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

[jagermeister_redbull]

These are sad days for ffxiv, if SE keep developing this game for new players I will more than likely stop playing. I wish SE would help retain long standing players instead of throwing new services and content to new players. I believe a large majority of new players that purchase a jump potion will stop playing 1-2 months after anyway.

If you're that dis-interested in playing an MMO for its story, character progression, level build up and world building experiences then you have no business playing this MMO. Players with negative views towards these activities will only further dived communities in an MMO because you are letting them, for a price, skip 90% of the content in your game.

[Belhi]

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.

Its not SE who loses out if they go back and fix the old quests. Its us established players. The money, workers and resources spent to fix those old quests will come out of what we get. That means less for us. People got frustrated when it took 5 months for a patch to come out and complain regularly about lack of things to do. In that climate, should Yoshi P really be giving existing players less to content just so they can rework old content?

More to the point, the issue here is only going to get worse. The climb to end game is going to get longer and longer and longer. There is only so much fat you can cut out of a story. As for skipping story, people already do this. They do it all the time. About half the sprouts I deal with skip most cutscenes even when I encourage them to what them. The only difference with this potion is that they won't have to run back and forth clicking on NPCs they aren't interested in and don't know anything about.

[Nestama]

snip

It gets tiring saying hyperbole, you know? and 90%? I treat expansions as their own separate game (that just require one another to progress). FFXIV, FFXIV-2 and FFXIV-3, if you will. The boost and skip will be placing the player on the previous level cap, which means on SB's release, that's Level 60 and ready for Stormblood's story and new Jobs (which cannot be level boosted, if I'm reading correctly).
I feel the majority who will buy both of these potions will be players on alts, especially raiders. I feel (and this is my opinion) that a minority of newbies will be quick to purchase a Booster and Skipper, especially those with friends they want to play with. A majority will not, as they will play the game on a Trial first. If they enjoyed the Trial, then it is up to them to decide to purchase the potions or not (presuming they even know of it in the first place). If they didn't enjoy the Trial, then they uninstall and save their money.

[VTXShiva]

Other game studios have had to or have done it. Bioware said the same things about their story, in that its too hard, too costly for it to be considered, and you know what, they worked it out, they had to as the churn was heading into the negative.

Are you SERIOUSLY comparing FFXIV to the trainwreck that is SWTOR? The game that uses subscription as a noose instead of a quality system. the game that throws scraps at you and belittles you for playing free and does not even allow you to play end-game without a sub. The game where the only way you're really making substantial in-game progress, is by spending money OUT OF THE GAME. (I'm a founding backer with a CE pre-purchase of SWTOR and at least 30 months of paid subscription to that game and i still feel like you're mocking me)

[jagermeister_redbull]

It gets tiring saying hyperbole, you know? and 90%? I treat expansions as their own separate game (that just require one another to progress). FFXIV, FFXIV-2 and FFXIV-3, if you will. The boost and skip will be placing the player on the previous level cap, which means on SB's release, that's Level 60 and ready for Stormblood's story and new Jobs (which cannot be level boosted, if I'm reading correctly).
I feel the majority who will buy both of these potions will be players on alts, especially raiders. I feel (and this is my opinion) that a minority of newbies will be quick to purchase a Booster and Skipper, especially those with friends they want to play with. A majority will not, as they will play the game on a Trial first. If they enjoyed the Trial, then it is up to them to decide to purchase the potions or not (presuming they even know of it in the first place). If they didn't enjoy the Trial, then they uninstall and save their money.

I think the argument that raiders and people with alts will buy the potions is valid especially if they have friends on other servers. However I think that leveling one character from scratch (to 60) should be a prerequisite for buying the potion.

If you see each expansion as a separate game, then technically they will be skipping two entire games to get to the third game. Let's just hope that what you say is true and only a minority purchase the jump and not a large sum of new players.

[Belhi]

I think the argument that raiders and people with alts will buy the potions is valid especially if they have friends on other servers. However I think that leveling one character from scratch (to 60) should be a prerequisite for buying the potion.

Let's just hope that what you say is true and only a minority purchase the jump and not a large sum of new players.

If new players don't use it, it defeats the very purpose of introducing it in the first place. The whole point is to deal with an issue that is turning off new players, the length of questing they have to go through to get to end game. Frankly to really suit its purpose all new players with access to Stormblood should get the potions with their expansion pack purchase.

[jagermeister_redbull]

If new players don't use it, it defeats the very purpose of introducing it in the first place. The whole point is to deal with an issue that is turning off new players, the length of questing they have to go through to get to end game. Frankly to really suit its purpose all new players with access to Stormblood should get the potions with their expansion pack purchase.

Wow didn't introduce a jump potion until 5 expansions in, SE are already introducing one. If it's to combat turning off new players this early it makes me think the game may not be doing so well in the first place to attract new players.

[VTXShiva]

If you see each expansion as a separate game, then technically they will be skipping two entire games to get to the third game. Let's just hope that what you say is true and only a minority purchase the jump and not a large sum of new players.

Purely anecdotal and intended to lighten the mood, but stop me if you heard this one before.

Player A "i tried the game but it's slow and boring"
Player B "it gets better later and at end-game it really isn't that bad"

Also... have you never started a show from a later season before? I know i never saw all 20?30?40? something seasons of Super Sentai, but i still pick them up every now and again. Or better yet, watch a show, like it, and check out what was before it?
I started playing Guilty Gear XX and loved it so much I went back and looked for previous games and read Wikias to find out more about the characters and stories.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Or at least mark them forever with something in their names that may show us how they are more of a fan of jumping than questing and leveling.

Are you suggesting we completely break the playerbase into 2? Because that's what this would do.
No one would ever want to take the players that jumped and we would get PFs excluding jumped characters and we'll break ourselves apart. It'll do more harm than good.

It's also extremely ignorant to imply everyone who jumped is a "fan" of it and don't enjoy natural leveling and story progression. Maybe someone will get a job to 60 and at some point decide they don't care enough for the ARR story to do 100+ more quests until HW. They shouldn't be slapped with a stigmata for doing such.

[VTXShiva]

Wow didn't introduce a jump potion until 5 expansions in, SE are already introducing one. If it's to combat turning off new players this early it makes me think the game may not be doing so well in the first place to attract new players.

it hasn't anything to do with the quality of the game in this case, simply the progression path of story and gating of systems.
FFXIV is EXTREMELY story centric so every new feature or unlock is done via quests, usually the main one. The only way you unlock most dungeons is by doing the main story quests.
The problem here is that even if you power level to max level, you still have to go back and do every.single.quest in the main story, as well as class quests to unlock things.
Secondarily is the fact that you can play all classes on the same character; meaning once you exhaust quests, you're stuck with 1-2 very repetitive processes to level, that in some cases is worse than alt-ing in wow.