Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Jennika]

I wouldn't be in such a rush if I were them. Endgame is pretty limited. If they want to pay money so they can start farming tomestones earlier I guess let them.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

When they add an item like this to the game I will be moving onto my next game and coming back when the game is shutting down to just do story.

RPG are meant to be a journey.. Not about just getting to the end but the journey to the end. If the player base doesn't want a journey they will not stay the long hall anyways. Please don't cater to people that are here for 6 months and leave just because you can make a quick $50 off them. Wouldn't you sooner not piss off people like me. Who has been around from 1.xx till now and will be around for another 10 years unless you do something that breaks the game for me.

My hubby and I played FFXI for 7 years in that time FFXI got broken and better a few times. And we left came back and left again in it current state because all the updates in the world can't fix a solo online game.

I have to wonder. Why do you care? Players who did opt into a potion jump won't impact how you play the game nor will their lack of interest in the journey. I leveled Dragoon in a single day doing nothing else but fate grinding for 10+ hours. There was no journey is my experience, I just had a ton of new skills I later googled to build a proper rotation around. What of people who skip every bit of dialogue or cut scenes just to speed through? They're not experiencing the story either. To some, the endgame is all they care for. Why does it matter to you how they go about getting there?

[Solarra]

Another thing we’re debating internally is whether or not to have something like World of Warcraft’s jumping potion that would work with both levels an story. I’m trying to decide if something like this should be timed with 4.0.

WoW would have players pay to jump over and skip levels and it’s something that can be considered for FFXIV as well...
...there has always been the debate of when we bring in new players, or if an existing player wants to bring in a new player, there’s disparity with the level gap between them, especially if the player has gone through all the content and their friend is just starting. It would be such an effort for the new player to catch up.

Ex WoW player here. The fact is, WoW's questing is a confusing mess that is face-roll easy but unsatisfying to play. Some of the side-quests are brilliant story-wise but the main story is jumbled and skips back and forth in time so much that it is practically impossible for a new player to follow, add in Heirloom gear which was not available to new players but gave older players a huge advantage and it's easy to see why so many new players didn't stick around and why people didn't want to level conventionally.

FF does things so much better imo. The story makes sense. Synching means you can play with your friends and help them out while they are levelling. The gear from Hall of the Novice helps put new players on par with those of us who are synched and the tutorials help them learn the basics of their role. Levelling is fairly fast up to HW and you have several routes you can take to do it.

I didn't like the levelling potion in WoW, I used it, dumped the character shortly afterwards and went back to levelling an alt.
Personally, I'd much rather they trimmed some of the padding from the MSQ and gave more xp from HW quests (and around lvl 48ish where I seem to remember having to grind fates to level up).
It won't please everyone, but often the people who want to hop straight to max level don't stick around as was shown by WoD. The WoW devs even stated that their market was cyclical (in other words they expected to lose a large amount of players fairly shortly after their expansion released), though I'm not sure they expected as many of their long-term subscribers to move on as well.

When you go too far with streamlining a game becomes very easy but ultimately unsatisfying to play for any length of time.
While looking at WoW, it might be an idea to consider that while WoD was floundering, Nostralius (unofficial Vanilla WoW server) was proving so successful Blizzard decided to take legal action to shut it down.

[XiXiQ]

Why do people play games if they don't want to work for anything.
]

Asked and answered really. They are "playing a game" because they don't want to "work". If they wanted to "work", there's far more constructive things to do than play games. A reasonable balance is required.

[KitingGenbu]

When you go too far with streamlining a game becomes very easy but ultimately unsatisfying to play for any length of time.
While looking at WoW, it might be an idea to consider that while WoD was floundering, Nostralius (unofficial Vanilla WoW server) was proving so successful Blizzard decided to take legal action to shut it down.

Are you sure they didn't take legal action to shut it down because it was illegal? lol. People deem WoW:WoD a failure even though the expansion clocked at least 10M. Now I wont attribute sales because of it actually being good but more to the hype it built up. Blizzard has changed how they deem success from an expansion. They no longer show sub rates because as you said, they know they can't hold solid retention rates. From a player base perspective, yes WoD did fail, but it sold well so from a business perspective it was a success. People can argue all they want that Blizzard 'could've made more money' but when you multiply 10M by 49.99 minimum, that makes honestly alot more money than most MMOs combined. You also have to factor in that the token wasn't added yet, so that's an addition 14.99 multiplied by 10M which again is alot more than many MMORPGs make even in their life time.

Am I defending wow's approach to gaming? No. I honestly always found wow pretty weak and on the decline since Cata tbh (I know I'm a heathen for liking Cata) but they get revenue. "Could've" is never on the the primary focus of any business, only absolutes. With that said, Legion has already hit the same pre-order sales as WoD, which you can find out all the information as to the exact financials under the event section of the blizzard site.

[Lokier]

When you go too far with streamlining a game becomes very easy but ultimately unsatisfying to play for any length of time.
While looking at WoW, it might be an idea to consider that while WoD was floundering, Nostralius (unofficial Vanilla WoW server) was proving so successful Blizzard decided to take legal action to shut it down.

Nost was taken down for accepting money from its players in the form of donations. Blizz doesn't like you making money from its ideas (and that's how it should be for any one's hard-earned work.) The second you start accepting money for things you don't own that company has every right to take legal actions.
It's like fan-art, I love drawing it and the companies and owners don't mind me, or anyone, doing so; however, you start selling that art work you, technically, don't own the rights to, you can have your art removed and a fine or law-suit on your hands. If Nost wanted to stay up it should never have been accepting money in any way.

[Solarra]

Yes, I agree with both of you about why Nostralius was closed down, and while I suspect it's success at a time when the current expansion was failing must have been an embarrassment at the very least, maybe mentioning it wasn't the best way of making my point.

WoD was the expansion that introduced the level boost and while it saw the highest sales figures ever it then suffered the biggest ever drop, and judging from the forums, sales figures etc. they lost a lot of long-term subscribers (including me) who were looking for a more traditional mmo, and who felt WoW no longer offered an experience that was satisfying for long-term play.
Since FFXIV levelling is at worst a little tedious (imo), I think introducing a levelling potion and encouraging players to skip much of the lower game completely is too drastic a solution and could be detrimental in the long-term.

[Aylis]

This is like putting Mike Tyson Punch out in a Nintendo and turning it on and being like "Wait. I have to learn this game and beat all these other people to be able to fight Mike Tyson?" "No thanks. Im out" Is this really what gamers want these days? omg

007 373 5963 :-p even those older games had level skip codes and cheats.


Anyway, as for the topic I'm pretty much neutral on the whole thing but leaning to the side of understanding the need for it especially with literally everything being gated behind the MSQ. It may work for the base game but once expansions start coming into play, the novelty of it may soon wear off fast for players. Just me personally but I'd be happier if the game matched the other story driven MMO's. Where the story was still the focal point but still allowed players something to do if the story wasn't their cup of tea at the time. If dungeons were kept as its own thing as well as side content like treasure hunts (zone unlocks) that's all that would be needed. With story dungeons having their own designated story mode when its time for story, other times they're all unlocked and free to come and go in as you please with friends. I don't need to know why I'm there, why I'm in Ishgard or anywhere, let me cross that bridge when I want to get to it. Cos I can speak from personal experience there is nothing more soul crushing then being asked to come do fun things with friends only to tell them you can't because you still have weeks/months of story to plod through.

I know I can't be the only one that has happened too and I know I'm not the only one that resorted to fast forwarding through it. Cause at that point a game could have the best story in the world, but what does it matter when players reach a point where they feel they start skipping dialogue and cut scenes just to get it over with. Along side the ones that get burned out from the ordeal and go to seek greener fields.

[dinnertime]

They should just actually make the leveling experience fun instead of allowing players with level jumps. In my opinion, right now it's boring and such a pushover. Probably it's one of the reasons why the game has a lot of incompetent players, especially when people do FATEs or the MSQ/side quests alone, because they learn nothing from it. Fetch quests make the experience tedious as well.

For story jumps, just make the MSQ less filled with pointless fetch or kill quests and/or replace them with more story. Also PLEASE fix Minfilia from being that annoying quest giver that asks you to go back and forth so many times. So many people hate her for this.
Also side quests need some change from being boring fetch/kill quests too imo. More story, less boring tasks.

I don't know why SE keeps on with their band-aid fixes. I really hope they don't consider those skip potions.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

They should just actually make the leveling experience fun instead of allowing players with level jumps. In my opinion, right now it's boring and such a pushover. Probably it's one of the reasons why the game has a lot of incompetent players, especially when people do FATEs or the MSQ/side quests alone, because they learn nothing from it. Fetch quests make the experience tedious as well.

For story jumps, just make the MSQ less filled with pointless fetch or kill quests and/or replace them with more story. Also PLEASE fix Minfilia from being that annoying quest giver that asks you to go back and forth so many times. So many people hate her for this.
Also side quests need some change from being boring fetch/kill quests too imo. More story, less boring tasks.

I don't know why SE keeps on with their band-aid fixes. I really hope they don't consider those skip potions.

Rewriting and tweaking whole quest chains would be enormously expensive, thereby sapping resources away from making content for all of us to enjoy. The only reason I've somewhat come around to the jump potion is it allows the devs a cost efficient means of abandoning old content without impacting new ideas for the expansion. It's far from an ideal solution, I'll admit. But it is one I prefer to the alternative.