Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[Terribad]

But there's a major difference between those other MMO companies and Square Enix. They sell games with a story, Square Enix sell stories in a game. And honestly, I highly doubt SE will go through with it. I understand your request and I can sympathise with it, but at the end of the day I highly doubt it's going to happen.

Eh I'm pretty positive they aren't going to do it either. Atleast they aren't gating the classes like they did with HW. I made a friend play this game and he smashed through ARR to get MCH and was very disappointed. Now he won't doesn't trust my suggestions any more lol.

[Paladinleeds]

Eh I'm pretty positive they aren't going to do it either. Atleast they aren't gating the classes like they did with HW. I made a friend play this game and he smashed through ARR to get MCH and was very disappointed. Now he won't doesn't trust my suggestions any more lol.

Intriguing. Has it been confirmed they aren't gating the classes behind the MSQ? If so, then I'm very OK with that.

[loreleidiangelo]

Intriguing. Has it been confirmed they aren't gating the classes behind the MSQ? If so, then I'm very OK with that.

I'm not, really. For what it's worth, it's not even really that I WANT a level boost potion, or a skip potion, or anything like that... I just want them to take the mandatory quest flags off of everything so that people can do the quests that they want, when they want, and go to the zones that they want even if there's nothing for them to "do" there.

I think that a lot of people are conflating the whole "mandatory MSQ" issue with "need to add level boosts or story skips", when in reality another compromise would be to simply remove a good portion of the "previous quest must be completed" flags off of quests and simply make them flagged by appropriate level instead. Yeah, for people who skip some stuff the MSQ will get a little jumbled, but if people aren't against players mashing ESC through cinematics and 0 through dialogues, then what should it matter if a player chooses to play the MSQ in a slight out-of-order instead?

I'd still prefer level boosts/story skips, because it's a better business decision that doesn't waste dev time and resources re-tooling old content, but if players are really that stuck on the notion of "allowing accessibility to the chaff" then I'd take this as an alternate compromise. It's not about accessing jobs, it's about always having to do the story in a certain way, in a certain order, going to every location in the exact same order, EVERY time. If you get to the Sastasha dungeon quest and for some reason you don't feel like doing a dungeon (anxiety, maybe?), you're stuck. You might level in FFXIV, but you can never do anything meaningful beyond getting that Sastasha out of the way. I think that forcing players into situations like that is mostly what I want to avoid. Some difficult solo instance, or some solo instance with really long or annoying dialogue? Too bad, you can't skip it in FFXIV. In other games you could just outlevel it and move past it, but not this one.

The 2.x content is a good example of this. You're stuck doing Keeper and Snowcloak and all the fetch quests even though you're 50 and want to check out the new zone ASAP. Yeah, that stuff is rewarding EXP, but in pretty much every other game out there you'd be able to just go to that zone and dive in. If you "run out" of exp, well, that's on you, do some dungeons or FATEs or whatever, or re-do those old quests you skipped. But FFXIV doesn't let you play like that, and that bugs me.

Is this a predicament that makes a bit more sense to people? Is this more relatable than just, "players who want boosts or skips are just lazy"? I feel like people are getting too focused on the "I don't want to watch the story" bits and the "I don't want to level from 1-60" bits when in reality we should be looking at, "level from 1-60 right now is really rigid and inflexible in terms of how the story and content guides you".

To me it's kind of funny, because even WITH boosts I feel like WoW does leveling better. Each race has it's own unique starting area, the Horde and Alliance leveling paths are both pretty different depending on faction, and if you want you get enough exp where you can "outlevel" a zone on a character and skip a zone you hate, without the game forcing you to do that zone anyway "because lore reasons". Admittedly, with WoW's big focus on alts (there's much less use for them here than in that game), it kind of makes sense that alternate leveling paths would be a given, but even just the freedom to bypass an area like Southern Thanalan on my alt leveling journey would make me insanely happy, tbh.

[Welsper59]

I'm not, really. For what it's worth, it's not even really that I WANT a level boost potion, or a skip potion, or anything like that... I just want them to take the mandatory quest flags off of everything so that people can do the quests that they want, when they want, and go to the zones that they want even if there's nothing for them to "do" there.

I think that a lot of people are conflating the whole "mandatory MSQ" issue with "need to add level boosts or story skips", when in reality another compromise would be to simply remove a good portion of the "previous quest must be completed" flags off of quests and simply make them flagged by appropriate level instead. Yeah, for people who skip some stuff the MSQ will get a little jumbled, but if people aren't against players mashing ESC through cinematics and 0 through dialogues, then what should it matter if a player chooses to play the MSQ in a slight out-of-order instead?

I'd still prefer level boosts/story skips, because it's a better business decision that doesn't waste dev time and resources re-tooling old content, but if players are really that stuck on the notion of "allowing accessibility to the chaff" then I'd take this as an alternate compromise. It's not about accessing jobs, it's about always having to do the story in a certain way, in a certain order, going to every location in the exact same order, EVERY time. If you get to the Sastasha dungeon quest and for some reason you don't feel like doing a dungeon (anxiety, maybe?), you're stuck. You might level in FFXIV, but you can never do anything meaningful beyond getting that Sastasha out of the way. I think that forcing players into situations like that is mostly what I want to avoid. Some difficult solo instance, or some solo instance with really long or annoying dialogue? Too bad, you can't skip it in FFXIV. In other games you could just outlevel it and move past it, but not this one.

The 2.x content is a good example of this. You're stuck doing Keeper and Snowcloak and all the fetch quests even though you're 50 and want to check out the new zone ASAP. Yeah, that stuff is rewarding EXP, but in pretty much every other game out there you'd be able to just go to that zone and dive in. If you "run out" of exp, well, that's on you, do some dungeons or FATEs or whatever, or re-do those old quests you skipped. But FFXIV doesn't let you play like that, and that bugs me.

Is this a predicament that makes a bit more sense to people? Is this more relatable than just, "players who want boosts or skips are just lazy"? I feel like people are getting too focused on the "I don't want to watch the story" bits and the "I don't want to level from 1-60" bits when in reality we should be looking at, "level from 1-60 right now is really rigid and inflexible in terms of how the story and content guides you".

To me it's kind of funny, because even WITH boosts I feel like WoW does leveling better. Each race has it's own unique starting area, the Horde and Alliance leveling paths are both pretty different depending on faction, and if you want you get enough exp where you can "outlevel" a zone on a character and skip a zone you hate, without the game forcing you to do that zone anyway "because lore reasons". Admittedly, with WoW's big focus on alts (there's much less use for them here than in that game), it kind of makes sense that alternate leveling paths would be a given, but even just the freedom to bypass an area like Southern Thanalan on my alt leveling journey would make me insanely happy, tbh.

I think you're kinda cherry picking points to argue here. I agree that it really doesn't need to be as restrictive as it is when it comes to some zone or most dungeon access, but your reasoning behind some of this is very easy to counterpoint.

Looking at the most vulnerable part of your argument, your last paragraph:

To me it's kind of funny, because even WITH boosts I feel like WoW does leveling better. Each race has it's own unique starting area, the Horde and Alliance leveling paths are both pretty different depending on faction, and if you want you get enough exp where you can "outlevel" a zone on a character and skip a zone you hate, without the game forcing you to do that zone anyway "because lore reasons". Admittedly, with WoW's big focus on alts (there's much less use for them here than in that game), it kind of makes sense that alternate leveling paths would be a given, but even just the freedom to bypass an area like Southern Thanalan on my alt leveling journey would make me insanely happy, tbh.

At what point are you actually forced to do a zone in this game because of lore reasons? MSQ requiring you to go to a zone is not a meaningful argument, if that's what you were referring to with the lore comment, since you're usually in and out in minutes. Might as well complain that you have to go get Aetheryte access before you can teleport, if that were the case lol.

I barely did quests in old zones when I leveled, even till today, since FATEs were a more efficient use of time... and story behind generic quests are mostly lackluster. In ARR zones, you have a lot of freedom to not do a specific zone if you don't want to. We have three regions, all of which offer mostly identical level ranges to get exp from. There's only one or two dry ranges for exp, I think. That can easily be bypassed with quests or dungeons. We even have PotD now. Most players, even new ones, understand that doing MSQ is beneficial, so dungeon accessibility isn't exactly unreasonable as it is. If I recall right, I barely leveled in Southern Thanalan for some jobs. It's a good zone to exp in, don't get me wrong, but you have other options open.

Even in WoW, tons of zones were terrible to level in. Any feeling of confinement here to doing specific zones, only because they're the best option, was felt a hundred times over in WoW.

Looking at your mention of being able to jump around on the MSQ or quests in general, it really doesn't work that way. Think of the greatest story you've ever experienced, be it books, movies, whatever. Imagine jumping to key points right off the bat, without even knowing character names, how fair would that be to the creators of it? Given how expressive we tend to be about what's "good" or "bad" about something, I'd bet a lot of money that some idiot would actually think their opinion about the story as valid, despite having done what I said.

What I'm getting at with that is that MSQ requirements is a personal design choice. It has nothing to do with player input (to an extent). Unless it somehow actually caused all/most players to quit or hate the game, there's no overruling reason to change it. For now, this is the direction that the creators themselves want for the game, despite any negative feelings some players may have. The mere fact that those negative responders are still here is evidence enough that it's not a big deal and never has been. Some players will realistically be turned off by the game having such requirements, but so is the realistic approach that they quit because you have to actually level up, group with other players, pay a sub fee, and even the fact that the game may not have a certain race available to play. The reason a small collection of these potential players choose not to play is rarely a noteworthy matter.