Quality of Life Improvements and MSQ Gating for New Players

[TwistedTea]

...Games are like spider webs: changing one thing is absolutely going to end up affecting a bunch of other things you may not have considered...

I agree, it's not worth it for SE to change the status quo.

The least painful solution would be to give everyone 1 free MSQ skip potion at the launch of 5.0.

And perhaps for 6.0 content, not MSQ gate content like areas/maps and NPC vendors,etc. As others have mentioned, this does not detract from the enjoyment of players who enjoy the MSQ.

[TwistedTea]

Where the devs pander to the players who don't want to invest time into the game...If you want it, work for it.

Uhm, no. Statements like this are what currently get my aldgoat. Even in a hypothetical scenario where it could be feasible to make the MSQ optional, we have people defending the MSQ in it's current state.

1. Plenty of other gates for content exist;eg. class levels/iLvls. MSQ as a mandatory gate is not required.

2. MSQ does not really help with learning to play your class.

3. There are other methods to level and if newbies really 'get lost', we already have "Recommended Quests", place the optional MSQ in there.

4. Let's be honest, a lot of MSQ,especially ARR is terrible and uninspired. There's a difference between grinding out your DOH/DOL and doing busywork quests.

5. Players invest time into parts of the game which they think are interesting. I did Hildebrand because I thought it was interesting even though it's optional.

[TwistedTea]

Cont...

6. SE has indicated FFXIV caters to casual/social players. If all I wanted to do was hang out/glam in Kugane with my vet friends, is it acceptable to go through months of MSQ or purchase a skip potion, to do so?

7. A casual/social MMORPG which requires the purchase of the base game,expansions and MSQ skip potions just to access the newest content/areas is not an attractive choice when compared against similar games.

8. If the barriers to the newest content/area in an MMORPG are considered to be unnecessarily tedious, there's a possibility of losing newbie subs. SE then possibly has to increase revenue from existing players and perhaps will do so through non-sub based revenue streams.

[alimdia]

You can buy skip potions... if you want to skip. Dev's don't need to waste development time for people who don't want to actually play the entire game. They're not going to adjust the main story or side story quests, they've already provided a solution.

This is the exact reason that didn't make me fully support level boosting, now they are using it as excuse to have the worst leveling experience in all of the top MMOs. I can't believe you guys would rather have less people to play with than having a half decent leveling experience for new players.

They should use the millions of dollars they have been getting from level boosts and MSQ skip to fund a proper new player experience instead of leaving the new player retention hemorrhaging.

[Okamimaru]

SE doesn't really care if people stay or go... people try it don't like it and quit... others love it and stay... and others sub and unsub as they choose... it's casual in that you dont need to raid or do ex primals... you don't have to log on everyday, every week or even every month.... you play it when want and don't play when you don't want to... this game isn't a sir around and chat all day game... and if that's your goal then don't do the msq... just sit and socialize where you are... but quit acting like reading (or pressing skip cutscene) is a burden on you... you don't need to be in endgame areas of you're not doing endgame content which you've said you don't have time for anyway

[Veliena]

snip.

But thats the thing, ffxiv doesn't try to compete or compare to similar games. Yes it is an mmo, but it is a final fantasy title first and foremost. Story is why we play the game, everything else, the entire mmo aspect, is 2nd on a majority of the players list.

If all you REALLY want to do is be max level and hang out in a major city while talking with friends, by all means, buy a potion, there is nothing stopping you.

WoW had the exact same thing, for a more expensive price, as a jump potion and MSQ potion combined, to do the same thing. Nobody here has a problem with their existence in the game or the players who chose to use them. We DO however take issue when players join the game, then want things changed to their liking, disregarding the very reason most of us began playing this game in the first place. Most players play 14 because its NOT like other mmo's.

[Vrankyl]

This is the exact reason that didn't make me fully support level boosting, now they are using it as excuse to have the worst leveling experience in all of the top MMOs. I can't believe you guys would rather have less people to play with than having a half decent leveling experience for new players.

They should use the millions of dollars they have been getting from level boosts and MSQ skip to fund a proper new player experience instead of leaving the new player retention hemorrhaging.

This is a niche mmo for a reason, SE realizes and admits this. In fact as an ex WoW player I can say without a doubt that I enjoy the leveling experience of FF14 more than I ever did in WoW. I just finished leveling a second character to 70, and still enjoyed every moment of it.

[alimdia]

This is a niche mmo for a reason, SE realizes and admits this. In fact as an ex WoW player I can say without a doubt that I enjoy the leveling experience of FF14 more than I ever did in WoW. I just finished leveling a second character to 70, and still enjoyed every moment of it.

This is not a niche MMO, this is a top 3 AAA MMO, I'm pretty sure this game is only second to WoW in population considering it's available in more countries than ESO/GW2/BDO (the other top MMOs)

[Iscah]

FFXIV is the only MMO I've played - my usual taste in games being single-player story games, whether RPG or shorter 'emotional' games - and I've enjoyed it very much because of the story. It's been a line to follow through the world of the game, and I think it would be incredibly confusing if it was optional but I wanted to follow it. Dungeons would unlock randomly and not at the point where we are supposed to be visiting them. Things would get out-of-order and lose their significance.

Making MSQ optional might help people that don't care about the story, but it would be at the cost of coherency for those who *do* care, and/or it would place additional restrictions on the way that the story could be told. Already the job quests have to avoid directly referencing the main plot to allow for players doing those quests at any time, whether they've rushed ahead of the MSQ or finished it and the next expansion a year ago.

ARR was also reasonably good at giving you 'side' dungeons that didn't require MSQ to unlock, I'm taking a second character through the MSQ now, and she's overleveled - so I could pick up quests for Qarn, Cutter's Cry, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale and Wanderer's Palace while still at the story point of the ~Lv30 Titan fetchquest.

(I think it *is* possible to level your initial class through MSQ and daily roulettes? Depending on how intensely you play, I guess. I've been playing slowly with that second character, while also continuing with my main, but I've been raising two classes easily - a tank through roulettes and a DPS through MSQ+sidequests, and that seems to be working fairly well. Only occasionally needing to run dungeons with the DPS class, so if you were rushing through with dungeon and MSQ EXP going into the same class it might not be that hard to keep up.)

Also, I feel like it's been enjoyable, in a way, to have things I want to do "visible but out of reach" to work towards. Now that I'm getting to the endgame, and the story is wrapped up for now, I feel a bit lost.

And if FFXI was a 'standard' MMO experience, from what people are saying about it, I think I would have hated it. Hooray for this game doing something different to what all the other MMOs do?

[suggestions that expansions should come with a free story skip potion]

If they were ever going to offer free story-skip potions with a game purchase, I would expect it to be with a future "complete edition" and not with expansions. Logically the people buying expansion-only releases are the ones who have already completed the previous expansion and are past the point of needing to skip anything.

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

Wait what? That shield has more important places to be. On the other hand I would appreciate being able to hang up *my* shield that I received as a gift - is that a master crafting recipe?

• Removing HW jobs from being strictly locked behind 3.0 and allow you to start them when you get lvl 30 and reach Coerthas area, they could have the guild NPCs stationed in those areas until you get to Ishgard

I'd also retroactively fix AST/MCH/DRK and SAM/RDM so that they can be started at level 1 without HW/SB. Because of how the game has been designed to date, this would require making Ishgard (but none of the level 60+ areas) available from the start, and also creating a storyline for level 1-30 for AST/MCH/DRK. SAM/RDM, really they shoe-horned this.

I've played the astrologian and machinist quests, and the stories are so heavily set within Ishgard. They can't just be relocated - they would have to be completely re-written, and I think it would break those stories.

That said, obviously they learned from it and put the Stormblood expansion jobs in more accessible locations, but they planned it from the start, and the story (or at least what I've experienced of red mage so far) still seems tied to Stormblood rather than ARR.

And personally I'm *much* happier to start those jobs from Lv30/50 than have another several classes to grind up from Lv1. I understand how it's frustrating for newcomers who want that as their main class, but I can also see how frustrating it would be for long-time players if new jobs were released with the new expansion but have to be leveled all the way up to current MSQ level before they can start playing as that class for the story.

You know what I'd change? I fix the initial character creation to have no job assigned (Freelancer class.) This would allow the player to get to a maximum of level 15 (eg play all the non-job quests) to where they can now get on the airship and go to any of the guild's to pick up any of the jobs. They must pick a class/job to do the dungeon content and progress any further. Any of the combat up to this point would have a generic "Fight, Magic, Defend" command with no main hand gear. If you want to pick a class/job at any point you can. Therefor, by playing the freelancer class to level 15, you automatically get ALL combat jobs to level 15 the first time you switch to them (quests still need to be done to unlock the skills,) which is where the game has the longest slog for.

While starting secondary classes at a higher level would be nice, I think this sounds like the first part of the game would have very boring combat.

Easier solution would be just to have classes start higher, maybe at level 10 (since that's the level when you're first allowed to change classes).

[Penthea]

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?

I don't think you could call a game story driven if unlocking content had little connection to it. Something that is story driven means the story is central to the game. Not something on the side you encounter sometimes.

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

Newsflash: XIV is a different game made by a different development team lead by different people. XIV isn't a sequel to XI. If you want to play XI then go play XI. Don't go to a forum of a different game and complain about how it isn't the same.

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.

You seem to have this idea that just because something doesn't appeal to you as a new player then it won't appeal to anyone else. If that were the case the game wouldn't have seen its first expansion, never mind the second. Do you know the history of this game? It literally rose from the ashes of an incredibly bad game and has become a success story that is otherwise unheard of in the gaming industry. Most players aren't 1.0 veterans, they're players who dealt with the msq gating just fine. Many players have alts and have experienced the gating two or even three times. I don't think they would have worked through it on their alts if they found it to be a massive turn-off like you do.

The gating would be an issue if lvl sync didn't exist as it would make instance queues crazy long. But there is lvl sync and daily relevant roulettes tied to old content so doing old msq content isn't a problem. Many players love reliving the old content while watching their friends seeing it for the first time.

If you don't like something, fine. Nothing you can do about your preference, you can't force yourself to enjoy something. But harping on about how casual players are somehow at a disadvantage because of the story is plainly incorrect. The majority of XIV players are casual and have been since before ARR. If they felt disadvantaged well...I don't think this forum would exist.