Quote Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Kalise View Post
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.