Why do I have to complete *all* vanilla story quests to get to HW content?

[Talligan]

I've recently found out that once I hit 50 and finish the base game's story quests, I still have ~100 story quests to do before I can get to heavensward content. This seems a little ridiculous, very annoying, and quite frankly punishing to new players. What is the reasoning behind this? That I need those quests to understand the story? Why not just write the story so I didn't need all that extraneous info and questing.

It's fine for players who played through the content when it was current, but is a huge barrier to entry for players either just joining or rejoining and will hurt the long-term health of the player base.

Are there plans to get rid of this requirement in the future? Or do I just have 100+ quests to go?

[Cwestcott18]

Well even though a lot play just for the new content and in some respects shouldn't be barred from the start, they do it for story purposes and they try and get new players to follow along with it, and a lot of the newer stuff does pertain to the overall arc, so to skip it would be to skip much of your understanding. Even so, you can just skip through the stuff, do the minimal reading and follow along enough to get through it, only other options is get someone else to do it XD

P.S. I skip through almost all the MSQ's the voice acting makes me hurl

**Also I feel for you, stick with it XD**

[Lan_Mantear]

Blame lore reasons. Ishgard is closed off to the player before Heavensward for a reason. It doesn't make much sense for you to suddenly be able to enter the area without going the necessary Main Story Quests that put you into a situation where the gates are finally open to you.

And unfortunately, Heavensward content is in Ishghard.

[Chimeric]

Because this is, by and large, how video games work.

[MaikoRaines]

P.S. I skip through almost all the MSQ's the voice acting makes me hurl

Switch to Japanese voice overs and done.

Main story I feel is integral to every Final Fantasy over WoW - Sure you can roll a character in WoW and just be powerleveled and access all of the content off the jump, but this isn't WoW - this is a fully immersive story. Though I do feel in SOME cases, some of the areas you explore before the quest tells you to should have some kind of instancing based on your progression (EG being able to access Coerthas Western Highlands but not Ishgard just yet) The game follows a history and a timeline. So for that, skipping content doesn't make any sense to me.

[ohmRICE]

When you look at anything by the numbers it always seems worse than it is.
It doesn't take that long to get through the quests even if you sit down and read through them all, and plenty of other new players have made it through them unscathed.

Gotta play through level 2 to get to level 3, man.

P.S. I skip through almost all the MSQ's the voice acting makes me hurl

Switch on JP audio (not much better) or turn off voices until 3.0. The EN dub is much better in Heavensward.

[bass9020]

Are you serious with this click bait of a thread

[Fived]

*True Story* I hate broccoli. Like a lot.

[ElHeggunte]

It's a Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy has always been very story-driven and XIV is no different. SE will probably never give you the option to just opt for the CliffsNotes version, but they at least ammended the lvl50 ARR quests at the start of HW to reward you with good gear and heaps of EXP so you're actually ahead of the curve when you finally do hit HW. You're getting way more out of doing them than us vanilla players at least.

At least you can rest assured that SE said they won't do the same thing again leading into 4.0.

[Averax]

Endgame is not as glorious as you'd think. Enjoy the ride before you subject yourself to an endless gear treadmill.