Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[KitingGenbu]

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Yet XI still allowed people to start separate expansion content regardless if they had did the previous or not....And that can't be done here? FF game after all. Personally, most new people only care about the new jobs and nothing more. A blue quest could've easily be put into Camp Dragonhead about going into Ishgard to deliver something without breaking anything in the story. You don't even do anything in the HW zones on the new job stuff until 50+ anyway, so it could've worked.

They've handled the retainer system with rather fair balance. In that the retainers cannot get you everything in the game. For the entirety of 2.0-2.55 they could not gather items from unspoiled nodes. These were later added after or during 3.0's launch. They currently cannot bring you the highest items (folklore, etc.) from HW. And a single retainer cannot bring back more than what the actual player could. In fact, it is sometimes more productive to gather the majority of the items yourself. I'm sure most people could bring back more than 20-30 iron ores in an hour.

I wouldn't necessarily call it paying to "win" as they don't "advance" the player in any certain terms. They can provide you with easily gathered materials, but it's still on the player to advance their character. They are more of a convenience. And like you said, you have to gather whatever they gather first, in order for them to unlock it. You also have to level them, and gear them. So they can't exceed what your own personal character can do yourself. The player is literally investing the time to make the retainers advantageous, not the other way around. The only thing I will admit they can advance, is your pocketbook. But then, I've seen it mentioned countless times that gil doesn't matter in this game. :P

I consider pay-to-win as something that advances your character past/thru content. Paying to level a character to 50 or 60. Paying to jump past story/dungeon content. Paying for gear that increases ilvl. Retainers cannot advance you in this way. They can only bring you things you have already succeeded in obtaining yourself.

You're talking about direct gear advance and I'm talking about money which can be put towards direct gear advancement. Item for glamour and even normal mats can be acquired passively by these retainers so I do not see how you think that is "balanced." Put it like this. Lets say I have 8 mining retainers that can pull in some new type of ore in SB. They pull in an average of 20 usually so that's 20x8=160. So I'm averaging almost 2 stacks of 99 that a person will probably buy for 100k~. I can make almost 200k a hour at the start of an expansion without doing anything other than checking on these things. One could say that gearing would be an issue but they would be wrong since there will be vendors who sell gear and if you have leves saved before the expansion, getting 61-62 wouldn't take more than a few hours of you time. So lets say someone has 1M to burn on all of that plus 5 hours of their time. Just to start passively making 150-200k after that point per hour because they were able to rent 6 more retainers than someone else. Not p2w?

The fact remains that the person who reaches the end first sets the standard until the market becomes oversaturated and then they are forced onto something else. That's fine if everyone is given the same tools. But its not fine if you can get extra tools outside of the confines you are working in and compete with others.