Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[TarynH]

Just have the Stormblood city accessible, then. Let newbies get their new Jobs once they hit level 30 on whatever Job they are. Don't make players be forced to level a Job they may not care about to 60 before they can even touch the Job they're interested in. Level 30 should be the minimal requirement.

This is a more balanced solution, for those that simply want the new jobs. If story doesn't matter to those people, they will get their job and go on to enjoy content. Or if story does matter, they will possibly play it as the new job.

However, what is being suggested throughout this post, is in essence skipping the entirety of the game. All story. All quests. All dungeons. All content, just to get to a particular end-game raid, to play with friends. I'm assuming Alexander. This is essentially pay-to-win. They may not be paying to win Alexander, but they paid to win every single story fight and dungeon along the way.

[TarynH]

And? If they want to skip all the way to Stormblood, and probably pay an extra $40-50 doing so. I don't care. It doesn't effect me. Those types of players either won't stay subbed regardless or won't even play the game without a MSQ skip option

You're jumping to conclusions here. Even in your scenario, none of it would be P2W because you actually have to learn fights to beat them. Leveling is just busy work.

Again, we're talking about far more than skipping cutscenes or quests here. There are actually dungeons, and fights that are linked to the main story, and the player is required to pass these to proceed. Primals, The Chrysalis, Steps of Faith, various dungeons (including Sastasha mentioned by OP). There is a ton of content that the player would be skipping to get through the MSQ. How else could the MSQ be registered as completed? It is a linear system.

So my scenario of pay-to-win is pretty accurate. You wouldn't need to learn anything to skip all of that content, other than where to enter your CC number. It's a very slippery slope. If they skip all the way to Stormblood, why would they not want to skip that too? It also effects game balance as far as unlocking gated gathering nodes, and crafting materials along the way. (Again, think RMT.)

Very dangerous and bad idea we're talking about here.

[Derio]

I am all for people paying 60 bucks on top of paying for stormblood to skip to lvl 60. Helps increase the budget for the next expansion

[dragonkyn20]

Just have the Stormblood city accessible, then. Let newbies get their new Jobs once they hit level 30 on whatever Job they are. Don't make players be forced to level a Job they may not care about to 60 before they can even touch the Job they're interested in. Level 30 should be the minimal requirement.

This. I wanted to be able to beat the ARR story as a Dark Knight on my alt's first clear but due to the lockout, you can't access the job until after you beat the story and unlock Ishgard. The devs can lock the scenario stuff if they want, but don't lock away the jobs as well. That's one of the main attractions to an expansion apart from the new instanced content.

[Voltyblast]

I just wanted to tell my two cents, not because it bothers me as I'm a story skipper (because I don't like it), but because this might be a very harmful thing for the expansion.

I get it: this game is all about story (then why 1.0 failed?) and apparently we can't live in this game without story, fine, but you know what we also need? New players. And a new player who sees a huge wall made of hundreds of quests JUST to access the latest expansion might leave halfway before they even finish. This is a thing that happens quite often (two of my friends and my sister laughed at me when they heard this for HW), with people simply being discouraged because of this huge wall of quests, and you want to repeat the same mistake twice? For STORY reasons?! I don't get it, I really don't, but if people are fine with this then more power to you all folks.

I'll just make sure to skip my way through to the end and you better hope all those new players have the patience to either skip it or follow it entirely, or else our numbers will dwindle even more.
Which will lead to more cash shop stuff to keep the game running....because a sub isn't enough anymore right x) ?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Again, we're talking about far more than skipping cutscenes or quests here. There are actually dungeons, and fights that are linked to the main story, and the player is required to pass these to proceed. Primals, The Chrysalis, Steps of Faith, various dungeons (including Sastasha mentioned by OP). There is a ton of content that the player would be skipping to get through the MSQ. How else could the MSQ be registered as completed? It is a linear system.

So my scenario of pay-to-win is pretty accurate. You wouldn't need to learn anything to skip all of that content, other than where to enter your CC number. It's a very slippery slope. If they skip all the way to Stormblood, why would they not want to skip that too? It also effects game balance as far as unlocking gated gathering nodes, and crafting materials along the way. (Again, think RMT.)

Very dangerous and bad idea we're talking about here.

You mean content I could literally solo them all through? Is it pay to win if I run them through Stone Vigil unsynced and murder everything with one button while they follow after me? It's old content. Who cares? If they want to skip the many stages of Ifrit, go right ahead. You can already obtain gear that vastly overgears you for all those fights.

None of that is pay to win. You aren't allotting them an unfair advantage other players do not have. An example of pay to win is what Black Desert does, wherein you lose EXP if you die and are transported back to the closest city. As loot drops on world bosses are based on DPS uptime, all this can really set you back. But! If you buy an item from their cash shop, you'll be revived instantly exactly in the spot you died with no EXP loss.

Wanting to skip old content and Stormblood are not the same thing. The former simply aren't interested in having to slog through hundreds of hours of content that lost its relevancy years ago. Maybe they find the class system fundamentally boring (I don't blame them. I leveled Lancer after all ). Or they want to play with their friends. Whatever their reason is, it's old content. It doesn't matter anymore. Letting them skip hard mode primals isn't pay to win. You can and will be carried through them even if you have no idea what you're doing. I've done it. And no it doesn't. A level potion would be battle jobs, seeing those gate content. Regardless, even if you could jump craft/gather classes. It wouldn't change anything except maybe some markets will have a larger supply. Once again, leveling is easy, albeit boring. It's the MSQ people want to skip because they want to experience the expansion when it launches not a month(s) later because they're stuck all the way back on 2.3.

There's nothing dangerous about it because it does nothing. What will happen longterm is new players simply won't pick up FFXIV because of the sheer grind it entails to reach the current expansion. How many people do you think would have picked up Legion if they had to go through fifteen years through of content? Even just five? I guarantee it wouldn't be nearly to the extent they currently sold.

wait wait.... role player that don't give a damn of the story? you don't feel like you are kinda saying something.... kinda.... weird.
it's them choice to not like this, but it's the main focus of this game, when they come here, they know it. and honestly... i did help friend do them dungeon in unsync, it take almost no time to do it in solo. and like said, doing the msq allows to get tons of exp for the first jobs...

anyway, i did see a lot of this sort of player ingame, they don't give a damn to the story and are often the first to complain about the content given by the patch.... because well they don't care about the msq or the secondary quest. then do i care for them? no... why they will have the right to pass stuff when other will do it? a free pass? no way! no pain no gain.

Roleplayers typically create their own story around the game's lore and their character simply lives in Eorzea. Essentially, you're an everyday person, an adventurer or whatever. Your character isn't the WoL nor do they know the scions. So the main story doesn't impact them. Some love it, others don't pay attention and do their own thing.

Some will probably do precisely that. But making them go through the story isn't going to abruptly have them care about something they weren't interested in to begin with. They'll still say they have nothing to do since they're likely skipping cutscenes anyway. As for why they have the right? I, frankly, don't care how other people choose to play the game, provided it doesn't impact me. I wanted to level normally and experience the story. If they don't. I am not going to feel sour over them wanting to skip ahead. I wouldn't buy a jump potion even to level an alt now. So... it just doesn't matter to me.

[bass9020]

Why are new players perceived as if they gods gift to humanity? They are and shouldn't be treated any different then anyone else who plays this game.

[Silvarion]

Put me in the "Game starts from the beginning" team.

Here's a little input from me as a new player. The journey to endgame is not that long to begin with, it only took me 2 weeks to reach level 50. Furthermore, there are so many tutorials and game mechanics explanations along the way that you'll miss if you go straight to level 60. If you play a level 60 character from the start, you'll be more likely 'gimped' in terms of playing skill. The journey is there for you to learn the basics and master them in preparation of the endgame activities.

[TarynH]

New players. And a new player who sees a huge wall made of hundreds of quests JUST to access the latest expansion might leave halfway before they even finish.

I know. It's horrible when I buy a new game, and I have all of that content to go through, just to get to the latest content. Ugh. Why don't they just tell you the end of the game, and let you collect stuff? That's where all the fun is at. Especially if it has weekly lockouts. I always said, "If they could just give us a game where we have to pay per month, to play it once a week, and log out until reset day..."

[Lexia]

...

People need to research what they buying and not expect everything handed to them, do they want full level 70 with the best gear also. Cause one you skip all the other content that pretty all you doing, couple raids and run the same dungeons for tomes to get gear.