Heavensward content

[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.)