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

[Adamantini]

I find it funny how much I read people laughing at this topic and mocking saying "you want a free skip".

Well, in the future, when we hit level 100, 110, 120...

When the story is so dragged to a new player that they choose not to play...

When the "hey kid! Want to play a new game? One that you have to pay to play, pay the monthly fee, pay for a bigger inventory (monthly), and pay to get where your friends are (and you'll have to pay for each expansion you want to skip. And pay again if you want your class to gain levels)" doesn't work...

It will be sweet to come back here and laugh too.

To the author of this post, I would like to say that I was thinking these days about how SE intended to make the game more "smooth" for people who have just started playing, when expansions pass level 100. I found your suggestion interesting, since we would have already established a bond with the main characters (scions). The real problem would be characters that appear after HW and make their appearance in various expansions, for example: Graha, Emet, Gosetsu.

Unfortunately, FFXIV doesn't seem to have been made for this kind of thing. SE will leave it as is and prefer appeal to the skips.

[Ceasaria]

Well, if we are changing of Great Continent and going in Meracydia or New World, I can see it happening.

[Baxcel]

I find it funny how much I read people laughing at this topic and mocking saying "you want a free skip".

Well, in the future, when we hit level 100, 110, 120...

When the story is so dragged to a new player that they choose not to play...

When the "hey kid! Want to play a new game? One that you have to pay to play, pay the monthly fee, pay for a bigger inventory (monthly), and pay to get where your friends are (and you'll have to pay for each expansion you want to skip. And pay again if you want your class to gain levels)" doesn't work...

It will be sweet to come back here and laugh too.

To the author of this post, I would like to say that I was thinking these days about how SE intended to make the game more "smooth" for people who have just started playing, when expansions pass level 100. I found your suggestion interesting, since we would have already established a bond with the main characters (scions). The real problem would be characters that appear after HW and make their appearance in various expansions, for example: Graha, Emet, Gosetsu.

Unfortunately, FFXIV doesn't seem to have been made for this kind of thing. SE will leave it as is and prefer appeal to the skips.

It seems like a trend in this thread of "can't play with friends who are further in the game them me" when there is a level sync option for players.. you can literally party with friends at anytime!

If your friends don't wanna sync down for you then that's their problem an they ain't very good friends if they don't wanna play with you just because your new to the game.

[Adamantini]

It seems like a trend in this thread of "can't play with friends who are further in the game them me" when there is a level sync option for players.. you can literally party with friends at anytime!

If your friends don't wanna sync down for you then that's their problem an they ain't very good friends if they don't wanna play with you just because your new to the game.

Of course, because everyone likes to sync Leviathan extreme to play with whoever is still on ARR. There isn't a recent thread of people complaining that low level extremes shouldn't be at mentor roulette. ~s

Will I blame my friends for wanting to play recent content? Well, I guess so, and then my new friends should blame me too for not wanting to do ARR all in sync with them, and HW, and SB, and SBH...

Sure, it's super fun to start playing the game and see everyone doing the latest extreme/savage that came out, while you're 300 quests away from getting to that content. That might not be a problem now, but what about when we reach level 120? Who will want to start Lv 1 and go all the way to 120?

[IkaraGreydancer]

The MSQ is hundreds of hours long at this point and a massive chunk of it is just unvoiced filler fetch quests. At the very least, they could cut down on that stuff and actually work on pacing the story better to avoid those long slog moments that clearly only existed so they could brag about their expansion having a 40 hour story. As it stands, I straight up can't recommend this game to anyone and have them actually stick with it because the early game is a slog and then slaps them with that post-ARR arc that's just 87 quests where most of it is literally a running simulator. Maybe give people a choice to skip the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc if they want to, assuming 7.0 is a complete departure anyway.

And for people harping on about players not knowing how to play -- the vast majority of people already suck at this game anyway, so who cares.

So "most players suck anyways so why not add to it" is your logic? You don't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it.

When I recommend the game I always make sure it's known the game is very story heavy. Years worth. Having a story based game and striving to make it so its easy to skip said story will breed many issues. It's almost akin to having a looter shooter but making the best loot available to just outright buy effectively marring the purpose (or a huge one) of the game.

If you don't like the grind aspect of a loot shooter time to play something else. If you don't like the story aspect of a story based game it's also time to play something else

[Raim]

The new story doesn't mean the previous is irrelevant. Its another book in the series, not an entirely different series.

[AmiableApkallu]

Unfortunately, FFXIV doesn't seem to have been made for this kind of thing.

I might argue that FFXIV is literally built on the idea of skipping a chunk of story and going directly to newer content: How many people skipped the story of 1.0 and started with A Realm Reborn?

Stories can be written so that the player can jump into the middle without feeling lost. Other Final Fantasy games demonstrate that this can be done even if your character is already known to the NPCs of the world. And we know that FFXIV can present different dialog and scenes depending on what you, as a player, have or have not done.

I think the harder problem to solve is job level and everything that comes along with that. But I can imagine something like the current Lv.90 SMN kit, or the current Lv.90 WHM kit with a few buttons consolidated, being an acceptable starting kit for a new player.

[Frodnoxx]

MSQ doesn't teach you anything. It is playing an RPG on Story Mode. Some of the modern/modernized dungeons are helpful to recognize mechanic motifs. Any job's rotation can be learned in its entirety at max level if the person has a mind for it - it does not need to be spoon fed to them one ability at a time.

It's a good story, but it's definitely drawn out and saturated with quests in between that just have you run/teleport around, read banter, and give you experience. Some will say the inbetween parts help with immersion and character bond building. But it was the opposite for me. Nothing broke my immersion more than going from a fantastic, relevant, voiced cutscene, with main characters to a quest that had me teleport to the middle of nowhere, talk to a throwaway npc and then teleport immediately back. A little bit of fluff here and there, fine. But it becomes really noticeable when they are doing it just to pad experience to satisfy 10 levels per expansion. Now that I think about it, MSQ actually had some really good MMO leveling gameplay experiences with their solo duties, particularly the duels and the special missions in Garlemald. But they're diamonds in too much rough. Don't make the good parts of your game a reward for enduring the bad parts.

So rather than making MSQ skippable, I'd more support a very generous trimming of it. They kind of did it with ARR patch content already because it was evidently a big quitting point for players (it would have been for me if my friend hadn't forced me to keep going), an MSQ that has grown to 200 hours will also become a significant quitting point for new players and they will definitely have to trim.

[TaleraRistain]

There's no way they will ever do this. The story in this game builds on itself from expansion to expansion to expansion. Small, miniscule threads that may have just been touched on and even looked like filler content in previous expansion can become significant story points in later expansion. They have even started incorporating older content either into the MSQ or significant side quest lines.

This is not an MMO like other MMOs out there, where the rest of the game ceases to exist unless someone wants to "slum it" in the previous expansion's content. And that exactly the reason many of us play it. This is story-based game in every sense. Even the side content requires going through story to unlock it. What you are asking for is no less than the complete loss of XIV's identity.

They already do purchasable story and level skips and that's most likely the best you're going to get, unless they decide to take the game in a very different direction than the path they've followed for all the years it has existed.

[DixieBellOCE]

...assuming it is truly a new start, and we are going to a new area on our own.

I'm thinking, maybe branch off after Heavensward, and allow players to either continue into Stormblood or the new expansion. Have the new expansion not reference anything outside of ARR and HW directly, and it stays like that. If we do need StB/SB/EW links, do it in side quests or options, and wait until 7.4 or 7.5 before introducing MSQ that requires EW, if at all.

Mechanically, let the MSQ give you many levels if you use a 60ish character, and make 71 and 85 dungeons for the first two in the expansion. Give enough quests to maybe support a second job going to 90. Then continue as normal.

Xp scaling could be set so that 90 characters barely feel a bump, for those already at EW endgame.

It's awkward, but the MSQ length is getting unwieldy. Something like this should happen.

I don't.

The game is a Final Fantasy story before it is an MMO.

The story is one cohesive journey, that is not broken up and torn apart like other MMO's and it would be an absolute SHAME to destroy that so that people can just skip to endgame and play. (There's an option for that, its called a character boost)