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

[HyoMinPark]

I forgot to touch on this point in my previous wall-of-text. I will try not to do another wall-o-text post, but I did want to say this:


People are talking about the "excessive gating" present in this game, but I have never encountered any sort of gate that I considered "excessive." I acknowledge that "excessive" here is obviously subjective, but I'm curious as to what people consider "excessive." The only thing I can think of (and that's just based on the amount of complaints I see) is the fact that DRK, MCH, and AST are all locked behind 1. purchasing Heavensward, and 2. Trekking through 2.x to get into Ishgard and start 3.0's story.

One poster said that the lore isn't an independent entity, and they are correct; it's not. It was created by those that developed this game. Countless hours spent creating backstories and histories...I really do think that's something that should be respected; that isn't easily done, and it takes an astounding amount of work to make everything flow and make sense. And even with all the work put into it, yes, plot holes still exist, because nothing is perfect, but still. It's truly amazing, the lore in the game, and I think that demands some semblance of respect. And if content-gating comes with the lore, then that should be respected as well. The gates make sense because they go with the story behind this game. It's not like they're arbitrary. At least, I don't find them arbitrary. But again, this is all subjective and based on people's opinions.

Gonna stop now before I make another wall post. orz

Um... the first Final Fantasy isn't story very focused. You had a goal, sure, but the story kinda took a back seat.
FFXI was also pretty story heavy, but it still didn't gate players out of the starter expansion zones. You needed to progress through the story to enter the harder/end-game areas, but that was just about it. Why can't FFXIV do what FFXI did in that regard?

I played FFXI only for a couple of hours, so bear with me here. I don't know much about it, but...

With regards to "starter expansion zones," we've already established that ARR is pretty-much free roam, even from the get-go. Albeit, you have to walk everywhere before level 15, but it's still doable, even if dangerous (walking from Gridania all the way to Mor Dhona as a level 1 archer is very exciting though!). I'd say that, for FFXIV, ARR is considered the "starting expansion" or "base game" here, with HW being the "expansion of the base game." In HW, certain areas are gated, requiring you to progress through the story to access them (Hinterlands, Azys Lla, Idyllshire), so how is that different from what you said FFXI did? If you still had to progress through the story to reach the harder/endgame areas in FFXI, how is that different that what you do in HW? Granted, the Churning Mists probably aren't considered endgame, per say, but I'd say they're up there with the "higher level areas."

Not trying to argue, just wanting to see why you consider FFXI different in this sense. :3