Quality of Life Improvements and MSQ Gating for New Players

[Iscah]

Why are you people (MSQ Gate Defenders) so against trimming the story or allowing easier access for new players to get into the game?

I guess the simplest answer is, I've enjoyed this game as a linear, story-driven game. If the story gating wasn't there, it would be a different game. It would have been built differently from the start. Would I have still enjoyed it? Maybe, but I wouldn't have played this game.

And I am, relatively, a new player. I've been here for less than a year, I've worked through the MSQ in a very "spread-out" sort of way and all the while I've had a social FC that I've had plenty of interaction and gameplay with despite not being at max level until recently.

Obviously I've got very different goals to your raiding friend, but for me it has been an enjoyable journey overall. The world has been wonderful to explore. The story is - I agree - very varying in its quality but the good parts are great and the bad parts are therefore worth going through. I like seeing my character in the story, and keeping track of all the different characters and their storylines.

And I think having the story makes it easier, in some ways, to get into the game because it guides you through the world instead of just leaving you to figure out what to do on your own. (I can see a different appeal in that, but I really like story-driven games.)


Also, if certain players are 'discouraged' from FFXIV because of the story gating, perhaps it's just not the game for them. And perhaps the games they do like are not games that I would enjoy. Not every game needs to - or can - cater to every person's taste in gaming, and ultimately it makes more sense (to me at least) for FFXIV to do things differently instead of being exactly the same as other MMOs.

[Vstarstruck]

What NPCs are you thinking of, exactly? Anything sold by the gear vendors can be purchased on the marketboard that you can access right from the start of the game. Some of it can be HQ and quite cheap because the MSQ inevitably throws more gear at you than you actually need, especially early in the expansions if the player has Ironworks/Shire gear and the MSQ-reward gear is not an upgrade, so everyone just takes it and tries to sell it.

If you are a crafter focus, the gating is hell. You leaves are locked behind unlocking them, needing to advance your crafting is gated unless you do the MSQ. I know someone who stopped playing a character (they really wanted to craft on one character while doing battle content on the other) and the way this game is set up makes that impossible to do. You really shouldn't be gating so much by MSQ. What you are liking, running around and talking to npcs feels tedious and meaningless to many, it also discourages making alts. discouraging making alts is a problem because yet again, this game as severe problems with having enough inventory space for career crafters.

The problem with "maybe this is not the game for some people" is that there was not this severe level of gating in ARR. you could run to mor dhona on your level 50 crafter and get your master books. Can't do that anymore (as in for 60 and 70) because it is locked behind the current expansions main hub.

Appealing to different types of play is never a bad thing, each expansion should not be blocking each other in one single chain, and will only grow more as a problem as future expansions open up.

Can anyone who is defending MSQ to not be changed answer me these few questions?

1. If i buy a MSQ skip potion only without buying a job skip potion how does the character level up ? Does this make it almost compulsory to buy both potions (MSQ + Job Potions) together? (for new characters)

2. When trying to get a friend to play the game who is interested in raiding , how do i justify the price he/she has to pay (complete edition + msq skip + job potion) just to get to the content that my friend enjoys?

3. It's an apparent problem (even if not a big one) that MSQ gating is discouraging new players from FFXIV due to the time investment / money investment(skip potions) . This would mean less new blood in ffxiv and also in the long run may cause playerbase to decline and leading to what might be the end of the game that we love. Why are you people (MSQ Gate Defenders) so against trimming the story or allowing easier access for new players to get into the game?

your reason 3 will only increase as a problem with every new expansion they release.

For 1 you just spam palace of the dead, no big deal

TBH if I could only buy one, the potion I be buying is skip potion because the MSQ series at level 50 is pure hell. I rather spam palace of the dead to gain levels, then to spam MSQs to get past the area gating.

[RinzTeiruzu]

The story is - I agree - very varying in its quality but the good parts are great and the bad parts are therefore worth going through
.

From your post , if you acknowledge there are good and bad parts what is wrong with trimming out the bad parts / parts which have no relation to the plot to make it a better and less sloggy experience for new players?

My friends are not exactly against going through the MSQ portion of FFXIV but when he asks me how long it is going to take(i feel obliged to tell him the truth as FFXIV is a chunk of money investment) and when he reads about the post ARR quests issues it really turns him off from playing FFXIV.. Which is a real shame because i think the story in FFXIV is great and the endgame content like savage raids are insanely fun and i know he would probably enjoy it.

[RinzTeiruzu]

For 1 you just spam palace of the dead, no big deal

TBH if I could only buy one, the potion I be buying is skip potion because the MSQ series at level 50 is pure hell. I rather spam palace of the dead to gain levels, then to spam MSQs to get past the area gating.

Thanks for this input as i was thinking about starting an alt but just wanted to get a MSQ skip to ARR ~

[Vhailor]

Plus, you also have people like me for whom, because the MSQ is mandatory, it feels it adds more weight to what I am doing. When I played WoW, I felt so inconsequential, so much "just another person in the machine", because of how the story was delivered. I couldn't get into it. But Final Fantasy XIV's story with the main scenario being mandatory and how it unlocked things for me, it added a lot more weight to it. Making the story optional would believe it or not actually kill that meaningful impact behind the story for me. And I'm probably not the only one either. Though I can definitely agree with a free story skip (and make said story skip unlock the relevant Deep Dungeons, as well as tell them HOW TO GET TO THEM!) - heck, throw in a choice of job levelling potion too. I'd be OK with that combined with the MSQ skip. But yeah, just don't ungate the story in my eyes.

Honestly, I think SE has overdone it with FFXIV. Having a few story-specific areas gated behind storyline content is fine, but it's just too much, and too linear. You can't enter Heavensward without being 50 and completing the ARR storyline (and there is no content whatsoever for sub-50 as a result); you can't enter Stormblood without being 60 and completing the Heavensward storyline (again, no content whatsoever for sub-60 as a result); what's next? Will we be talking a level 80 requirement and 500+ main scenario quests to access any content a couple of expansions from now?

FFXI handled this much better, and it's shameful that the FFXIV development team has stubbornly ignored its approach. XI's storyline certainly didn't lack for weight, and despite featuring far more difficult content, its expansions were a lot more accessible than XIV's are. Rise of the Zilart introduced mid-20s areas despite increasing the cap from 50 to, eventually, 75. Players jumped naturally into these areas at 25ish when they ventured to Kazham. Chains of Promathia, released under a 75 cap, had content start at level 30. Treasures of Aht Urhgan, released under a 75 cap, had creatures starting in the 50s, and replaced most of the XP camps from the mid-50s onward. These expansions, despite featuring increasingly difficult content and challenging fights, despite offering new toys that increased the power of existing players, still allowed for players who weren't at the cap to participate. And, none of the expansion content was gated behind any other expansion's storyline content. Sky was introduced in Zilart, and was gated behind Zilart storyline; Sea was introduced in CoP, and was gated behind CoP storyline.

That's how you build strong storylines that also don't bar newer players from leaping into the content immediately. You introduce some stuff for everyone, and you don't gate the f***ing content behind pre-existing storylines. Segment them off from each other. There's no need whatsoever for the linear approach to story-building that the XIV team has embraced.

[Iscah]

From your post , if you acknowledge there are good and bad parts what is wrong with trimming out the bad parts / parts which have no relation to the plot to make it a better and less sloggy experience for new players?

My friends are not exactly against going through the MSQ portion of FFXIV but when he asks me how long it is going to take(i feel obliged to tell him the truth as FFXIV is a chunk of money investment) and when he reads about the post ARR quests issues it really turns him off from playing FFXIV.. Which is a real shame because i think the story in FFXIV is great and the endgame content like savage raids are insanely fun and i know he would probably enjoy it.

I guess it comes back to, if they had planned from the start to have story content that would 'become optional' later, they would have planned for it, but since they didn't, it becomes too hard to remove it now.

For example, the long fetchquest leading up to fighting Titan - I'm fairly sure most people hate it, but what happens if you take it out? Suddenly you've lost a few levels of MSQ, and the associated EXP, and the reason for us to go to Brayflox's Longstop, AND they need to rewrite all the script elements that rely on that being a mandatory part of progression and recode things underneath. There needs to be a new end-purpose to the quest chain now that it's not "so they'll let us fight Titan".

Repeat for every section of the plot that can be considered optional. It's probably not efficient for them as a company to spend time and money "fixing" it (which they may not personally view as needing fixing) versus the amount of people that will refuse to play the game because of it.

And just judging which stories are 'optional' to the point of needing removal would be a whole process in itself. Where do they draw the line? How much of their game do they cut up and rearrange before the players are happy?


(Additionally, with the long-form storytelling they're using here, things do happen later that rely on insignificant things earlier. Maybe some of those one-shot characters turn out to be important three expansions later.)

[Nestama]

There's a lot of unnecessary filler within the ARR story, specifically around Titan's story and again throughout 2.1 and 2.2 (I think SE eased up on this from then on). I've also suggested that entire zones not be locked behind the story and just do things how FFXI did it.

But there's always someone who will say that FFXIV is a story-focused game (that some people skip anyway and also once you're done with the story, that's it. Can't even redo those solo fights unless you make an alt), or that the gates are there to keep the RMT's out or something. I'm glad that SE at least let people unlock SAM and RDM outside of SB and HW, but it's a shame they didn't do that in the first place for the HW Jobs (from what I can recall, aren't most/all of their Job Quests in ARR zones?)

[Kaitoo]

snip

to question 3: If the reason your friend wants to play an mmorpg only for raiding ff xiv (and imo mmorpgs in general) is not the game for him to begin with

[Remedi]

to question 3: If the reason your friend wants to play an mmorpg only for raiding ff xiv (and imo mmorpgs in general) is not the game for him to begin with

I agree, if some1 is interested in only raiding this is definitively not the game for them

[Iscah]

the HW Jobs (from what I can recall, aren't most/all of their Job Quests in ARR zones?)

The Lv30-50 quests use ARR locations, because you need to be a higher level to go into the HW zones, so all those early quests need to be in accessible locations while you get your new class up to MSQ level. They're very much set in Ishgard for the story though.