Quote Originally Posted by SenahPanipahr View Post
It does seem to be a bit of a meme in the FFXIV community that 'competency is a nice surprise', but yeahhh, much as I enjoyed the series of experiences are post-SB and ShB that have you play as someone else, I didn't understand why we were being taught the basics of a class after hundreds of hours leading up to that point. Is it meant to be for people who boosted *and* MSQ skipped? If so, people should surely be given a different, separate form of tutorial if they're going to insist on boosting.

You're definitely right that the collective experience is feeling rather patronised though. Same feeling I haver over it requiring a very conscious effort to be killed by mobs in the world. One of the best things about Eureka is the world actually having a sense of danger to it; it's such a shame that such experiences are so contained like that.
If I'm being completely honest, I think if the team had the mentality they hold now back when ARR was released, I don't think Extreme, Savage, or Ultimate would exist at all. I think these difficulty modes exist as an obligation to the players who would probably leave if they stopped making savage fights, which would hemorrhage players far more than job homogenization ever will. The hardest content would probably be Alliance Raids, and the Ivalice Raids never would've released with the challenge they held when introduced.

If they started with this mentality at launch, then the player base would never know that content was missing, so there'd be no concern about losing players.