I hope 7.0's has a way to skip most of the current story

[Gararr]

FFXI Had both horizontal and vertical progression so this worked.

FFXIV will never pull something like this off because it's a treadmil and nothing else.

[Gararr]

Meant to quote the guy referencing this post sorry.

It would be nice if they did this. In FFXI, a new player could get up to a certain point in the story and begin the other expansions. The first 2 more or less continued the main story but Treasures of Aht Urghan took us to a whole separate part of the world and was only tangentially related to everything else going on in the main story.

It gets harder each expansion to recommend this game to new players when they have 100+ hours of MSQ to catch up. I'd like if new content could reference past stuff if you've done it, but it was its own thing that had nothing to do with Garlemald (unless there's yet another rogue legion doing their own thing), Ascians, or Ancients.

[Supersnow845]

FFXI Had both horizontal and vertical progression so this worked.

FFXIV will never pull something like this off because it's a treadmil and nothing else.

Like I mean eureka shows that horizontal progression can work just fine if they ever care to properly implement it, Cassie earring is still the single most valuable item on the market board despite eureka being what 4 years old at this point

[Midareyukki]

Like I mean eureka shows that horizontal progression can work just fine if they ever care to properly implement it, Cassie earring is still the single most valuable item on the market board despite eureka being what 4 years old at this point

They implemented it on Eureka because, and I paraphrase, they wanted people to experience that good Old RPG gameplay vibe. For better or for worse. But the thing is that it came in a vaccum. With how large the game is and how much would have to be changed and then re-balanced to accomodate it, I doubt they'd focus on changing their design to something like that. Doable, sure, given enough time, effort, money, interest, all that... but it's not really realistic to do.

I don't think there's ever been another MMO that's changed how their progression system was designed this late into the game's lifespan? Not to say "Oh others can't do it, so we won't either", that isn't really an excuse for me (let's face it, ARR was unprecedented the way it worked out, and so much else can be as well). It's just more so that it's probably unheard of for a reason.

[hagare]

I think the team is trying to make a new entry point.
it might be 7.0, it might be somewhere else.
But I'm 90% sure it'll definitely happen

[Midareyukki]

I think the team is trying to make a new entry point.
it might be 7.0, it might be somewhere else.
But I'm 90% sure it'll definitely happen

The real question is... when you start the game, there's an entire status quo that is unresolved:
- You start in the 6th Astral Era
- You can't access Ishgard other than housing
- You can't access Ala Mhigo or anything outside Eorzea proper
- A lot of the world is still being rebuilt and dealing with outside threats
- Dragons are still angy, the Empire still has a stick up its fourth eye and is terrorizing a bunch of lands, a lot of countries are sheltered and closed off...
If you start a new adventure through such a skip, it won't look organic at all. It will feel like you just missed out on a decade worth of content that never once stopped being linear.

So if they do anything, either they need to skip the entire story and shove people directly into 7.0. And they need to scale things down, because odds are people won't be playing through ARR.
Or they just make up a whole new continent and at some point in the ARR tutorial you're given the option to stay in Eorzea and deal with four-ish expansions worth of drama, or travel there for a whole new breath of fresh air. But the Scions can't come with us, and it seems they're still going to be present in the future. Because it'd mean that they went through some personal development, and that's just not right.
...or something else that I'm just not seeing. Maybe this situation or "new starting point" is being misunderstood and odds are won't be as drastic as we make of it. It likely will still be a continuation of what's already been laid out.

Honestly, I didn't play World of Warcraft :P How did they deal with this? I know that you can sort of choose which expansion you want to deal with, but I assume some stuff is linear, like X character having Y development in one expansion and keeps growing from that into the other one.

[Supersnow845]

They implemented it on Eureka because, and I paraphrase, they wanted people to experience that good Old RPG gameplay vibe. For better or for worse. But the thing is that it came in a vaccum. With how large the game is and how much would have to be changed and then re-balanced to accomodate it, I doubt they'd focus on changing their design to something like that. Doable, sure, given enough time, effort, money, interest, all that... but it's not really realistic to do.

I don't think there's ever been another MMO that's changed how their progression system was designed this late into the game's lifespan? Not to say "Oh others can't do it, so we won't either", that isn't really an excuse for me (let's face it, ARR was unprecedented the way it worked out, and so much else can be as well). It's just more so that it's probably unheard of for a reason.

That’s fair enough but they could always add it going forward and just sync it out in older encounters, like “horizontal progression only applies in duties above level 90”, I think we are all getting tired of the gear treadmill

Like at this point I can tell you the ilvl of the gear dropped by the 12th floor boss in the 18th expansion

[hagare]

The real question is... when you start the game, there's an entire status quo that is unresolved:
- You start in the 6th Astral Era
- You can't access Ishgard other than housing
- You can't access Ala Mhigo or anything outside Eorzea proper
- A lot of the world is still being rebuilt and dealing with outside threats
- Dragons are still angy, the Empire still has a stick up its fourth eye and is terrorizing a bunch of lands, a lot of countries are sheltered and closed off...
If you start a new adventure through such a skip, it won't look organic at all. It will feel like you just missed out on a decade worth of content that never once stopped being linear.

So if they do anything, either they need to skip the entire story and shove people directly into 7.0. And they need to scale things down, because odds are people won't be playing through ARR.
Or they just make up a whole new continent and at some point in the ARR tutorial you're given the option to stay in Eorzea and deal with four-ish expansions worth of drama, or travel there for a whole new breath of fresh air. But the Scions can't come with us, and it seems they're still going to be present in the future. Because it'd mean that they went through some personal development, and that's just not right.
...or something else that I'm just not seeing. Maybe this situation or "new starting point" is being misunderstood and odds are won't be as drastic as we make of it. It likely will still be a continuation of what's already been laid out.

Honestly, I didn't play World of Warcraft :P How did they deal with this? I know that you can sort of choose which expansion you want to deal with, but I assume some stuff is linear, like X character having Y development in one expansion and keeps growing from that into the other one.

yeah, well. That's their problem.

[Midareyukki]

That’s fair enough but they could always add it going forward and just sync it out in older encounters, like “horizontal progression only applies in duties above level 90”, I think we are all getting tired of the gear treadmill

Like at this point I can tell you the ilvl of the gear dropped by the 12th floor boss in the 18th expansion

We all can ^^; that's the problem with this system. It's easy to implement and maintain, it's just going to be bland, boring and predictable.

They could maybe add it going forward though yeah. Like, vertical up until 7.0, where it caps at 90 and it becomes horizontal. And we do have level synch anyway, it'd just need to be expanded upon. Question is if they're willing. Because even if the team decides "Eh sure", maybe Square won't pay them for the extra thought time needed to design and implement it.

yeah, well. That's their problem.

It is. And that's kind of the purpose of this thread. Because it's their problem, and it will affect how we current players experience the game and how future new players will start their experience.

[hagare]

It is. And that's kind of the purpose of this thread. Because it's their problem, and it will affect how we current players experience the game and how future new players will start their experience.

current players won't be affected because it would affect the entry point of new players.
So asking people who is current and have forgotten how long it took them to reach that point is not advisable.