why i quit before reaching endgame (feedback from a new player)

[Penthea]

Most post expansion/ARR content is designed that you do a few hours of story per month. The balance is totally off for new players coming into the game at this point. There is a reason story skip sells well. However, i dont think they make more money in the long term by having people who dont like story delivery/gates choosing between annoyance, pay, or quit.

Does it really sell well? I only know of two people who have used it. And unsurprisingly they both quit the game...because they didn't have much investment in a game they paid to not experience. They couldn't understand why HW was praised so much because they didn't understand why anything was pivotal.

when you start skipping cutscenes and text, it becomes literally just busy work for no purpose. Which is how a lot people handle it, but thats not an optimal game design/user design. What you are saying is, hey man, why cant you just spend 40-80 hours literally doing nothing but running from npc to npc clicking buttons just to get past them?

No of course it's not optimal design because the game isn't designed with players not caring about the story in mind. There are options for those who don't care, but the optimal experience is designed for those who follow the story.

Just like how WoW isn't designed for in-depth story-telling so someone who loves lore won't have an optimal experience due to reasons such as a lot of the story taking place in older games, novels, comics and the majority that is presented in the game is in giant walls of text without any animations or cutscenes accompanying them. But someone who doesn't care would just breeze through.

It's almost as if different games can cater to the different needs of different players! Crazy isn't it? You could...omg, play a different game if you don't like one of the primary elements of FFXIV :O