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

[Mihana]

I have to admit I am 100% for the story skip potions. One of the downfalls of this game the ungodly amount of quest fodder they shove in your face just to progress the story. I get they wanted to make it easier for a person to level up from the beginning but much of that can easily be done by redoing dungeons to obtain the unique loot drops. Seriously, just trying to get the loot drops in some areas at 50+ I was already meeting if not exceeding the level requirements for my current gear and had out-leveled the area I was in. And I've had the same experience on newer alts. Leveling from 1 to 60 is easier in dungeons and grinding but you've still got a lot of redundant quests to sift through just to progress the story. Here's a typical scenario:

There's a big threat looming overhead that you must fight. However before doing so you need to prepare. Fair enough, except it requires you do a multitude of errands for other characters barely related to the big threat you are preparing for. But before you can prepare, another smaller unrelated threat pops up and you have to deal with it including several more fetch and/or kill quests to satisfy that before you find out that you can now face that big threat.

There's too much filler which just serves to give the player some EXP or money they could otherwise earn just by interacting with the community or doing dungeons. While I do approve of the story skip potions I'd much rather have them streamline the story quests into a more condensed version. Keep some fodder but get rid of the stuff that serves no purpose other than giving the player "something to do" as if to simulate a wait or delay between NPCs getting preparations made.

[Nestama]

Honestly, I think the exp potion jump is fine. However, I do not think people should be able to skip story. Story is what makes Final Fantasy that. Skipping that is just lazy and takes away from the experience of the game.

And if they don't care about the story in an MMO?

[SDaemon]

it's not fair for people who take their time to farm and level their gathering class to make some gil and then comes this "player" and makes the same as him so easily.

The one that was farming and leveling is going to have so so so much more gil than the 300k the other "player" gets. The one that was farming and leveling is also going to know so so so much more about the job and how the gathering system works than the other "player". If anything the one that farmed and leveled should feel proud of themselves and perhaps a bit of pity for the other "player" that has now jumped into a situation they know nothing about with nothing but the bare essentials of their new position to their name. Yeah the other "player" is now a higher level, but what exactly have they gained over the one who farmed and leveled? I would argue that the one who farmed and leveled is the one in the advantageous position with something to show for it as well.

[Yasuhiro]

And if they don't care about the story in an MMO?

They're just giving their 2 cents on what makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game.
Do you have to comment on every little thing? x.x

[Nestama]

They're just giving their 2 cents on what makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game.
Do you have to comment on every little thing? x.x

I'm just saying that not everyone playing FFXIV cares for the story.
Yes.

[Virlym]

The subject alone will have people jumping to one side or the other even if there is no real reason for their decision. Most reasoning for being against is is that people will either be annoyed when someone who doesn't know how to play their job joins their party, or because they worked hard to get as far as they did and now there's an easy way to make all that work useless.

That being said, there are still plenty of reasons as to why they would be helpful as well. The biggest reason is time. Let's say FFXIV is around for another 10+ years and a new expansion comes out every year. New players aren't going to join the game because they don't have the time to do 9+ expansions worth of main story quests just to catch up to what's currently happening in the game.

[Virlym]

I personally think that "jump potions" would be good for the game if handled "properly". I cannot say the "best" course of action, but I do have some thoughts as to what could be done.

1) Use one potion instead of two and make it modular. When using the potion, the player is given choices. They can decide if they want to skip main story quests that they have yet to complete and/or they could level one class up to the previous expansion's cap. This allows for the player to put in the work and time into something if they want, and it will make it less complicated when purchasing the potions (always give a verification at the end of the choices to make up for accidental clicking).

[Virlym]

2) Create another "Hall of the Novice"-like part of the game for when people use the potions to level. This feature should have the player go through a tutorial of their job's skills and finish with a fight tailored to the job. This fight should make them use most (if not all) of their skills that they would typically use in 8-man content (for healers, please make the NPCs part of the party instead of separate to make targeting easier for those on a controller).

3) Include a potion when buying the expansion. This will help newer players by lowering the initial cost of the game if the main reason they want to play is to play with their friends who have already finished the new content. You could even just bundle it with the bundled versions of FFXIV that come with the base ARR as well as all the expansions, instead of with all expansion sales.

[Virlym]

4) Have the player sit through a cut-scene that describes what has happened in the story if they use the potion to skip the main story quests. This way they won't be completely lost and left out of the loop when doing the new main story quests. Basically, give a single cut-scene that has been shortened down so that the new player isn't just thrown into the middle of some unknown turmoil with no background knowledge of the relationships that they would have forged.

5) If price is an issue when bundling the potions together, then make the base potion a little more. The current potions are around $21. To buy two so that you can catch up one job to your friends, you would spend about $42. So make the modular potion around $30. This would in turn, bring in more money as I'm sure there are a lot more people that will be buying it for leveling multiple classes than there would be buying it for the story.

[Fawkes]

I have to admit I am 100% for the story skip potions. One of the downfalls of this game the ungodly amount of quest fodder they shove in your face just to progress the story. I get they wanted to make it easier for a person to level up from the beginning but much of that can easily be done by redoing dungeons to obtain the unique loot drops. Seriously, just trying to get the loot drops in some areas at 50+ I was already meeting if not exceeding the level requirements for my current gear and had out-leveled the area I was in. And I've had the same experience on newer alts. Leveling from 1 to 60 is easier in dungeons and grinding but you've still got a lot of redundant quests to sift through just to progress the story. Here's a typical scenario:

There's a big threat looming overhead that you must fight. However before doing so you need to prepare. Fair enough, except it requires you do a multitude of errands for other characters barely related to the big threat you are preparing for. But before you can prepare, another smaller unrelated threat pops up and you have to deal with it including several more fetch and/or kill quests to satisfy that before you find out that you can now face that big threat.

There's too much filler which just serves to give the player some EXP or money they could otherwise earn just by interacting with the community or doing dungeons. While I do approve of the story skip potions I'd much rather have them streamline the story quests into a more condensed version. Keep some fodder but get rid of the stuff that serves no purpose other than giving the player "something to do" as if to simulate a wait or delay between NPCs getting preparations made.

It's true that there's too much filler, but to add a paid skip is not a good solution. It does nothing for people who want to just skip the filler, it only benefits people who don't care about getting any of the story. Also it gives SE no reason to go back and fix the filler ever, because they can make money off it being bad, so it will always be bad for new players who care about the story. And it incentivizes SE to make future story have the same filler, because then they can make money selling a Stormblood story skip in a few years.