Quote Originally Posted by PyurBlue View Post
This doesn't seem like a significant distinction to me. If you bought FF14 primarily to participate in something locked behind the MSQ you have to pay additional money to play the content right away. It's the same as with the other games. While the content you don't want to play might be handled a little differently, that probably doesn't matter if you didn't want to play it in the first place. FF14 flagging the skipped content as done could be a disadvantage too. If the player skipping wanted to do the skipped content at their own pace, the skip potion forever takes that content away from them (but this is fixed in Shadowbringers).
It is a significant distinction when you're claiming that you're paying for the game twice. Regardless of your interest in the part that is affected by the boost, when you use the boost, you get the benefits of the quests that are completed for you at a fraction of the time it would've taken were you to do them manually, like minions and mounts and unlocked dungeons. So it's not like you're paying for nothing, aka being charged twice for the same thing.
Maybe I can make it clearer by putting it another way. The skip potion and similar items have you paying to solve problems made by the devs. Paying to save time is completely valid, but in FF14 the time investment only exists because the developers put it into the game. They didn't have to and paying for it just reinforces it as a good business strategy for them. SE absolutely deserves to make money for their products of course but when you end up paying the devs to sell you solutions to problems that shouldn't exist, it hardly seems fair to have to pay. It makes some sense with the level skip because leveling helps to keep dungeons alive. Making players go through the MSQ on the other hand has very little effect on the game as a whole since it's a solo experience.
The time investment only exists because that is the nature of a growing game that is continuously expanded at a regular frequency. If you're not willing to invest the time in a growing game and not willing to pay to go through the provided shortcut, then maybe look for a static game that doesn't grow.