lose/lose. You can't throw out the story in a story based game without hurting the game. You hurt the story as well because developers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how many of their Dev $$ on given content. If fewer players follow the story, that content get's fewer $$, which directly hurts the story, and game.

Although I have a feeling that the reason why it might hurt, it's because the actual people who follow the story would be much less than you think....I'm only speculating here though.

Speculate away, all you're doing is confirming in my eyes that you don't don't care about story.

Your position is essentially to say, that because you don't think story matters, it's ok to make it optional, regardless of the consequences to the game, or players. FFXIV is a story driven game, making that story optional, or skippable devalues the very thing that is core to the game. Changing the game that fundamentally will hurt players, the game and the story all so that a bunch of people who might play if only that pesky story wasn't there, can sub, and then unsub a couple of months later when something else new and shiny comes along.

This idea that you can make the story and leveling skippable attacks the game and devalues it in ways that ultimately hurt the player base, and honestly, will drive long standing players from the game if it happens. In my opinion, I'd rather lose a bunch of short term players who'll move on soon anyway than lose a bunch of players who have built roots in Eorzea and shown through their loyalty that they are hee for the long haul.

Eh, do you even realize what you just said? I agree completely - the point of an MMO is for people to play together. The linear storyline is PREVENTING people from playing together. They WANT to play where the other people are playing - but they can't, because they have weeks' worth of storyline to get through just to get where the people are.

With multiple storylines, players have the option of choosing a shorter path to get where the people are. They can start right off with the latest expansion's story, and once they've gotten into the thick of endgame they can choose to explore the other storylines at their leisure.

Way to go with selective quoting and comprehension.

I said that an MMORPG has to balance solo elements and multi-player elements. So that the story is largely a solo experience except for the points at which players are brought together for larger events that take more than a single player, such as dungeons and trials. I realize completely what I said.

As for your implication that there are weeks of story that has to be completed without the presence of friends, you must have some not so great friends if they won't take time to help you out in progressing the MSQ multi-player events.

Multiple story lines and free form story elements create a disjointed story experience for players. With a linear story - and let's just face it story telling is fundamentally linear, even if you play with flashbacks and stories told through multiple flashbacks and time sequences the story itself is always a linear progression from one event to another - with a linear story, you have commone experience and events to talk about, it creates common ground among players.

Honestly, the worst thing about this game IMHO is the end-game. Fortunately, it's eminently skippable.