Making the case for a new starting point in 7.0

[Shougun]

So bascially somehow the character still has done everything up to that point? Then the buyable story skips are still imo the easiest solutions. After all people that jump to the end do skip months of subscriptions, so for me its only fair that basically the price for that is the money for the skip potion. There they can still go through the story again if they suddenly see that maybe there isnt that much at endgame and SE does not need to change anything at all (and gets more money out of it too).

Not somehow, you've probably started quite a few games where your character did something you didn't know about until later. Of course someone might say "but /I/ didn't do it, making it feel less like the character is an extension of me" but in terms of lore it seems like a non-issue for story telling capabilities as there are many live examples of it, and a vaguely similar in FFXIV example of it given we've legacy start vs non-legacy start. Can see 2.0 start as the accelerated start and legacy players as the OG start- of course I say vaguely because technically there was some retcon and such too... lol.

For the devs of course the story skip is the easiest option, but I also feel like it's an awful option even if free. It just throws you at the wall at 900 miles an hour. Big frowny face from me on that being a good solution. Having the game give an accelerated lesson of gameplay, general immediate need to know lore, and also direction out of the gate I think is far superior to "WAM WELCOME TO THE GAME BOIISSS". Which is what the potion basically does. Introductions can and should help hook you (I mean literally some people refer to events like this as "the hook"), the skip potions have a god awful hook. But "400+ hour hook" isn't a hook.. that's the marathon lol.

A marathon I will note some people are going to see as the whole point of the game, while others will be on a range of "I want to play with my friends with current content they're doing, I joined because I want to do what they're doing" to "I saw the new expansion and it looks amazing, I didn't join at the other expansions because I wasn't interested- I'm still not interested". The latter who doesn't really appreciate the lore or theme of a specific expansion have the opportunity to being hooked into the game at something they did like and potentially going back (via MSQ+) and then actually liking it. Your only option currently is to invest in a massive commitment (if you were specifically only interested in later stuff) or pay to be thrown at the wall in a way I would describe as an awful hook.

[Alleo]

Not somehow, you've probably started quite a few games where your character did something you didn't know about until later. Of course someone might say "but /I/ didn't do it, making it feel less like the character is an extension of me" but in terms of lore it seems like a non-issue for story telling capabilities as there are many live examples of it, and a vaguely similar in FFXIV example of it given we've legacy start vs non-legacy start. Can see 2.0 start as the accelerated start and legacy players as the OG start- of course I say vaguely because technically there was some retcon and such too... lol.

For the devs of course the story skip is the easiest option, but I also feel like it's an awful option even if free. It just throws you at the wall at 900 miles an hour. Big frowny face from me on that being a good solution. Having the game give an accelerated lesson of gameplay, general immediate need to know lore, and also direction out of the gate I think is far superior to "WAM WELCOME TO THE GAME BOIISSS". Which is what the potion basically does.

How would a new starting point make that easier? They would either need to use hours of mindless grinding if they start a job at level 1 and if they start at a higher level to begin the new expansion they will be overwhelmed with everything too, after all those are probably new players that have to learn the whole game.

So what will that do to the dungeon quality for the new dungeons? How many more players will not know what a stack marker is? At least if they skipped with a jump potion they had to buy it first which can already stop some from doing that.

Also about your character: There is a difference between a character having some kind of life before we take over them (which can still largely be made up by ourself since there is nothing known ingame) and a character that has bascially 90 levels and several expansions of stories behind them which includes saving the whole universe.

[Shougun]

How would a new starting point make that easier? They would either need to use hours of mindless grinding if they start a job at level 1 and if they start at a higher level to begin the new expansion they will be overwhelmed with everything too, after all those are probably new players that have to learn the whole game.

So what will that do with the dungeon quality for the new dungeons? How many more players will not know what a stack marker is? At least if they skipped with a jump potion they had to buy it first which can already stop some from doing that.

Also about your character: There is a difference between a character having some kind of life before we take over them (which can still largely be made up by ourself since there is nothing known ingame) and a character that has bascially 90 levels and several expansions of stories which includes saving the whole universe.

You're describing what the intro would do... Or at least need to do, it's not like I'm suggesting a new bog standard low quality intro (like a lot of mmos have, to be honest), it would need to be carefully constructed (to the point you might consider it one of the better 'quests' of the game, but that's where MSQ+ would allow players who already started the game to also get to enjoy it too and put a reward behind it so the effort isn't wasted on a whole section of the audience).

Can you not mentally create a multi-hour introduction (2hr?), in your mind that would teach people stack? If you started someone at like level 30, and then boosted them to 40, 50, etc. They would, except maybe specific weird jobs like Black Mage which might evolve weirdly, be able to pick it up at least to the current quality we already have in DF- I strongly believe.

For the last point, not really- imo. Again many games have done just that, it's proven to be fine... I've played many games that had series components where you did something epic but then the next game would be okay to start at if you didn't play the previous ones.