Quality of Life Improvements and MSQ Gating for New Players

[SonKevin]

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:

Literally the only thing you can do is start a new expansion at anytime. Everything else was gated behind something long and annoying. Let's take leveling for instance that you're touting as being better in FFXI. At level 18 you needed to unlock your subjob otherwise you weren't going to get any party invites and it would kill any chance of you leveling. To unlock your subjob, you needed to collect 3 items and one of those items were impossible to get alone or in the normal course of leveling. So you were gated at level 18 right away. Once you got your subjob unlocked, you needed to level your secondary class so you weren't a gimped character because no one wanted to invite a gimped character to a leveling party. Once you finally get two jobs to level 20, you needed to make the trek to Jeuno. This trek could take you HOURS depending on your luck and if you had someone who would walk next to you constantly casting sneak and invisible so you can make it to Jeuno. Next you were safe in Jeuno until about level 25 when you needed to unlock Kazham because that was the only place people leveled after it came out. This meant you needed 148,000 gil or you needed to collect three items. These 3 items needed someone else to get them for you or you needed a party because it was impossible for a level 25 to actually collect these items. Realistically the only way to do it is to find someone else because you'd never find a party to unlock it. Now I'm can't off the top of my head remember what comes between 32 (when you leave the jungle and get to 50 in the other ares), but when you get to 50 you have to do more farming that is impossible to do alone just to break past level 50. Then you need to do a quest every 5 levels to keep breaking your limit to 75. The amount of time these quests can literally take is days if you're unlucky with finding people to do them for you since you didn't find too many limit break parties.

Your idea that you can start any expansion is correct, but you couldn't just level up without being gated by a whole horrible amount of time consuming things. FFXIV's MSQ is NOTHING compared to FFXI's just leveling to 75 which required A LOT of unlocking. You needed to unlock and start multiple expansions just to get to the leveling areas. Like 70-75+ was in Treasures. The new 60-70 or something was located in Wings of the Goddess. Before level 25 you needed to start Chains of Promathia.

So don't use it as an example. You were forced into a lot of painful situations that you had to waste tons of your time. It's not surprising for your first 75 to take a year back in the day because of the amount of things you had to do and the amount of reliance on parties or stronger players. God forbid you picked a unwanted class before level sync, you would never get a party.

[Fhaerron]

For new players, take 2 weeks of work and get trough the MSQ. It's really easy and fast.

If you don't want to take off work or don't want to fly trough the MSQ you can always buy a skip potion.

Option is yours.

Of course SE will never change this because then they would sell less skip potions.

[TwistedTea]

Sure, some games may allow free access to all content from the start...

There are already plenty of gates in terms of class levels/iLvls for dungeons eg.

If someone has purchased the base game plus expansions, why should they be locked out of areas/maps, NPCs purely for story reasons?

Literally the only thing you can do is start a new expansion at anytime...Let's take leveling for instance that you're touting as being better in FFXI...

I've not praised FFXI for leveling.

From everything you and others have stated, I imagine FFXI was terrible in many ways. But the point remains, you're not blocked from certain areas/maps and NPCs, notwithstanding the difficulties in reaching them.

No one is asking to implement the most terrible things/grinds about FFXI into FFXIV but please do not block areas/maps, NPCs purely for story reasons. If a lowbie dies, in a high level zone, that's their fault.

[Hasrat]

There are already plenty of gates in terms of class levels/iLvls for dungeons eg.

If someone has purchased the base game plus expansions, why should they be locked out of areas/maps, NPCs purely for story reasons?

How many times do I need to repeat this point? Because that is exactly how devs intend for this game to be played. Arguing against it is arguing for the game to be different than what it is and what it is meant to be. I'm not going to go play a first-person shooter and complain that I'd rather play in third-person. I'm not playing Minecraft and complaining that there's no story. I'm not playing Sims and complaining that there's no action/platforming.

FF XIV is a story-driven game. That's not going to appeal to every player. It's not supposed to. There are mountains of other games available to those players. A game is under no obligation to appeal to everyone.

[TwistedTea]

..FFXIV is a story-driven game...

How many times must I repeat the point that just because the game is story-driven doesn't mean that content such as areas/maps and NPCs should be locked behind story? Not in a social MMORPG catered towards casuals?

In single-player, locking out such things makes sense. FFXIV is good at getting you leveled really fast even without MSQ.Start of HW, main was already past 60. Any little difficulty MSQ provided became laughable. A movie which is interrupted by a few fights here and there.

FFXI has managed to be story driven and still provide a relative amount of 'freedom' when it comes to such content.

A social MMORPG has to appeal to a large audience to gain new subscriptions. The investment for a newbie either through time or jump potions to get the newest content is not attractive compared to the competition.

No/few new players= increase monetization efforts especially through non-sub based revenue streams.

[Zojha]

A game is under no obligation to appeal to everyone.

As a matter of fact, a game is under no obligation to appeal to anyone.

It's just going to hurt its own success if it doesn't. Which is what the original reddit was about - People having a lot of trouble convincing their friends to stick with the game due to the MSQ. I'm not surprised that people defend SE shooting themselves in the foot like that, but I am amazed it's not coming from the people who usually wish SE to crash and burn.

[KisaiTenshi]

As a matter of fact, a game is under no obligation to appeal to anyone.

It's just going to hurt its own success if it doesn't. Which is what the original reddit was about - People having a lot of trouble convincing their friends to stick with the game due to the MSQ. I'm not surprised that people defend SE shooting themselves in the foot like that, but I am amazed it's not coming from the people who usually wish SE to crash and burn.

Because it's a Final Fantasy game, therefor the story is important.

Leveling is the primary gate in MOST MMORPG games, and are actually are designed this way, because you become a one-hit-ko.

This game gates stuff behind MSQ because it assumes you are playing it for the story. You don't start watching a film at the third act climax. You don't start reading a novel at the last chapter. Asking to skip directly to HW or SB expansion's is like skipping the first and/or second book in a series.

[Genz]

While salvaging MSQ from its crap pit is certainly out of question for the dev team, an easier solution would be to make the "skip msq" a free option.
To defend the need to complete msq to start the next expansion, Yoshida tried to compare it to seasons in tv show... except that we're free to watch tv shows (or read books series, etc.) in whatever order we want (especially if we're told that the first season is boring...) because nobody actually gives a f... whether we watch things in order or not.
"xp fatigue" vs "rest xp bonus", in both WoW and FFXIV, has shown how players prefer to be "rewarded" instead of "punished". In Mass Effect 2 and 3, if you have a save file from the previous episode, you get some bonus. You're not forbidden to play ME2 if you haven't finished the first.

Thus, just make the msq skip free and add some reward when MSQ are done without skip, like the fantasia. Players can create a new character if they want to do the MSQ later.

[Veliena]

OP please just stop. We do not want ffxiv to become the next WoW. Where the devs pander to the players who don't want to invest time into the game. Buying the game does not mean you can experience everything the game has to offer. If you want it, work for it.

[Vhailor]

Sure there's the jump potion,free trial and the first 30 days free. However, after purchasing the game,the investment of further time and money compared to some other popular games,which let you get into the newest content faster,doesn't seem worth it.

Yeah, it's a definite problem. Most games seem to follow the path of FFXI, where each expansion came with a self-contained storyline that didn't require the completion of previous storylines in order to be able to participate. To be sure, the storyline in FFXIV is vastly easier to complete; it's easier to find groups, the fights are easier, non-Instance content requires no assistance at all and offers enough XP to more or less keep you at level cap. But it's still a problem, one absolutely certain to get worse if the next expansion is locked behind Stormblood. I mean, players starting out will literally have close to 500 quests between them and max-level dungeons, at that point. That's insane.

Don't get me wrong, like some others here, I think it'd be a waste of development resources to address. I think SE richly deserves a layer of criticism over this, and should probably give players a free month to account for the unnecessary time it'll take to fix. But their short-sighted incompetence in creating a story structure largely incompatible with a MMO nevertheless is going to require addressing. They might be able to get away with simply shifting course for 5.0, and allowing users to jump into it right after ARR, but if they lock it behind Stormblood, they're going to discourage huge numbers of new players.