Famitsu interview with Yoshida after NA's FanFest

[KrenianKandos]

While I'm not keen on the whole leveling potion, it is the cheapest alternative for them:

1) For those arguing to redo the 2.0-Now experience, the problem is that is cost. It would take a lot of cost to trim down the fat (Sidequest). While you can bypass most of the side quests now with the 100% boost you get from 1-50, the problem is that the MSQ still has a lot of filler. And that would be where the costs would be if you had to trim. The potion alleviates this: leave the content in there, have it so trivial that at 60 you're blowing through, and simply have it that you don't change the game at all. Furthermore, I would go even further that they could remove the whole "cap at x level" if you get to that story to even facilitate the jump better. If you can blow through the entire story by escaping everything and not worrying about stuff and it gave you the gear you should have at 60 (Say a full set of 250 gear as this is 4.0 we're talking about introducing said potions), most MSQ stuff could be queued up as undersized parties and blown right through to 50. (Save the 8 man runs but you have an answer to that via main storyline roulettes.)

2) Incur a cost to said potions. Face it: We've got a cash shop. And such, it'll be utilize. So do like WoW does: offer it for 60 bucks. And if you think that's a steep price? Too bad, level. You're skipping two expansions of experience via time for convenience. Consider yourself lucky. With the cost, they can use said money for x or y. I would prefer x being (Put money back into the game for the infrastructure/game improvements but S-E can use their money any way they want it)

So really, this is a win-win. They don't have to review the whole system by trimming and making it costly in time and effort, keep the game the way it is, and allow players that jump. Those who want to do the leveling experience will be able to, still, and those who just want to jump into the game will require you to pay a bit more to do so.

One last thing: I can also foresee them putting one vial if you pre-order Stormblood. This will allow them to feed off of people who are set off from wanting to not play due to the leveling requirements in the game. This will garner more sales for them. So just some advice for S-E: Do like Blizzard does and give one at an expansion to level up to x. It helps and allows people to catch up. (Albeit, this kinda doesn't but it makes it a lot easier.)

[Game_Over]

Snip

This makes sense even though I'm against the concept.

[alimdia]

Not particularly, it'd be like the Legacy Player/2.0 Player split. There'd be SOME difference to begin with but after a while your star would begin to eclipse your predecessor and people would treat you with the exact same respect they'd have treated them.

That split worked fine because they pulled the amnesia card, it didn't matter if you were a new WoL or the WoL from 1.0, everyone would treat you as a new WoL except for a couple people, they can't pull that card now, the story moving forward has to assume you're the same hero.

[FJerome]

That split worked fine because they pulled the amnesia card, it didn't matter if you were a new WoL or the WoL from 1.0, everyone would treat you as a new WoL except for a couple people, they can't pull that card now, the story moving forward has to assume you're the same hero.

They can attach a storyline to the Hall of Intermediate content and make it mandatory, killing two birds with one stone; by the time you're done you vaguely know how to play your class and story-wise you'd have done some sort of miraculous feat so that people are already calling you the WoL.

[Neophyte]

This makes sense even though I'm against the concept.

Just consider that SCH can already be 'pushed' to 60 with only playing the base class till 50 and doing the job quests, while playing a dps role.

I don't recognize the average SCH more worse as the average SMN.

You can argue about situational awarness and interpreting situations/marks/mechanics. But you can't demand the MSQ to teach you rotational, job related things anyway, not in a game where you use 1 job (or maybe 2 as Arcanist) to do MSQ and afterwsrd up to 12 jobs who can be maxed by fating or PotD.