Forced to finish Before the Fall, dumb design.

[Shyluv]

It's just a damn shame, sure this is a story driven game but the fact is, it has difficult endgame progression content for hardcore raiders as well. Most of which, at least the ones I've raided with, don't care for story.

You don't have to do any of the difficult raids. Just the easy mode of the primals. You don't have to do coil or the extreme primals or even crystal tower.

[Nutz]

It's just a damn shame, sure this is a story driven game but the fact is, it has difficult endgame progression content for hardcore raiders as well. Most of which, at least the ones I've raided with, don't care for story.

There's really not a ton of 'extra' story to worry about. The majority of it is pre-50 and grinding your first character without the MSQ would be way beyond tedious. There may be an extra few days to a week between hitting 50 and being able to enter Ishgard depending on how much one plays, but in all likelihood going through those missions after registering the expansion will net you exp to catch up on the Heavensward content faster anyway.

If you're worried about getting into raiding content sooner, at least consider that none of it will be available in June anyway. If your friends play relatively quickly they may even be able to join you when it's released, though we'll have to see how long the HW storyline really is.

Also, you can help your friends speed through some of the more annoying bits of the story by going in overpowered and slaughtering story mode primals and dungeons without level sync and without subjecting them to long que times.

[Tsuga]

You have to level to 50 (soon, 60) to get to the end game content. The MSQ is the easiest way to get to level 50, and fastest, too, if you skip all of the cutscenes, especially considering that MSQ will provide twice as much exp in less than a week, now.

Toss your friends 50k to cover teleport costs and help them rush through it. I've been helping one of my friends this way and she's gotten through more than half of the 2.0 story(with cutscenes) playing a few hours a day for the last few weeks. We just cleared Stone Vigil last night, looking forward to helping her with castrum and prae, and all of her other duties. It's fun to just tag along and help her clear out trash mobs, too.

The MSQ is an extremely easy gate to clear, it just takes a little bit of effort and time. If you queue up with them on a tank or healer you'll expedite the process that much more. FFXIV is a game based around progression, progression requires gates. The MSQ is a logical, and simple gate to overcome to get to HW, and literally all of the content will be "new content" to your friends. Have fun with it.

[lordoftheapes79]

If you're skipping the cutscenes it will only take a week or two to catch up. The horse is already dead dude.

[Mwynn]

The Main Story (2.0) takes 2-3 Days if you start fresh with tons of Grinding.
I have done it in a Week if not even less.
2.1 ~ 2.5 takes a Day if you know what to do else you can expect 2-3 Days if you won't fail Duties or you're doing something else wrong. (Damn you SoF Pre-Nerf <_<)

Without the Story at all, what are you playing for? There are no Instances to unlock, No Primals, No Coils. You have to Quest here else you will not even leave your Starter City ...

I could Qoute several People but .... if you play FFVII you ain't on Second Disc at the beginning, right? If you play FFX, you ain't on the Airship before Bevelle, right?
Final Fantasy was always Story Driven, hence why People love the older ones and FFXIV ARR does it right.

(INB4 someone says, you should enter T13 immediately being Level 1 *LOL*)

Without a Story... I couldn't imagine the Game at all, it would honestly suck.

[Cynfael]

It's pretty next level stupid of SE to force players to complete the original story quests up to and including before the fall in order to step foot into Heavensward. Got a few friends that bought the game and pre-ordered Heavensward but it looks like we wont be able to start the expansion right away since they dont have the time to finish all of the long and tedious quests leading up to it. I'm sure I'm not the only one having a problem with this. A new expansion should mean a new start and an equalization between the player base and gear. Everyone should be on equal footing.

If your friends are new players, they will need to level up, anyway. The Main Scenario quest progression offers a fair chunk of XP and guides players through content that they'll probably need to revisit later on. It's actually kind of difficult to manage to XP to 50 as a new player without utilizing the Main Scenario quests at all since SO much in the game is linked to them.

In short, it's not that big of a deal, especially since other new players (as well as existing players wanting to XP new jobs) will be going through the same content. Even if you put story considerations aside, it makes sense from a new player orientation standpoint. From what it looks like, there is nothing in the new areas for low-level characters, anyway; all the new dungeon content and presumably the open world content there is geared towards 50-60 progression.

[Inconcern]

Have they said anything about the ilvl80+ MSQ content? It's not super hard or anything, but players going through the MSQ especially post-Heavensward probably won't meet the ilvl requirements as it is now.

[Whiteroom]

Have they said anything about the ilvl80+ MSQ content? It's not super hard or anything, but players going through the MSQ especially post-Heavensward probably won't meet the ilvl requirements as it is now.

How so? Its not like you are locked at lvl 50 until you complete the 2.55 msq. There will be crafted gear and other options avalible. If anything they should be well overgeared for it.

[BroodingFicus]

I thought I read somewhere about the higher/recent MSQ past 2.0 giving gear drops after HW to help give new people a boost so that they are not stuck farming old content to get to the required item level. I doubt that will be an issue. Am I happy about leveling my Au Ra through the MSQ again? Not really but yeah, its a done deal. I just hope the changes they made (exp doubling etc) will make it less of a grind. Though I do agree a lot of the 'go get us some flowers warrrior of light' quests could be removed.

[m3eansean]

Am I happy about leveling my Au Ra through the MSQ again?.

They give you a free fantasia if you bought CE Heavensward, so you can change this dapper gent you have now into an Au Ra, no re-leveling through the MSQ required. See, the great thing about this game, is you don't have to play alts, and frankly aside from small side things like desynth and whatnot, there is literally no benefit from playing alternate characters. I mean, on the back of the box ARR is sold in, one of the selling points is the ability to do everything on one character -- so the game was designed to leverage this aspect.