Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[RyuDragnier]

We are talk about Day when Expansion will release. You will drop your progression and discover expansion and go to Sastasha to help players? I don't think so, and expansion will take you a month or more so people who will join you and have to do MSQ will just leave this game.

Leveling roulette. You will run it to get some cheap exp and the new tomestones. Do not deny it, it will happen.

[loreleidiangelo]

Leveling roulette. You will run it to get some cheap exp and the new tomestones. Do not deny it, it will happen.

Most people at HW launch, if they weren't actively questing, were either botting or legitimately doing FATES in Northern Thanalan, actually. The premier progression FC on our server got their name dragged through the mud for doing so and eventually disbanded.

It's not really the point, though. The point is that making MSQ mandatory = making dungeons mandatory, and thats problematic for a variety of reasons. If the devs don't push vets into queuing, newbies get frustrated and quit. If the devs DO keep pushing, like they're doing now, vets will eventually start to harbor some resentment over never being "done" with certain content they hate.

[Kondor]

First they Yelling about no one do Sophia Ex or other stuff and for DPS need wait 90 minutes for pop dungeons.
Then i tell them, lets invite new players who can play that content.
But no they Yell, THEY MUST DO 400 QUEST MSQ.
New players Bounce form game and no one come to the game
Servers are more empty, less party finder every day.
People Yelling about marge servers and Yoshida give them Cross Server Party finder but that wont work.
I start That Drama on on forum because I'm as leader Free Company KNOW WHERE PROBLEM IS.
But no - people like mad Feminist Yelling about "YOU HAVE TO MAKE THAT HUGE MOUNTAIN WITH 400 MSQ"
So good luck guys - you want have raids, dungeons and other stuff but its MMO and you need players, and if they have wall to pass, they just leave.
Hardcore players who are tire to make single roulette because pops are less than 40 min, they leave game and servers make more empty.
You make that Circle of madness for your wish and that will be last expansion for FFXIV.

[Kondor]

Leveling roulette. You will run it to get some cheap exp and the new tomestones. Do not deny it, it will happen.

With Your 3 friends as Speed Run, We are going to lvl 70 fast, and don't have time to teach any new players on sastasha. Also like @loreleidiangelo says - people spam fates, or speed run dungeons no one care about your sastasha in MSQ. Here is the problem - ARR have MSQ with 8 dungeons who no one do. I lvl my Alt and i need ask my friend to make it unsync because i was boring to wait more than 40 min to pop single Totorak or Stone Vigil. Good for you if you leave story quest in expansion and go to help new players, because me and 99,9% people wont do this.

[kaptainpancake69]

They need to add leveling options with friends, so they're not gated from each other. The atrocious Palace of the Dead is a rough draft for that, but they have a whole expansion pack to flesh out similiar concepts.

I am also strongly against making old content completely worthless like WoW does with each expansion pack, always a rush for the latest and greatest. Makes everything seem skippable and worthless.

[Derio]

False when HW first came out, I did the story up to where I could get into ishgard and lvl DRK. Many others did the same and were either running fates in Costa DE sol, then the Highlands, to NT, or the masses were using DF for roulette xp, spamming old dungeons etc. For the first 2 weeks DF had need dps bonus.

People were leveling new jobs and DoH classes. People were running old content in massive quantities.

If new jobs start at 30 you can expect the same.

[RyuSaarva]

With Your 3 friends as Speed Run, We are going to lvl 70 fast, and don't have time to teach any new players on sastasha. Also like @loreleidiangelo says - people spam fates, or speed run dungeons no one care about your sastasha in MSQ. Here is the problem - ARR have MSQ with 8 dungeons who no one do. I lvl my Alt and i need ask my friend to make it unsync because i was boring to wait more than 40 min to pop single Totorak or Stone Vigil. Good for you if you leave story quest in expansion and go to help new players, because me and 99,9% people wont do this.

more like you and 2% of people, sastasha is still as fast to get as 2 years ago, people will do roulettes and nice guys in mentor chat help new players also.

[Moonlite]

If SE had a track record for cleaning up bloat from old content gating would be mostly a non issue. But since they have not shown any real skill at trimming past content into a more manageable system building onto past MSQ would probably be a bad idea.

I am sure the forums could trim 80% of the quests increase the xp rewards or lower the xp required to level in 3.55. That would take you from 1-60 open all the dungeons in a less then 30 play hours. That is about 2 hours a night for 2 weeks. Which seems to line up with a lot of games over the past generation. rare do you see games have the little 80+ and some seem to be a selling point at 20+.

But as someone linked (kudoos to them) this will not be a repeat of HW's gate. And to the people who think that the game has no rmt bots in HW's. Why when they teleport underground and do MSQ would they have a hard time. If you ever wait for the timed botanist node near the sylph has MSQ with dancing emote. You can see the emotes and target them and see target move back and forth between the npcs. But you can't actually see them above ground. If they can do that why would steps be a gate, when all blms and no tanks/healers must be a huge dps increase?

[Remus]

I don't see what the problem is with skipping. How does someone else skipping impact you? If you enjoy the story then enjoy it. Someone doesn't have to share the same interests as you and enjoy the story. Instead they may enjoy raids/battle content more and hardly care for the story. Honestly when i see some of these replies it just mostly boils down to "because I done it, they need to do it!". The simple fact is people don't want to spend a large majority of their time in old content simple as that. I would rather SE do add a skip potion because then at least people will be inclined to try the Expansion and then perhaps stay afterwards then increase overall sub numbers. Instead of leaving early game and then telling their friends how poor the game is and then their friends tell the same information etc.

All it comes down to is:

If you want to do the story then do it. No one is saying you are not allowed to do that. Yes this game is story-driven but sadly with the current patches you only get some every 3/4 months and the rest of the time your doing battle content or other pieces of content in the game. There is a reason why dungeons have been appearing earlier in the story patches because SE said themselves there are quite a few people who complained and simply don't care for the story and want the dungeon for Expert. So let people skip let them play how they want to play their game and I won't judge them for playing that way because everyone plays in a different way from one another.

Also just a side note. Those that say leveling up lets you learn your class is just a bunch of nonsense and you have no idea what you are talking about. This game hardly teaches you your job and based on "certain means" I can see that just by looking at other people's DPS that even though they are 60 they do terrible damage, can't heal properly or struggle to tank. If you want to learn your job in this game you yourself have to go out of your way to learn it and perhaps look up rotations because the game does not provide it. They only say what the skills are but that's it. Job quests didn't teach me a single thing about my job.

[SaitoHikari]

Watching new players get into this game, particularly those that choose to start as a DPS, is rather enlightening. And I mean that in a pretty bad way.

There's stories on mainstream gaming forums about new players quitting once they hit the two Main Scenario Roulette dungeons, because they're mandatory 8 player dungeons. They think that the queue times for those two dungeons are something they should expect throughout the rest of the game.

Worse still, I'm quite sure the vast majority of players just don't queue into MSQ roulette because the rewards from it are outdated most of the time, plus it's a complete mixed bag in terms of player experience (mostly regarding whether or not the party breaks into an argument about letting new players watch cutscenes without leaving them behind). Updating the rewards would also just be putting a bandaid on the problem.


I'd propose getting rid of Main Scenario Roulette entirely, and overhauling Castrum Meridanum and the Praetorium in the following ways:
- For Castrum, the entire dungeon up until you confront Livia should be a player-instanced duty, with Grand Company NPCs accompanying you to stand in for the other players. This bypasses the dilemma of whether or not other players should wait for you to watch the cutscenes, because there won't be any other players with you.
- Livia becomes a Trial that people queuing for Trial Roulette can end up in. Of course, the fight may as well be overhauled for it to become a real trial.
- For Praetorium, the entire dungeon up until you confront the Ultima Weapon should be a player-instanced duty, with Grand Company NPCs accompanying you to stand in for the other players (up until you reach the Magitek Armor, in which the rest of the duty then becomes a solo affair). This bypasses the dilemma of whether or not other players should wait for you to watch the cutscenes.
- Ultima Weapon becomes its own trial that people queuing for Trial Roulette can end up in (justification being that Cid and the Grand Company NPCs in the meantime have managed to secure a path for reinforcements to join you).
- The Lahabrea portion becomes a player-instanced duty as well (or the entire thing just becomes a cutscene once successfully clearing the Ultima Weapon trial and leaving the instance).
- Main Scenario roulette rewards get merged with Guildhest Roulette (makes sense considering there are no post-50 Guildhests).

I'd also propose reorganizing Leveling/50/60 roulettes into two.
- Main Scenario Leveling roulette, for dungeons that are mandatory to progress in the main story.
- Optional Dungeon Leveling Roulette, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

The first would obviously be more important with rewards that function the same as 60 roulette currently does (if capped). If not capped, it functions the same way as Leveling Roulette currently does.
The second, if level capped, would combine the rewards of the old 50 roulette and the current leveling roulette. If not capped, it functions the same way as Leveling Roulette currently does.
That means if not capped, you now have two Leveling Roulettes worth of EXP.

(Plus this cleans up the mess of having to maintain a 50/60/presumably 70 dungeon roulettes and so on.)

Dungeons in each roulette would be as follows:

Main Scenario Leveling Roulette:
- Pre-50: Tam-Tara Deepcroft, Satasha, Copperbell Mines, Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, Haukke Manor, Brayflox's Longstop, Titan Normal, Stone Vigil, Gardua Normal
- 50-59: Snowcloak, Keeper of the Lake, Sohm Al, The Aery, The Vault, Great Gubal Library
- 60: Aetherochemical Research Facility, Antitower, Sohr Khai, Xelphatol

Optional Dungeon Leveling Roulette:
- Pre-50: Halitali, Sunken Temple of Qarn, Cutter's Cry, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale
- 50: Wanderer's Palace, Wanderer's Palace (Hard), Amdapor Keep, Amdapor Keep (Hard), Pharos Sirius, Copperbell Mines (Hard), Satasha (Hard), Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard), Halitali (Hard), Lost City of Amdapor, Hullbreaker Isle, Stone Vigil (Hard), Brayflox's Longstop (Hard), Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard), Haukke Manor (Hard)
- 51-60: Dusk Vigil, Neverreap, Fractal Continuum, Saint Mocianne's Arboretum, Pharos Sirius (Hard), Lost City of Amdapor (Hard), Hullbreaker Isle (Hard), Great Gubal Library (Hard)