Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Snugglebutt]

Right, so not long enough to understand why leveling potions were needed for that game, but just enough to have an opinion and a knee jerk reaction. They were needed there, not necessarily needed here (yet).

Level skip potions did not solve WoW's problems, it added to them. You imply 4 years is not enough time to have a valid opinion on this so let me ask you what arbitrary number do you think is enough and how long did you play it for? Adding such a feature to this game will do more harm than good, just because there will always be a few people who want shortcuts to fulfill their desire for instant gratification does not mean they should always get them and in this case regarding level skip potions they should not. As shown by how much opposition there is to this in here, SE should take note and not head down that path.

[Dikai]

How about instead of a jump potion, you make the 'trial' bigger and make entire ARR the trial, you can still restrict the mb/tell/whatever it is you restrict now, and lengthen the trial to 30 days max. That gives people more than enough time to get skilled enough and get familiar with the game with a couple free days.

Make areas like Northwest shroud in between of lower areas, and things where high and lowlvl people are playing together, like the Palace of the Dead idea. It's better than having an insta50 tank run around like DeeDee from Dexters Laboratory 'OOOOOOOOH WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO! in a Titan roulette'.

[Talligan]

Level skip potions did not solve WoW's problems, it added to them. You imply 4 years is not enough time to have a valid opinion on this so let me ask you what arbitrary number do you think is enough and how long did you play it for?

As I explained in an above post: The level skip potions were implemented after vanilla+4 expansions, 90 levels, and around 10+ years of being an mmo. During that time people had leveled up many, many characters through that same content a ton of times. So much so, that for Blizzard to introduce a new class they had to give people a way to skip that content for the umpteenth time so they could quickly get to the new content on a new class - a better, fresher experience to keep them playing and paying. It was one of their better decisions for WoD actually. And by the time you played 90-100 to get to end game you had learned all your abilities anyways.

[Talligan]

So imagine in 7 years from now, you want to play FFXIV's new blue mage class but can't stand the thought of FATE/duty grinding through another 90 levels. How should SE convince you to keep paying and playing to try it out?

[Anzaman]

So imagine in 7 years from now, you want to play FFXIV's new blue mage class but can't stand the thought of FATE/duty grinding through another 90 levels.

Even these current 1-60 levels are quite mind numbing with dungeon/leve/fate -spamming after getting multiple jobs to 60, but at least we're getting another leveling-option (Deep Dungeon) with 3.35 patch.

[Snugglebutt]

So imagine in 7 years from now, you want to play FFXIV's new blue mage class but can't stand the thought of FATE/duty grinding through another 90 levels. How should SE convince you to keep paying and playing to try it out?

A vanity piece of gear with an increased EXP rate would suffice, you don't get to skip levels through an additional P2W style potion. You still have to level up like everyone had too but it takes less time. We have in this game already gear which does this, SE could just increase the amount of boost it gives to the EXP rate up till a certain level. We also have new classes starting at 30, there is no need to add a potion which skips more.

The main story in this game is a core feature, whether you like it or not it should remain intact, perhaps streamlined in the sense of how long each quest takes with regards to things like fetch quests requiring less items that need fetching and maybe merging of some pointless quests but people should be required to clear ARR story always all the way up past HW gating. Gating which has so far kept RMT out of HW and potentially future zones if those future zones also require getting at least past HW gating, even if does not require completing 3.0 for future expansions it should require at least getting past 2.0+gaining access to HW zones.

Things like new mounts, new side quests, new classes and side attractions/new features like Gold Saucer for example can all be outside that HW gating and inside ARR but in terms of new zones and cities...that should remain behind HW gating at a minimum. SE seem to have agreed on that for the time being thankfully in that even 4.0 will require completing 2.0 and working through the HW gating to access but just wont require completing HW itself to access 4.0 content.

[GaMEChld]

I find it a dubious prospect to copy strategy from WoW considering the diminishing number of subs they have experienced in recent years. If I had to pin that on anything, its from removing challenge and treating players like babies.

As my friend likes to say, "They gave away the carrot." There needs to be that horizon you are walking toward. Skipping content and throwing in free levels is not the right solution. If the pace of the early game is such a hurdle, why not do something as simple as massively increase the exp rewards from old MSQ quests? Make them give so much exp that you cannot level lock yourself out of them. That'll increase leveling rate of the first class dramatically and get rid of a big part of the grind.

[Talligan]

A vanity piece of gear with an increased EXP rate would suffice, you don't get to skip levels through such a potion. You still have to level up like everyone had too but it takes less time. We have in this game already gear which does this, SE could just increase the amount of boost it gives to the EXP rate up till a certain level. We also have new classes starting at 30, there is no need to add a potion which skips more.

I agree, they should not do it now and usually the xp boost options are better anyways. But WoW (being what it is and how old it is) had a relatively unique circumstance that lead to that potion.

[Hito-Shura]

How about you create a skip potion for those who already beaten the content multiple times to quickly level up alts or other classes?

For example... I have a character with all classes at 50 and 4 at 60... It took me ages and a LOT of FATES and frustrating dungeons to get to them. Now though, I want to make an alt on another server and play with other friends while my other character is locked on another server because of housing. Do I want to level all classes back to 50 and 60 today, do I want sit through hours of story quests that I already know? Oh hell no. Not only was it long but it is now even longer since FATE parties are nowhere near as common as they used to be and I don't want to do dungeons. I've been doing those dungeons for almost 3 years now. I'm sick of them!

I for one am for skip potions but only if there is a restriction. New players should still learn their class the hard way and see the entire story. It's actually an amazing story and can be done very quickly. They should though fix the exp gain so that you don't need to grind levels in-between quests for your main class.

[TankHunter678]

It was one of their better decisions for WoD actually.

As denoted by them losing 50% of their subscribers only 3 months into the expansion? Cause you could hit level cap in a few hours to a couple days and see everything and have nothing left to do besides facebook garrisons in a week flat.

People complain about how empty and lifeless the world is in WoW. Cause every new player gets to skip that world to go right to the latest expac zone where they then get bored and leave the game within a week of playtime. If they stick around and make an alt they get to see the world for the first 15 levels, then they go sit in their faction city and run dungeons till they hit the level cap. Then they leave because there is nothing to do at level cap besides raid.