Thoughts on Isgard Lockout.

[Teuciont]

What catering are you talking about exactly, nerfing old content and giving bonuses for running it?

No, designing content with the mindset that it needs to be "easily accessible" to people that have never played a MMO before, or at least this. I 100% believe that the 2.0-2.55 story should give both experience points and gear rewards to help a player gear up without having to grind. And I doubly believe that some of the 2.0-2.55 fights should be tuned towards four people instead of eight. My point was more as I first mentioned, this "completely new to a MMO" group that Yoshida has, on numerous occasions, given interest in continuing to babysit in 3.0.

[LineageRazor]

No, designing content with the mindset that it needs to be "easily accessible" to people that have never played a MMO before, or at least this. I 100% believe that the 2.0-2.55 story should give both experience points and gear rewards to help a player gear up without having to grind. And I doubly believe that some of the 2.0-2.55 fights should be tuned towards four people instead of eight. My point was more as I first mentioned, this "completely new to a MMO" group that Yoshida has, on numerous occasions, given interest in continuing to babysit in 3.0.

The catering to new players should end when we're ready for the game to shut down. New players are what keeps an MMO thriving, because if no one steps in to replace old players that leave, a game dies. While it's important to gate some of the content behind story progression, I don't believe that the new jobs should have been one of those things. SE needs to continue to supply a steady supply of attractive toys that new players (whether new to MMOs in general or just new to FFXIV) can snatch up and play with right out of the box - and additional jobs are perfect for that kind of thing. Right now, the expansion offers no such toys, except for the opportunity to play as an Au Ra. The incentive for a new player to fork over for the ARR/Heavensward combo set instead of the much cheaper ARR-only set is very low.

[SpiritMuse]

The catering to new players should end when we're ready for the game to shut down. New players are what keeps an MMO thriving, because if no one steps in to replace old players that leave, a game dies. While it's important to gate some of the content behind story progression, I don't believe that the new jobs should have been one of those things. SE needs to continue to supply a steady supply of attractive toys that new players (whether new to MMOs in general or just new to FFXIV) can snatch up and play with right out of the box - and additional jobs are perfect for that kind of thing. Right now, the expansion offers no such toys, except for the opportunity to play as an Au Ra. The incentive for a new player to fork over for the ARR/Heavensward combo set instead of the much cheaper ARR-only set is very low.

But if they only buy ARR they're going to want Heavensward by the time they do get there, so they're going to eventually be buying that anyway.