Heavensward content

[hawkemoon]

main storyline, lvl 1-50 (184 quests) ending with "the ultimate weapon"
then once you are lvl 50, the new quest line is from release 2.0 and is called the "7th astral era" quest line, 100 quests all lvl 50 from when lvl 50 was cap before HW release.
3rd set is HW main scenario, ( 94 quests) from lvl 50-60 and finally you have the dragonsong series, which is current lvl 60 endgame series.
my problem is forcing someone to play the entire release for lvl 50 when current game is lvl 60, it would be akin to playing WoW and being forced to do the entire quest series for burning crusade before you could do lich king, then do lich king series before you can do panda land, etc etc, it doesn't make much sense to force players to do previous expansion content to gate current content, at least if its not relevant. why would I spend weeks doing a lvl 50 quest line so that I could access the lvl50-60 content I bought and am expecting to play. I am not saying don't make it to lvl 50, I am saying once I am at lvl 50 why can I not go to HW and continue from there? is there any relevant content to HW and 50-60 that I need to gain before I can do HW? I am doing the series (like I have a choice?) but am I going to get anything out of this? and by the time I am done with it, wont I be well into my 50's and now when I do go into HW I am over lvl of the content I am supposed to be doing from 50-60. seems like someone dropped the ball.
Also when Stormblood comes out in 2 months how are they going to deal with this type of issue then?
typically anytime you sell content expansion that's includes a lvl increase, most games will allow you to create a char at the current content lvl, IE of stormblood increases from 60-70,. then if you buy stormblood you can created 1 time, 1 char at lvl 60 and jump right in. the purpose being bringing in new blood
anyway, my point was that I find it time consuming and frustrating that the lil bit o time I get to play I don't get to play as I wish. I work full time and play casually

[Niwashi]

it doesn't make much sense to force players to do previous expansion content to gate current content, at least if its not relevant.

If it weren't relevant, then it wouldn't be required. But that's not the case here. Those quests are relevant.

Admittedly, it's roughly the later half of those patch quests whose relevance is the most obvious. They're the lead up to the Heavensward story, and how our characters get to Ishgard. They're essentially already part of Heavensward except that they don't require purchase of the expansion to do them. It's silly to complain about not being on Heavensward yet when you essentially already are.

(Or if you're talking more specifically about functional relevance, those patch quests have been updated to give out gear that gets you to the stats necessary to continue. You'd be far further behind if you still had to grind out everything a tier at a time the way people did back when it was first being released. Instead you have those quests to jump-start you to the gear levels necessary to do Heavensward content.)


FFXIV is a story focused game. It's weird how many players accept it perfectly well that earlier content is gated on the story, but then are perplexed that level 50 content is still gated on the story. It's still the same game. That basic pattern doesn't change just because an expansion came out. The expansions just give us more of the game, more of the storyline, to go through.

With Stormblood, SE will be changing some of the issues with the Heavensward gating, though. We won't have to complete all the prior storyline to unlock Red Mage and Samurai, like we do with Dark Knight, Astrologian, and Machinist. But the main scenario is still the story, and still continues from the previous story. (It's why purchase of Stormblood includes access to Heavensward, because they're still tied together. One continues from where the other left off.)