Allow MSQ Fast Track To Latest Expansion

[Jandor]

I also don't get this hate for jump potions. It is a win win for everyone. <skip> This only allows the game to grow because it keeps the revolving door of MMORPGs turning. People leave MMORPGs all the time but you don't want to make it difficult for new players taking their place to join.

I very much doubt people are going to sign up for a subscription MMO because it now provides the option to pay extra to skip a huge chunk of it.
Skipping portions of the story isn't a major problem, charging people extra to do it is though.

More growth and money for the developers means more and faster content for everyone.

Content patches have stayed roughly the same size and been delivered at roughly the same rate for the entirety of the games life after relaunch, both before and after the cash shop, and despite the shops ever growing size. More money for SE means more money for SE, nothing more, nothing less. No one is doing us a favour by using the mogstation.

[Belhi]

It's amazing the number of times I've seen players say "Oh, I don't like the story in this game at all, so I just skip past all the dialog and cutscenes." If they're skipping past it, then clearly they don't even know what the story is, so how could they possibly decide whether they do or don't like it?

Anyway, if a story jump potion were ever to be added (which I hope it never is), there shouldn't be any story summary. You play through the story and find out what the story is about, or you skip it and don't. Any summary that actually covers the plotline is going to be just as long as that plotline it's replacing, since there's hardly any filler there to begin with.

As long as it doesn't impact my play experience I don't mind a summary. Something like a 'story so far' thing on the website or something that allowed you to read up summaries in chapters to get up to date would probably be a useful refresher for existing players as well as new players who skip. Such a summary wouldn't eat much into the developers time or cost a great deal. There are actually fanmade summaries already (for example The Lore Train on gamer escape or Ethys Asher's ARR abridged series). However I don't want them to bend over backwards or spend a great deal of resources accomplishing it. I certainly don't want them to draw out my current player investment in the story to accommodate others. If they want to jump in the deep end let them.

I very much doubt people are going to sign up for a subscription MMO because it now provides the option to pay extra to skip a huge chunk of it. Skipping portions of the story isn't a major problem, charging people extra to do it is though.

I am not really sold on the model they are offering. Frankly I don't really see a need for a lvl Jump potion at this point for example. I also think that it would make more sense to include a story jump potion if it was introduced with an expansion set as part of its cost rather than selling it separately as for the most part only people buying an expansion would need it.

I can however see an argument for charging for a story job potion outside of an expansion set. The existing concept of a story Jump potion is to jump you to the start of the current expansion. Currently the existing story structure does act as a blocking mechanism for a lot of RMT and bots since it actually requires a degree of playing and money investment to access the higher areas. This is probably why they chose to include HW with the expansion set rather than the base ARR game.

Content patches have stayed roughly the same size and been delivered at roughly the same rate for the entirety of the games life after relaunch, both before and after the cash shop, and despite the shops ever growing size. More money for SE means more money for SE, nothing more, nothing less. No one is doing us a favour by using the mogstation.

This isn't entirely true. As a rule trying new stuff is almost always more resource consuming than sticking to what you already are doing. In addition to that we are getting some pretty major and costly infrastructure upgrades. Note that the EU datacentre didn't become a thing until the cash shop became a thing. They even outright stated that the cash shop revenue payed for a good deal of the cost of building the EU datacentre.

Content release quantity is more limited by the availability of staff with the right skill set and experience to be hired rather than the funds involved. SE has been hiring for a while now for FF14.

[Vhailor]

If you start a new character and skip everything and only focus on MSQ and dungeon unlocks, you can get from 1-60 and even gear in ilvl 230-260 gear within 2 weeks, and that's when playing only 4 or 5 hours every day. Done it with alts lately and it isn't big a deal. With potd even faster if you chose to do that, but then you will have to back track and do MSQ/Job Quests and unlock quests, which will most likely take much longer than just rushing through with skipping.

I don't think it's as trivial as you make it out to be, for a variety of reasons.

(1) Most people won't skip everything and purely focus on MSQ and dungeon unlocks. Not to say they can't, but most won't. Forcing players into a choice between taking reasonable amounts of time and stopping to smell the roses even a little bit isn't appropriate.

(2) Most people returning from lengthy breaks aren't as familiar with the process as you are. That's going to add time.

(3) Even by your (exceedingly conservative) estimate, you're still talking (4.5 hours/day on average) * (14 days) = 63 hours. Many people can't devote 4.5 hours per day to the game, though; if they're playing, say, 10 hours a week, it's over a month and a half JUST to get through the Heavensward story and gear up to i230 / i260. That's ridiculous.

In short, your tossed-off 2 week figure is relevant for people who know exactly what they're doing, aren't spending idle time on other tasks, and have significant amounts of time to devote to FFXIV. If all gamers fell into this category, I'd agree that the storyline setup is rather appropriate. Given this isn't the reality, though, I think jumping potions are needed at this point for SE to combat the grind.

[Lexia]

Those same people that want to skip everything and go straight to "end game" will find out that there not much of end game and not exciting for long and will be the same one that will quit after only playing a couple months. So either way those people are going to quit anyways.

[Lambadelta]

(3) Even by your (exceedingly conservative) estimate, you're still talking (4.5 hours/day on average) * (14 days) = 63 hours. Many people can't devote 4.5 hours per day to the game, though; if they're playing, say, 10 hours a week, it's over a month and a half JUST to get through the Heavensward story and gear up to i230 / i260. That's ridiculous.

It's like MMOs are meant to be a time sink, and the time sink we have these days is nothing like the days of old (in other MMOs) where leveling to max level took months.

Honestly if people don't like the idea of time sinks in an MMO then why play an MMO. Seems pretty counterproductive to me.

[JCharms]

I don't like the idea of people outright SKIPPING the story. The story is the whole point of FFXIV. It's the very meat and potatoes of the game.

I keep seeing this line of argument, and I cannot see how anyone can come up with this conclusion?
This is an MMO, and the object of the team is to get you to keep logging in via any one or all of the systems in place to do so, like dailies/weeklies, achieves, progression, rep grinds and so on... Now the MSQ is won-and-done so to speak, so by its very definition, not possible to be one of those systems to keep you logging in month after month.
I am sure there are people that only play the game for the MSQ, but its hard to believe that's the focus of the game.. It makes no sense.

[Transient_Shadow]

For some games like ESO where the story is trash I'd completely agree. However I must say that such an impimentation would seriously be cheating players out of the story.

[LunaFaye]

I don't think it's as trivial as you make it out to be, for a variety of reasons.

(1) Most people won't skip everything and purely focus on MSQ and dungeon unlocks. Not to say they can't, but most won't. Forcing players into a choice between taking reasonable amounts of time and stopping to smell the roses even a little bit isn't appropriate.

(2) Most people returning from lengthy breaks aren't as familiar with the process as you are. That's going to add time.

(3) Even by your (exceedingly conservative) estimate, you're still talking (4.5 hours/day on average) * (14 days) = 63 hours. Many people can't devote 4.5 hours per day to the game, though; if they're playing, say, 10 hours a week, it's over a month and a half JUST to get through the Heavensward story and gear up to i230 / i260. That's ridiculous.

In short, your tossed-off 2 week figure is relevant for people who know exactly what they're doing, aren't spending idle time on other tasks, and have significant amounts of time to devote to FFXIV. If all gamers fell into this category, I'd agree that the storyline setup is rather appropriate. Given this isn't the reality, though, I think jumping potions are needed at this point for SE to combat the grind.

I based it on the OP's question/suggestion. I don't think that his returning friends are not even falling in the non casual category, that would be the category you're trying to explain here, because if that would be the case the OP probably wouldn't be worried about his/her friends returning and trying to be ready for the expansion, if they would just play 10 hours a week. As well as he/she mentioned returning, meaning that they will know what they are doing, or the OP knows how the game works and can lead his/her friends in the right direction. I wasn't talking about players that just started for the first time and I was also not telling these kind of people that they should be skipping everything.

But to go with your example, even it it then would take a month, that's faster then we have done it. There was no exp bonus and such things, and it actually was a grind compared to today's leveling. And while I mentioned that I am not against the potion (if you would have not quoted half of the sentence), it's still not necessary or as high priority as you are trying to make it sound like. IF his/her friends would return now, they be not only geared, but having multiple characters till stormblood and wouldn't have to hope that this potion gets released way later down the line, if even at all.

[Belhi]

It's like MMOs are meant to be a time sink, and the time sink we have these days is nothing like the days of old (in other MMOs) where leveling to max level took months.

Honestly if people don't like the idea of time sinks in an MMO then why play an MMO. Seems pretty counterproductive to me.

It tends to be more about doing the stuff the people you socialise are doing than having an issue with a time sink. MMOs are fundamentally a social game platform and the levelling process can feel very much like a single player game with a chat function. Doing treasure hunts or running dungeons or raids for loot with friends is always more entertaining than doing it on your own or with a pug of strangers.

[KarstenS]

far behind on the MSQ that it would take quit a grind to catch back up.

And then?

There will be still a grind as they are far behind with gear progression, whoich would be mandatory to upgrade before they can start over into the expansion.

As seen before at the release of Heavensward, the quests will get additional gear rewards to finally be ready for entering the new areas.

And as the Heavensward MSQ is done very fast compared to the ARR ones, this will be the fastest way to get ready for Stormblood.