For stormblood do you want the gated conten path of hw, or the free roam path of arr?

[Derio]

Story and lore. The optional dungeons still have their lore. It's like when an npc tells you to go back to a tower for a hard mode but if you never been in the original version it wouldn't make sense

[Xau]

free roam to me is, do anything whenever you want, no unlocking needed to do such content, yet tell me, what you need to do dungeons?, reach to a certain part of the msq or reach a certain level to unlock them right?, and the leves?, same, you need to reach a certain part of the msq, and after that, to unlock aditional leve areas you need to reach the specific level, and fates?, you could dare to do a lvl 50 fate whit a lvl 15 character all alone?, not me, what about beastmen tribes?, same as before, msq locked

so to me arr did never had true free roam

[bswpayton]

free roam to me is, do anything whenever you want, no unlocking needed to do such content, yet tell me, what you need to do dungeons?, reach to a certain part of the msq or reach a certain

Free roam in the sense that once I started my job quest I could do all of them without them being gated , every class one through 50 with as much as getting a chocobo and taking a break from the story. Making each job quest my story in turn something I could do each day and keep myself occupied. Also once you pick up any gatherer you had free roam to travel all the way to north thal and get whatever matts you wanted to without little concern of where you were in the story. See the thing is I haven't done hw yet because Id rather wait til 3.5 comes out to see how much content comes out so I can be behind the fray Im determined to not just be farming for gear with my play time that sounds like zero fun to me.

So that being said I dont know exactly how the job quest tie in with the story. My question was which set up did people prefer whether it was gated or not arr still gave the player more freedom in doing things unrelated to the story than hw does. And this is simply because of the gated flying zones, which cut you off from job quest, fates, hunts, leves, optional dungeons , gear and prob other things. Ok so the gate for arr is level 15, that's one gate , the gates pile up in hw , you don't do one quest and then you have free roam you are locked at every turn and have no freedom like you did in arr. I was saying I personally would prefer them to go back to the arr frame work at least make any zone accessible and let the player decide how they want to play

[Pyretta_Blaze]

Honestly I am FOR the gating in FFXIV. It gives a clear sense of character progression and some sense of accomplishment as you progress through the story. Don't get me wrong, I looooove openworld sandbox games but FFXIV is not one and I play other things when I want to roam free.

Also as others have mentioned it allows for the story to be told in a coherent way. I expect Stormblood to be no different.

[bswpayton]

Honestly I am FOR the gating in FFXIV. It gives a clear .

Yes the story but job quest an going to a different area on the map isnt effecting the story in the slightest, the thing is everyone doesn't want to immediately go to endgame right off the bat if you lock everything behind story even the optional things you have no choice. When storm blood comes out you will have people that will have beat it within a month or two and will began complaining about it not being enough content in the game well its because you spammed it and did it all that's why. The arr approach gives you a chance to where you could could take months and months finishing the story longevity is the key to more money for the game where as those who spam are the ones who end up taking breaks and come back every patch for content and then take another break. If you don't gate things people can play the game how they want to.

[Amirya]

You're whining about something you haven't even done? Seriously?

I had been under them impression that you had completed through 3.0, not that you're blindly ignorant of it all.

It's gated. You can't accidentally stumble upon Azys Lla. You can't possibly explain to Ishgard why you're roaming in heretical territory, because, "Miner of Light!!!" Is more likely to get you expelled from the Holy See's lands.

[Aramina]

Yes the story but job quest an going to a different area on the map isnt effecting the story in the slightest, the thing is everyone doesn't want to immediately go to endgame right off the bat if you lock everything behind story even the optional things you have no choice. When storm blood comes out you will have people that will have beat it within a month or two and will began complaining about it not being enough content in the game well its because you spammed it and did it all that's why. The arr approach gives you a chance to where you could could take months and months finishing the story longevity is the key to more money for the game where as those who spam are the ones who end up taking breaks and come back every patch for content and then take another break. If you don't gate things people can play the game how they want to.

I think they probably know more than we do in regards to "more money for the game".

[Anarnee]

Huh? Lol Last I checked, if you start in Limsa, you still do have to do the story up to 15 to get to any of the other city states.

A lot of things are locked behind the MSQ.

Job skills were always locked behind story (Albiet the job story) Class skills were the only ones that you got from just leveling.

And in this game it would make sense to me if npcs actually mention how great your power was that you could master all of these skills, but they don't just call you the warrior of light and call it a day. If you are a whm they refer to you as a whm, if you are palidan they refer to you as a palidan , they dont even bring up what sub classes you have to level to even get your job you have to find that out from other players or google. So they really didnt do a good job lore wise at all on this, and the play styles are so different with hardly any cross over aside from buffs or something like that , that the jobs are 100 percent different , the only way it makes sense is if you over look this or if you just make up your own rp.

How can you complain that it doesn't make sense lore wise and then be complaining that the HW stuff is story gated... FOR LORE REASONS! I'm confused.

Edit; Like. I donno. "Warrior of light" will do just fine for me.

I don't need someone to boost my ego.

I'd rather them condense it, rather than have to write a ton of different lines like...

"WOW YOU'RE A WARRIOR, PALADIN, DARK KNIGHT, WHITE MAGE, SCHOLAR, BLACK MAGE, SUMMONER, BARD, MACHINIST, DRAGOON, MONK, NINJA."

[HyoMinPark]

I think that those who are talking about the optional endgame content (things like Hildibrand, Postmoogle, Scholisticate, etc.), need to also consider that THAT content was designed with the level cap (50 for some, 60 for others) in mind, and were designed to give those that had completed the 2.0 or 3.0 MSQ something to do while they waited for the next patch/next expansion. They were NOT added into the game so that someone who was only on the quest "Sylph-management" but was somehow level 50 could go off and do the quests.

Again, FFXIV is a game designed in such a way that a player levels up their character WITH the story, not AHEAD of it. Poor design choice or not, it follows the way the other Final Fantasy games were designed. In FFX, we knew about Zanarkand. We knew it was a wasteland. But we couldn't just waltz right into Zanarkand. Aside from the stronger enemies along the way, there was also a story to be told on the way there. And while the two games aren't completely the same, the concept of "the story" is still there for FFXIV. There's a story to be told on your way to Sea of Clouds, and on your way to Azys Lla, which, again, being that it's surrounded by a barrier and no one has set foot there in thousands of years, it wouldn't make sense for you to just be able to waltz right in there. I understand wanting to be able to roam and explore areas, but I find it exciting if you reach an area, and there's a gate there (take Idyllshire for example), and you have to level up to gain access to the area and open that gate. Gives me something to work towards, and new content to explore once I get closer to cap.

This game was also not designed to be centered around crafting or gathering jobs. While it sucks your crafters and gatherers hit a roadblock at 50, and you can't just walk into Ishgard and start crafting up a storm in there, or start gathering Gaelicatnip in the Hinterlands, this game is combat-driven first, tradecraft-driven second. The Weaver of Light wouldn't stand a chance against the Ultima Weapon or King Thordan or the Warring Triad or the primals. I know a lot of people play this game for the crafting aspect, but it wasn't designed for players to ignore the MSQ and focus solely on crafting.

There will come a time when the devs won't be able to continue locking expansions behind other expansions, as that will be turn off for new players. When that will be, however, no one can really say. I've heard that the earliest we'll make it to Garlemald is 6.0, so perhaps after then, since the story in this game always comes back to the Empire and their quest to conquer Eorzea. But there will probably still be some of gating in future expansions, in the sense that you will still need to pay attention to the story rather than start doing "endgame" or "level-capped" activities.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

every class one through 50 with as much as getting a chocobo and taking a break from the story.

Chocobo use, heck mounts in general, are locked indirectly behind MSQ. You need to progress enough in the MSQ that you are forced to join a Grand Company. Once you have done that, My Little Chocobo opens up as a side quest from your GC. Complete that quest to get your Company Chocobo, and the ability to use mounts in this game.

So, what you want to do IS ALREADY GATED.

I did not include it as part of the quotation, but stop dilly dallying. You can only open things up to do (such as gathering your own materials for high level crafting) by working on the HW story. Oh, ALL of HW's optional dungeons are locked behind completion of 3.0, at a minimum. There are no optional dungeons for 51-59, each one of the five dungeons under 60 in HW is a story dungeon. Some of the level 60 dungeons are optional, some are story dungeons.

But, other than the two gates I mentioned in HW in a previous post, all the rest of the gates in HW *make sense* ... but you'd need to actually DO the MSQ to realize it, to realize why. Come back AFTER you've beaten 3.45 MSQ and tell us why the gates should not have been there.