Thoughts on Isgard Lockout.

[Verdan]

It's becoming increasingly clear as I read these forums(which I don't know why I do) that so many of you just don't understand like, the fundamentals of human behavior. Having new classes locked behind a year's worth of post 50 content is a mind-numbingly stupid decision that I guarantee will make a lot of really bad waves once Heavensward hits. This is a 4 million sub game, bone headed moves like this will get noticed.

Now, WHY is it bone headed? Because expansions are made to expand the content and bring back old players who relapsed and new players with the excitement of what's added. They added two VERY popular new classes, which would get a lot of people talking and thinking "hey maybe I should check out that final fantasy game. You know, the one built off of the ashes of an MMO so bad they burned it all down and made a new one." If they have to get through all this and then all this to try out one of the Cool New Classes that were added, they're not gonna be happy! I don't care if you grumble like a country-club stereotype about "ENTITLEMENTS" and "HANDOUTS," this is how humans behave and they're going to be disappointed that they can't try the stuff they wanted to try from this cool new expansion pack they bought.

[SDaemon]

words

A year's worth of story content. It equates to far far less than the total sum of content released since re-launch. So please try and not make it sound like some astronomical amount. A new player can level to 50 and complete the main story elements up to 2.55 in a very very respectable amount of time.

Also just wanted to add, the main story quests you linked, several upon several of them take less than a minute each to complete.

[Landonian]

This is a 4 million sub game

[citation needed]

[Elmeron]

[citation needed]

Not to mention probably 1 million of those subs are gil spammers... *Cough.*

[XxSliphxX]

It's becoming increasingly clear as I read these forums(which I don't know why I do) that so many of you just don't understand like, the fundamentals of human behavior. Having new classes locked behind a year's worth of post 50 content is a mind-numbingly stupid decision that I guarantee will make a lot of really bad waves once Heavensward hits. This is a 4 million sub game, bone headed moves like this will get noticed.

Now, WHY is it bone headed? Because expansions are made to expand the content and bring back old players who relapsed and new players with the excitement of what's added. They added two VERY popular new classes, which would get a lot of people talking and thinking "hey maybe I should check out that final fantasy game. You know, the one built off of the ashes of an MMO so bad they burned it all down and made a new one." If they have to get through all this and then all this to try out one of the Cool New Classes that were added, they're not gonna be happy! I don't care if you grumble like a country-club stereotype about "ENTITLEMENTS" and "HANDOUTS," this is how humans behave and they're going to be disappointed that they can't try the stuff they wanted to try from this cool new expansion pack they bought.

As a new player myself I completely agree with you and i'm looking forward to the shit storm that hits once heavensward is released it should be pretty entertaining reading. The ONLY reason I even started playing this game is because I heard about the upcoming expansion and saw the new characters and races and got really excited to play an astrologian. Now originally I was going to just wait until the expansion hit to start playing at all but due to just being bored and impatient i decided to start playing about a month ago and thank god i did or I would have been royally screwed and not just a little bit pissed off at this news. And lemme tell you I only recently found out about this because they do a really great job of hiding it from new players.

It never would have occurred to me "and i'm very sure other new players are the same" that I would have been locked out of new content or would have not been able to play the new class coming into the game as no other recent mmo does this when an expansion hits. Heck the entire purpose of an expansion is to entice new and old players to return but this game is doing it ass backwards imo. I can tell you with 100% surety that had I waited until the day of the expansion to play and then been hit with this horrible news I would have raged hard and gotten my money back and never again looked at another ff game. I cannot believe that they are releasing it in this state and pretty much giving new players a gigantic FU.

From a purely business perspective this is the most retarded decision they could possibly make. The only people I see happy about this are the elitist/entitled players who think they deserve this and have that "new players need to suffer like they did" mentality. To them i say grow up it's not all about you and new players being able to play new content isn't hurting you in any way besides your petty digital pride.

[Ryel]

snip

Actually the gating of new jobs / etc behind Ishgard access is a pretty smart move from a business perspective and one that is fairly common as far as MMO's go. For players new to the game it actually gives them a goal to play for, something that they will have to spend time (a few days to a few weeks depending on playstyle) on achieving, which in turn prolongs the life of the content.

By now most people interested in buying the game will have seen the promo shots and videos of Dark Knight, Machinist, and Astrologian, and for some that may have been the push they needed to buy the game + the expansion. When those players log in and actually SEE other players running around on those jobs it will keep the hype going and act as an added incentive to level up and make their way towards the expansion content, also last i checked there isn't any gate to starting the game fresh as an Au Ra so they get to play through the entirety of the MSQ as the new race if they wish to.

This isn't the old days of MMO's where leveling your first class took months on end of constant play, one can easily and realistically get to 50 and complete the main scenario in a week or so at a casual pace, and with the number of people catching up / leveling new jobs the queues are likely to be decent with all the returning / new players.

This approach also prevents an over-saturation of the newly released jobs, as its fairly obvious we are going to see a large (possibly temporary) shift of older players trying them out, but with brand NEW players still playing the first set of jobs it ensures that we still see some job diversity as they make their way towards Ishgard so in a sense it makes sure that every job is still being played.

And lastly from a server perspective this ALSO ensures that every single player isn't spamming the new zones / instances at the same time, it creates a sort of staircase of access as players make their way up through the content, you wont have EVERY single player trying to enter Ishgard at the exact same time when servers go up. Sure you'll have a large number of players exploring the new areas etc but this ensures that areas like Thanalan and La Noscea are still filled with people actively doing quests and FATEs.

I can understand the feelings of someone new who very much has the "That looks cool! GIMMIE GIMMIE NAO!" perspective, but for many, many reasons gating the content they way they are is the best (and smartest) decision they could make.

If the concept of actually PLAYING through the game to reach new content is such a turn off for new players, then perhaps MMO's are not the types of games they will like in the long run.