Option to unlock content without mandatory MSQ

[Elladie]

I am not really sure why you think this is a good idea, OP.

If you don't want to play the story and level up, you can buy skips to take you straight to endgame. If you don't consider that a valid investment, your urge to get the endgame isn't an overpowering one, so maybe you'll enjoy journeying through the story. It's a win/win for SE because you either pay a larger amount to bypass the MSQ or you sub for the time it takes to do it. By the time to get to level 80 by either means, you're having fun or you're not. But SE has made money out of you through this time.

If they make story skip free, level boost free and then you decide you're not having fun, they made a month's sub out of you, and that's it. The option to skip the story already exists. Why would they make it free? People who want to rush past the story are probably not going to hang around very long once they've done so, most of the future content is also going to be story based so why would they stay.

SE gave these people the option to buy skips if they want to. That's all the game needs in this respect

[Alacran]

Would it be feasible to add an option to unlock instances without making it mandatory to do MSQ?

Most MMOs don't have such a (long) main mandatory questline to unlock content and allow players to journey through the game however they like. People who don't care much for story will have a terrible time in FFXIV.

People who still want to unlock stuff through MSQ can continue to do so and unlock content that way. People who don't care for the MSQ can unlock the instances with this option and decide to perhaps do the MSQ another time.

I'm pretty sure this option would open up the game to (quite a lot) of new players who are for example only interested in combat/crafting/instances/raids/art and don't want to experience forced visual novel.

I would personally never use this option because I greatly enjoy the MSQ but I think this game is missing out on a lot of new players because of the MSQ barrier. Even with an MSQ skip they have to go through lots of quests (towards and at endgame) before unlocking content/instances and have to do so again with each patch.

Why would you be for or against this option? What needs to be taken into consideration?

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Edit:
My response to argument concerning players at endgame who will have no idea about what they're doing and thus worsen DF experience:

(Reads whole post)...

Right, people wanting something for nothing... about sums up our current issues in society.

Instant gratification should not be so overly demanded, expected, or praised. Somethings should be earned. What value is there in rewards you don't deserve?

Besides, they are already working on streamlining the early MSQ to trim the bloat of fetch quest.

[Darkpaw]

And for those of you claiming end game is a reason for so many players. 14’s end game is nothing revolutionary or out of the ordinary in fact a lot of people criticize it for being too easy. So what do most hardcore endgamers do? They clear week 1 and disable their subs until just before the next raid tier and quickly catch up and do it again.

Does that mean end game is bad? No. It’s not bad but it as just as casual friendly as any other content.

And its not like every piece of content is locked until the end of msq, throughout the msq you unlock plenty of different things that people enjoy, glamours at level 15, gold saucer, at level 50 there are 5 jobs ( 5 jobs considering foundation is a requirement for ast, drk, and mch) and a limited job, tons of dungeons, alliance raids, 8 man raids, extreme trials, old school relic, more stuff gets unlocked at 60 including two new jobs, more at 70, more at 80.

While yes you have to go through msq its not like the sense of progression is taken from you, and its not like they arent addressing the issues with the most contentious part of the bleeding story.

You want less fetch quests.. oh okay sure they are doing that, you want less quests between arr and hw oop wait doing that too, you want flying in arr areas oop theres evidence to suggest thats happening too.

The story if you choose to skip it freely (skipping cutscenes blah blah blah) is a minor MINOR inconvenience at best.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

As a somewhat new'ish player myself (I basically didn't start til recently despite buying the game years ago), it's taken me months to get through ARR, HW and I'm only partway through Stormblood. When I think of skips in games, I generally think of things that either take a lot of time but offer very little (ie- fast travel avoids having to spend most of your time auto running from point a to b- just consider how often you use it rather than walking or even using a porter which is a slow version of fast travel)- or activities that are specifically made to slow people down to make them play the game longer/spend money (grinds, most leveling systems, ultra low drop rates to valuables that can also be purchased in loot crates).

I don't think you can skip to the end of a story and then come back later and have the same effect- and the reason all the group content is behind story is because the story leads up to everything you do, it's interconnected. You ruin the dramatic effect of Episode V if the first scene you ever see in Star Wars is the father reveal, you aren't surprised if you know who dun it before a who dun it starts. You can't go back and unknow things, and generally speaking most story writers- whether for games, books or movies- want you to experience it in a certain order.

Now, to me the MSQ and major side quests is the biggest draw of the game, so spending a long period of time doing it is entirely to my benefit. I can understand wanting to skip a grind, or skip some sort of repetition- but by its nature that's not what a story is. I just can't imagine buying a regular game, book or movie only to skip to the end.

[Alacran]

Question, In skipping said MSQ, would you still feel you are entitled to MSQ rewards, glamours, minions, emotes, gil, and the like? Would you expect a flood of threads asking why those skippers who never get those items to complain as to why they get excluded from rewards specifically tied to the MSQ?


Where does the entitlement end?

[SamRF]

I am not really sure why you think this is a good idea, OP.

If you don't want to play the story and level up, you can buy skips to take you straight to endgame. If you don't consider that a valid investment, your urge to get the endgame isn't an overpowering one, so maybe you'll enjoy journeying through the story. It's a win/win for SE because you either pay a larger amount to bypass the MSQ or you sub for the time it takes to do it. By the time to get to level 80 by either means, you're having fun or you're not. But SE has made money out of you through this time.

If they make story skip free, level boost free and then you decide you're not having fun, they made a month's sub out of you, and that's it. The option to skip the story already exists. Why would they make it free? People who want to rush past the story are probably not going to hang around very long once they've done so, most of the future content is also going to be story based so why would they stay.

SE gave these people the option to buy skips if they want to. That's all the game needs in this respect

The skips don't take you straight to endgame, you still need to do considerable amount of very awkward story you will barely understand because you didn't experience everything that came before it. It will also spoil previous story which you may have wanted to do at some point after you've experienced some endgame content and got a feel for the combat.

When it comes to profit, the game could perhaps make even more profit by making it more accessible and draw in many more players who are used to other MMO's. They could potentially get more sales long term and thus make more profit. Complying to demand is why the game isn't costing 200$. You need to have a good deal to attract as many players as possible.

These are purely counterarguments against the "MSQ skip potion", not for the actual topic itself.

[linay]

It will also spoil previous story which you may have wanted to do at some point after you've experienced some endgame content and got a feel for the combat.

That's what unlocking content without the story would do: spoil the story unless the endgame content is always separated from the MSQ, which would limit the narrative possibility. The latest example is the Eden raid.

[Kuroka]

Would it be feasible to add an option to unlock instances without making it mandatory to do MSQ?

Most MMOs don't have such a (long) main mandatory questline to unlock content and allow players to journey through the game however they like. People who don't care much for story will have a terrible time in FFXIV.

...which simply means its the wrong kind of game for them. Im not gettin GoD because the landscapes are pretty but i hate all that shooting and explosions, either. I just dont see why "its a mmo and i wanna raid" is a valid excuse for this...

[Saefinn]

The skips don't take you straight to endgame, you still need to do considerable amount of very awkward story you will barely understand because you didn't experience everything that came before it. It will also spoil previous story which you may have wanted to do at some point after you've experienced some endgame content and got a feel for the combat.

When it comes to profit, the game could perhaps make even more profit by making it more accessible and draw in many more players who are used to other MMO's. They could potentially get more sales long term and thus make more profit. Complying to demand is why the game isn't costing 200$. You need to have a good deal to attract as many players as possible.

These are purely counterarguments against the "MSQ skip potion", not for the actual topic itself.

You speak like they're needing to compromise to get more players when it is doing remarkably well as an MMO. As though this isn't a ridiculously successful MMO already, which just got a standing ovation for its Shadowbringers expansion (with it being heralded as one of the best storylines in the FF series, which is high praise), an increasing player base and one miraculously rescued from its massive flop from 1.0. It's not like this hasn't been encouraging its share of WoW refugees either. It seems ridiculous that after the team has done this amazingly well, that they should be doing more to maximise profit. There's certainly things that need improvement (chronic moany healer here) and there are problems out there, but I'd not say it being a story focused game is not one of them.

They could try to please everyone to maximise profit even further, yes, but the idea of developer effort being driven to maximum profit for me already is a terrible principle. Hello EA.

But trying to please everyone can also dilute the experience, there being an imperative to progress story rather than it being optional encourages more investment in the experience of the game and this is what people come to expect out of a story driven game. And the game is tailored to provide a certain user experience. I cannot skip story progression in any other Final Fantasy. If I want to fight Ruby Weapon in FFVII, I have to progress to it, not just jump in and do the fight. I thought this principle was actually kinda well...normal for a video game. It isn't always different for an MMO and I like that it isn't here.

[SannaR]

Going for BIS was totally up to the person to decide though. If that reward was important enough to them, they would clear the content. The difference here is that SE gave players a choice. They didn't force you to complete 100% of the previous stories just to work on what you actually wanted.

Only up to the person if they didn't want to do the hardest content. The XI playerbase wouldn't even take a smn who didn't have Alexander back before the PD nerf to events and that's before gear was even thought of. Depending on the job you came as to any event you better look like you were working on getting BiS or were known to have skills or you were seen by most on the server as gimping any group you joined or at least come as a whm. Oh and you better know the current meta or you were again left behind.

Also that's just gear if we go to travel most of the best ways to get around the world requires you to have done a lot if not most of the various storylines. One even makes you have to go through one of the citystates storylines just so you can get a key item that allows you not need two other people to open a door.