The MSQ defeated me

[VirusOnline]

No that's absolutely atrocious. Why would you even care about the story if your experience is through a TL'DR? Do you approach a several-installment-long novel series and go "I want to skip to the latest book and just have a TL'DR of the previous installments?". You want to just be able to jump in at any random part of the story you feel like and experience in completely seperate and out of context? This story, and any properly told story, doesn't work that way. It's a long, overarching narrative, it's not meant to be experienced at whatever moment in the several-years long storyline you feel like, it's a start-to-finish type of story.

I'm also a story enjoyer, but hot damn if this isn't a dramatic reply.
To be honest, I love to revisit series I've read and re read through the more exciting passages and there's nothing wrong with that. Choosing how to experience a story should be an option. There's no one way that's right.

On top of that, unlike WoW, you are playing as the canonical main character. It wouldn't make any sense for a new player to just jump in whatever random zone in whatever expansion because not only would it be completely out of context it wouldn't even make any sense to them. You're not playing as some random, faceless adventurer you're playing as the main character who has an actual face and name. That type of approach works when there's basically no story at all and you aren't playing an actual character, or you just don't care about the story and just want the option to play whatever content straight from the begining. This isn't a proper theme-park game so that's not going to work.

It can be done =). Write a nice little summary cutscene, introduce scions, etc, and insert the player starting in whatever expansion they chose.
Also er, we are technically a random faceless adventurer when we start the game.
We are quite literally addressed as "one of those adventurers" upon getting to our starting city and for a good portion of ARR to HW even.
Actually being this widely well known and hailed as the Hero is now an obvious detriment that we see in the current MSQ and will be very interesting to see how SE handles this in coming expansions. The attempt to revert to "adventurer" is failing atm.

If you actually care about the story than why would you want to experience it in such a way? May as well just buy a skip at that point. While yes, it's gotten very long, but if you're actually playing the game for the story it's just more content to experience and not an obstacle. The game up to stormblood is completely free, the story and all the other content prior to that expansion. I'm sure what they'll do is start making even more expansions free. Why does a new player need to jump to the latest expansion? There isn't any rush, the content isn't going anywhere, it's not like WoW where content becomes irrelevant permanently after the next patch.

This entire "gotta get to the latest expansion ASAP" argument that's been repeated ad infinitum throughout MMO's in general is predicated on FOMO, a consequence of games like WoW which make all their content irrelevant as soon as the next patch arrives so as to encourage you to FOMO in so you don't miss out. FF doesnt have that problem since they have managed to do what every one of these games should have done all along and keep their content relevant. You aren't forced to do anything, either go through the content as it was meant to be experienced (half of which is completely free), or just buy a skip. But WoW's approach to storytelling is objectively horrendous, it fundamentally fails at basic storytelling and no game, least of all FF, should be trying to replicate it.

The context here is "new character", not new account, not new player. Choosing which expansion to start at would be a great option.
It's not about skipping or FOMO, getting to the latest ASAP, it's about giving players options in an alt unfriendly mmo - especially players who have already completed MSQ.
FOMO already exists the day of patch drops.

See, I've been playing since HW and leveled 4-5 alts.
I think I know the story =3

Also um, do you know the amount of useless content that is laying around in XIV ? Come now, let's not play WoW bad XIV good.

Dang yo, I'm sad.

[Tehmon]

The context here is "new character", not new account, not new player. Choosing which expansion to start at would be a great option.
It's not about skipping or FOMO, getting to the latest ASAP, it's about giving players options in an alt unfriendly mmo - especially players who have already completed MSQ.

This I agree with. If you have cleared the game from ARR to the recent expansion without buying a story or a job skip, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to start off from another point when you make a new character.

I'd at least make it so that you can start off from ARR, Heavensward or Stormblood if you have cleared the story without any skips, while keeping the current most recent story skip as a cash shop exclusive. And when 7.0 is released, make it so that you can start off from Shadowbringers, while skipping to Endwalker is a cash shop exclusive. And when 8.0 is released, Endwalker becomes available as a starting point. This way they could balance accessibility and replayability for players, while not messing up with the money flow coming from people buying story skips too much, since I'm sure that is the bottom line with a change like this.