A thought on solving the content gating issue. Long read, pls bare with me.

[Treble]

So, I was sittin there thinkin about the content gating arguments. Debating both sides in my head, and I came to the conclusion that it can truly only be done to one extreme or the other. You either content gate everyone 100%, or you make the storyline seem less relevant and let people bypass it.


Sooooooooooooooooooo my thought about this was... Let people start in ilvl90, and in ishgard at the intro for the story of heavensward. BUT!!! for each old phase of the game (in this case its 1.0 and ARR), make an interactive movie/storybook scenario.

Something that takes the important scenes of each game, and narrates them. Something with interactive menu's, with the menus fading in and out as you say chose your job. Something polished and nice, with your main story and class/job story nicely organized.

Add a character creator to it, make the file from that importable to new players that start HeavensWard or whatever expansion the game is on in the future. When they load up their game for the first time it'll prompt the player to import their created character from their storybook experience, or proceed anyways and make one in the client.



The idea with this, adding a narrated movie version of each expansions important story points/events, while keeping their dungeons relevant in game so players can go back and experience them, would allow for an interesting experience for all walks.

And then, when all is said and done, and FF14 is long gone, we'll always have the storybook to revisit and enjoy the story as many times as we want. Something we'll always be able to show our friends in the future that may have missed out on past final fantasies.
It could even be used as an advertising tool, a demo of it being available to dl to tell the story side of the game if they so desired.


This story book program would come with each game you purchase either on the install CD/packaged with the initial download, or as a seperate cd/download, but put right next to it and strongly reccomended or needed to dl along with the client.



I dunno, it's a skeleton idea that would need fleshing out, but I think it could be a very cool solution. What do you guys think?

[lordoftheapes79]

This isn't a bad idea, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them do something similar in future expansions, but in this case opening the gates to ishgard is rightfully story driven. It's one that's been in the works since 1.0, that city looming over cch, for some nearly half a decade now, has been a long sought after destination. To allow people to hop right in after having waited years to see it would be a bit insulting. That said when we go to doma and ala migo for the first time a scenario like this is possible.

[Ditto]

The content gating 'issue' is not an 'issue' at all, it's just spoiled people who think that the subscription they're paying entitles them to have everything immediately, without any bit of work.

[Felis]

Sooooooooooooooooooo my thought about this was... Let people start in ilvl90, and in ishgard at the intro for the story of heavensward. BUT!!! for each old phase of the game (in this case its 1.0 and ARR), make an interactive movie/storybook scenario.

Only if the players, who starting the game with Ishgard access, are still level 1 in ilevel 1 equip, starting still in the city with their starting class guild and can't do the 2.0-2.55 MSQ. They can enter Ishgard, but have to first level up to 50 to do quests there with no help of the 2.x MSQ exp they have choosed to skip.

[sirDarts]

While I do like the story book idea, I can't imagine letting everyone start at l50, i90, with access to the comparably harder dungeons in Ishgard.
Remember what Yoshi P said - the first 50 levels are a tutorial, slowly easing people into the game, into mechanics, etc.

I can't imagine a completely new player join Longstop, Cutter's Cry, or AV, let alone any of the HM dungeons. There might be a few that would handle it, but it's an insignificant number.

What I would like to see is a slow condensation of the "lower" levels.
This is partially already happening - new players level fast as hell using just MSQ, and get some of the best equips. IMO the journey from 1 to 50 on a new character is smooth sailing and not long at all.
What they could do in the future is to up the exp even more, and remove the "fetch" quests, in the end leaving only main story parts and dungeons. But dungeons have to ALL stay mandatory.

[odie]

I'm actually wanting people to have to work through the 2.0 half before getting to Heavensward. I know it sucks that you want to pick right up and be a dark knight right away but you cant. But a lot of these people are going to start in ishgard (i90 is probably way too low for the average player to just be heading in and fighting the new mobs in western coerthas) and a bunch of old mechanics and parts of the game that taught them how to play would be passed and ignored. You're basically giving someone a free level 50, they've never learned any of the skills they now have from the start, and they'll be in the dungeons before long making the runs incredibly miserable. I know you want all that stuff right away, but you're going to be hurting everyone else by letting this happen. I'd hate to be in this new content trying to teach a 50^ what their role is and how to play it so that we can get through content.

[randysquirrel]

I can't really support what would effectively be them dedicating resource to something just to accommodate a few whiners.
And completely agree with odie, we'd have level 50 people trying to run things without knowing anything at all about their role (it's bad enough already XD)

[Cid_Grim]

There is no issue. If people hate playing the game, maybe they shouldn't play it.

The developers should not work extra hard just so you can skip all their hard work.

[KisaiTenshi]

So, I was sittin there thinkin about the content gating arguments. Debating both sides in my head, and I came to the conclusion that it can truly only be done to one extreme or the other. You either content gate everyone 100%, or you make the storyline seem less relevant and let people bypass it.

...

What do you guys think?

Did we really need another thread on this... was a 48 page one not enough?

a) Tiny amount of people want a complete storyline nerf, the majority of the players do not care enough to read the forum, there's 4 million subs. More people want to keep the storyline or haven't enough issue with it to vent about it.
b) If there was really a problem with the MSQ and Content gating, people would be canceling their subs in droves. That isn't happening.
c) It's far more likely that people are canceling because they can't play with their friends on the server they want because some servers are NEVER available to create new characters on. Thank you RMT for ruining this again. (I spent the last 12 hours trying to see if Excalibur in Primal would ever be available to create a new character. Not even once was it available. Only Excalibur and Hyperion stayed unavailable. And by 7am every server in Primal was busy except Ultros, Leviathan and Diablos.)
d) This is not WoW. Wow's population base fluctuates by 30% on expansion pack releases and then dives back below where it started. It's a game that people are losing interest in, including people who wreck the game for fun and profit.

Some people agree with speeding up the tutorial-part of the MSQ because there is a bit of fluff in there and no real story to care about.

Gating the new jobs and content... of course it's gated. Every game gates new content otherwise people wouldn't buy the expansion packs. In "freemium" games, the expansions are free, but the new content is the most "Expensive" to rush through with cash shop items. They don't care how fast it's burned through because the whales will just drop a small fortune to be the "Server first" at any cost, and 24 hours after the expansion pack comes out, the content is stale again. But hey they made all the money they need to support the game for the next year in one day.

For a Final Fantasy game, it needs to be a "Final Fantasy" game foremost, and if people don't like that, this is not the game for them. No excuses will pass for this.

If people just want to play together, help each other. Don't run off and level to 60 while you leave your friends behind. This happens in every game. Some people are only playing the game to "play with you" and don't care about the game's lore as much. People who leave their friends behind are being bad friends.

[lordoftheapes79]

A lot of the people complaining about gating right now are only on the band wagon anyway. Just like at 2.0 launch they'll play for 2-3 months then move on to the next new thing. Why pander to these people who aren't going to be paying more than $100 while the rest of us will pay for years to come? It's an annoying reality to the MMO world and isn't going to change any time soon.