Anyone else used Scenario skip on their first character?

[Liam_Harper]

FF14 is interesting in that it has players who couldn't care less about the story, but become invested in the game and play for years in all sorts of content, from raiding, housing, gathering, crafting and so on. Personally I think that's great, it's a sign they're doing things right if they can offer us a great story but still have enough to keep the players who aren't interested in story engaged.

Scenario skips are perfectly fine. I'd never use one, but if story isn't your cup of tea I'm certainly not going to judge. We both get what we enjoy.

[tdb]

The levelling process is what teaches you how to play. Skipping all the dungeons and content just yields bad players

That's only somewhat true. Overall gaming experience matters too. I'm pretty sure I could jump into WoW or ESO or what have you, buy a level skip and be at least mediocre in max level dungeons right away. Maybe even passably competent. I can, like, read the descriptions of my abilities and piece together what my basic rotation is. On the other hand, there are players who just don't seem to be interested in learning at all. They'll get carried through everything and be no better at playing in Heroes' Gauntlet than they were in Sastasha.

Liking story doesn't equal RPing. And can a story hinder you when there is literally no consequence for anything you do in it?

What I meant is that if someone likes RPing an original character, they probably don't like to be spoonfed a story. Doubly so if you (the player) have no agency at all in that story and everything happens according to a script. SW:TOR at least had events play out in different ways even if the ultimate outcome was the same, and kept track of the balance of your "good" and "evil" choices.

[SturmChurro]

The holy grail of MMORPGs is a totally open sandbox where the players make up the story and the world, and a developer-given story conflicts with that. Those games don't tend to be very successful though, because there's only so many players who are actually interested in role-playing.

Yeah, nah. There needs to be some structure. I don't like people's stupid ideas come to life ruining my immersion. For that matter, a sandbox game is an empty game, so I wouldn't be immersed in the first place. Especially when they "build" the world. It might sound cool in theory, but it's horrifying in practice.

[Tuska]

I guess that's true but isn't that like saying I bought a fighting game but I don't like fighting and now the game is 'forcing' me to do it?
Sometimes I get the impression that MMOs aren't allowed to have a somewhat decent story along with everything else. Maybe we're so used to really bad storytelling in MMOs that people don't expect anything else anymore. I dunno. lol

No, very bad comparisons. MMOs have always been built on "adventure" either solo or with a party. Story has always been optional and is optional in every mmo except for this one. You can have a decent story and not FORCE it. I liked WoW, Archeage, and Aion's story and lore and it was fun because they didn't force it on you. And you could read extra little tid bits from wandering npcs, books on the ground and dropped items. Those games made you want to learn about the lore and what's going on and felt like you were in a world. Heck even BDO makes you feel that way, there's just no lore lmao. But more importantly, I could do it at my own pace, I didn't have to force myself through hours of boring quests to get to anything fun.

A good story =/= a story forced on you.

[glitteringcosmos]

Why on earth would you spend $60 on a game and not play its main story??? Especially one as good as FFXIV, Shadowbringers is being hailed as some of the game story ever written and you'll be lost if you play it without having first played the story of the rest of the game. I just don't understand it. It seems like such a waste to me. I always, always recommend going through story first THEN buying skips for your alts, not the other way around.

[SturmChurro]

Why on earth would you spend $60 on a game and not play its main story??? Especially one as good as FFXIV, Shadowbringers is being hailed as some of the game story ever written and you'll be lost if you play it without having first played the story of the rest of the game. I just don't understand it. It seems like such a waste to me. I always, always recommend going through story first THEN buying skips for your alts, not the other way around.

Because, as someone pointed out, you can have 16000 hours in this game. That's 15800 hours of fun WITHOUT the story, give or take.

[MsMisato]

I mean its FF and it will always have a story, even Yoshi P stands by the story and has stated its not being gutted and the option to skip it will remain via the msq pot for a cost. IMO just go to a prefer server and transfer later at the same price. You can hit level 70 in two weeks on one character doing the MSQ and roulettes only and be almost done with stormblood. Getting side tracked on other quests is a different story though and prolong your time but the Road to 70 is good for all jobs and crafting.

That being said, if a person wants to spend the money on MSQ and more on a level skip by all means do it, you just need to know how to play your class and not be a dead weight in runs. Dead weights are easy to spot in runs.

[tdb]

Story has always been optional and is optional in every mmo except for this one.

You probably mean "most" but since you said "every" I feel compelled to point out that in SW:TOR also you have to play through the story to unlock content. And I bet I could find other examples if I went digging.

In both SW:TOR and FFXIV I picked up the game because of the story and stayed for the MMO. In fact I left SW:TOR largely because of diminishing story updates. If SE stops releasing new story for FFXIV, I'll be out of here too.

[Tuska]

You probably mean "most" but since you said "every" I feel compelled to point out that in SW:TOR also you have to play through the story to unlock content. And I bet I could find other examples if I went digging.

In both SW:TOR and FFXIV I picked up the game because of the story and stayed for the MMO. In fact I left SW:TOR largely because of diminishing story updates. If SE stops releasing new story for FFXIV, I'll be out of here too.

I played SW:TOR for a tiny bit (got bored) And I don't remember being forced to go through the story.

No one is saying SE should stop releasing quest/story content or implying that (Atleast I don't see anyone implying that) it's just that the story doesn't have to be forced on you. Plenty of people play mmos without ever paying attention to the lore at all and vise versa. Making a quest mandatory to complete is not going to make some one read the text.

[KayRadley]

Nope, though I was tempted for the longest time back when I was still in the 2.X MSQ. I have a personal rule: no story boosts for content I haven't cleared yet, and no job boosts until I have at maxed it out first.