We should get exp boost in the game.

[Shibi]

I bought a brand new player in recently. Absolutely green to MMOs, this is their first ever and they had zero idea of anything. It's been incredibly interesting to watch. To do it properly, I rerolled myself to level 1 on a new server so I could do the exact same quests as them.

We've been going slow, we had to really as it's a lot to learn for a fresh player, weeks in and only today we did MSQ Titan, level 35 SMN quests, and a few side quests.

At this point, the XP to level has been about ideal for a brand new character on ARR content. They are enjoying the story without grind, their awareness is starting to grow at about the timing I expected, although I need to keep working on explaining rotation.

I know we will soon head into Coerthas and levelling will fall off a cliff when we do. So far this is fine to me, as the dungeons are getting much harder for the new player with me, and the practice will be handy for them.

I will put myself in the - the levelling rate is about correct for a new player - group. Any faster and they would be in too deep.

I know and accept some will want to rush to the end and jump into FC raids. But maybe for these people an extra form of XP pot on top of food and rings might help. Something alternate to an insta-level, but something that allows faster levelling than the natural for those genuine new players who want to experience the story.


(As an aside, I'd forgotten how shockingly bad ARR MSQ was. When I did it years ago it seemed very fresh and exciting, but ugh, so many delivery quests.)

[MistakeNot]

Which people do. Some people only need the last 5 minutes to know if it was a good movie or not.

In some cases perhaps. In general - nope. And even if they can tell, they still won't have seen the movie if they skip to the end.

[Solarra]

Except you're wrong. The story isn't the pull for this game...

Well, that's not strictly true. The story may not be the pull for you but for other people it's the main pull. I came for the story and after WoW, it was refreshing to play a game where the story hadn't been rendered incoherent over time due to huge chunks having been deleted, and where all important events happened in-game, rather than being available only to those players prepared to go to the Blizzard store and buy the books!
I think you have to appreciate that Square do their market research and have hit on a formula that pleases the majority of their customers, but they won't please everyone, because that's impossible. So no, FFXIV does not have to change and would probably shed a huge amount of subs if it did.

The only people who will continue playing are whales and hardcore fans. No new player is going to drop $60 on a game and then another $60 when they find out the game is locked behind a massive story.

The whole FF franchise is based around story. If you bought the game and only just discovered that, I'm amazed. While I agree the jump potions are expensive, that was deliberate and it has the support of the majority of players, on the forum at least (just do a search).
WoW gave one free jump potion to everyone, I used mine and regretted it almost immediately. A boost dumps a whole heap of abilities onto you at once and it's a steep learning curve. Boosted players who don't want to put any effort into learning to play at max level can be a real annoyance to others in instanced content, WoW had numerous complaints after introducing the skip for that reason.

My friends quit because they couldn't jump into dungeons right away.

But the first dungeon is level 15! If you have played an mmo before and you're on a preferred world, that is probably something you could achieve in minutes.
Imagine if the game did allow you into an instance at level one, with no gear and only one button to press it would hardly be an exciting experience.

I'm sorry you aren't enjoying FFXIV but just because you and a handful of friends haven't found it fun doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the game itself. It's just not what you wanted.
You say want to skip to endgame (but only if you can do that for free), but it's quite likely you wouldn't enjoy that either. There is plenty of story at max level too, both MSQ and class/role quests. It's enjoyable for those of us who like the story but for you, I imagine it would be purgatory.

[SamRF]

If story is the main appeal of this game, it's a really shitty game imo. Sure, story is good for MMO standards and if you're lucky it can emotionally invest you but it sure as hell isn't the reason why I'm playing this game everytime I do. Sure, I do sometimes return to this game after a break out of curiosity where the story went and that's great for me (someone who's interestes in story), but after the story is done I'm still playing. Do you log in everyday just in anticipation and preperarion of next story patch? No, you do things completely unrelated to story yet standard MMO stuff. Some people are interested in those standard MMO stuff you are putting 90% of your time in and not the story.

Again, I'm sure there are way more people than you think, that don't care about MSQ playing this game right now at endgame, who have skipped everything or have experienced it all but simply don't like it. They're simply not on these forums which makes sense. I think many of them are high-end raiders too.

You might even be better off watching a crappy shounen anime if story is all you care about. The story isn't good on its own, it's gameplay and MMO mechanics that make it worthwhile (imagine putting FFXIV story into a novel or tv-show).

edit: also, consider nobody is arguing for less story or a major overhaul of this game's focus. People who like story, including me, will still have their precious story when there are means for people to skip it more easily. Then they might even be able to take more risks with the plot and don't need the story to be as accessible and cheesy as it is if they're no longer trying to interest EVERYONE (aka crappy but popular shounen anime).

[Enla]

You might even be better off watching a crappy shounen anime if story is all you care about. The story isn't good on its own, it's gameplay and MMO mechanics that make it worthwhile (imagine putting FFXIV story into a novel or tv-show).

Given that most of it's story, Shadowbringers in particular, was specifically written to take advantage of the medium of gaming? I can understand what you're trying to say but different mediums facilitate different stories. Just because a story works better in one medium does not mean it is inherently a bad or vice versa. We don't knock books like I Am Legend or The Wheel of Time simply because they're near impossible to adapt into a movie format and almost all attempts to adapt them have ended up with a subpar product. Likewise most narrative games with an undefined protagonist would suffer similarly. Which is why most adaptations of those games settle on named protagonists or canons to get around the issue, or pretend the proverbial hero is off in some far off corner doing undefined heroic things. You can take one look at the Dragon Age greater lexicon for the right way to adapt a game's story, and Baldur's Gate in contrast for the wrong way to do it, which is to say don't do it at all if you value your sanity and instead focus on telling stories in the world itself. Literal adaptations of games almost never, ever end well and it's not usually because the stories are inherently awful but rather the medium they're being adapted into being a poor fit.

That said it's fine if people don't like the story or do happen to like it. But arguing either way is going to end up as mere conjecture and 'NO I'M RIGHT - NO /I'M/ RIGHT' without hard data to back up either assertion. Data SE likely has but will almost never actually give anyone as it benefits them in no way, shape or form to do so.

[Nedkel]

Wow is completely different game, skipping content there does not hurt as much as it does here.

Without going through story, you are missing a ton of content that is available to you and still relevant due to the cosmetics. It wont work in ffxiv as max lvl content is not large enough to sustain your interest for so long.

I still feel guilty skipping ARR and wish i never did, as its story after praetorium is really interesting.

[kaynide]

...

I did something similar where I rerolled and am doing a new character currently 54ish. I've only done roulettes rather sparingly and the main story/job related quests and the XP has been much faster than I remembered. I finished the base 2.0 story with around level 53. (I am using the XP boost headpiece if that matters).

It didn't take me long at all. Were I not watching so much Netflix I probably could have knocked it out in I dunno... a week? I'm kinda holding off on the 2.X->3.0 content because holy hell that drags on. Hoping the patch cuts a lot out.. Not that it takes so long to do, it's just tedious.

So..yeah. For a new player looking to enjoy the story (which they should) it could take a month to digest 2.0 slowly. Maybe 2 months to get to Ishgard? That's not too bad imho.


All that said, I'm fairly confident that I could burn through the entire story to 80 in a month if I went full-on nerd mode. (I do work/have a family...)

[GeminiReed]

The story grind is a problem that Square recognizes. We know this because they said so and are taking action with 5.3 to tighten up some of the ARR missions because too many people were quitting in disgust. Think about that. They are using resources to adjust the story because they are losing enough customers that it make business sense to try to fix a retention problem.

My hope is that they're being conservative because if they are not it's only going to shift the point where customers give up. If successful this could just be the first of several cleanups or if not they may finally concede that story gating is bad for business.

FF has a critical mass of fans that carried XIV through a dark patch. Yes the story does continue to attract that niche but IMO it is not why XIV has been successful. Instead I think XIV's success is mostly due to its stability and predictability. This is shockingly rare in the industry.

Once more, nobody is advocating getting rid of the story or that they should stop any sort of story focus. What people want is for Square to decouple the story from group activity access. Will it kill the game if they don't? Of course not. Will they be as successful as they can be? No and the danger is they will fall to niche status if some other MMO figures out that stability and a predictable content pipeline are the road to success.

[Razard]

If story is the main appeal of this game, it's a really shitty game lol.

Deus Ex, KotOR, Witcher 3, Thief and Planescape: Torment (off the top of my head) have entered the chat...

Mr. Contrarian being wrong, imagine my shock.

[SamRF]

Deus Ex, KotOR, Witcher 3, Thief and Planescape: Torment (off the top of my head) have entered the chat...

Mr. Contrarian being wrong, imagine my shock.

No you misunderstand. I'm talking about FFXIV being shitty if the FFXIV story in particular is supposed to be the main appeal (because it's not that good of a story, compared to those other games you mentioned for example). I'm assuming you immediately stopped reading my post after that first line or I didn't state it obvious enough with the follow up.

Nitpicking and focusing on section outside of context on these forums, imagine my shock. For a community that's interested in story and lore you'd expect them to be more patient and considerate of what posts actually mean instead of straw-manning and nitpicking on impulse at every chance they get. See this practice very often on these forums.