Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Except expansions are not a new game they are just expanding a already existing game, now if the game been out for 10 years and has like 5 expansions but XIV only been our for 3 years with barely any information known about 3rd expansion.

Why put off the inevitable? You don't wait until population numbers are dwindling to think perhaps the initial quest bloat leading up to your expansion may be a vote of contention for people, especially when games make the vast majority of their sales in the first few weeks. To give an example. BDO is currently advertising Dark Knight being added. Now it's certainly piqued my interest. If I were expected to play through several hours of old content I may not even care for, I'll more than likely put the game down long before ever trying out Dark Knight. It doesn't matter whether Stormblood is a new game or not. People will treat it like one. And without a skip of some variety, they'll opt for a game far lessing demanding before they can experience what they deem fun.

IIRC they haven't said going forward is impossible. They said going backwards isn't possible without resetting things you've unlocked, which is why we haven't got new game +, and part of the reason the team isn't set on going ahead with these potions.
Going forward must be possible otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Going forward still necessitates adding conflicting code which will trigger every flag in the game. It isn't quite as simple as just tossing in some lines of dialogue and calling it a day. We're only having this conversation because some people are adamantly against a jump potion. The devs are weighing in either implementing it or leaving things as they stand. They aren't considering an in-game quest skip.

From a business perspective, it makes sense to avoid controversy. This is obviously controversial, we've had multiple 50+ page threads on it now.

As for bots, SWTOR was cited earlier as doing something similar, if a F2P game from EA can handle bots and manage to offer customers a choice without charging them extra then I expect SE can as well.

People complaining on forums is a poor representation of your audience. We make up maybe 1%. The vast majority aren't going to care or even notice a skip potion being put on the mogstation. Case in point, people lost their collective minds when a cash shop was announced. Flash forward two years later and it's been among the most profitable aspects of FFXIV.

Since I don't know SWTOR's system well enough to comment, I'll leave it be.