An option for characters to start at level 50, pre-heavensward, for FREE

[DumdogsWorld]

Your money or your time. Please pick one. People who value their time more than anything else should find the 3 or 4 days required to complete ARR worth the 20 dollars or whatever.

[Ronduwil]

To be completely fair, it isn't level skips that are killing WoW. It is ignorance and hubris that are killing it.

It isn't *just* level skips that are killing WoW, but they are a factor. Players buy the game, get a free boost to 110, clear 10 levels in a month, and then there's nothing to do except raid or grind WQs. Since they haven't invested anything in their character, there's no incentive to remain. There's a group of players who is just playing the game for the sake of having the best stuff as quickly as possible, which means jumping straight to max level and grinding out raids. However, I believe that there is a larger portion of players who actually enjoy playing the game for its own sake. I fall into that latter category. I've had a blast leveling all my gathering and crafting classes to 30, and it feels like I'm leveling at a pretty fast rate just by progressing through the story. I'm not even taking on leves or side quests on my main class, and I'm still about five levels higher than my story quest. I hear complaints that leveling is slow, but I just don't see it. I'm already level 37, and leveling still seems fast. If it slows down from levels 40-50, then that's only 10 levels that will be slow. That's not so bad. Again, I just don't see a compelling reason to make leveling even faster than it already is.

[ForteNightshade]

It is hard for me to sympathize with SE when they say "but muh workload!" They are a huge name in the gaming industry and are fully capable of doing what needs to be done when they want to in order for them to turn a profit. They have talked about this in the past though and I'm pretty sure they are keen on doing it. It'll just be a matter of when imo.

Money isn't the issue. Whether they throw thousands at this problem or do it on the cheap, it still requires people from the dev team to commit their time towards something else. That inevitably means they have less people working on new content. Think of it this way. If they had 100 people all working on new content but this consolidation required 30 due to all the work associated with adjusting code, possibly rewriting dialogue and etc. That means only 70 people are left working on things for Shadowbringers, which may result in longer delays or less new content overall. Yoshida has acknowledged this the precise reason they have yet to touch ARR.

I, for one, wouldn't want to lose content just so they can make ARR less of a slog.

[DeusOcha]

As a new player starting just last month and currently in Heavensward content. I disagree. The story of ARR/post-ARR is essential to understand what the heck's going on in Heavensward. If anything though, post-ARR quests could stand to be trimmed down substantially.

[Vahlnir]

Money isn't the issue. Whether they throw thousands at this problem or do it on the cheap, it still requires people from the dev team to commit their time towards something else. That inevitably means they have less people working on new content. Think of it this way. If they had 100 people all working on new content but this consolidation required 30 due to all the work associated with adjusting code, possibly rewriting dialogue and etc. That means only 70 people are left working on things for Shadowbringers, which may result in longer delays or less new content overall. Yoshida has acknowledged this the precise reason they have yet to touch ARR.

So they should hire a few more people. I realize it's not as simple as that. They would probably need some training and such...but it would benefit them as a company in the long run. Sometimes a business has to spend money to make more money.

[Kleeya]

So they should hire a few more people. I realize it's not as simple as that. They would probably need some training and such...but it would benefit them as a company in the long run. Sometimes a business has to spend money to make more money.

If only it was that simple.

While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop. This is a complex problem that can’t be solved simply by throwing more money or people at it, as it impacts both debugging and QA.

https://gamerescape.com/2019/05/10/l...producer-lxii/

I can understand that very well. At my last work the more new trainees were launched at me, the more time i did lose ensuring they were not making any mistakes that would impact the entire team afterwards, making my usual personnal tasks less and less efficient. It was way better working without them, and a relief when they were thrown at someone else XD

[Seraphor]

A price drop sure.
Basically have the SB skip be the price the GW skip is currently.
Then the HW skip be what the ARR skip is right now.
So then ARR skip can be half of what it is.

Maybe then in 6.0 it'll be free.

[Schan]

As time goes by, I believe that it’s getting harder and harder to get new players into the game. I believe the game’s quality skyrocketed ever since heavensward.

I know lots of people think jump potions should be purchased, but as time goes by I think jump potions shouldn’t be the only option for players to catch up. Starting level 50 from Heavensward makes the most sense to me so we get new characters without disrespecting existing players.
Upvote if you agree

I disagree. Can we not encourage SE to make the same mistakes Blizzard has done please?

[Dyvid]

Why Level 50. Why not just give a free MSQ skip potion with purchase?

[Avidria]

As time goes by, I believe that it’s getting harder and harder to get new players into the game. I believe the game’s quality skyrocketed ever since heavensward.

I know lots of people think jump potions should be purchased, but as time goes by I think jump potions shouldn’t be the only option for players to catch up. Starting level 50 from Heavensward makes the most sense to me so we get new characters without disrespecting existing players.
Upvote if you agree

Or they can just cut out all the ridiculous fluffy fetch quests in post-ARR and streamline the leveling process a little bit instead of letting people carve off a huge chunk of the game for free.

This comes with an unfortunate caveat though. The devs have admitted consolidating the sheer amount of quests would take considerable work. Therefore, if they prioritize it, we, the veteran players, may lose out on new content for something none of us will ever see unless we level alts. It's easy to say "new players should do the story but just make it more streamlined." But far too many people forget there's a cost involved. For myself, if it came down to losing a trial, BA, Ultimate, more fleshed out side quests or really anything of significance, I'd be quite annoyed because as mentioned, fixing the myriad of pointless fetch quests in ARR won't have any impact on me whatsoever. I'll just have even less to do.

It's tricky. Personally, I'd be okay with them going back and focusing on streamlining old content, especially if some extra QoL improvements got bundled in the mix somehow. Trim down some menus, make it so I can do solo dungeons without leaving my group... stuff like that. Just a whole patch focused on fixing what we already have and making it better.

While I totally disagree with OP's suggestion, they are right that the more expansions we get, the more story new players are gonna have to do to catch up, and the more daunting it's gonna get for somebody totally new to the game who's just checked the wiki for how many quests they have left to do. :P