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

[Belhi]

Not going to read through 39 pages of replies, so forgive me if this was already stated.

This game is not yet four years old. You are only talking about THE SECOND EXPANSION. Has anyone bothered to consider that while such a service will eventually become necessary with all the MSQ gating (IE - tying all the expansions together into one long string rather than having one here and there that is the start of a brand new story) TWO EXPANSIONS IS TOO EARLY FOR SUCH A THING.

MSQ offers one of the most efficient means of leveling up from 1-50 in ARR then from 50-60 in HW. Someone playing a few hours a day can play through the MSQ of both ARR and HW in a few weeks. Not years, not months, mere weeks.

The continuous flow of the MSQ is one of the things I like most about this game so I am very much opposed to any change to that. Also, having dealt with quite a lot of sprouts I can tell you as a fact that it usually takes several months for them to get through it. A lot burn out early HW.

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.

The way they described how the questing and flagging system worked it doesn't sound like it would be simple. In fact it would probably require substantially modifying how that system works. Right now they cant allow you to replay old questlines without completely resetting all your progress back to that point.

Even if they did, this would effect things such as phasing and the story mechanics with effects on such aspects.

If you actually valued players catching up faster, this would be free and work on ways to catch everyone up faster, not just people with some extra dough.

Just making it a free service has its own drawbacks. For example the price is likely to be a major turnoff for RMT to exploiting it.

That said, my preference would be for them to only offer it once per character and give one set of potions included in the cost of the expansion. The additional price is likely to undermine the value of its purpose as paying an extra $50 is likely to be a major turn off for players. It makes far better sense to allow all new legitimate players with the latest expansion use of the potion as part of their initial purchase and provide support systems for newly autoleveled players (a tutorial).

Whatever your view of WoW as a game, I think they handled their level boost system very well. If FF14 is going to pursue this option, it wouldn't be a bad lead to follow.