Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[Mwynn]

100 HRS or 300 HRS. You still spend too much time doing things besides reaching the goal post.

Gratulations, so we cut off the MSQ, everything ELSE is a Timesink aswell. Relic is a Timesink, Tomestones are a Timesink, Woundrous Tails are a Timesink if you want the best out of it, Beast Tribes are a Timesink, Gathering/Crafting is a Timesink, Leveling is a Timesink, heck, Building up a Free Company is a Timesink, Selling Stuff on Marketboard is a Timesink, everything is a Timesink.

You want to know why?

1. -- The longer Player need to do something, the more they have to Subscribe, thus, keeping the Game alive.
2. -- It is an MMORPG, it is meant to be a huge Timesink, this is no Shooter, it is an RPG just with hundred thousands of Players connected!

Do you actually know how much it costs to maintain all these Servers, Staff Members / Developement Team, Developement in General, PR, Events? No?
We are not talking about a few Hundred Thousand Dollars or Millions of Yens, it is beyond that!

Cutting or removing Timesinks such as Main Story or Tomestones in this Game will kill FFXIV faster than you might think.
Players would be already iLv.259 (Full Shire Gear being +260) and just quit the Game waiting for another 2 Months and a half for the next Patch.

This is Dooming the Game to it's own Death!

[Blood-Aki]

Just because that's the norm, doesn't make that a good thing. SE should endeavor to make the game fun at all levels.

They already do, hence "catch up patches" they won't just completely hold your hand tho, hence just skipping everything and getting straight to end game. You have to actually do some kind of work to get what you want.

Not to mention the early ARR story is so watered down/vs our current levels, you can seriously just get one high level freind to solo/duo most of the dungeons you'll need. in fact i have seen plenty of green leafs in level 50 instances, it clearly is not a long process. Those people just want to be lazy, it's not a matter of being a "good thing" as that it self is subjective, it's just necessary.

[bswpayton]

People nowadays want everything handed to them with little to no effort from their part. If a new player can't reach endgame within a week, he rants about too much grind and so on. We got all these facilities to help out friends that come to us, like unsynced DF, lots of classes, parties etc and still they complain. All has to be done with no effort and in days.
I've had no problem getting my alts to 60 and to the end of current HW, it's not such a grind as they moan. Yes some quests are a bit boring and could be deleted for what I care, but with all the skipping cutscenes it took me maybe 2 weeks to reach 60 and open access to everything.
You guys might aswell just go on youtube and watch playthroughs, then you don't even have to play hehe.

I agree with this 100 percent if you want a short game play an rpg game are sports games where u can play one game and turn it off.

[basketofseals]

If it has become the norm, it's because it works. And if businessmen react like MMO players, it's probably the most profitable way of doing things when you consider dev cost vs profits.

It works in a very loose sense. It's kinda something we've all accepted and are willing to move on, but I can assure you it turns people who are new to the genre off.

[Sandpark]

Gratulations, so we cut off the MSQ, everything ELSE is a Timesink aswell.

You want to know why?

1. -- The longer Player need to do something, the more they have to Subscribe, thus, keeping the Game alive.

Do you actually know how much it costs to maintain all these Servers, Staff Members / Developement Team, Developement in General, PR, Events? No?
We are not talking about a few Hundred Thousand Dollars or Millions of Yens, it is beyond that!

This is Dooming the Game to it's own Death!

Not sure but according to here it only cost WoW 200 mil since 2004. And that is the biggest playerbase to date.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09...t_upkeep_200m/

If you remove the barriers between timesinks as in having to do other things to do what you want to do. Then the time stink still exist, it just isn't as overburdening and actually welcomed often.

Timesinks are needed and that is the point of a sub based mmorpg. However when you go out of your way to add those in multiple areas and other companies do not. People leave your game in droves and sometimes do not come back.

I love horizontal progression and games that demand loads of time when done the right way. Done the wrong way it becomes a hardcore game which 998 out of 1000 companies are trying to avoid like the plague for some reason.

[Reynhart]

but I can assure you it turns people who are new to the genre off.

No, it doesn't. I can assure you, if SE wouldn't have seen a sufficient amount of new players coming in for HW, they undoubtedly would have changed their design for Stormblood.
Only them can really see the actual numbers of new players. Any personal observation you, I or everyone else could make would only be an irrelevant sample compared to a whole playerbase.

[Mikhaill]

Ok, not your idea precisely.
But the whole "We should be able to start Stormblood rigth away" surely is. And let's be honest, most of the MSQ is not fluffy cutscenes.
People see it like that probably because some patches didn't have much more to offer, without realizing that only counted for less than 1 hour of MSQ.

If they find the early game too boring, I wonder how they'll like doing the same content over and over and over at endgame

my idea was never that...:/
but you kept picking things and turning them around to make it seem like I ever said that.

[AlexionSkylark]

I can assure you it turns people who are new to the genre off.

So, your idea is to change the genre?
If staying true to the genre turns people new to the genre off, then those people don't really like MMOs, right?

It's WoW WOTLK all over again, according to you. MMOs were a niche market, so they changed the genre into something else to make it more palatable to... PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T LIKE MMORPGs. Nice #NOT

[Moonlite]

No, it doesn't. I can assure you, if SE wouldn't have seen a sufficient amount of new players coming in for HW, they undoubtedly would have changed their design for Stormblood.
Only them can really see the actual numbers of new players. Any personal observation you, I or everyone else could make would only be an irrelevant sample compared to a whole playerbase.

Well what is and isn't gated has yet to be officially announced. How it is gated also yet to be announced. The following statement seems to imply that they did not see the bump of new players from HWs they had hoped. But may have been offset by the gouging of inventory and cash shop.

Main Scenario Progression to Access 4.0 Content

Though it’s still a bit early to talk about this, you’ll be able to access and accept quests for Patch 4.0 even if you have not completed the main scenario for the Patch 3.x series. Similarly, you’ll be able to unlock new jobs regardless of your scenario progression. Due to this, we feel the need to create a system that will allow you to watch a digest of what happened. However, for the 3.0 story, since everyone has seen everything up until now I think it was enjoyable, and while there were some pros and cons for this, I think having the system we did for the 3.x series was a good thing.

[Naunet]

Then maybe ppl need to play an MMO that's not Final Fantasy!
Final Fantasy is a Story based GAME! Not a free hand out of crap.
The story is what make this game Final Fantasy!

The game can have a story and still not restrict players from content they have paid for based on the arbitrary requirement of "have you clicked through these fifteen million boring cutscenes?"

The story isn't that great. I play through it, sure. I even enjoyed some parts of it. But I put money down on the HW expansion. The game should let me access that content (even if it's just visiting zones and picking up the jobs) whenever I want.

Though it’s still a bit early to talk about this, you’ll be able to access and accept quests for Patch 4.0 even if you have not completed the main scenario for the Patch 3.x series. Similarly, you’ll be able to unlock new jobs regardless of your scenario progression. Due to this, we feel the need to create a system that will allow you to watch a digest of what happened. However, for the 3.0 story, since everyone has seen everything up until now I think it was enjoyable, and while there were some pros and cons for this, I think having the system we did for the 3.x series was a good thing.

Oh sweet. Where was this?