Quality of Life Improvements and MSQ Gating for New Players

[Makeda]

This is all well and good, if FFXIV was a single-player game.However, it is not. It is first and foremost an MMORPG catered towards ... stuff it isn't actually catered towards

No Okamimaru is right. FFXIV is a Final Fantasy game that is also an MMO, not an MMO that just has anime trappings.

Now... I have actually paid to boost 2 characters through MSQ and paid for 2 level 60 boosts.

BUT for alts...
I played up to Stormblood on two other characters, and will soon have done Stormblood on four.

So I think I can speak to BOTH angles on this...

You miss a LOT by skipping all that story. I can just look at what my Ninja here has 'experienced' versus my Mi'Qote tank. If my Ninja was my only character, I would have no clue what kind of game I was in or any of the story or lore or any of the things that make this game worth playing...

This is a game you play so you can have Haurchefant's broken shield hanging in your apartment, and know WHY it is there.

In that giant MMO you play so you can have the latest gear, grind through stuff, and have no clue what the story is. In that giant MMO players gripe about a long grind to unlock four new races, only 2 of which have any story to their grind, and even then only for about the first half of the grind... Because over there lore is secondary... so secondary that it's rumored game design members can add any lore they want without approval of any central lead... and it shows. And there is not core story.

But this is here... where we remember seeing Meffrid go down, and we knew who he was from way back in Quarrymill, and we cried when we found Wilred's body years before. Where we cheered when we liberated Ala Mhigo as much as we did the first time we read of Frodo tossing the ring into the mountain.

This is a story.

With a game bolted onto the side of it.

It just happens to also be a good game.


Your goal when you come here is to experience that story...

If I sold you a copy of Lord of the Rings, and then sold you a bookmark that you could place on the last page to say you were done with it... what was the point of even buying that novel?

Sure... maybe if I asked you to read it four time... you might get that special bookmark... that's what I did for my third and fourth reads of FFXIV... but not the first two times...

And everyone should read this book once. Or what was it all for? Just ask M'naago, that's her line after all.


If you want an MMO for just the raiding and gear grinding... this isn't the MMO for you.

If you want a great story, than then allows you to raid and grind after it... then come here. I'd wager Elder Scrolls is "almost" like this as well (except the great story is in side quests while their MSQ is... not as highly praised...).

But FFXIV...

The whole point of playing this game is the story...

If you just want to see the last page of Lord of the Rings without reading the book... you're missing the point of being here...

Oh... and this was/is my first and only Final Fantasy game. But the story was STILL everything for me. I bought this game knowing that Final Fantasy was about stories - stories I'd missed out on thus far. I should like to think that people who come here value this story for what it offers, not for what other games do.

[TwistedTea]

...why cant people learn to adapt to it and accept it?

This may come as a surprise to some, but the game isn't required to appeal to every player.

An MMORPG catering to a niche audience is something I can get behind.

A new player comparing FFXIV to the casual MMORPG competition, will find out they have to wait months before they can access the newest content with their 'veteran' friends.

But it has been pointed out that from a cost analysis POV,it would be better/more profitable to maintain the status quo; not redirecting dev resources,revenue from existing players,new players buying skip/jump potions etc.

Since we have no concrete numbers on revenue generated by new player subs,I'm inclined to think that SE's increased monetization efforts regarding non-subscription streams of revenue is not just their 'greed' or shareholder 'greed' but that existing subs are not cutting it.

[TwistedTea]

I get that. But you really didn't offer any alternatives whatsoever. You just said "it should be optional" and then "the leveling/gear/rewards/etc associated with it can remain."

Actually, I've.Please read the previous pages. The game already has multiple ways to level. Yes, use levels to unlock stuff when you hit certain levels, flash notifications/maps whatever.

FFXI already has set a precedent for this sort of progression.

Leveling is not my issue with MSQ gating. It is access to areas/maps,NPC vendors etc.

It seems vet players have this fear that if MSQ is made optional, newbies are going to miss out on story etc. WOW seems to handle this just fine. I did the Hildebrand quest line because I thought it was an interesting story even though it's optional. Basically people who are interested about the game's lore will do it, those who are not,well they won't.

Character levels for progression are a whole different can of worms.

[InkstainedGwyn]

I haven't played every MMO out there, not by a long shot - but I've played a lot (CoX, WoW pre/during BC, EQ2, GW1, LotRO, Rift, SWtOR, ESO, Neverwinter, etc). This is the first game I've ever played in which you can get from 0 to raiding endgame within a month without skip potions if you focus/have the time. MMOs are not meant to be 60-hour games so that you're doing multiplayer endgame matches within the week. MMOs are meant to be something you play in and out over weeks, months, years. MSQ gives XP so quickly (though yes, post-50/pre-HW is annoying, that I will admit that they could find a way to condense it) that this game isn't anywhere near the grind most games are.

People play how they want. If all you care about is doing the endgame stuff with your friends, that's fine, but that's never been something that most MMOs handed out freely. And most endgame players are bored, bored, bored out of their minds, so personally, I think that just blowing through 95% of the content so that you can grind the newest content for a couple of weeks is kind of sad.

Some friends recently joined and they did exactly that - blew through the story - so that they could "join us veterans". And promptly got bored and stopped playing, because "us veterans" log in, run expert, do weeklies, log out. Sometimes we farm a primal. Sometimes we do Eureka. What they didn't realise is that "us veterans" had been looking forward to going back through old content like MSQ dungeons, Coils, CT, etc. with them - but because they just ran through it ASAP to try to clear it, we didn't get a chance to do most of that - and I think more veterans want to run older stuff with new players than new players realise. We like sharing something we enjoyed with our friends. It's fun to listen to them react to the story. It gives us a reason to go back to old content beyond "levelling/trials/50-60 roulette again."

If you really want to skip all the content, go ahead, get a skip potion. You'll be ready to raid with your friends within a week. But it's simply not MMO practice to just "condense/make optional" the whole levelling process.

[DreadRabbit]

Actually, I've.Please read the previous pages. The game already has multiple ways to level. Yes, use levels to unlock stuff when you hit certain levels, flash notifications/maps whatever.

I did, and you offered nothing new. You don't unlock PoTD until you're level 17. And even then, unless you start in Gridania you probably wouldn't even know the unlock quest is there if you weren't following the MSQ to take you to Gridania where you would see the big blue quest point. Fates for early levels in most servers are barren (heck most fates are barren now). And people are going to get tired of PoTD 1-60 if that's all they do in between roulettes.

So if the MSQ, which leads you to all of the above things, is now optional and players can ignore it, then what would you want to see as a potential option in its place? That's what I'm getting at. I'm not against alternatives for different play styles, but the MSQ as it's designed now serves as a bridge to link all of this content together. If you make that optional, how do you show new players where to go? What do you add in for people that don't enjoy the early leveling options but aren't too into the MSQ?

[SonKevin]

A new player comparing FFXIV to the casual MMORPG competition, will find out they have to wait months before they can access the newest content with their 'veteran' friends.

It wouldn't take months to catch up. At most a month and the very least two weekends. You can push through the game quite quickly especially if you have friends that can power you through dungeons and trials.

FFXI already has set a precedent for this sort of progression.

You mentioned FFXI before, but the simple fact was FFXI was gated behind A LOT of stuff and most of that stuff was time. A lot of time is spent being unable to do a lot of things and the only way to cut down time was to do the MSQ for expansions and even that took a long time. Why don't we discuss how long it took you to get your Chocobo license or how to get your own Chocobo you need to spend an entire month raising it and then you still had to pay every time you summoned them to the field. If you didn't have people to cast sneak and invisible on you, you were simply stuck at where ever you were at. There was no way to beat the Shadow Lord and get your airship license unless you somehow acquired a half a million of gil. At least with this game you can solo everything up to completion. You couldn't do that in FFXI and the only reason you can do that in FFXI now is because of Trusts.

[TwistedTea]

I did, and you offered nothing new. You don't unlock PoTD until you're level 17.

Again, I'm not concerned with the leveling process and offered POTD as one example.

If all we need the MSQ is for big exclamation marks to lead players from point to point; then I as said keep the MSQ as it is/improve it etc but make it optional/semi-optional in terms of blocking off areas/maps, NPCs etc.

I'm satisfied with all questing in this game being optional. Eg, if you want to unlock specific types of content,eg primals, you go do the quest for it. What I'm discontent with is that areas/maps, NPCs and content are blocked off purely for story reasons.

[TwistedTea]

You mentioned FFXI before, but the simple fact was FFXI was gated behind A LOT of stuff and most of that stuff was time.

And I also mentioned that FFXI is imperfect in many ways shortly afterwards. I use FFXI as an example because it seems FFXI had fewer MSQ gates/locks on content:

...FFXI where you can choose to NOT do main story quest if you don't want to, and can level up nicely. You can also do any of the patches main story independently from the base story...

To be fair, FFXI did lock major portions of the game behind story:

To do Dynamis you has to beat the Shadow Lord

To access airships you had to be rank 5 in your nation

To do Sky or Sea, you had to be pretty far in their respective storylines

FFXI did place less impetus on storyline progression, and participation in expansion content was divorced entirely from the story. You bought it, you can start on it right now.

[TwistedTea]

Continued...

As players, I should be able to experience everything the game has to offer ASAP, at my own pace - if I don't want to touch battle content and just want to craft and gather, playing housing and dress up, and market board PvP - I should be able to do ALL of this without needing to complete any MSQ. If all I want to do is dungeons, trials and raid, there should not be any barrier of MSQ that is gating everything...

[Hasrat]

As players, I should be able to experience everything the game has to offer ASAP, at my own pace - if I don't want to touch battle content and just want to craft and gather, playing housing and dress up, and market board PvP - I should be able to do ALL of this without needing to complete any MSQ. If all I want to do is dungeons, trials and raid, there should not be any barrier of MSQ that is gating everything...

Says who, exactly? Just because I bought FF7 doesn't mean I'm entitled to fight Sephiroth right now. Playing Super Mario Bros. doesn't entitle you to just skip to 8-4.

Sure, some games may allow free access to all content from the start. But that doesn't mean every game is required to follow suit.