Completion of Heavenwards -not- required for Stormblood?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/fina...lood-expansion

USgamer: Prior to Stormblood, players had to complete all of A Realm Reborn's story to move onto Heavensward. That requirement is going away with the new expansion. Do you feel that relaxing the hard story requirements from Heavensward is a good move for the game? Is that meant to get newer players into the game?

Yoshida: Nothing was lost by relaxing that limitation. We received a lot of feedback that said, "I bought 3.0, but I couldn't access anything in it until I finished everything that was AAR." I was like, "Oh, you know what? That's right!" That was the biggest reason why.

When the team is building the storyline of Final Fantasy XIV, we're very focused on creating that storyline. When we were progressing from AAR to Heavensward, we were so focused on the narrative that we wanted people to experience everything that we had put into A Realm Reborn and the subsequent patches. It was a narrow way to get into the expansion content.

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There were thoughts of "Well, maybe we should have players enjoy the new Jobs that are introduced with the expansion." That might be a better way for players to get introduced into XIV. Of course, there were opposing devil's advocates saying, "Well you haven't gotten to the land of Hingashi, so why can you be a Samurai?" There may be people who want to get into Final Fantasy XIV using the new jobs. We just simply wanted to find a good solution that would address that.

Although it has been discussed before, I cannot recall any interview where it's bluntly stated. Seeing Yoshi did not disagree, it looks entirely likely completing all of Heavenwards' content won't be necessary to access Stormblood. Curious if they only mean jobs, content after 3.0 (2.1-2.55 if often cited as the biggest hurdle) or what. All said, I do find it interesting they may be branching away from a wholly linear story progression.

[dragonkyn20]

Yeah I didn't see any other source that confirmed Yoshi saying anything about removing the main scenario completion requirement for Stormblood. Would be nice if this is true. If not, I'm at least glad the two new jobs aren't restricted.

[Naunet]

Hmmm... interesting and promising, but I'm not going to 100% believe it until I see him say it outright. It would be good, though.

[PomPomFlare]

It is required. Interview you posted is dated, plans were changed.

[Niwashi]

Well, he clearly said the requirement is going away, but still didn't really specify which requirement for what content? Will the jobs be available, but regions and storyline locked? Jobs and regions available and only storyline locked? Or none of them locked and we can go straight to the Stormblood storyline without doing the Heavensward storyline?

(I rather doubt it's the later with none of them locked behind Heavensward, because if that were the case, they wouldn't have had to include Heavensward when someone purchases Stormblood. The fact that they did indicates HW content is still required for getting to something, it's just not clear what. My guess is that it's the MSQ, that the SB MSQ will follow from the HW MSQ and need to be done in their original order, but that we'll be able to access the regions and jobs without getting to that MSQ section. But at this point, it's still a guess.)

[dragonkyn20]

It is required. Interview you posted is dated, plans were changed.

Do you have a source for that? Because this interview is less than a week old.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

From the article - "There were thoughts of "Well, maybe we should have players enjoy the new Jobs that are introduced with the expansion." That might be a better way for players to get introduced into XIV. Of course, there were opposing devil's advocates saying, "Well you haven't gotten to the land of Hingashi, so why can you be a Samurai?" There may be people who want to get into Final Fantasy XIV using the new jobs. We just simply wanted to find a good solution that would address that. "

It looks like what they meant was allowing you to access the jobs without completing the story. You will still have to complete 3.56 in order to proceed into the expansion content itself, they just relaxed the job restrictions.

[ErikMynhier]

I love when the community jumps to conclusions and then those conclusions become "facts" and then the actual info comes out and people flip out.

[silentwindfr]

i'm curious to see how they will do this, how explain who is the lady in red without the 3.56?
how explain the presence of shinryu and omega without the 3.55-3.56?
or how explain gotestu or why yugiri did leave for return to doma? without the 3.56?

it's nice to say you don't need to complet the story quest is too long, but the story will have huge plothole without some quest from HW...

[Derio]

I thought completion of the heavensward is not required to access the new jobs. But then again if the new jobs missions are located in SB regions then they have to make it where completion of heavensward to not be required for Stormblood