New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Melichoir]

Funny, because the MSQ ACTIVELY PREVENTS YOU FROM ACCESSING CONTENT.

As in, to access actual content (dungeons, trials, raids, alliance quests, daily quests) you have to get through certain parts of the MSQ or you are completely locked out of those systems regardless of character level. Level 61 and in full stormblood gear but still havent finished a certain part of MSQ? Sorry, you dont have access to reputation farming, alliance raids, 8 man raids, extreme trials, the hunt system, the squadron system, player housing, something im certain im forgetting, and probably feel like theres not enough content in the game.

Guess what. MSQ is content. The class you play is content, the quests you take, the places you go. Its all content. Youre not being prevented from content in the sense the MSQ is stripping you from it, but youre being gated. Thats an important distinction because all it means is you cant just have your run of any content. You actually need to do things to access stuff other than just be a high enough level. You need to put in effort and investment. And people tend to forget that MSQ is important because its the central point of FFXIV. The whole game is built around it. FFXIV is a very plot centric mmo that isnt set up in 'episodes'. You want episodic, play WoW. There is a large over arching story, but the way the xpacs and what not operate, you can jump in mid XPac and be up to speed with current events going on in the world because the game doesnt focus to heavily on that overall narrative. It allows you to skip over content. Because you arent important individually. The story just behaves that if you didnt do it, someone else did. Cause the formula for their content is Baddy comes along, horde or alliance encounter it, stuff happens, baddie is resolved with some overarching lore getting slightly pushed forward. But your character specifically isnt tied into that over arching lore unless its the only character you ever make. The game makes it very clear that you are one of many heroes of the horde/alliance, where the bigger plot points are generally resolved by heroes like Thrall or Jaina and youre there to help them. Youre a hero, not the hero.

That isnt the case with FFXIV. There are other adventures, but you are, more or less, the warrior of light (if not one of the very very few WoLs.) Youre actions directly impact the overarching narrative. Its about you, the player. So it makes perfect sense you cant just jump into a dungeon cause your level is high enough.

This isnt even a new concept. In RPGs and MMOs generally, level isnt the only requirement for access to certain content. Where people are getting hosed up over is they think they should have access because of their level rather than realizing that the driving force behind access to certain content is questing. Can we stream line some of that? Possibly. Some of the quests in ARR are a bit overly complex. It would take effort on SEs part to rewrite those quest lines to be more streamlined. Thats a possible solution. But I think this whole notion of "THE MSQ PREVENTS CONTENT ACCESS" comes from a misunderstanding of FFXIV as a whole and what is defined as content. Does it gate people? Sure. Is it preventing access? No, not in the sense that is being argued typically.