Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[Neophyte]

edit: :P /10char

[Reynhart]

are to difficult to be mandatory? Haha, good joke.

Look how clever I am, I remove the most important of the content and then cornered you into making you answer not meaningful. And I purposely ignore the fact that quests like Hilbidrand and Odin are only here because fan requested it, than Beast tribe are here to be able to help leveling other jobs, and optionnal dungeon are here so that people aren't burned because of the narrow content...while still advocating to narrow the content even more by remoing any justification of doing anything before the previous level cap
/sigh

And why not make them easier then for the sake of the story? To be able to enjoy every story there is, is most important, isn't it?

Yeah, why didn't they do that with the 8-man raid in HW ? Oh, wait...
And they totally kept the Golds Of Eld storyline with EX Primals after Bismarck and Ravana instead of switching it to normal Primals ! Oh, wait...

What about people with physical disadvantages?

Yeah, let's screw deaf people and totally not add a visual mode so that they could have the same information than anyone else !

But with MSQ that won't work. Because of reasons.

Yes, because of totally justifiable Lore reason. Ishgard hate your guts, so it you're a nobody, they'd kick your ass out of the city.

Although huge ammount of story content is optional in this game, many people do enjoy them, so therefore they will enjoy MSQ even if it's optional.

No, because most of those optionnal content were offering relevant rewards when released. People did not farm CT and Coil over and over for nothing. If you give instant level 60 and access to Stormblood, those people won't do ARR or HW content, unless you force them to do it.

Those aren't like anything near to 25% of all the story FF-X offers...

But they are far more than 25% of the total playtime of your game. The main difference is that you already bought their game. The endgame could be crap, that it wouldn't change anything. In a MMO, you need to keep people interesting over and over, and dumb grinding alone is boring.

Is this true for tv series, movie or book sequels?

Do you have to buy the first book to be able to open the second ? Do we really have to explain the whole "expansion" concept to stop this stupid analogies ?

[Neophyte]

You're totally missing the main points. All your arguments only show that this game "might" be ruined for someone who intentionally skips the MSQ but then realizes that this was a bad idea, because he wanted to enjoy the Story.
They don't Show in any way, why you have to be concerned about those Players and why the game Quality suffers because of those few players.

Look how clever I am, I remove the most important of the content and then cornered you into making you answer not meaningful. And I purposely ignore the fact that quests like Hilbidrand and Odin are only here because fan requested it, than Beast tribe are here to be able to help leveling other jobs, and optionnal dungeon are here so that people aren't burned because of the narrow content...while still advocating to narrow the content even more by remoing any justification of doing anything before the previous level cap
/sigh

Beast tribes meant to be enjoyed just because of the story, too. I did all beast tribe quests (except Ixal) with lvl. 50 character. Did I do it wrong?

And also, no reason why they couldn't have been made mandatory.

Yeah, why didn't they do that with the 8-man raid in HW ? Oh, wait...
And they totally kept the Golds Of Eld storyline with EX Primals after Bismarck and Ravana instead of switching it to normal Primals ! Oh, wait...

Yeah, let's screw deaf people and totally not add a visual mode so that they could have the same information than anyone else !

Easier, but still optional. Since your main point was "they are optional, because they are to hard", which isn't the case anymore, this argument works for my side.

Also... Lore-wise I had the impression that it's kinda "mandatory" to stop Alexander, this doesn't get represented by anything in game.
We can clear SB, we can clear the next expansion and bahamuth and alexander will still slumber. That totally contradicts with the lore that teases us to do them (i.e. "they have to be stopped").

Do you consider this good design in a story-driven game?

Yes, because of totally justifiable Lore reason. Ishagrd hate your guts, so it you're a nobody, they'd kick your ass out of the city.

"Proving Grounds" can do that. You could have just no memory, like you did when you got ported into 2.0 as a non-legacy player... it's easy to come up with solutions to this.

I mean: Although the 1.0 story is kinda very important for everything happening in 2.0, nobody had to do it to actually access 2.0.
Is this good or bad in terms of story (not in regards of keeping the game alive)?

Was the story of FF14 2.0 worse, because there are a huge ammount of People who didn't play 1.0 and therefore missed hundreds of hours of lore related to FF14?
I'd do the story of FF14 1.0, if I could, even if my characters are already in endgame of 3.0... most People caring for story would do... and so the same counts for players starting in 4.0 and doing 2.0 later on.

No, because most of those optionnal content were offering relevant rewards when released. People did not farm CT and Coil over and over for nothing. If you give instant level 60 and access to Stormblood, those people won't do ARR or HW content, unless you force them to do it.

So, no new player is doing CT or old beast tribes anymore (since you don't need the xp boost that much by now with PotD and buffed MSQ XP as compared with 2.2/3/4) at least once, since they're not relevant for progression anymore?
Isn't this kinda sad and should be alleviated by making it mandatory then? It's sad if such a good story get's lost, just because it isn't relevant anymore.
Nowadays nobody farms them anyway, even today if you do them it's mostly for the story, not for progression. This won't be changed a bit.

Also, you said "Every content not done yet is relevant"... so no, they do offer relevant content right now: Story.
Do you want me to tell that story isn't relevant enough?

But they are far more than 25% of the total playtime of your game. The main difference is that you already bought their game. The endgame could be crap, that it wouldn't change anything. In a MMO, you need to keep people interesting over and over, and dumb grinding alone is boring.

Ok, considering playtime FF14 story even shrinks to ~1% of your playtime then.
After finishing the MSQ, which you say can be done in a quite short time ("I have already seen leafs in Idyllshire"), they are in the same boat as everyone else and only have the grind and optional stuff left.
You expected 40h (which is more likely 150h)... so all you do by making the MSQ mandatory is keeping the players interest up (or better "keep him on a short leash") for 40-150h more than if they would skip the MSQ.

Do you have to buy the first book to be able to open the second ? Do we really have to explain the whole "expansion" concept to stop this stupid analogies ?

No. But I had to buy BG2 to play BG2:TdB. Did those X-Pac story quality suffer because I could skip BG2 story and everything from BG2 was explained in an "what happened" or withing optional dialogues with NPCs? Don't avoid that question again!

Here it would be the same... most people actually skipping the main game would be people who either are only caring for the game mechanics ("I want to play an high level AD&D mechanics video game adaption, so I skip right away to "endgame"") and/or have already seen the story, exactly like with BG2 and it's expansion. Please give me any hint you have, which indicates an other outcome.