New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[van_arn]

I have little interest in getting new players caught up to top tier content, especially if Square is going to keep doing an abysmal job with gating that top tier content. I only want to be able to tell a new player it's not a fedexing visual novel for 100+ hours before they can play the actual game.

I still don't see the problem in just starting a new player at the gates of Heavensward. They're already skipped past 1.0, so why not just move the starting point to 3.0?

Heck, even the story wouldn't suffer. Just watching the trailer for Heavensward tells you you're on the run from your "home" and you've taken refuge somewhere. That's an easy hook for anyone to latch onto, and the story of Heavensward does a decent job filling in the gaps. This also solves the problems of new players being unable to play DRK or AST (both of which are common complaints) as well as a better example of the game in its current form. Even the MSQ is less scatterbrained past the gates of heavensward; this might actually be a better place to introduce players to the story than ARR.

New players that want even more context have the inn and NG+, much like players look to youtube for 1.0 story nowadays.

Skip potions on the mog station aren't really an excuse for a poor player experience, and I really don't see "they can pay extra to make it bearable" as a valid alternative. Perhaps at minimum just dump a level 50 job/story skip with recruit a friend. Or with an upgrade from the starter edition.