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

[TalHawke]

Long thread but I wanted to add my voice to it, for whatever difference it will make.

Have you ever played a game where the only areas with any population were the places with content for the top 5 levels, and where the rest of the world was a barren wasteland, where you'd almost never see another living soul?

I have, and it sucks. It's even worse when you're trying to level up in such a game.

That's the problem with allowing people to skip stuff. At first, people do it to "catch up with their friends" which I get. I hate being behind my friends like everyone else. Later on though, bypassing content becomes an unofficial requirement of any new player. "If you want to enjoy this game (that is, if you want to play with other people), you have to be at max level." If you want to try to level up the old way, prepare yourself for a long and lonely road.

Take Mor Dhona and the three starting cities. Prior to Heavensward, these places were packed - honestly, overcrowded on my server. After Heavensward, all the people moved to Idyllshire, but there's still healthy populations in the starter cities and Mor Dhona. While some of this is due to things like seasonal events or GC turn ins that bring people back, a lot of it is simply that new players still have to spend time in these places.

When Stormsblood releases, presumably we'll get a new hub, somewhere over by Ala Mhigo, and Idyllshire will become like Mor Dhona is today. That's fine. What's not fine though would be teleporting to Idyllshire and being the only person in the zone, except for that one gil spammer hanging out by the aetheryte.

This is the reason I don't like this change - it has nothing to do with the mechanics of it and everything to do with human behavior. The ostensible goal of this is to make it easier for new players to join the fun with their friends but in my experience, while it may not be so bad initially, eventually the cost of the jump potion will become an additional barrier to entry for new players, because they'll "have" to have it in order to enjoy any social aspects of the game, and at the same time, it will become an immersion breaker for players who care about the integrity of the game world - though I realize those kinds of players are probably already a minority.

To be honest, I'm not really even that opposed to the leveling jump potion. If someone wants to power to 50/60 without learning how to function in a group there are ways to do it today, so the level potions wouldn't really result in any more bad players than we already have. And truthfully, experience is ridiculous pre-50. People make it out to be a grind but if you do the story quests and only some of the side quests along the way you will be over-level for nearly the entire time. My other character was 60 before she even set foot in Heavensward, simply because I took the time to do the ARR relic on her - and that was without any of the various experience boosts that you can get. Experience to level on your first job is not, and has never been a real issue. On 2nd/3rd/4th jobs? Yeah ok. Maybe a little.

But the story potion I'm opposed to, because it means that first the ARR areas, and later the HW areas, start to die off completely. Maybe it will take a year or two before it's really noticeable, but once things start down that road, they really can't stop.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I wouldn't be surprised if the way newbies are treated in the level 50 main scenario dungeons were a prominent factor in the decision to make these available so early.

After all this time of "Skip everything and watch it at the inn later", I'm not surprised it has come to this. Heck, every time someone asks what's the fastest way of leveling up, it's either FATEs or Palace of the Dead. The devs is just gutting the middleman with the potions now.

[VTXShiva]

Bear in mind TalHawke also the numbers SE has shared with us regarding the analytics on Asian servers.
They are around 30% (at the high end) and that's in a market that does not shun this concept as we do in the west.
IoW at worst we see a similar number of potions sold over here, which means only ~3 in 10 players will disappear from those level brackets, while definitely not insignificant, it's not a huge number either.
If the trend of shunning continues, we may even see this number lower, which means the impact could be even less than expected.
On top of that it's worth noting how little this affects the entirety of a server, in a place where leveling (especially for older players) occurs primarily via POTD and Dungeons.

[TalHawke]

Bear in mind TalHawke also the numbers SE has shared with us regarding the analytics on Asian servers.
They are around 30% (at the high end) and that's in a market that does not shun this concept as we do in the west.
IoW at worst we see a similar number of potions sold over here, which means only ~3 in 10 players will disappear from those level brackets, while definitely not insignificant, it's not a huge number either.
If the trend of shunning continues, we may even see this number lower, which means the impact could be even less than expected.
On top of that it's worth noting how little this affects the entirety of a server, in a place where leveling (especially for older players) occurs primarily via POTD and Dungeons.

I saw the data and while it's interesting, I don't believe that we should consider it as an apples to apples comparison. There are multiple reasons for this. First is that the majority of Asian MMO players pay using pre-paid game time rather than subscriptions like we do in the "west". This is true for FFXIV as well as other games. So there's an entirely different economic mindset at play between the two different population groups. I'll also note that taken as a group, asian players tend to approach MMOs very differently from european and american players, which is no doubt due to cultural differences. It's hard to spot the differences unless you spend a lot of time playing majority-asian games, but they're there.

What I go on is my experience, playing these games for over 20 years now. In every major game where level skipping has been a thing, two things have occurred: The first is that eventually new players start to think of it as mandatory, and the second is that older areas of the game world become unused and empty. The process may happen over the course of 2 or more years but I've watched it happen in multiple games, from multiple publishers. Neither of these things are ones that I would like to see happen to FFXIV.

I'm a realist - I realize that jump potions will probably happen in one form or another. But if SE wants the game to remain healthy long-term then they need to take serious steps to ensure that a new player, who decides to level up through old content, can still enjoy that content and at the very least see other players playing the game around them.

[Maddonious]

While I personally have mixed opinions of how this potion affects the morality of the general experience of an MMORPG I can see benefits. I am all for "earning what I put in" but the dynamic environment of the gaming scene is changing and will keep changing to reflect the lifestyles of the gamers that play them and populate them.

I am not against this happening. Maybe some folks will stay around longer knowing they don't have to put up with a bunch of filler to reach the "real" game at the end. Others will benefit from them with Alts (I don't understand alts in this game but w/e). Some will even use it to reach their friends to have fun.

I can see the downsides tho as im not blind. We may get new players who get to end game with no idea how to do their job and constantly be a hindrance on others and may leave due to others lashing back at them for the decision.

In the end I believe those who want to experience the game to the fullest along with the adventure it provides will refuse said potion and be part of the better community at the end of the journey while the potion users may not stick around long but the company will still get their money to further support this game from money they would not have gotten otherwise.

In the realm of mobile gaming with micro transactions how is this so off putting these days that people still backlash against it? SE will implement it one way or another. We can kick and scream all we want but those with exposible income who would perfer the jump potion will not harm the game overall and earn SE more cash overall.

[Maddonious]

I'm a realist - I realize that jump potions will probably happen in one form or another. But if SE wants the game to remain healthy long-term then they need to take serious steps to ensure that a new player, who decides to level up through old content, can still enjoy that content and at the very least see other players playing the game around them.

While I do understand your worry over older areas of MMORPG games dying out it always happens, jump potion or not. Eventually the populations stabilize and the new players coming in slow to a crawl unless during major expansions. SE is adding features to help players progress through older content in the form of squadrons, chocobos, and other GC npcs down the line perhaps. While these features are only vague they are known so we should expect some form of assistance for newer players down the line.

[Thaldor]

After all this time of "Skip everything and watch it at the inn later", I'm not surprised it has come to this. Heck, every time someone asks what's the fastest way of leveling up, it's either FATEs or Palace of the Dead. The devs is just gutting the middleman with the potions now.

This cant come in soon enough... the amount of times i was pressured into skipping the cut scenes and made to speed run the content for the main story quests.

There really is no difference....

[VTXShiva]

What I go on is my experience, playing these games for over 20 years now. In every major game where level skipping has been a thing, two things have occurred: The first is that eventually new players start to think of it as mandatory, and the second is that older areas of the game world become unused and empty. The process may happen over the course of 2 or more years but I've watched it happen in multiple games, from multiple publishers. Neither of these things are ones that I would like to see happen to FFXIV.

Not to be glib but i have a similarly long experience with MMOs, and on top of that have not only worked on games but also on an MMO for a short period.
Yet my experience with these services is mostly contrary to yours. For instance i have almost never seen any intent on player's behalf to consider level boosts as mandatory in any way. While often recommended to people who do not have the patience, most people will still point you towards the traditional leveling process.
The second part is mostly inevitable in any MMO due to roller-coaster model used in most successful MMOs; this has nothing to do with the potions. The only MMO that managed to keep most areas relatively healthy was Guild Wars with its horizontal progression system, and even that I can't bet on now with the latest expansion and the changes since i last played it. SWTOR is doing something similar but given the game's overall model i would hardly use it as a viable comparison for this environment.
FFXIV managed at least so far to do a better job than your average MMO in keeping older content accessible, viable and relevant however simply by looking at player interest, this seems to be shunned by your average player as a notion of rehashed content.

In short, neither of your two arguments seem to bear relevance on the existance of potions, merely natural symptoms of a vertical progression system MMO.

[Aerowaffle]

This cant come in soon enough... the amount of times i was pressured into skipping the cut scenes and made to speed run the content for the main story quests.

There really is no difference....

Yeah. That made me mad when I went through Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium leveling up. One of my friends recently picked up the game so I invited him for an unsynced run (when he reached those points) with just me and him so he could enjoy the small cutscenes.

[Lambdafish]

This cant come in soon enough... the amount of times i was pressured into skipping the cut scenes and made to speed run the content for the main story quests.

There really is no difference....

I can only think of 2 instances where this is the case, castrum, praetorium. The devs acknowledged years ago that it was a mistake that unfortunately cannot be fixed, and their solution was to design HW ending the way they did (far better). So yeah, the amount of times you were pressured to skip important cutscenes in the MSQ is twice (now negated by unsync), because cutscenes tend to happen after you leave the instance.

Edit: you could be talking about coil, which does sometimes happen but that is a completely separate (non?) issue which is PF dependant and is based on how long it takes to run through all 13.