A serious discussion about abridging the story quest 1-50 (discouraging new players)

[RichardButte]

The storyline in Heavensward is amazing, thus far. I'm really, REALLY drawn into it whereas I was only mildly interested in the storyline in ARR. A tip of the hat to the devs for that.

But that brings me to the primary issue I'm seeing with the current way the storyline works in ARR content...

If you had played ARR throughout all of the content patches of the past few years, the current layout of the storyline makes sense. But for new players, especially those who just want to join their veteran friends in HW content, it's a HORRENDOUS grind, especially when you hit 50 and are trying to slog through years worth of story updates so you can try out the new classes.

I have three friends who I've tried to introduce to XIV. Out of those three, only one really remains and even he was grappling with making it through all of the 50 storyline last night (I went to bed before he finished, not sure where he left off).

I love how entering new zones in HW has the Count reading from his journal about your travels. It's a great storytelling device and it makes the whole thing more personal, and most of all, it makes it quick.

I think it would be great to have an abridged story option in ARR (at least for all of the 50 story content) that gives players a brief rundown of what's happening in a very similar fashion, then they'd still need to go do each of the dungeons/trials as they arrive, but those are the part that we can help new players with.

But most of the level 50 story quest is just running to the end of a zone just to say two words to an NPC. It could all easily be summarized in a few narrative screens and in doing so increase the likelihood that the player won't burn out in the process.

After all, this is ~2 years worth of story content that a new player is expected to hammer through in order to actually join their friends. I think it would be best if it could be sped along by offering players the option to see an abridged version of the story instead of playing through every single quest (again, most of which are just fedex quests anyway).

I say this because I've literally been unable to coax two of my friends past the amount of story quest that this game has. It's not quite as bad if the story is really grabbing you, but if you're only mildly interested in it, it's enough to make people not want to play any longer, even with the promise of fun raid encounters in the distance. :\