We should get exp boost in the game.

[Dfess]

Only to those who aren't the target audience when it comes to RPG's. There's plenty of games out there where you can jump right into the action with little or no focus on story. FFXIV isn't one of those games, nor does it need to be changed in order to become one.

Why are you so quick to turn away potential new players? When you make an "MMORPG" the target audience is RPG players.

[Morningstar1337]

The key thing of note here is that XIV is a JRPG first and foremost and MMO second. I don't think it needs to change but I must state that JRPGs are not the only type of RPG's we have the Elder Scrolls games which are Open World RPGs and thus has its story progresses nonlinearly, we have Dark Souls a RPG made in Japan (AFAIK) that's closer to Elder Scrolls in terms of structure, and we have RPGs (granted ones in the mechanical sense), J or otherwise, with no story at all (One Minute Heroics comes to mind here). What this means is that just because one is an RPG fan in general, does not mean they would enjoy a specific subset of RPGs such as JRPGs

[Theodric]

Why are you so quick to turn away potential new players? When you make an "MMORPG" the target audience is RPG players.

Players who can't handle a focus on storytelling in RPG's are not likely to actually be fans of the genre in the first place. Furthermore, I don't think that appealing to new players should come at the cost of the game's core design and nature. There's plenty of players who are new to the game who have little issue with the focus on storytelling, so it's interesting that such a fact is often ignored in favour of expressing concern for the new players who don't enjoy the story.

[Morningstar1337]

I feel like the MSQ roulette ties into this argument as well, as the story was made unskippable for the benefit of new players.

[Dfess]

Players who can't handle a focus on storytelling in RPG's are not likely to actually be fans of the genre in the first place. Furthermore, I don't think that appealing to new players should come at the cost of the game's core design and nature. There's plenty of players who are new to the game who have little issue with the focus on storytelling, so it's interesting that such a fact is often ignored in favour of expressing concern for the new players who don't enjoy the story.

So in other words you don't want new players to have an easier time than you did playing the game? If you had to suffer through it then so do they. I got you.

[Esmoire]

Why are you so quick to turn away potential new players? When you make an "MMORPG" the target audience is RPG players.

Genre terms in general shouldn't define specification, but help communicate to people to some degree of what to expect. Puzzle games, for example, can be turn-based, grid-based, falling blocks, so much... The genre term is helpful, but it requires the potential player to willingly investigate what a particular title entails. It would be stupid to say all puzzle games have to have falling blocks, or be single player, etc., just because we use language term to help describe it.

You can try to package it in with your loaded, obsolete, shallow idea of MMORPGs. I see it as Final Fantasy games where my party members are controller by others, and rather than just a one-and-done story, it's an ongoing narrative.

[Theodric]

So in other words you don't want new players to have an easier time than you did playing the game? If you had to suffer through it then so do they. I got you.

I didn't 'suffer' through anything. If I didn't find the game to be enjoyable then I would not have played it for years. Obviously there's some things about FFXIV that should be improved, though I disagree immensely with the idea that the story should be given less focus. It's one of the game's biggest draws. The players who don't care about the story aren't likely to be entertained for very long and would be better off playing something else.

[Enla]

So in other words you don't want new players to have an easier time than you did playing the game? If you had to suffer through it then so do they. I got you.

They already do have an easier time though. It took me two months to get to 50 back in ARR and even longer to finish up to the 2.4 storyline. There were not story skips back then at all, and leveling was an absolute slog in part because of the necessity of the cross class system and how several classes were hamstrung if they didn't have a specific skill from another class unlocked. Swiftcast and Blood for Blood were absolutely essential for healers and DPS respectively and you needed to level THM and LNC to even get them. Or Stoneskin for that matter for healers in general. Couple that with a lack of options when it came to leveling compared to what we have now along with leveling just taking outright longer and it's not hard to say that newbies have things a lot easier now than we did back then.

SE has gone out of it's way to make the new player experience much more palatable and their planned reduction and streamlining of the ARR questline that's coming in 5.3 is another step forwards in that regards. However what you're asking for just is never going to happen.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I thought we already did get xp boosts in game...

The Armory XP Bonus
The Brand New Ring +30% XP bonus
The various +XP earrings we've seen over the years
Food Buff XP bonuses.

Also I'm fairly certain you can't level a character from 1 to 120 in 4 hours no matter what buffs or methods you use in WoW.

While I know some may not agree with me, I feel that the main focus of FFXIV IS the story and those who want to skip it without ever engaging with it (as opposed to rolling an alt after doing the story with a main) aren't really the people FFXIV is designed for.

If someone is "new" to FFXIV I feel they should need to experience the story IMO. They should not be able to skip it because the story IS the game. The paid story skip is for those foolish enough, in my opinion, to actually pay to not play the game. Those who feel the need to rush to max lvl through the most expedient method possible so they can just jump into endgame content are not, in my opinion, the audience the game is primarily designed for, and anyone coming into FFXIV with such a mindset is going to have a very bad time I think. More so, when such a player actually does reach max level and finds the endgame, such as it is, isn't what they were expecting, and doesn't fit what they think an endgame should be. Then they blame FFXIV for not being more like WoW. FFXIV is not WoW and it's not trying to be.

I play both FFXIV and WoW concurrently and I like both for different reasons. I enjoy my time in FFXIV because it typically doesn't share the same things that frustrate me about wow (FFXIV has a whole different list of things to frustrate me :P )

[Dfess]

They already do have an easier time though. It took me two months to get to 50 back in ARR and even longer to finish up to the 2.4 storyline. There were not story skips back then at all, and leveling was an absolute slog in part because of the necessity of the cross class system and how several classes were hamstrung if they didn't have a specific skill from another class unlocked. Swiftcast and Blood for Blood were absolutely essential for healers and DPS respectively and you needed to level THM and LNC to even get them. Or Stoneskin for that matter for healers in general. Couple that with a lack of options when it came to leveling compared to what we have now along with leveling just taking outright longer and it's not hard to say that newbies have things a lot easier now than we did back then.

SE has gone out of it's way to make the new player experience much more palatable and their planned reduction and streamlining of the ARR questline that's coming in 5.3 is another step forwards in that regards. However what you're asking for just is never going to happen.

Palatable is acceptable to you? I mean in the CCG genre Hearthstone is palatable. But at least the players aren't in denial and know the game isn't new player friendly and it needs to be changed. However the greedy cooperate side says "nah, forget that". FFXIV may not be as bad as hearthstone but it's not far off from turning into the hearthstone of mmorpg's. At least in MTG and Shadowverse you get in game currency plus updates that give you free packs through-out the expansions. Hearthstone be like, "for the release of the expansion here's a quest for 10 packs. pay me for more or spend 40-60 hours grinding to get to a playable state."