New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Melichoir]

That is reductio ad absurdum, intentionally so. Because requiring a new player to go through this content for the misguided "importance" of the story is equally absurd, especially when every new player is already skipping content.

There is no need to require a player to go through ARR when the trailers and the context in the game tells players all they need to know to start heavensward IN Heavensward. Offering something for sale does not get Square off the hook for supplying an experience that is inferior for the last 100+ hours of the game.

Not only that, but New Game + erases any other justification to keep this content in the required block.

Heck, if story were the driving force behind requiring so much MSQ then Coils would be required of every new player, and that's a whole new tier of asinine.

I addressed this in the edit above. The game is designed around you being the hero. World events dont move unless you make them move. This isnt like WoW where things happen regardless. You can go to Northrend, do some quests, then jump to Pandaria, never resolving anything in Northrend because the game treats you as a foot soldier. You dont have to resolve those events. This structure means you have less impact on the world. Not more. This isnt like FF, where the world is impacted by your actions through the story.

Also no, HW doesnt cover the entirety of events of ARR, nor does it create or build stakes in the player why what happened mattered. At best, it gives you a synopsis. A reminder of some key points, which is useful for the guy whos played it, but not so much for hte person who skipped all that. An anology for this would be like if you went to a movie and htey took the first hour of it, shortened it to a 2 minute trailer, and then gave you the last 30 minutes. Most people would rightfully point out "Well thats kinda crap, why do I even care about these characters or this struggle?" There is merit in taking time to build up and invest in the plot and characters of a story. Again, careful streamlining is a good solution. Skipping it cause "To Long dont care" isnt really one. All youre doing is encouraging new players to not get invested. If they dont like it, just skip it. All the fun things are at the max level right? Then we get those players who race to max level and spend the subsequent few weeks complaining about how there's nothing to do before quitting. You dont foster a player base by giving them everything and not having them spend time and effort investing into the game.

Also new game + doesnt resolve this, because that mode was designed for people to REPLAY the MSQ. Meaning, for new game plus to actually be used, you ahve to have completed that content. The idea of removing the gate on content stems from teh idea you should just jump into anything you want regardless of where you were with the MSQ. Remove the gate, and the game operates like wow. You can always go back and finish BC if you skipped 90% of it by lvling in WoW. It also means that the idea of you being the hero in FFXIV becomes moot, because things then progress regardless of what youre doing. It's like saying if you spent absurd hours leveling to lvl 99 in FFVII right outside of Midgard on Disc 1, you can go ahead and skip all the way to the Crater and fight Sephiroth cause youre high enough level. Cause gating content is bad!

Also, far as I remember, Coils has almost no impact on the MSQ other than dealing with where Alisaie is during ARR. It's a good side quest with lore that is great and addresses more of 1.0 stuff, but its not core to the current MSQ. In fact, the savage content generally doesnt impact the MSQ. Its a side event that you can participate in. For example, if you dont do any of omega, nothing in the MSQ changes. It still shows up, does its thing, then goes and crashes somewhere. The MSQ proceeds regardless of those events cause Omega weapon is a separate side story. Even so, if it does have impact, it was limited, which is fine. Im not saying MSQ is perfect, but that doesnt mean we should say screw it and not care all together. Again, this isnt a zero sum game. Theres nuance here.