Making the case for a new starting point in 7.0

[aveyond-dreams]

They can revamp ARR until it's blinding in its mediocrity but I will not be able to get any new players interested with a mandatory five JRPGs worth of story before multiplayer kicks in. It's too much.

If people solely want a single player game, they aren't going to settle for a mangled MMO version of one that has such outrageous demands. They will go play a single player game with better graphics, polish and more accessible gameplay.

Even single player gamers can't get into ARR in its current (pre-addition of Trusts) stage. There's no fun in the combat and the story takes too long to pick up. People just don't care about what's happening in totally-not-generic-starter-village-Gridania or pirate land. They want to fight the empire, and they want to go fight dragons in Ishgard. Also, they want to actually be able to fight and use their abilities, which isn't possible in current ARR instances. This is my opinion as someone who for the most part avoids multiplayer games except this one and FFXI. If the story is floundering and every fight is over in less than a minute, why should I buy your game in order to pay for a skip to when everything actually starts getting good? It's bad business.

An optional skip or Season 2 character creation for 7.0 solves the main barriers to entry: Want a good story? Start at the point where the writers finally figured out what they were doing and abandoned most filler quests/classic mmorpg garbage. Want to play with friends in the more recent (and objectively more engaging) fights? Start at 7.0. A single opportunity to start in Season 2 or to make a character for one would go a long way towards helping the current state of affairs. At any time they can go back and unlock the content they missed out on, maybe even add an in-game guide of questlines/raids not completed yet outside of the new game plus menu that is more obvious and handy.