Naoki Yoshida's Comment in Regard to Jump Potions/Boost Potions

[Austherus]

I don't particularly appreciate being lied to about the motivations for this nonsense?

Yeah it's super-important that the game is accessible to new people, and I appreciate that this is being thought about carefully. I certainly don't agree with buying experience points (which this clearly is) but I do agree that something to lubricate the story progression would help. But let's be clear here - the motivation is the money. There are in-game solutions to all the problems that this nonsense claims to solve, and the payment component is not a requirement.

The excuse is that these things cost money because they're not something to be used lightly. Really? People splurge out on overpriced glamour on the mog station every single day. The cost is not a factor that will restrict their use! It's an excuse, and it's a poor one.

You're claiming that feedback is super important for this process. My feedback is simply this: "No."

Nicely thought out, nicely written.

I would like to add something: The claiming that feedback is important is just a tool to build their narrative, the idea that we are "building this game together". The first time these potions were mentioned they certainly had all their plans set on stone already.

[Damona]

I don't particularly appreciate being lied to about the motivations for this nonsense?

Yeah it's super-important that the game is accessible to new people, and I appreciate that this is being thought about carefully. I certainly don't agree with buying experience points (which this clearly is) but I do agree that something to lubricate the story progression would help. But let's be clear here - the motivation is the money. There are in-game solutions to all the problems that this nonsense claims to solve, and the payment component is not a requirement.

The excuse is that these things cost money because they're not something to be used lightly. Really? People splurge out on overpriced glamour on the mog station every single day. The cost is not a factor that will restrict their use! It's an excuse, and it's a poor one.

You're claiming that feedback is super important for this process. My feedback is simply this: "No."

This guy a million times. You had 1 year to fix your awful quest chain in 2.x, 1 year to bring decent solutions to those who are stuck in there and yet nothing happend. And now these guys have to pay for your shortcomings? Money is the main motivation here, nothing else.

20 Bucks or not, level boosts or whatever, has no one ever thought that this might even scare new players away? I wouldnt have started ffxiv for sure if this kind of thing was available at the start. Why would I want to grind some jobs? Better shell out 20 bucks and be done with it! And grinding nowadays isnt even that much of a hassle anymore, yet you want to charge extra money for it? Wow!

If either of those things hit the EU Server I'll be gone for sure. I'll never support throwing band aids on a problem that was there all the time and is supposed to be solved with extra money.

[Belhi]

People keep talking about other in game options. Can anyone suggest one that the existing quest system will allow for and that won't require a overhaul of the ARR MSQ. I wouldn't be opposed to an overhaul in theory if it wasn't for the fact that doing so would mean a lot less endgame content for people who have already completed the MSQ.

Any quest overhaul will take a great deal of resources and those resources will come directly out of our content. Further any overhaul will only be useful until the next expansion. The problem isn't just the quality but the length. There is only so much MSQ a person can grind through in one go before it gets to being too much.

[Rikku1987]

MSQ are a really boring wall of walk from a to b quests, new players have a hard time to get throu them.
If i look back to my start of FFXIV like 2 years ago i was about to quit multiple times cause it was just boring(i've only watched cutscenes with voice), fun comes later with ex primals and endgame content in general.
Without ability to skip them new players have to play boring stuff for weeks and start to think thats all FFXIV is about, run from A to B and do dungeons were you wait hours to get in...
We need this in NA/EU too, maybe rather free (just MSQ, not lvling) for every FFXIV purcase of ARR+HW(+SB).

LvL Jump potions are.... not really needed imo because even with long que times in dungeons you can lvl pretty easy with palace of the death and fates etc.
Players are bad if they jump in lvls is no argument btw, i saw ALOT ppl with all classes at 60 who are horrible at there job

[Chamber691]

Im A12s cleared for weeks not and guess what I havent watched a cut scene that it would let me skip since lvl 34 titan. I have no interest in story in multiplayer environments and save the story for single player environments like skyrim. Trying to dictate how and why someone enjoys the game limits the number of people interested. Plus it is the players who need to get better to fix savage and potions neither aid or hinder that. That argument is entirely the backing for why they should move forward on the idea to make intermediate/advanced halls. You could then make df locked for jumped jobs that havent gone through the halls. I personally would say make the story potion cheaper or remove story progression gates entirely but both would be weird. I have helped many a newbie level up and teach them to play at a much higher level but the barrier was the story reqs. Then I have friends that would be interested in resub but they dont want to slog through the story reqs to get caught up.

To make some more points clear jump potions are not meant to fix the current player base. All they are is a tool and just like any tool can be used properly or improperly so don't blame the tool blame the user. This topic was important enough to clarify that i finally made a forum account. The story skip is not even debatable on what is would do. All it can do is remove old walls that the current game design would need massive resources invested in every expac to not intimidate new players. I have alts that I have attempted to go through the old msq with and even on gladiator ques for the old unsync friendly content are long with minor improvements with wt addition. With the addition of a potion you would not be running into constant walls and begging all the vets or your friends for help to progress. To put it bluntly the pre 50 content was so boring that the group of eight irl friends that i was apart of that joined the game only 3 made it to 50. After that another quit from the constant walls between different fights. That problem has been fixed but to return they would have to go through more walls. When the competition doesn't have walls its hard to get new players and keep player retention high. To those suggesting they should fix this instead of potions the dev team is already stretched thin as it is. The coding involved to fix all the old walls vs making an item that acts like a key for all the doors in the walls is night and day. A single person can make a potion like this and since the china/korea versions have it its already done versus an entire team being pulled to redo old content that this potion fixes.

Now that only clears up the story skip which is honestly needed for many reasons as a cheaper price possibly an ingame gil based item that a friend could help pay for. We then have the elephant in the room the jump potion. First off bad players are bad players and will always be bad players until a day comes that that decide to maybe try and learn from someone who isn't a bad player and listen to said player. Just like tutoring math in school, teaching some people is impossible cause they are unwilling to learn. That said the same tutoring helps some become better cause they were willing but needed guidance was all. The potion doesn't teach but instead gives them all the material that they need to learn kinda like a ged and sub 100 level courses to get into college courses. Because of this I feel the job potion needs the pairing of the teacher. We have two options for this. One we let the existing player base become the teacher which imo is terrible and i point to the disaster that is the mentor system as evidence. Option 2 is new levels of the hall of novice. This has some drawbacks being that it requires development that will take resources and probably some adjustments to get right. It also comes with that advantage that it can then be used not only to teach level potion users but the people who know they are not strong and want to learn. We can't do anything about the bads that won't learn but vote kick when that happens. Having an in game resource to teach players how to perform better would do wonders to the game. Lets be real the type of player that is bad won't likely know about the out of game resources available.

Now that I have covered both potions more in depth with this edit I want to add a comment to the general posts I have been reading. To the doomsayers, the potions do nothing to you personally stop crying wolf it really is pathetic. To the people saying its just a cash grab why would this be free it skips things that would have required playtime long enough to pay for a month or two of sub so its priced similar to what it skips although i would prefer a 10 30 split with 10 story 30 job skip. If you have ever taken economics there is no free lunch. To any devs that may be reading this thread keep it up you are noticing problems and are trying to solve them in the most efficient way possible. We are not perfect so mistakes will be made the sign of character is how you react to the mistakes and adjust to which I commend you all the comms.

[Khai]

I'm likely going against the grain here, but I think that it's in the best long-term interests of the game that new players are able to catch up to the latest content semi-quickly.

I started near the tail end of ARR, right before the HW launch. I primarily focused on the MSQ, with a dash of crafting when I was burnt out from questing. Although I love the story and the lore behind Eorzea, the storyline tends to drag on and on and on. I can see players that don't enjoy the story just skipping every cutscene that pops up... But even then, all they really do is talk to someone, teleport to an aetheryte, talk to the next person, over and over and over. It can feel very grindy and not all that fun, which means that person is less likely to reach current content.

That being said... I'm not sure if jumping potions are the "right" way to avoid that. Is there even a right way? I'm sure there's stuff that could be done in-game (like cutting down some of those filler quests in ARR).

[Khai]

And what of the players that do boost and find themselves lost in Eorzea, with no clue of the story or even how to play their class or role? I can't imagine that they'd be able to pick up on a fresh level 60 class very easily -- I'm not even sure if I could. Give me a level 60 healer, and I guarantee you, we'd likely wipe.

And for the non-boosting players, will our experiences be watered down by the boosters? Will we receive less story, simpler dungeons and raids?

And what of the RMTers? I wouldn't be surprised if they'd be able to eat the subscription, game, and boost costs to keep spreading their annoying whispers all throughout Hydaelyn. And the bots...? I don't want to see them in high level areas either.

Apologies for the double-post. I apparently hit the character limit when everything was one big post.

[Jerbob]

People keep talking about other in game options. Can anyone suggest one that the existing quest system will allow for and that won't require a overhaul of the ARR MSQ. I wouldn't be opposed to an overhaul in theory if it wasn't for the fact that doing so would mean a lot less endgame content for people who have already completed the MSQ.

They could replicate the proposed jump potion nonsense in-game just as easily by introducing a "memories NPC" that would, through various shenanigans, auto-complete quests in exactly the same way as the potion. That'd be one extreme.

If that's not what people want, there's a whole spectrum of options between that and doing nothing. Perhaps an "auto-complete fetch quests" option that skips all the unimportant jobs and leaves us with just the plot-relevant cutscenes? A "play all the cutscenes in order without any travelling required" option? The choice to auto-complete certain sections but not others? There are tonnes of choices that SE could make that would require no editing to the cutscenes (and thus very little work, work that's probably already been done in preparation for these potions). They could even implement multiple options - that'd be really nice for people who have different tastes and opinions on this matter.

A visual streamlining of the questline, with new condensed cutscenes and dialogue - yes, that could potentially be difficult and expensive to do, I'll freely accept that. But I don't believe that's the route they have to take.

[Meeka19]

LvL Jump potions are.... not really needed imo because even with long que times in dungeons you can lvl pretty easy with palace of the death and fates etc.

Yeah, it's fairly fast <50 in particular, sucks to just spam potd when it's not a challenge though.

[Exidrial]

People keep talking about other in game options. Can anyone suggest one that the existing quest system will allow for and that won't require a overhaul of the ARR MSQ. I wouldn't be opposed to an overhaul in theory if it wasn't for the fact that doing so would mean a lot less endgame content for people who have already completed the MSQ.

Making all the content ilvl and level gated. In essence making the MSQ optional.
All this would require would be a simple change in content unlock requirements. They wouldn't even have to touch the MSQ for that.

There is NO reason to implement a level skip potion other than making SE money.