The story is great, but it blatantly gets in the way of the rest of the game

[Lustre]

I've had multiple people I know irl quit because they saw a list of all of the quests they had to do to catch up to me, and decided the time investment isnt worth it. Most of them said the story was decent but it didnt grab them enough for it to matter. Despite all the people saying, "huehue this game isnt for you", and "have you ever played a FF game", this IS an mmorpg. I think the "this game isnt for you" comments make sense if, this game just had arr + HW. But now we have the base, and 4 expansions + all patch content, and even then your unlocks would be sparse after finishing msq so youd want to do some side content. It feels unreasonable to ask new players to undertake this to catch up to current content. If it wasnt, all of the people I tried to get into the game wouldve carried on playing. All of them wanted to play/raid with me, and loved playing MMOs.

One quit in ARR patch content, one at the start of HW, and another midway through ARR. My brother however cleared msq and levelled a few job to cap+ went heavy on fishing etc. However he's a lifelong FF fan, so that's the distinction between them. Even then he ended up quitting after EW anyway but thats a different story lol.

I think the best thing they could do for future players is establish a new optional starting point, at 7.0+ or whatever.

[DPZ2]

I think the best thing they could do for future players is establish a new optional starting point, at 7.0+ or whatever.

They already do this. Today. It's called Tales of Adventure + One Hero's Journey, and costs US$50, unless discounted during a sale.

I don't have an issue with a new optional starting point at 7.0+ for an additional albeit lower-than-current price (say, US$15), without the gil reward. I imagine the complaints from long-time players about new players who don't know how to play rock, paper, scissors on their jobs will still abound.

Next time, tell your friends that ARR patch content can be skipped for US$11 by purchasing Tales of Adventure: A Realm Reborn once they hit level 50.

If your friends dislike story-heavy MMOs, they're not going to appreciate the leveling experience in any case. That's one of the reasons that there are a variety of MMOs, each with some modicum of success. That's why there are First Person Shooters and MOBAs -- different people enjoy doing different types of games.

[StriderShinryu]

If your friends dislike story-heavy MMOs, they're not going to appreciate the leveling experience in any case

I do agree that the last couple of posters sound like they would have been prime candidates for purchasing skips. I won't speak to their long term enjoyment of the game but if their current time enjoyment comes from doing the "end game content with friends" that's the quickest and easiest way to achieve that, and it is provided as an option.

I've been thinking a bit on the quoted point specifically though and I do think it raises a valid point as well. It's not necessarily just about The Story because it really is that the entire levelling progression process for a first character is based around the MSQ. Not that there aren't other ways to level of course as we always have extra jobs to level somehow but the general course of character progression does run straight through the MSQ. If SE completely detached the story from the progression then we'd largely be left with a fairly hollow levelling experience. I can understand someone being discouraged by the amount of story to play through to get to "end game" if they're just starting out new, but I'm not really sure they'd be more encouraged by being told "Okay, just do your dailies/weeklies and grind dungeons/FATEs for a couple of months and you'll be able to play with us!" any more. At least the story can be clicked through and the cutscenes can be skipped in a way that the grind can't.

In any case, I do think the best thing for SE to do at this point is find some way to create an alternate starting point, which is something they are clearly thinking about as YoshiP himself has mentioned as much.

[TaleraRistain]

I've been thinking a bit on the quoted point specifically though and I do think it raises a valid point as well. It's not necessarily just about The Story because it really is that the entire levelling progression process for a first character is based around the MSQ. Not that there aren't other ways to level of course as we always have extra jobs to level somehow but the general course of character progression does run straight through the MSQ. If SE completely detached the story from the progression then we'd largely be left with a fairly hollow levelling experience. I can understand someone being discouraged by the amount of story to play through to get to "end game" if they're just starting out new, but I'm not really sure they'd be more encouraged by being told "Okay, just do your dailies/weeklies and grind dungeons/FATEs for a couple of months and you'll be able to play with us!" any more. At least the story can be clicked through and the cutscenes can be skipped in a way that the grind can't.

This is a really solid point. They can tie so much into the story because the story is the main way to level your first class. I've even heard instances where people out-level the story on Road to X servers or if they stick to all the story and side quests on a single class. And if they did just say "Okay story's not required" then those new people would be stuck with the much-less-effective alternate grinds for leveling instead of the story custom-made to get them to the right levels for content. Which means they could end up in an even worse position.