Option to unlock content without mandatory MSQ

[Iscah]

Bottom line is that more people will be making alts. Leveling and playing alts will lead to more gametime, just like how leveling alt jobs on your main leads to more gametime.

Except that people do have a finite amount of time to spend on the game. It will only lead to more gametime if it makes someone shift from (say) playing for one hour each day to playing for one hour per character each day. If they already play for two hours and now split that time between two characters instead of focusing on one, there is no increase in game time.

It may drive some people to play for longer, but would it balance out the time lost (on a large scale) because they're not taking alts through the MSQ any more? I don't know, but I do know that personally once I get my alts to endgame, that would be when I feel like I'm "finished" with them (besides maybe levelling roulette and playing with glamours) and it's back to my main or other alts.

[SamRF]

Except that people do have a finite amount of time to spend on the game. It will only lead to more gametime if it makes someone shift from (say) playing for one hour each day to playing for one hour per character each day. If they already play for two hours and now split that time between two characters instead of focusing on one, there is no increase in game time.

It may drive some people to play for longer, but would it balance out the time lost (on a large scale) because they're not taking alts through the MSQ any more? I don't know, but I do know that personally once I get my alts to endgame, that would be when I feel like I'm "finished" with them (besides maybe levelling roulette and playing with glamours) and it's back to my main or other alts.

This goes back to what I said in the more profit reasoning:

more gametime --> more player satisfaction --> more chance players stay subscribed --> more standard subscription instead of entry subscription (bc multiple chars) --> more profit?

You say you consider being done with alt when you finish MSQ, this means that you wouldn't consider buying jump potion in the first place, so it makes no difference for you if this option to make MSQ account-wide would exist or not. SE wouldn't lose or win any profit from you specifically with implementation of this option. I'm sure there are others like you.

However when it comes to people who do consider buying jump potion for their alt, meaning they are not interested in doing MSQ again, many of those I think will avoid making an alt because it's not worth the jump potion --> less player satisfaction --> ....

Even if they do end up buying jump potion, they will have to do a good amount MSQ of latest expansion and with each new patch. Not great player experience if you're not interested in doing MSQ again.

Remember that I'm talking about an option to make MSQ account-wide, doesn't have to be so on default.

[LaylaTsarra]

You are dreaming if you think they are going to throw away their cash cow of skip potions. I have multiple end game alts some of which i took through main story and others I've skipped. It's just not going to happen. They won't even let alts share a house or a clothing and achievement bank let alone share main story and offer free skips. Most Mogstation items aren't even account wide. You can ask but wish you luck.

[GeminiReed]

You are dreaming if you think they are going to throw away their cash cow of skip potions.

Depends. What's worth more? Skip potion sales or new player retention? The ARR rework suggests their metrics are reflecting the latter is an issue. IMO streamlining ARR/7th Astral is not nearly enough. My 3rd alt through ShB took 300 hours and that's with skipping pretty much all cutscenes before HW and a good 60-75% of the HW ones. That's too big of an ask.

Though, how relevant "Opening Up" the game to these people is, given of all the things you've listed there, the only ones that FFXIV does WELL is Art and the forced Visual Novel.

There are MMO's with much better combat than FFXIV.

There are MMO's with much better dungeons and raids than FFXIV (Heck, WoW's Raids are like the only good thing in the damn game)

There are MMO's with much better crafting than FFXIV.

The only thing that makes FFXIV stand out from other titles, is that it has an absolutely fantastic MSQ.

Hard disagree on all points.

Combat: I'll agree that 14's combat doesn't start to get interesting until much later in the levelling grind. This is not a unique problem though. The race to end-game isn't only about getting to the content but also getting to the point where you have your core skills. This personal peeve wouldn't be so grating if all we gained were fun situational skills. Unfortunately class designers feel compelled award you with skills that completely change how the class is played. I also loathe class sets that again mess with the core rotation. IMO the core flow should be put in place by the end of the tutorial zones.

PVE instances: The 6 months I suffered WoW did not impress me. I loved Wildstar's dungeons and raids but there simply wasn't enough. I also loved SW:TOR's instances but they broke all incentives for running them. Consequently you do not have a population that can consistently run the more challenging instances.

Crafting: Seriously? Most have been an afterthought and very often the output isn't worth making. Haven't seen any that all that engaging either.

Yes, compared to other MMO's, its story is great but that bar is not exactly high. I've had better story experiences in single player games. The thing with story is that it's one-and-done content. No MMO can live on story alone. Just look at SW:TOR to see how well that worked out for them.

[Kalise]

Combat: I'll agree that 14's combat doesn't start to get interesting until much later in the levelling grind.

FFXIV's combat doesn't get interesting at all.

Even once you've slugged out to max level, all you have left is predetermined rotations that are set in stone.

To the point where, if the Macro system wasn't utter garbage, most jobs would be able to make a 1 button macro that does an entire boss fight's worth of optimized skill usage.

Compare this to more action orientated MMO's like BDO or ESO, even Astellia as another tab target MMO has more interesting combat and it's like night and day.

PVE instances

There being "Not enough" (Either dungeons or players) doesn't discount the fact that if people only cared about good instances, then there are better iterations than FFXIV's hallway simulator/oh look another Trial/Raid that is just a single mob in an arena...

Crafting: Seriously? Most have been an afterthought and very often the output isn't worth making.

Like those statements don't apply to FFXIV either... Where the only worthwhile things to make are each raid tiers new set and even that's only notable if you're going for early Savage attempts.

EQ2's crafting is more interesting to actually participate in too, since you can't just press a macro and then go AFK while stuff makes itself (Which creates a system not very far away from the terrible WoW crafting one)

No MMO can live on story alone. Just look at SW:TOR to see how well that worked out for them.

FFXIV lives on story alone. That and hitting the nostalgia buttons of Final Fantasy fans.

SW:TOR, had some good story for the class quests, but after that the story was kind of meh. Meaning that while it was hinging on its story to stay alive, its story kind of became as crummy as the rest of their game...

As is, FFXIV, is the most notable example of a story based MMO. Many people are here mainly for the story and in fact, there are quite significant numbers of players who drop their subs and wait for the next story to release then resub and play through it and get geared to then unsub and wait for the next story drop.

There simply are better alternatives for people who want good combat/instances/crafting (Though, some will come with caveats of other areas being not good... Like, while BDO's combat is great, it has no instances and "Crafting" is horrible... Though Trade Routes are pretty fun)

[SamRF]

FFXIV's combat doesn't get interesting at all.

Even once you've slugged out to max level, all you have left is predetermined rotations that are set in stone.

To the point where, if the Macro system wasn't utter garbage, most jobs would be able to make a 1 button macro that does an entire boss fight's worth of optimized skill usage.

Compare this to more action orientated MMO's like BDO or ESO, even Astellia as another tab target MMO has more interesting combat and it's like night and day.

You can't really compare FFXIV combat system to BDO or ESO imo. I greatly prefer FFXIV/WoW type of combat with lots of abilities and slots used. Games like ESO, BDO, GW2 are more action game-ish with their limited amount of abilities, BDO & ESO don't even have tab targeting so it's something else entirely (action combat). In GW2 and ESO you also need to weapon swap to play optimally to make up for the ability shortage. Personally greatly dislike the idea of weapon-swapping in combat.

I do wish more jobs in FFXIV were using procs more often cause also don't like the idea of predetermined rotations set in stone. Still, except for some jobs perhaps (healers), FFXIV combat isn't that bad imo right now. There are few (polished) MMO's I think that use as many slots as FFXIV, even most WoW specs use way less. And that's something I personally like about combat system of this game, which I won't find in many other polished MMO's at the moment. Also, I think the lack of macros get sort of compensated by the amount of abilities and length of some rotations.

[Bright-Flower]

That really depends on jobs, and assumes that you don't have mechanics to deal with while doing said rotation. Dancer for example has a lot of procs. You cannot play dancer with a macro even on a target dummy. Paladin you could on a target dummy, but not on an actual boss where you have to move, deal with mechanics, use defensive cooldowns on tank busters, etc.

[Akiudo]

Depends. What's worth more? Skip potion sales or new player retention? The ARR rework suggests their metrics are reflecting the latter is an issue. IMO streamlining ARR/7th Astral is not nearly enough. My 3rd alt through ShB took 300 hours and that's with skipping pretty much all cutscenes before HW and a good 60-75% of the HW ones. That's too big of an ask.

well considering its your 3rd alt which one absolutely doesn't need obviously you are not the one square fears will leave anytime soon.

thats not to say its not an issue (i might add that i personally feel they really could wave the mainstory requirement with alt characters at least) but the arr rework mostly suggest that players jumping ship during what is a giant slog fest, maybe just reworking that portion is not enough, i dont know, but generally this game is build upon a foundation of "this is the story, we are gonna tell it to you, you will listen to this story" .
Cutting out the 5 boring and not really adding anything important chapters out of a great 20 chapter book may very well be all it takes to make it so suddenly 80% of people finish the book in question instead of only 40% that do now, and the same may very well go for this very story driven mmorpg where the narrative is part of the package integrated at its core, we simply don't know the answer to that.

[Kalise]

You can't really compare FFXIV combat system to BDO or ESO imo.

You can easily compare them.

Action and tab target based systems do exist and they can be implemented in different ways.

The aforementioned action based systems lend themselves to being more engaging.

However, there also exist tab targeting MMO's with more interesting combat. B&S, CoH/V, Astellia and GW2 have tab targetting systems that are more interesting than FFXIV's.

WoW manages to escape this list because even though it uses a more engaging "Priority based system" as opposed to a "Set in stone rotation" it has the ability for classes (Sans Feral Druid which is complex to maximize DPS due to buff and DoT timers) to macro a single button with all their skills in priority order and then mash that ad infinitum...

In GW2 and ESO you also need to weapon swap to play optimally to make up for the ability shortage. Personally greatly dislike the idea of weapon-swapping in combat.

Weapon swapping isn't the biggest deal in those games, especially depending on how you have spec'd (Moreso for Tanks in ESO where you're basically stuck with SnB forever because of how much stronger its block skill is and the fact that you either need SnB or that single other skill set for access to Taunt which you need to use every 15 seconds due to how aggro works in that game)

There are few (polished) MMO's I think that use as many slots as FFXIV, even most WoW specs use way less.

Though, it's not entirely about the number of skills. But how you USE those skills.

In FFXIV, a lot of skills are fluff ones. Like, your filler rotation of 123 for melee characters is no different to other games (Or other jobs) filler rotation of 111. Only you need extra keybinds for no reason. Heck, this is made more apparent when PvP and the RP fights will condense this 123 rotation down to a single button...

In a game like Astellia, my Assassin has a core DPS skill set of about 6 buttons. But the way those buttons are used are really interesting, making use of DoT uptime, combo point generation and usage, positioning and even mana management. With those 6 buttons, I actually have so much going on, I don't even use my filler skill.

Throw in the added complexity in that game of managing your Astels (Both their skills as well as your resources for summoning and maintaining them) as well as CC skills which are actually useful to set up for situational damage skills and you get a lot of interesting combat, without having a ton of fluff skills that are often excessive (I.e. Healers with too many heals and not enough places to actually use them. Tanks with a billion CD's but only infrequent TB's to use them on. Extra filler skills to seemingly just add more buttons for the sake of having more buttons etc)

[SamRF]

Though, it's not entirely about the number of skills. But how you USE those skills.

In FFXIV, a lot of skills are fluff ones. Like, your filler rotation of 123 for melee characters is no different to other games (Or other jobs) filler rotation of 111. Only you need extra keybinds for no reason. Heck, this is made more apparent when PvP and the RP fights will condense this 123 rotation down to a single button...

In a game like Astellia, my Assassin has a core DPS skill set of about 6 buttons. But the way those buttons are used are really interesting, making use of DoT uptime, combo point generation and usage, positioning and even mana management. With those 6 buttons, I actually have so much going on, I don't even use my filler skill.

Throw in the added complexity in that game of managing your Astels (Both their skills as well as your resources for summoning and maintaining them) as well as CC skills which are actually useful to set up for situational damage skills and you get a lot of interesting combat, without having a ton of fluff skills that are often excessive (I.e. Healers with too many heals and not enough places to actually use them. Tanks with a billion CD's but only infrequent TB's to use them on. Extra filler skills to seemingly just add more buttons for the sake of having more buttons etc)

You have a valid opinion and I have heard other people have about the same complaints as you have. In the end I think it's subjective and comes down to personal preference. I may be in the minority, but I kind of like having button bloat and get creative with my slots and keybindings to get all abilities in convenient reach, I wouldn't mind to get some more buttons for all jobs in ffxiv right now, even if they're not part of the core rotation.