Naoki Yoshida's Comment in Regard to Jump Potions/Boost Potions

[Legewiel]

I can see the need for content skipping eventually. But as I've said before, the game is too young. Its not like it has Everquest's 22 expansions yet. Or even however many WoW

It's not about number of expansions, it's about the time we're living. When WoW and Everquest launched it were ok to spend lots of time in a single game... Today with a lot of different options, it's not everyone that want to spend a lot of hours with promises that it'll possible get fun later on... the start in wow is boring too, but you don't need to do it anymore, the expansion comes with a free potion and if you want to level alts you buy more or you do it the normal way now that you're into the game and know its potential. I had interest in some other mmos, but I sure as hell don't want to spend days playing just to be able to get a feeling of the endgame and see if its worth it...

[Legewiel]

Kinda weird the people with 1 post to the forums are all saying the same thing...

Probably cause it's a subject that affects everyone and everyone wants to raise their opinion on it, it's not just another "post here your elezen topic"
Facebook groups and reddit are also crowded with ppl talking about it

[Elkanah]

I fully agree with what you said. A Jump potion will not make a player play their job bad. Its that player's laziness when it comes to learning how to use their Job that will make them play bad.

This just makes the matter worse. Prepare for a lot of backlash from the current players and from the community with black lists filled up across all servers. If you're not willing to take the time to understand the job from the ground up and level like everybody else does, let alone the story, your argument is invalid. You're just waiting for backlash to happen. This isn't China, where the time they have is the same or relevant as ours. Or would you rather pay your sub by the hour? Cause that's pretty much what they do there. Le'ts also NOT forget that wages don't work the same way as they do in North America. People also don't have the kind of time North america or Japan might have when it comes to sitting down and playing games. Japan plays more mobile games, but that's besides the point. The point is, you bring in new players > they get the boost > they play the game > and they leave. The only real winner in this conversation is square enix greed system of double purchases.

From a business stand point, I can agree, as this game is so casual that hardcore content is pointless at it is sad. But it's there for the quote unquote 'raiders'. The game, while needing more casual and middle ground content, doesn't keep the interest for more than 5 minutes, so they move on to another game because "Yoshi-p said it's okay to do". As a MMO developer, that's not what you want to tell your audience, but I get it. Not everyone wants to invest in the product when there's nothing to do. So stepping away for 5min and coming back can make it feel quote unquote "rejuvenated" or "like new" again, without breaking the rhythm or the beat.

I don't feel like you understand the difference between China/Korea and North America like you think you do when it comes to the jump potions and why getting them only makes it worse here for the players who play normally, and the people who plan to buy and sell accounts because of Squeenix's decision. Did you also know that China and Korea are heavily KNOWN for gold and gil farmers? Selling accounts at rapid prices to people too, because of the same issue. And a great investment of money right back in the hands of the jump potion buyers. #justsayin

[seraf]

Seriously this is nothing but a cash grab and laziness on SE and the dev teams part

This is a story based MMO new players should need to do the MSQ if they dont like it they can go find another MMO.

So you'd rather turn potential new players away from the game just because of this? Because that's how you kill an mmo. As much as I love this game for its story I realize that a lot of people only want to play for the social aspect and/or other content like PVP, Raiding, etc. Telling people they have to do over 4 years worth of content just to catch up to friends or to experience the latest expansion is going to be a major turn off for many.

[Elkanah]

Does it bother no one at SE that the largest impediment they are seeing to new players playing the game is ... having to play the game?

I can see the need for content skipping eventually. But as I've said before, the game is too young. Its not like it has Everquest's 22 expansions yet. Or even however many WoW had when it started its PTW leveling.

This. SO MUCH THIS.

We're not in FFXI where they waited 10 years before they made their move. We're talking about an MMO that BARELY has investment expansions, let alone the game itself. We're not counting 1.0 because it was straight garbage, but the 2.0 content and up until now have given us the lore we needed to feel complete about missing puzzle pieces from 1.0

[Elkanah]

It's already bad enough there are cut-scenes that we can't EVER go back and watch. Remember when Minfilia became the mother light and she started talking to you from the crystal? Yeah, guess what? Not a view-able cut-scene, but a VERY important one to that part of the 3.0 series in that specific content. There are STILL cut-scenes that are NOT view-able by the inn rooms or crafted book items. Which also makes that pointless.

[Elkanah]

If squeenix holds up the decision for it, there's nothing I can do about that. As they only listen to the players who come in about the game just starting. But, expect a lot of income to be made from Squeenix's loop hole on account selling. Cause that looks like what we'll be seeing more sites of when they bring this potion, and the community/dev team will have no one else but themselves to blame. But hey, it's Squeenix, not Ubisoft. *shrugs*

[Belhi]

Can the narrative not be continuing, with out it being directly tied to it? Can people not enjoy more world building with out it being built right on top of the old content. Within the current system that is somewhat outlined they have quest progression and flagging issues that can't be fixed, I get that. But why does each thing have to be directly tied to the last. I don't expect a fix anymore or ever really. I expect better planning going forward.But as we have seen from other issues what seems to be simple planning going forward, like we have an inventory issue lets not increase the items number for 10 levels to the same as first 50. Oh wait we can just charge them for it.

I actually don't oppose potions so much as bad design, bad fixes, and cash grabs. But basically to embrace what you find enjoyable perpetuates bad design and allows for cash grab.

To legeweil the mistake of directly linking 3.0 and 2.0 stories together when they have no way to adjust them in the future except to flag as all done for cash. Just for starters.

The link is the continuity. We have development for characters play out over multiple expansions. Our relationship to those characters directly ties into that. Iceheart would be just some random rebel leader without her introduction in 2.4. One of the most emotional scenes in HW story would have substantially less impact if we didn't already have establish relationships with characters involved. This is true for enemies and allies.

Now you could argue that they could just have it so you step into the existing story at that point and it would be like reading a series of novels and starting half way through. That's basically what the Story Jump potion does. The reason they cant just do this without something like a Jump Potion seems to be that their questing/gating system isn't designed for it and while it would be better for that to be fixed, it would also be a massive amount of work to overhaul a core system and that is something that is less realistic to expect.

The reality is the game engine we have is what they have to work with. Any solutions have to work within those confines. As you point out SE is a business and any major investments of money need to be justified to investors. They need to feel the returns are worth the cost. MMOs are these days already rather unpopular with investors simply because of the high risk and the rather smaller ratio of profit to investment compared to other game. Case in point look at Blizzard. Hearthstone has a vastly higher profit to cost ratio compared to WoW and required a tiny team to create.

There is going to be a cap on the realistic amount of resources a dev team can ask for and that has to be divided up among all the game's projects. This time round its Server infrastructure (for a inventory size increase), the patch development and the expansion. If we were to get a quest system overhaul it would come at the cost of one of those things.

You can complain about design mistakes in the past till the cows come home and it won't change the fact that the system we have is the one they have to work with. If we want to keep playing this game its that system they have to get to work.

[Elkanah]

You can complain about design mistakes in the past till the cows come home and it won't change the fact that the system we have is the one they have to work with. If we want to keep playing this game its that system they have to get to work.

Since squeenix took all the devs from XIV to work on XV, and the creators of the Dot Hack games are developing the project for FF VII Remake because they know how to work the multi-disc progress system with their past .Hack PS2 titles, I have to wonder how much development squeenix will bother with.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

-Player A buys game, plus Potion.
-Player B buys just the game.
-Both players start the same day.

Do one of these players have a distinct advantage purchased with real world cash? If your answer is "yes", well... If that is not P2W, I don't know what is.

Without context, this kind of definition for P2W can get turned on its head pretty quickly. For example, someone who bought Heavensward and leveled their crafters through a massive grind of items compared to someone come 3.3 who had Moogles doling out a million EXP a day for less than twenty minutes of "work." What about people who took forever and a day grinding all their classes to 60 versus PotD practically gifting EXP like candy? On a cash shop specific example. Are retainers and the Chinese Dress pay to win? Both technically provide an advantage to whomever purchases them. In theme park MMOs, you don't win anything by leveling. It's simply a means to an end because we will all, eventually, be on the same playing field.