New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Shougun]

Man I wonder if that FF7 remake will let you just skip all the story and go fight Emerald and Ruby Weapon

Expansions for an mmorpg should been seen (a bit) like a continuing series, imo - at least after so many additions, like a witcher 1, 2, 3. Each connected. Skipping inside a game itself I think is unnecessary but I think the argument gains strength across games especially the longer gaps. Some people don't care for witcher 1 but love 3. Or like Harry Potter / lord of the rings / star wars movies, you get extra value out of seeing them in order but you could enter the series out of order then realize you love it and go back and fix it. I've known a few people who went into both series out of order because lack of interest until friends enjoyed the ride on newer ones with them. For Witcher, for example, I recommend 3 over and out of order of 1/2 if I know they have a lower tolerance for older systems/graphics and then if they love 3 encourage playing 1 and 2 for the world value.

The fans of the lore / ff experience are already satiated with the current pipeline but those prospective other people looking in at the new content, at "witcher 3" are potentially not looking at or interested in "witcher 1" (yet at least).

I dont think chopping the game up into a billion disjointed pieces is wise, or skipping in random locations with no cohesion, but I do think there is a lack of considering other types of interests and people if we waive off the value of skipping things too much. I think making a streamlined introduction of some sort, as an option, has a lot of potential value. Skip potion sort of (poorly imo) covers that but lacks cohesion (could be fixed up) and is also a hard sell to make to a new person who is like "have to play witcher 1 or you won't let me try 3? Or I have to pay nearly an extra expansion on top of all the stuff I already have to buy (~$20+ potion)? Ok no thanks, bye".