Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Voltyblast]

Speculate away, all you're doing is confirming in my eyes that you don't don't care about story.

I personally don't care about the story, no, however I know people care about it and this is why I'm giving my opinions on how it could improved. I could've said "just remove it entirely" but I would be lying if I said that.
However, despite my carelessness for the story I even gave my take on how to make it more relevant because by making them optional the developers can have more freedom, as the game isn't bound to the story.

However, I don't agree with what you said because you're putting the story above everything, even gameplay. While I - according to you that is - devalue the story for gameplay, you are devalueing gameplay for story and guess which one is worse?
Let me just say, that 1.0 didn't exactly shine in gameplay and it was one of the major reason for its shutdown. Even its story couldn't save it (although I heard only later the story became "decent")

And once again, people who don't care about the story WILL NOT CARE in the future, but those who CARE ABOUT THE GAME will keep playing the game in the future. I'm not saying that there is just one kind of people: there are those who want a story and those who don't, which is TOTALLY FINE. It's however useless to say "oh but they won't care about the lore and the story if they can skip it": people already don't care, and they won't bother with the lore to begin with. Not all of course but still a good bunch of players will skip it and never bother. You won't change them. You won't change me. Ever.

And this is why I said that players who follow won't see the difference, because you can still follow the story at your own way. What would stop you to follow if it was optional? It's not being put aside: the story and gameplay can go together, but you don't require both to play it fully. It doesn't necessarily have to be bound to lore to make it sense and again, the bible this is not: they can modify things, remove things, make up reasons, anything.
Or perhaps people will lose the reason to follow it because now it's not mandatory anymore? I'm not saying that's the reason but, the way I spoke with people in the past, they made the MSQ look like busy work. Nobody likes busy work in videogames...

On top of that, with normal RPGs, I can play any chapter of the saga in any order I want: I can play Shadow Hearts 2 before 1, or Ar tonelico 3 before 1, or Atelier Iris 3 before 2, or Digital devil saga 2 before 1, or Drakenkard 2 before 1, Legaia 2 before 1 and etc. It's my loss? Yeah, but guess what: I can play the previous game and learn the story, at my own pace. I usually don't but it's my choice, not the game's. And yes I know they're offline rpgs so they technically don't count, but I'm sure you see my point.

But if you don't agree then...."shrugs" just pray this potion won't come out from the sketches. But I doubt it.