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

[Colino]

I understand people's concerns about jump potions, but the game has been out for so long now. I have been trying to get some irl friends to play recently, but convincing them to trek through ARR AND HW just to be ready for the expansion is a huge ask if you have a full time job.

[BunnyChain]

I find it pretty bizarre to pay for a game to be able to play it and then pay on top of that to not play it. .-.
In a game that focuses on story, has a great localization team and profound lore, comparatively to other MMOs.
There are many ways and reasons to play a game and ultimately it doesn't really matter if someone does choose to skip the bulk of what their subscription pays for.

And the game did get lengthy over the course of three years, in my opinion, what would make a nice compromise is to not have dungeons/areas locked behind quests. Have people jump in, do what they want and later complete the MSQ at their own pace.
You'd be able to get into Ishgard before it's canon but it would be better than not be able to experience it later at all or only after making another character?

[Austherus]

I understand people's concerns about jump potions, but the game has been out for so long now. I have been trying to get some irl friends to play recently, but convincing them to trek through ARR AND HW just to be ready for the expansion is a huge ask if you have a full time job.

It's pretty crazy when you look at it from the point of view of a new player. Personally, I would give up if I had to go through all that content just to get to where everyone else is at. But I would also give up if I had to pay to skip it, would feel like I was being scammed, and I don't like that feeling.

Why not have a "free" potion with each new character?

[nyxxye]

I understand people's concerns about jump potions, but the game has been out for so long now. I have been trying to get some irl friends to play recently, but convincing them to trek through ARR AND HW just to be ready for the expansion is a huge ask if you have a full time job.

same here , managed to get 4 friends buying ARR but then they quit before even reaching heavensward.Out of 4 only 1 stay and continue play with me.
they said , "catching up is hard with works" while I already told em i'm gonna help em through content but it's just hard for them.

[SenseiSw1tch]

Right, I hardly ever post on the forums, but I feel like having a few words on this issue.

Most of this has obviously been mentioned already no doubt. I can see the MSQ being rather daunting for new players coming to the game, yet I personally found the story/lore to this game enthralling and enjoyable. Even more interesting with the 1.0 tie-in. Now, quite a few players skip all the dialogue/cutscenes (I\\'ll never know why in a game like this) and are perfectly good players or helpful members of this community.

My main worry with these potions is player skill. Even now I run into certain types of players that don\\'t know how to play their jobs (Bards that don\\'t play songs, or Scholars who never use DoTs ect). Sure we\\'ll always have those kinds of players, but will we see a big increase due to these potions? Maybe, maybe not.

[SenseiSw1tch]

The thing I liked about the various job quests we get are they give you/teach you new abilities and kind of explain what they do, and when to use them. Now people will skip these useful job quests with the potion.

One of the main reasons for these is people saying "I wan\\'t to play the game with my friends." Well guess what. You can play with your friends already. It sounds more like your friends can\\'t be bothered to run older content with you. Also, I like a lot of the older content myself, ie Crystal Tower ect, and as you know, the queue times for instances like this are already bad. What will they be like after the potions are added? Not all newer players will be buying said potions, so it\\'ll just increase queue times for those people.

[SenseiSw1tch]

I'm not for nor against these potions per say, I just have a few reservations about the whole thing. I can see the good/bad on both sides of the argument. Either way it looks like they'll be coming at somepoint. I'm just a little surprised they've already been used/considered this early on.

Sorry about the multiple posts, but character limitations. And I've no idea why the ///'s have been inserted.

[Austherus]

Sorry about the multiple posts, but character limitations. And I've no idea why the ///'s have been inserted.

When you edit a post it increases the character limit.

[Keitou]

I mean think about it, what's the point for paying for ARR then? A long-term solution would be to somehow improve ARR. Not just smack a jump potion and skip everything like it's not going to be brought up again. Right now whats happening, is that ARR is failing to keep the motivation of new players to keep going. Which is why, I think there needs to be more content to it starting early game in order to keep players going. With this, the MSQ can be done on their own pace.

[Lambdafish]

snip

So much this, I'm sad to say Yoshi P but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, WoW has a jump potion because it had 5 expansions and 10 years of content to get through, you only have 2. What this means is that you did something wrong with the content requirements and gating somewhere. It almost looks (to the unaware) like you gated all the content to make money off a jump potion (ok, taking the tin foil hat off).

Some proposed solutions that make levelling potions unnecessary:

A) like palace of the dead, make more content accessible at low levels

B) make the new jobs accessibility requirements only to finish the 2.0 story (beat praetorium) and have them outside the expansion area. (Reason being is that this is the point you become the WoL).

C) allow crafters and gatherers to enter the expansion areas through beating their class quests

D) Make the storyline of 3.4/3.5 separate from 3.1-3.3 (a little message saying these events take place after the events of the dragonsong war)

I know the levelling potion is the easiest path, but it's not a good practice. I know it has its good points, but releasing it so early (rather than 6.0) shows a precident that I have been seeing for a while. It makes me sad as a games designer that you do not seem to understand reward structure and incentive and seem to think that people can either pay their way to the end, or that everyone deserves everything because it will keep them subscribed. The levelling potion doesn't cause any problems itself, but as outlined above, these problems can be solved other ways, and it sets a precident of what's to come from the cash shop.

You seem to misunderstand people's issues with the story, people only have an issue with 2.1-2.55. I am ok with you wanting to condense that chunk, it's level 50 content that only has 2 story dungeons. If you wanted to make people skip that and give them a summary, that is much better than going from level 1-60 and skipping everything, just make 2.X patch content skippable so that when people beat the game they can immediately move on to HW (and onto 3.4 via the proposed system). Oh look, SB is a lot closer now after beating 2.0

One final note: Please no level jump potion, the story I understand, but there is no excuse for a level jump potion, as I said before about reward structure, it is downright offensive that you would propose it and it defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place. Levelling does not take long, and through a mixture of increased XP (like at the start of HW) and more content like potd, this fills the same void as the levelling potion, except it is through gameplay. Also the fact that you said "we are making the price high to stop people from abusing the system" while not actually stopping people from buying a potion for every job shows that you are fully aware and ok with someone buying them all AND taking the premium price from it.