Do you think lore helps or hinders?

[Voltyblast]

In this game you need context to do anything.

Fair enough, but make it a reasonable context, especially in a mmorpg. Generally speaking the context is used for quest purposes: you usually can go in dungeons anytime (in any mmorpg whatsoever) but the context behind it helps when you need to do quests to get rewards, easily workable both ways. If you don't have the quest you won't get rewards, but if you do by following the main quest you'll get you reward. Would it work differently in this game? Absolutely not: you could still do the main quest and unlock the quest for X dungeon, but you can do X dungeon anytime you want when you hit a certain level. You just won't have a reason to go in yet. This is how most (if not ALL) mmorpgs do with dungeon exploration, giving absolute freedom in how they want to explore the world, which is an essential part in any mmorpg (a bit less in normal rpgs, but as I said already even those kind of games allow more freedom than this game does)

But again, context is fine, but is the choices you brought up the ONLY way for us to explore said places? I ask because...ehm...what if we're simple adventurers? What if we explore those places because, you know, we're not WoL and we just happen to be dungeon dwellers? I also ask because we're never alone in said dungeons (which we should be, according to the "lore") and since we're accompanied by 3 random people we don't know, are they also WoL? Are we Legion? We are many? I still want to know why we're never alone despite we should be the ONLY WoL of the game. For a game so focused on story and lore, this is quite a contradiction if you ask me...infact why couldn't we be just normal soldiers with the ability of the echo because we're all highly special, instead of just being one? I mean, there are 4 WoD so...why are we just one WoL?

In SWTOR you can do story dungeons (they're not many though) thanks to a solo bot that heals, dps and tanks for you if required. The dungeon is the same but toned down, but it's just you and nobody else.

And in WoW while you're never alone in dungeons, the bosses usually acknowledges your team presence as a "team" (and some bosses in Legion even recongnizes your artifact), and while we're supposed to be unique this time we're still simple commanders with an OP weapon. Sure it's kind of unreasonable why we have so many Ashbringers or Claws of Ursoc, but we're not special: we're just simple soldiers who achieved great highs thanks to our actions.

I might just repeat myself, but Context is totally fine if reasonable and not harmful to the gameplay...because this is a game afterall, right?

[Elazu]

I'm gonna go with hinders. See pvp. The 1v1v1 system makes queues so long that people don't even bother queueing up.

[Niwashi]

Irrelevant: you're still blocked for "x" reasons. You can put anything between the quotes and nothing really changes by a long shot: you're having an artificial reason for why you can't do a lot of stuff

No, it's certainly not irrelevant. Having something because of lore reasons is a completely different situation than having it because of gameplay reasons, and therefore having a lore explanation of it. In the first situation, lore actually drives what the developers can and cannot put into the game. In the second, the devs are making the decisions based on what they want in the game, and if there even is any lore attached, it comes after the fact and exists only to give an in-universe explanation of features the game was going to have anyway.

In a conversation about lore and where it's helpful or hurtful, that's a pretty big difference.

[Theodric]

I'm gonna go with hinders. See pvp. The 1v1v1 system makes queues so long that people don't even bother queueing up.

To be fair the game wasn't really built with PvP in mind. That may change as of 4.0 when we get further server upgrades though in the bulk of MMO's PvP is typically a novelty mini-game that a minority of the community take seriously.

[Berethos]

No wonder that (A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF) people are annoyed about HW and SB being story locked, when the could simply be introduced via a flashback of their past action, and each expansion the new WoL will have a different story.

That would be awful lot of work to craft several different versions of the story - ongoing WoL versus new WoL for each expansion (meaning the variables would grow over time) - along with possibly hampering the story because now you have to largely fit a single story into one expansion cycle (compare to Heavensward - it's prologue is essentially the 35-40 section in Central Coerthas, and the first chapters that set the stage are in the 2.x series)...

And for what? To placate those who don't care about the story anyway and just want to skip to the latest thing?

No thanks.

[Voltyblast]

That would be awful lot of work to craft several different versions of the story - ongoing WoL versus new WoL for each expansion (meaning the variables would grow over time) - along with possibly hampering the story because now you have to largely fit a single story into one expansion cycle (compare to Heavensward - it's prologue is essentially the 35-40 section in Central Coerthas, and the first chapters that set the stage are in the 2.x series)...

And for what? To placate those who don't care about the story anyway and just want to skip to the latest thing?

No thanks.

"Shrugs" then just hope the players won't dwindle down to bad numbers, because I can guarantee you that a lot of people I used to know didn't even bother to play the expansion thanks to the lore hindrance called "story gating". I'm sure that many want the story, but I'm sure that there are as many who don't want, and all this gating will discourage most of the future buyers. I'm certainly fine skipping the story however: just because I hate this game's story doesn't make me an rpg hater (Or else I wouldn't be playing Trails of Cold Steel right now, and waiting its sequel). However I'm almost sure - if not totally sure - that some other players can't stand it and skip it all the time (I certainly know a big bunch...too bad they all left the game), while a lot others won't even bother because of the lore lock.

All I can say is, good luck. Because we might need it.

[Berethos]

I don't think the story gating has the big impact on the overall players number that you think it does (your anecdotal evidence suggests a lot do leave to it...yet mine suggests the exact opposite, as my server continues to have solid numbers of 60s around every evening, and I don't see a lot that I know personally leaving the game...and when they do, it's not been for story gating reasons).

Consider this - a few years ago one of the WoW developers talked about the amount of players that actually made it past level 10 out of those that tried the game (trial and purchased accounts). The number at that point in the life of the game, as I recall, was 30%.

70% left the game before even reaching level 10, and there was no story gate there to impede them.

That being said, my main point was that doing all that extra development work to create variable stories each expansion while restricting the story to having to take place in 4-5 patches for people that honestly aren't likely to care much about the story at all in the first place doesn't even begin to make sense.

Also, if the issue is player numbers and retention and catching up with friends, the level boost option (with a synopsis of the story thus far available) is simply the more elegant solution. It provides those that don't care about the story a way to get around it, and lets those of us who do care about the story get as much as they are willing to give us.

[Voltyblast]

Also, if the issue is player numbers and retention and catching up with friends, the level boost option (with a synopsis of the story thus far available) is simply the more elegant solution. It provides those that don't care about the story a way to get around it, and lets those of us who do care about the story get as much as they are willing to give us.

Well, that's the only reason I can think of why they're going to lock the expansion again, which is genius - although I'm just speculating, but they did promise they wouldn't do this again. so It's normal to be skeptic at this point.

And I'm sorry, but I honestly disagree with this idea. One thing is making the jump just as a cheap way to reach the required level, one thing is to purposedly slow the player down so that they either endure or jump to 60-70 right away. WoW's jumping boost only serves to speed up an already fast levelling process, while FFXIV's jumping boost would only serve as a way to ignore a chunk of mandatory content that will inevitably be dead, especially when the expansion is out (who's gonna bother doing castrum or even steps of faith, when most of 70s will be focused on "Insert raid here" normal/savage and "Insert 2 expert dungeons" here?).

I might be considered blasphemous to say this, but WoW's boost is probably the lesser evil of the two. I mean I used mine for legion but I could also not use it. In FFXIV, if you don't use the potion you'd have to follow through hundreds of quests. I see a big difference here....afterall forcing a story on their throat isn't usually a good way to make them enjoy it. Think of this case: I studied art and literature by myself first before attending university and studying it properly for becoming a scholar, but I can assure you that if I was forced to study that without the enjoyment I had during my courses, I wouldn't care at all. Plus I personally dislike the writing and the characters so even after following it through for a bit (until Coerthas: I felt all that mess was boring and unnecessary. Again), I'd still hate them enough to just skip it. By the way this is a personal opinion so hold your torches and forks.

PS: When I mean about the amount of players, I don't strictly mean that there is nobody: I'm in balmung and yeah of course it's chock full but basically 70% of my entire friendlist is either gone for good on a break (or hating me to death. Pretty sure you can see why). And those who left it's either because of lack of content (3.0) or because they got nothing else to do besides raids or primals, which they either run or not. I don't do any raids (did it once, was enough toxicity) and any primals (same as for raids) but unfortunately I can't take long breaks without losing my hard worked house (And new houses won't come out until next year, if we're lucky).

Besides, I'm pretty sure there was an unofficial census made somewhere in these threads. Sure they're not 100% reliable or precise, but it's still an estimate info about the population. Good luck waiting for an official one!

[Dyvid]

Ever since the announcement of the 4.0 expansion, threads have popped up about a number of things: from new jobs to qol issues to possible new activities and many others. One recurring thing that I've seen in nearly all of those threads is lore and how it can impact what people want or don't want.

Do you think lore advances those issues? Or does it limit what could be coming? My take? Its my first time seeing lore having such an effect on decision making made by the players here and I'm not sure if it should have that much weight when it comes certain parts of the game. Then again, I will admit while I do like the lore, I don't like it enough to say "yes that should happen cuz of lore" and vice-versa".

Really doesn't matter but devs already stated they design game play first then use lore to fill in the gap. See the real reason why Summoners didn't get new Egis, hint: it wasn't because of lore.

[Alleo]

I agree with Berethos. Most of the people I know that stopped playing did this not because of the story but because of the, in their opinion, lacking end game. Some of those rushed through the story only to see that maybe the end is not the best anyway. There are so many reasons someone can drop the game and there are and will be people that will stop playing because they hate to go through so much story but is it really worth to change anything for them?

But to be more on topic I do agree that SE should try not to use lore as a reason for not implementing something at least not something that is really minor..like some glamours. FC summoning a primal might a example where I could understand that it wont be coming because of lore.