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

[bswpayton]

Except...there's a difference between the Warrior of Light slaying a primal, a being that is bleeding the land dry of aether, and them killing an army of Brass Blades or Crystal Braves that are

Thanks again for your respectful comments , but ill say to your last part I would not say that I'm the minority , maybe not sixty no but players out level there msq all the time its to easy to level up in this game because its designed to level 13 characters on one.

There are many and I mean many players that go into hw that are level 52, 53, or higher, when the yoki event was around players where leveling up even faster than normal just to do those fates for the weapons. Now with the new floors in potd , the trend continues, I actually dont think I know any players that crossed over at level 50 only tbh, and Ive been in the novice my whole time playing the game.

And to your point on why arr isnt gated that was my question to start with like I mention earlier I never intended for this to be a hw and endgame thread. I asked if the base would rather have the freedom that they had in arr and the ones that actually answered the question said the next expansion could go a bit less gated zones or content. Others have just been stating their point on why hw is gated. Which it is gated and I will adjust accordingly, but still play the game the way I like it which is not stream lining the story I can always craft 250 gear once I have my weaver at 60 that's another point tho. But my question was which was more preferred not about the lore and why this are that happened.

The devs could make job quest a separate thing like they did in arr, they don have to connect them to the msq like they did with hw, its many things that could be done. It was a simple do you like how hw is gated compared to how arr is not gated. The question wasnt is arr just as gated as hw, because you have said yourself that it is not. And I for one hope that its more like arr than it is hw , because streaming lining the story only creates more people at the top of the game scrambling for stuff to do as opposed to more in the middle with a long road ahead of them to finish everything. Also you speak of the ff franchise as a whole and I also have 15 and everyone is recommending to be over leveled in that one so I wouldn't say that its like that in all of the ff games by any means

And to your first point luckily you cant control your characters actions because if they tie me up , then I would have hit them with the holy spam.

[CorvinusV]

Anyone coming to the game will notice the difference, in Arr now you can be level 50 and still be on the level 25 quest in msq, but still have access to a ton of content like all the dungeons i mention 4 dungeons, that arent tied to the msq. And you can travel to any area you see fit thats in arr you cant do this in hw, also your job quest wernt locked behind what areas you where in within the msq, like it is in msq so I dont see the similarities here, with how easy it is to level now I see no reason for the things to be gated like they are now in hw.

I agree that HW felt a bit more gated than ARR. HW made leveling a character exclusively for solo crafting/gathering a bit more difficult than it was in ARR.
Maybe SE can land right in the middle of the two but if I had to pick one or the other, I lean more toward ARR's style.

[JunseiKei]

its designed to level 13 characters on one.

I would dsaresay it's designed for one omnicharacter with the option of paying a higher subscription fee for alternate characters. Unlike those other games where you have one character locked on one class. Ew.

I asked if the base would rather have the freedom that they had in arr and the ones that actually answered the question said the next expansion could go a bit less gated zones or content.

Implying there is no gating in ARR when there was, it was just far less noticeable than HW and not pertaining to the zones themselves. Unless you started in Limsa Lominsa, and did none of the story, you could, technically, run to Mor Dhona; thanks to 1.0 and retaining legacy players on certain servers only at the re-opening of FFXIV.

The devs could make job quest a separate thing like they did in arr, they don have to connect them to the msq like they did with hw

Except with each expansion, seemingly a single job gets focused on and will be inevitably tied to the story. Heavensward was dragoon. Stormblood is monk. Job quest NPCs are not in a vacuum; they're going to make references to wars and other major events, just like in real life. That's actually good writing.

[Chalbee]

This shouldn't be a zero-sum argument...

Obviously we can't undo the way HW was designed, it's consistent with the lore. However, keep in mind that the lore is not some independently existing thing, people created the lore. In other words, they made the gates tedious and annoying on purpose. What we can do is hope that this time around they made lore that does not require the same level of gating, and that they heard the negative feedback from players who were upset by the excessive MSQ gating. There are ways to have a form of gating without wanting to make people bash our heads against the wall. For example, we know that they can do level syncing/difficulty syncing, so they could implement that for the expanded MSQ.

For lore reasons, obviously some areas will have to be gated in order to make sense, but they could make it relatively open after getting to Gyr Abania via MSQ progression (unlike HW where the Churning Mists and Dravanian Hinterlands were just 100% inaccessible even if you had reached Ishgard). That would be a decent compromise for crafters and gatherers who got shafted in HW.

If they add new jobs, they could put their guilds in the starting cities, there is no reason new guilds have to be in new zones. The whole thing where you have to level a job to 50 and finish 284 story quests before you can even touch the new jobs was, imo, really extra.

Note: I don't agree with OP that ARR was open roam. There was a good amount of healthy gating, and that's the way it should be.

[JunseiKei]

If they add new jobs, they could put their guilds in the starting cities, there is no reason new guilds have to be in new zones. The whole thing where you have to level a job to 50 and finish 284 story quests before you can even touch the new jobs was, imo, really extra.

Lore-wise, a lot of magic was deemed forbidden, thanks to calamities and magic's misuses that brought them on. Even non- magical classes, like dark knight, were mercilessly hunted down for story's own purpose. (The first dark knight slayed a member of the church to defend the innocent; considering Ishgard was originally a member of the Eorzean Alliance, the city-states would be more inclined to listen to the Holy See than a seemingly murderous knight).

[HyoMinPark]

Thanks again for your respectful comments , but ill say to your last part I would not say that I'm the minority , maybe not sixty no but players out level there msq all the time its to easy to level up in this game because its designed to level 13 characters on one.

I probably wasn't clear in my posts, and I apologize, but my reference to you being the minority was with regards to your previous comments about how you already have several jobs maxed out to 60, and how that was the case before you ever entered Heavensward areas. Most players, especially new ones, don't enter Ishgard with several level 60 jobs under their belts. It's not at all surprising to enter there at level 52 or 53 (I was almost level 53 when I entered Ishgard for the first time), because the 2.x stories and dungeons all give experience now (with the exception of the optional Hildibrand and Postmoogle content). What I meant was most people don't level up multiple jobs to 60 before they complete a main expansion's story. Most tend to stick with one job they really love (in my case, BRD), and level it up with the story. Sure, they may end up being max level before the finish the story (I was), but not in the sense of "I'm level 60 on a level 52 MSQ." So, apologizes again, if I was unclear there.

I leveled up my main job (BRD) with the story (2.0, 2.x, and 3.0), so pardon if my information is incorrect, but my job quests--just from briefly glancing at the requisites, aren't gated by other MSQ quests. At least, not in the sense of "You have to complete the MSQ 'xxxx' in order to unlock your level 56 BRD quest." I also do not think that any of the job quests send you to gated areas like Azys Lla (I know, I know, I keep bringing that place up, but it really is a good example). Again, I would have to look into it more, because it's not really something I thought about, seeing as how I was already at endgame when I started working on my second job to 60, and my third, and my fourth, and so on. Because I went through the story on my main job, and didn't deviate to level up alt jobs until I had caught up with the MSQ, which was 3.1 by the time I reached "endgame." But, I guess I just get confused reading about how you say job quests are gated by the MSQ, but they really aren't...not in a true sense.

Being over-leveled certainly helps make content easier by ways of gear and attributes and so on, but I don't think developers develop games in such a way as to FORCE players to be 10 levels over, or max level, in order to clear a boss, or a final boss. It may be recommended to be over-leveled to make the fights easier, but I don't think that it is the design.

To answer your original question (seeing as how I have posted several times in this thread, yet continued to ignore the original question): I like ARR as it is, and I also like HW as it is. I find it exciting to explore, yes, but I find it more exciting to stumble upon a gated area, and learn that I have to do such-and-such objectives to gain access. That gives me something to work towards, and a new area to look forward to the closer I approach endgame. I like the idea of having areas gated due to story reasons, because it give the areas character and a history, and it makes the game more complex and interesting to me. I absolutely love the amount of story and lore behind FFXIV (and any of the Final Fantasy games, really), so story-gates and lore-gates don't bother me a bit. After all, I did stay up all night refreshing the SE Store page so I could snag one of those lore books. And I continue to flip through and read it quite often. And I play on alts to relive the story, not have alternate characters to bypass raid lockouts, or to bypass the three crafting specialist limits. For the story. So, to answer the original question, I prefer both, and gates don't bother me.

For lore reasons, obviously some areas will have to be gated in order to make sense, but they could make it relatively open after getting to Gyr Abania via MSQ progression (unlike HW where the Churning Mists and Dravanian Hinterlands were just 100% inaccessible even if you had reached Ishgard). That would be a decent compromise for crafters and gatherers who got shafted in HW.

If they add new jobs, they could put their guilds in the starting cities, there is no reason new guilds have to be in new zones. The whole thing where you have to level a job to 50 and finish 284 story quests before you can even touch the new jobs was, imo, really extra.

With regards to the crafting and gathering classes, FFXIV wasn't really designed based around the tradecraft classes, but the battlecraft ones. Thus, why crafters and gatherers hit that roadblock at level 50. The story is centered around a Warrior of Light, not a Weaver of Light. So it makes sense for the gates to be there. Frustrating, yes, but it's the design of the game.

With regards to the extra jobs, I can't speak for AST because I don't remember much of the job story line, and I haven't finish MCH yet, but DRK references events from 2.x. So, story-wise, it wouldn't make sense if you could unlock the job in the midst of the 2.0 story, since you will have no idea who Leviathan is, or what Fray is talking about when he mentions Ul'dah in your level 50 quest. Also, MCH and DRK were both born in Ishgard, a community that is inaccessible in 2.0. So, again, it wouldn't make sense for an individual to unlock DRK while trekking through ARR's original storyline. Since they have no access to Ishgard, nor do they know much about the history of that nation outside of the fact that they're embroiled in the thousand-year-long Dragonsong War.

The jobs being locked behind the expansion is frustrating, I agree. But I can see why from a lore-standpoint. And yes, there is probably a money-making standpoint behind gating them as well. For 4.0, if they could not tie in the additional jobs with the story behind Ala Mhigo, or have them make reference to 3.x events, it would make sense for them to be completely ungated. But SE has already set a precedent here, and they tend to stick to their current formulas.

[Shug]

I have a level 60 monk and am only on the level 54 story in HW. No job quests have been gated for me by the MSQ. Most of the people are on your case cause we started when the game was released, and it wasn't as easy then as it is now, so we can't relate to how you say ARR was not gated. But this isn't WOW, it's Final Fantasy, and as everyone who knows FF since the 80's, it is a story focused game and is never going to change no matter how many people want it to.

[Squigley]

keep in mind that the lore is not some independently existing thing, people created the lore. In other words, they made the gates tedious and annoying on purpose. What we can do is hope that this time around they made lore that does not require the same level of gating, and that they heard the negative feedback from players who were upset by the excessive MSQ gating.

I love you.

--

Comparing the lore to the Bible is a neat analogy. Both can take a lot of fun out of life if you follow them religiously. But if you're into that kind of thing, you can get quite mighty kicks and good feelings out of it.

As far as crafters etc are concerned, I just wanted to keep my battle classes geared with the equipment I made myself. As in leveling crafters at about the same pace as battle classes. But HW gating didn't allow even that. The mats for "current" gear came from the next zone which I wasn't able to access. Not that it would have mattered anyway, the story geared my main and alt battle classes with HQ gear. Yet another decision I really can't understand.

[bswpayton]

I have a level 60 monk and am only on the level 54 story in HW. No job quests have been gated for me by the MSQ. Most of the people are on your case cause we started when the game was released, and it wasn't as easy then as it is now, so we can't relate to how you say ARR was not gated. But this isn't WOW, it's Final Fantasy, and as everyone who knows FF since the 80's, it is a story focused game and is never going to change no matter how many people want it to.

But what I keep repeating is that Im not asking to take away the gate of dungeons, or primals, or raids I 100 percent support this in the game. I simply would just like to travel anywhere that is in the game without it being gated. Im not asking to go do an extreme primal , just because Im already level 60 , because I haven't even fought said extreme primal in the game.

Im saying what I would like to see is no fly lock outs in the next expansion, here it is I finish my msq for arr go to hw where I hear the story is so much better and exciting and I was happy and I get there and realize. Oh wait so I cant just walk anywhere that I please like Ive been doing for 4 in a half months now , so I cant pace the story how I would like anymore. My argument is this , I am not a sequel type person I'm not a cliff hanger type , if the next bit of story isnt gona be introduced for another 3 months then Im not going to do it and then know that I have zero msq to do until I wait three months. Im not the do eight quest here and then wait another 3 months for another 8 quest.

Also the fact that there isnt really an endgame like I said , you can do essentially the same thing in the middle of the game as you can do at the end of the game. Aside from Alexander raids, dungeons, and the level 60 primals extreme, everything else is the same at level 50 as it is when your level 60. That ,being leveling jobs, getting gear you can have all level 250 gear before reaching the end of the game and etc, doing crafts all of those things, can be done while your doing the story. Hunts , leves, fates, all of these things arent lore and if you are the right level you should be able to do them. If you have to stream line the story then there needs to be more things to do after the story as a reward as opposed to the same dungeons youve already done on your way to finishing the story and a raid, literally everything else can be done while your leveling the only difference is now you dont have anymore msq and your left to create content for yourself.


Also the level 56 pali quest is in the forelands so its gated until you get that area

[starLivitation]

I support gated content since its gating RMT thats the only reason. unless SE can figure out another way to stop them, which i dont think they are intrested, when i report RMT the GMT send me back a generic message, so this means, they depend on bots to fight RMT, bots can't do much.