An alternative idea to allowing parsing: The License Board

[Archaell]

Have you seen our player base? Hard is subjective. If you make it too easy, then our average player would be annoyed by it, not to mention what would be the point then? If you make it too hard, it creates different type of annoyance.

Forcing players to do something they are free to do of their own will (they can study guides) isn't going to work. They are lazy and they want to stay that way. Forced effort is going to be major turn-off for them.

[lyndwyrm]

Have you seen our player base? Hard is subjective. If you make it too easy, then our average player would be annoyed by it, not to mention what would be the point then? If you make it too hard, it creates different type of annoyance.

Forcing players to do something they are free to do of their own will (they can study guides) isn't going to work. They are lazy and they want to stay that way. Forced effort is going to be major turn-off for them.

You see, I see this as actually the opposite of hard. I see this as more of a way to hand the guide to the players than it is now. I don't want to put words in the OP's mouth, but the leveling ones could even have explicit details on how to complete them. Since obviously the guildhests don't offer enough direction to people (as many also simply ignore them for the most part), why not just lay out what a [insert job here] should be doing at a given level? It will no longer be an "option" to look up a guide in their free time because now they can will have to play through a guide and never have to leave the game to do it! Plus they come with an achievement, and gear unlocks! Any maybe even a free pony! I mean, how is that not cool!?

Considering myself an average+ player, I would be happy to do all of these if I never have to encounter another "Blizzard mage," lv50+ Gladiator, dragoon that "doesn't have heavy thrust", or WHM that says "cleric stance makes me heal better." I would be happy to.

A little annoyed? Maybe. Happy to reduce the number of people that didn't RTFM, definitely.

And if someone is too casual to be forced into completing such hard content, then I should at least be able to expect them to not queue for top tier dungeons/raids/trials since they couldn't be bothered to fulfill the prerequisites. We do already have prerequisites in the form of ilv requirement, and this is quite a bit more reasonable than gear requirements imo, and those didn't end the world.

If the problem is with being forced to complete any content at all, well, they already gotta do the story, 25 more solo 5 min. instances would be small beans compared to that.

[Dotsusama]

they already gotta do the story, 25 more solo 5 min. instances would be small beans compared to that.

Small beans? That's two hours PER JOB.

Oh, and they would have to make this fair and thus retroactively everyone would have to do this for their existing jobs.

No thanks. I'm all for better tutorials on how to play one's class, but to be honest I've never seen any MMO do it with any degree of satisfaction and I don't need XIV to be the one to start a trend.

[lyndwyrm]

Small beans? That's two hours PER JOB.

Yes. That is small beans. And that's if you actually take 5 min. for each of them.

First, for people that only plan to play one job, that is only two hours. Considering at most you can get 1-2 tome items per week and about 2 items per week from Alex NM, and assuming these sorts of rates remain the same, they would have to complete said 2 hours (or less) of tutorials within a week to not be restricted. Furthermore, as these would at most frequently be added every ~6 months for ilv upgrade patches, it would amount to maybe 10-15 min. of tutorials per 6 months after the initial batch. Or you would complete them at the start of the expansion and not have to worry about it again for ~18 months.

For people that want to have every job geared and play a variety of jobs frequently, it would be more like 26 hours. But with the same loot per week restrictions, there'd be little reason to do much more than the previously mentioned amount per week. Yes, if this extended to farmable-tier gear, then they would have to go through the trials before they go about farming that gear out. Once again however, the 2 hours a week prospect is for the initial batch, and after that it would be a handful of minutes per month.

And this isn't even getting into the comparison I was making to the story. Dungeon time, leveling time, questing time, cutscene time, and whatever else adds up to a lot more than 26 hours.

[Dotsusama]

And this isn't even getting into the comparison I was making to the story. Dungeon time, leveling time, questing time, cutscene time, and whatever else adds up to a lot more than 26 hours.

Except you're not removing those hurdles in any way, you're just adding another one between players and the content they find rewarding. No thanks. I think something ought to be done, but this is not it. I do not, nor do I think anyone seriously wants to put content behind tests, much less that the dev team spend who knows how many hours creating this system in the first place.