Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[TarynH]

Though I do acknowledge that having to parade through the whole story might be a bit much for new players who just want to fast-track to end game.

What... fun. Can see the involved discussions now.

Random Shouter: Woot! We just beat ______! First time!
MSQ Skipper: Why is that so special?
Random Shouter: Dude, do you even story?
MSQ Skipper: Nah, I skipped it. Was too much of a drag.
Random Shouter: >.>
MSQ Skipper: But seriously, why'd you kill him?

[Belhi]

What... fun. Can see the involved discussions now.

Random Shouter: Woot! We just beat ______! First time!
MSQ Skipper: Why is that so special?
Random Shouter: Dude, do you even story?
MSQ Skipper: Nah, I skipped it. Was too much of a drag.
Random Shouter: >.>
MSQ Skipper: But seriously, why'd you kill him?

This already exists. One of the tanks in my FC's static has no interest in the story and has pretty much skipped every cutscene the game has (Dirty cutscene skipper!). He doesn't even know what Aether is and I don't think he can name all the Scions. I would say to any other MSQ skipper the same thing I say to him. Make a new character and do the story. If you try and explain they usually lose interest once the explanation takes more than 2 sentences anyway. He's a good tank though.

Generally though, people who aren't interested in the story aren't going to pay attention anyway and will skip through most of the story stuff. For those people fast tracking the story has very little impact and all it does is save them furiously clicking through text and hitting esc whenever a cutscene comes up.

MSQ lock on Ala Mhigo would be in the level 30 range, so they don't need to go and flip Forgotten springs content that hinges on it being a refugee camp.

I remember them saying you wouldn't need HW to get whatever 4.0 revolved around. The trouble I see is, will it red lock to level 60 or will the new zone be 50 to 70?

The new content is almost certainly going to be 60+. Assuming you don't need to buy HW your still going to have to get lvl'ed to the point to do it. I seriously doubt they are going to create sufficient content for a player to get to 60 in the new zones since all that would be wasted on people who have already levelled.

[EusisLandale]

The new content is almost certainly going to be 60+. Assuming you don't need to buy HW your still going to have to get lvl'ed to the point to do it. I seriously doubt they are going to create sufficient content for a player to get to 60 in the new zones since all that would be wasted on people who have already levelled.

They do actually have a way to get around needing it to be starting at 60. The Vanu Vanu and Vath quests scale to you 50-60. They can simply arrange it so the first new zone is all scaled quests from 50 to whatever level the intent is to have for the next.

[Belhi]

They do actually have a way to get around needing it to be starting at 60. The Vanu Vanu and Vath quests scale to you 50-60. They can simply arrange it so the first new zone is all scaled quests from 50 to whatever level the intent is to have for the next.

What? So one zone takes you from 50 to say 62?

To be honest, many would still need to unlock HW simply to do Job quests.

[EusisLandale]

What? So one zone takes you from 50 to say 62?

To be honest, many would still need to unlock HW simply to do Job quests.

Yeah, they could do it fairly easily.
As for skills, I'm not too worried there. PotD has shown they can just give us the skills at level, and they're talking about changing up stuff about skills anyway.
I've not leveled all the Jobs just yet so I'm not really sure how many would necessarily need the Heavensward Job stories, but from what I have seen it shouldn't really be that hard to just have the Heavensward and Stormblood stories disconnected.

[Belhi]

Yeah, they could do it fairly easily.
As for skills, I'm not too worried there. PotD has shown they can just give us the skills at level, and they're talking about changing up stuff about skills anyway.
I've not leveled all the Jobs just yet so I'm not really sure how many would necessarily need the Heavensward Job stories, but from what I have seen it shouldn't really be that hard to just have the Heavensward and Stormblood stories disconnected.

But they aren't. Heavensward is a continuation of the existing storyline. I'm also not too sure at the idea of removing the role of Job quests as part of Job progression. I also doubt they will ever have a single zone that lets you go up 12 levels in a single zone.

[EusisLandale]

I also doubt they will ever have a single zone that lets you go up 12 levels in a single zone.

I do agree that it's unlikely that they will do such a thing, but it's not entirely wise to rule out the possibility to bypass expansions when the mechanics to skip are already in place and that about the only thing missing would be an easily inserted "how we got here" type scene for people choosing to skip.