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.

[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.

[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.

[tdb]

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

I don't know if it's been changed in the five years since I stopped playing, but I distinctly recall that back then you couldn't even get off your starter planet before completing the four quests for your class there. And then you had to complete another four class quests on your capital planet to get your spaceship. After that I think you were able to fly to any planet, but I'm not sure if any of the planet quests or flashpoint (= dungeon) unlocks were available without advancing your class story. And many of the flashpoints were locked behind mini-storylines of their own. In any case you'd have to be stupid to not do the class quests (unless you went for the paid level skip option) since at some point they changed them to give enough experience points that you didn't need to do anything else to level up.

[Wyakin]

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

[Derio]

Nope. The story is crucial for me. The endgame in FFXIV is not hours on hours of content. So playing through the different storylines is what really built the experience for me.

[Payadopa]

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.

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

[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.

[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.