Option to unlock content without mandatory MSQ

[Packetdancer]

Another suggestion I had made in a previous thread (which was also met with just as much criticism) was to treat this whole story from ARR till whatever next expansion will be as 1 saga and then continue the story with a completely new concept/threat without involving any of the previous story elements so people can safely level boost and story skip to that point and enjoy next saga story to the fullest, even though they didn't experience 2.0 till 6.0 . Potentially increasing longevity of this game.

I can see where you're coming from, but if you just come up with a new relatively-isolated story arc still involving the established cast... well, at that point, isn't that basically Shadowbringers? Even though the story stands on its own a lot more than Heavensward (for instance) did, it still builds on all the things that came before. People who story-jump right to ShB and still want to enjoy the story are like, "Wait, who is this person? Why am I supposed to care?" And the impact of things you learn lore-wise is greater because of all the previous history with the Ascians and how Hydaelyn and Zodiark's conflict has been portrayed previously.

I'd argue that even 2.0—itself a 'let's start a new saga'—suffers from this a bit; I've had friends start playing recently who are like, "I get that this 'Louisoix' person was important somehow, but what the heck did he do? What was this 'Circle of Knowing' anyway?" or "Who the hell was this 'Nael van Darnus'?" and so on; folks familiar with the 1.0 storyline, meanwhile, have the context.

This isn't to say you can't find ways to mitigate that, but it takes a not-insignificant amount of time. And to separate it out entirely—to get rid of all our current characters like the Scions, Raubahn, Pipin, the Elder Seedseer, Aymeric, Cid, Wedge, Biggs, Nero, Shadowhunter, Estinien, etc.—feels to me like at that point it's less "the next expansion" and more like when a successful television show turns into a franchise and cancels one show while a new one launches. Sure, they took place in the same universe, but not everyone who liked "Star Trek: the Next Generation" moved on to "Star Trek: Deep Space 9". And not everyone who loved DS9 moved on to Voyager. Not everyone who enjoyed Voyager moved on to Enterprise. And no one enjoyed Enterprise.

(I kid. Mostly.)

Plenty of people played the Secret World despite the objectively broken combat system solely because we enjoyed the story, and I have no doubt there's a similar chunk of FFXIV players who play the game solely for the story and don't care much about savage endgame or fine-tuning their combat rotation. (And then there's people who care about both things, like me.) We have no way to know what percentage of the playerbase that represents; I don't know that even SquareEnix necessarily knows. And we don't know what SquareEnix's target playerbase size is; sometimes you don't want a game to expand too much beyond a target level because the resources necessary to maintain the playerbase become too high.

(Presumably SquareEnix does know their target size. Or else they need to have serious words with some department of the company.)

That said, I do think that catering too heavily to any one niche of a game's playerbase at the expense of others is unwise. If alienating the story-driven playerbase is almost certainly a bad idea for a game like this, I don't think alienating the endgame chasers and hardcore raiders is a great idea either; I'd argue that the in-game economy around any given patch is driven by those chasing the new glamour items (witness how much the Rebel Coat went for when 5.1 hit, and how much the Dalmascan stuff is going for right now) and those chasing gear for raiding (witness how much the Neo-Ishgardian stuff went for initially). But catering too heavily to one smaller target, such as making your entire focus the diehard raiders...

Well, as I said in another thread, press F to pay respects to WildStar.

If the playerbase is at or near the target size right now, and 65% (hypothetical number) of the playerbase are casual players who are here for the story 30% are diehard raiders and endgame chasers solely here for endgame content who don't care about the MSQ, while 5% are here solely to gather/craft and play triple triad... well, if you restart the story—effectively launching a new 'show'—maybe not all of those 65% follow you. I know a lot of people—me included—who eventually drifted away from SWTOR after they basically went "Okay, and now... entirely new story nearly entirely unrelated to all previous story! *jazzhands*" (Despite the fact that I really did enjoy the addition of Theron and Lana to the companion group.)

If the playerbase is way below their desired the target size... well, then maybe it makes sense for them to examine options to get more folks in who don't care about the story.

But without access to numbers that only SquareEnix has—assuming anyone has an accurate census of the playerbase's interests and motives for sticking around—I expect it's really hard for anyone to know whether a massive shift in story like that would be a wise decision or a really ill-advised one. So I imagine that for now, carrying the story onwards (for the story-focused folks) while providing jump potions (for those who want to hop right into the content) is their way of hedging their bets.

[TaleraRistain]

I'd be against it. The commitment to the story is one of the things that makes FFXIV unique in MMOs. We have plenty of MMOs who don't care about story. Let's keep the one that does as it is.

[sauc]

Lotta people here ignoring the part he said ''optional''. I would have 100% have leveled through just spamming dungeons,fates,collecting bear asses etc like all other mmos. The msq made me quit in 2013 and nearly made me quit again, alot of us couldn't possibly care less about a story and just want to play an mmo. The rest of you would lose out on nothing. All I see is ''I want to force you to go through something you don't want to because I liked it and so should you.''

But as it's already been said they sell story skip potions so it won't ever be an option sadly. It's mere existence means there's enough people who don't want to do it and they figured they could cash out on it.

[dangadget]

Lotta people here ignoring the part he said ''optional''. I would have 100% have leveled through just spamming dungeons,fates,collecting bear asses etc like all other mmos. The msq made me quit in 2013 and nearly made me quit again, alot of us couldn't possibly care less about a story and just want to play an mmo. The rest of you would lose out on nothing. All I see is ''I want to force you to go through something you don't want to because I liked it and so should you.''

But as it's already been said they sell story skip potions so it won't ever be an option sadly. It's mere existence means there's enough people who don't want to do it and they figured they could cash out on it.

Not at all, completely got that the first time around, but the other part of that statement was free, and that is the part that I feel would be detrimental to the character of the game.
There is no demonstrable need to "widen" or "expand" the playerbase by appealing to those who do not actually want to play a Final Fantasy MMO

[Skivvy]

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.

But again, the path in which you experienced the game was your own choice.

XI didn't force you to get BIS items. Some groups may have required that, but it was nowhere near a requirement to play the game and do well at your jobs. No different than how certain XIV PF/Static groups require extremely high gear for their groups. It's nowhere near a requirement set by SE, but if you want to play with that group, you'll do what needs to be done.

Options are a fantastic thing to have in an MMO. I don't think anyone here is saying to remove the story, simply make some of it optional.

[Packetdancer]

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.

It sounds to me like you're asking for two mutually exclusive things here, though, at least insofar as they want to handle FFXIV. So far as I can tell from this, you want:

1. For people to join and be immediately able to jump to endgame raiding, so they can experience endgame and know what it's like.
2. To ensure they aren't spoiled on story, so they can go back and play it at some later date.

But clearly what the devs want to do with FFXIV is to tell a story where pieces interconnect. You can't do really any Shadowbringers content that takes you to the Crystarium without (to some extent) spoiling a bit of the Crystal Tower alliance raid storyline. You can't do the Twinning without spoiling at least a little bit of the Alexander and Omega raids. You can't do the Eden raids without spoiling the end result of the choice that a certain character makes in the MSQ. You can't do any ShB content at all without spoiling the entire late-post-Stormblood arc.

There are games where you can do content out-of-order. Where things will scale appropriately, so it doesn't matter if you've finished three other expansions or if this is your first set of quests, and where no storyline in one expansion remotely impacts another one. Where every expansion stands on its own narratively, and nothing that happens in any one expansion is referenced (and thus potentially spoiled) in another, so it doesn't matter what order they're played in. (Or where the game has little to no story at all beyond some sort of shared background meta-narrative that advances in realtime, a'la EvE Online or Elite: Dangerous.)

But I'd argue we have plenty of evidence that's not the game that the FFXIV dev team want to make.

I feel like even if they were to reboot the story and get rid of every element we've already had—no reference to the Calamity, no interactions with the existing NPCs we've met and had extensive interactions with like the Garlond Ironworks crew, or the Eorzean leader NPCs and Aymeric, or Estinien, or the Scions—so that absolutely nothing in the game up to this point were referenced, I suspect they'd still want to reference things in the new saga going forward in it. And then you still have the same problem; even if 6.0 pushes a reset button—throws you onto a new star somewhere without any established NPCs and never references anything prior to it—when 7.0 comes out, it references stuff in 6.0.

What you might be able to do is the Bioware approach, like they did for Mass Effect 2 on Playstation when Mass Effect 1 had not been released there; they made a sort of playable 'comic book' that took you through the story very quickly, letting you make any choices that you would've been able to make in the game, and then created an appropriate world state to import into ME2. SquareEnix could do one of those for each storyline—including 1.0, if they wanted!—and then people would be able to get the story without having to do the grind, and could use jump potions. You could even extend those potions to go to endgame at that point.

But if the ask is "I don't want this game to have ongoing story at all, every expansion should be self-contained with no story elements and characters carried over between them, and where you can do them in any order and at your leisure", I'd argue that's a very different game than FFXIV is—or, arguably, than the dev team seems to ever intend it to be. Or even want to make.

And for a shift that dramatic... well, it strikes me as saying there's flaws in Law and Order, because it doesn't have enough starships and space wizardry. And no matter how much you might enjoy Star Wars, they're two very different things, and there's space in the world for both of them.

(That said, BRB; I'm totally going to go write a procedural legal drama set in the Star Wars universe because it sounds amazing. And there's space in the world for that third thing, too.)

[sauc]

Not at all, completely got that the first time around, but the other part of that statement was free, and that is the part that I feel would be detrimental to the character of the game.
There is no demonstrable need to "widen" or "expand" the playerbase by appealing to those who do not actually want to play a Final Fantasy MMO

Are you saying that people who play the game simply because it has the final fantasy name would quit in droves if it was optional? Seems like a rather petty reason. Even if it did I doubt it would make the number of people who quit greater than the number of people the game would keep thanks to the msq. I don't think it's a secret to anyone that the msq and the extremely slow combat at the start are huge player retention killers. Those 2 things are among the most repeated criticism of the game.

But as I said already: potion skip. That alone likely tilts the pros over cons to square. Well that and they are likely unable to change it even if they wanted to.

[Kenky]

See.. The issue here is that, well..

It's a Final Fantasy Game. I know that's been said in this particular thread countless times, but I think it should be clarified what a "Final Fantasy" game is. It's main goal is to tell a story, with little bits here and there to round it all out.

There are 13 (more than 13 actually) other titles that hammer it over the players head that anything with "Final Fantasy" in the title is going to prioritize story-telling and cinematics. If it can't tell the story, or if you don't care about the story, then why are you picking up a Final Fantasy game? Why give it time when you clearly don't want what it offers?

You want an MMO that lets you level however you please? Go play WoW, or GW2 or any other MMO that credits itself as a mindless hack-and-slash fest. You're not really going to win any supporters of get any favours when you cry about a Final Fantasy game being a Final Fantasy game, even though you read the name on the tin. It's not like you open a pack of peanuts and a plug-socket suddenly springs out at you, eh?

And lastly. With all of the dungeons (with the exception of Post-expansion dungeons and Dusk Vigil in Heavensward) the story gives you a legitimate reason and even offers your character motive to DO said dungeon, or raid, or whatever-have-you. Because it ties into the story. Plenty of dungeons in ARR pit you against voidsent, primal worshippers or those that pose too great a threat for the local guards to deal with. in Heavensward, you're fighting and pushing back the Dravanian tide, in Stormblood you're amassing an army to fight the Garleans, even if it means proving your worth to strangers.

They all matter. They all play a part in the over-arching story and, again, if you don't care about the story, then FFXIV isn't an MMO for you. No ifs, ands or buts here. They know what they're selling and who their audience is. They don't need to "reach a broader market" because it's pretty damn clear than whenever an MMO decides to do so, they suddenly catch on fire and burn out. Or shall we forget the dumbing down of WoW over the past few expansions, purely to cater to anyone and everyone? And that's not just mechanics, but story too. Every part of it just being white-washed into "These guys good. Those guys bad. Kill bad."

[sauc]

See.. The issue here is that, well..

It's a Final Fantasy Game. I know that's been said in this particular thread countless times, but I think it should be clarified what a "Final Fantasy" game is. It's main goal is to tell a story, with little bits here and there to round it all out.

There are 13 (more than 13 actually) other titles that hammer it over the players head that anything with "Final Fantasy" in the title is going to prioritize story-telling and cinematics. If it can't tell the story, or if you don't care about the story, then why are you picking up a Final Fantasy game?

You want an MMO that lets you level however you please? Go play WoW, or GW2 or any other MMO that credits itself as a mindless hack-and-slash fest. You're not really going to win any supporters of get any favours when you cry about a Final Fantasy game being a Final Fantasy game, even though you read the name on the tin. It's not like you open a pack of peanuts and a plug-socket suddenly springs out at you, eh?

The only other 2 ff titles i played were 7 and tactics advanced on an emulator. I paid no attention at all to the story but still found them enjoyable so not sure why people think if it says ''final fantasy'' it means 90% reading and watching cutscenes. The msq isn't really anything like those games.

And wow never catered to story when it as growing in subs, so that's not why it's crashing and burning. It's crashing and burning because of things like island expeditions warfronts titanforging etc

[Kenky]

The only other 2 ff titles i played were 7 and tactics advanced on an emulator. I paid no attention at all to the story but still found them enjoyable so not sure why people think if it says ''final fantasy'' it means 90% reading and watching cutscenes. The msq isn't really anything like those games.

No, the MSQ isn't. But nor should it be, because there's a big difference between Final Fantasy 7 and what one can achieve on a PS1s hardware and a Massive, Multiplayer, Online Game that is meant to house hundreds of thousands of players at a time.

If they were still doing FF7-esque writing and design, I'm sure it wouldn't be as popular as it is today.

Not to mention you not paying attention to the story and just mindlessly playing through the game doesn't mean that's still its original intent. There's bound to be outliers to each ruling, exceptions to each case. I still stand by my point of "if you want mindless hitting things, go play something else".