Possible level/story jumps....really?

[mirta000]

I came here to express my opinion before they make a decision. I vote "no". My FC votes "no". Adding this would effectively make sure that we would no longer pug any content, starting from roulettes, ending with 24 man. We would close down as a community, simply out of fear of what kind of people we're going to meet, if they bought their way to max level. Even when Blizzard put a high price on their equivalent, it really ruined the pugging community, as simply people that knew nothing of their class were unable to clear even the easiest of content.

[FJerome]

If the game creates a pathway for people to skip all the initial story because they don't like that sort of thing what's going to happen when they hit the story-gated content of the sub-patches? It's not like they're going to be happy about that either.

And if they stop making such story-heavy sub-patches the main reason I and most of my FC play the game is going to be gone.

[Chadness]

Really dislike this idea. This is a FINAL FANTASY game, it’s going to have story, and if you don’t like that, an MMO with “FINAL FANTASY” in the title is probably not right for you. I think the idea of this is a huge overreaction in response to a huge overreaction. I think certain players (apparently more so players outside of Japan) greatly overreacted to having to complete the ARR story to get into Ishgard in the first place.

I don’t see the issue being having to play through the story, but I do think SE messed up in the implementation of some highly-advertised features of the expansion. Most notably that is the addition of the three new jobs, and that is probably the single most annoying thing for either new or returning players. Another, of course, is those who predominately craft or gather, and couldn’t get to Heavensward zones without doing battle content and pushing through the ARR story, as well.

Both these issues could have been alleviated very obviously by not locking the zones themselves, or the new jobs, behind the story content wall. I think SE could have easily done this while still having the story unlock other content, such as dungeons, trials, and mostly battle-related content.

If they are smart about 4.0, then any new jobs, the new zones, and possibly other as-yet-unannounced major additions to the game will be available right out of the gate simply by registering the expansion to your account – no need for story progression. However, I really don’t think they should in any way simply allow players to skip the story or the leveling process of any part of the game.

[Kerrigen]

Don't have people jump to the higher levels just yet, this is a disaster waiting to happen (not to mention it happened relatively late in WoW's lifespan and this game isn't nearly as old).

A lot of people already struggle immensely with the limited amount of buttons they're given, they would have an absolutely terrible experience with the game starting with this many skills. Picking up any of the extra jobs at level 30 has enough of a learning curve already. If anything, boost them to level 30, give them their jobs so that they can skip the whole 1.0 class nonsense and along with faster levelling avenues, this would probably be a reasonable starting point.

Instead of doing this, design the game in a more open manner so that people can enjoy some of the content from 4.0 onwards (especially new jobs) without necessarily being high level. It seems like it's where it's headed anyway. Look at the way FF11 did it, maybe. Whenever they released an expansion, Jobs were immediately accessible to mostly everyone, the beginning of the story could be tackled at a relatively low level and then it would ramp up, side activities and new systems they introduced weren't necessarily tailored for level cap only, either.

[Otium]

I don't think that this should be a thing, the story is far too important in this game, along with the fact that leveling and experiencing the wonderful world SE have built is a huge part of the enjoyment in this game. I don't see why they would want to take this away? Leveling really doesn't take that long if you're not interested in the story anyway. People should work to level, i think they should take it slow and enjoy the game, but even if you want to rush, it shouldn't just be handed to you.

I do however think that going forward they could do with streamlining some of the older content. A lot of time is spent doing level 50 MSQ's that just don't add to the story (fetch quests), I didn't like doing those quests at the time, and I doubt anyone leveling up through the main story would enjoy them, when they could be cut out and reshuffle some of the exp to make it so people keep at the correct level, little improvements like this could impact how the leveling is enjoyed by people.

[Derio]

Yea only to have players complain that there is nothing to do. And then us tell them they paid to skip from 50-60 or 50-70.

Honestly it's a bad idea but 4.0 is less than a year away so they probably will do it

[Kallera]

If they implement this here in FFXIV, it will be quite different than WoW because they'll only get one job boosted to lvl60(?), and the rest will be still lvl1. The only boost will be that they'll be able to play with old players as soon as they log into the new expansion, so they won't feel alone/bored grinding a content they don't really care about anyways, so for Square-Enix is a win-win because they get new players and they pay for the boost, and we should be happier if there are more players around because that means more content/quality, I don't want FFXIV to die!

All boosting one job does is ensure that the boosted player will be unable to play properly at lvl60, and will not know this until they run into other players THAT HAVE LEVELED THEIR OTHER CLASSES. You are setting the boosted player up for failure and to go back to level. That's shadier than WoW's boost, to be honest.

On the other side, I can understand you being worried about the quality of the new boosted players, but I think FFXIV is quite different.

How will it be different? The boosting concept is the same, ffxiv liberally takes notes from WoW... the animosity and mistrust of new players is certainly there. People are going to want to keep those players out in order to have a smoother experience.

[Cakekizyy]

I came here to express my opinion before they make a decision. I vote "no". My FC votes "no". Adding this would effectively make sure that we would no longer pug any content, starting from roulettes, ending with 24 man. We would close down as a community, simply out of fear of what kind of people we're going to meet, if they bought their way to max level. Even when Blizzard put a high price on their equivalent, it really ruined the pugging community, as simply people that knew nothing of their class were unable to clear even the easiest of content.

Your FC is gonna be shut-ins from fear that the new people will be idiots that can't read tooltips?

[Cabalabob]

I'd rather 4.0 just be split into 2 stories, 1 finishing the story in ARR taking us to ala mhigo and garlemald, and 1 that is a completely seperate and new story that doesn't require completion of any old content, kind of like how FFXI did ToAU, you went to a completely new land which had its own story and had nothing to do with anything you had done before, you get there and the first thing they say "I don't care what rank or title you had on the mainland, here you're just a mercenary to me". That way there's a continuation for old players to finish off their story and maybe have some end game content there as a reward for getting through all 3 expansions worth of story while also having a new story for new and existing players alike with its own endgame path.

As for jump potions, no, such a lazy solution, this game already has a reputation for spoon feeding, this won't help especially if you make it a cash shop item which will just set off the pay to win alarm bells.

[Kallera]

Your FC is gonna be shut-ins from fear that the new people will be idiots that can't read tooltips?

That can be a real possibility. There are folks that won't touch the df without at least majority vote, just in case they run into that one guy that makes it a slog. You are also forgetting the other types of people that make a df run into a terrible experience.