Why is the game Accessable but not Accessable?

[Atelier-Bagur]

Players don't have any awareness of patches or pacing during the MSQ once a particular expansion is done, and typically they'll either wait until the end of the MSQ in its entirety (the most common) to bother with side content due to wanting to be adequately geared and on par with other players, or at most until the end of that expansion's story (less common), which by then there can still literally be an ocean of the things to go through to find extra content regardless. Given the importance of the fights to gearing up and the whole pathway into higher end duties being a little obscured to the uninitiated overall, I'm really struggling to see what's so interfering or insulting about a little heads up at the end of a quest: "hey, you can challenge extra content relating to this quest in exchange for higher rewards!" etc. The only way I'd see it as possibly shoving it in your face is if it forced you into a questline to unlock it.

Again, I'm speaking from experience as a sprout going through the game on my own sweet time.

1. Dont necessarily need to follow the patch notes; the major raids and trials are easily findable after you completed the expansion's main story as blue quests are relegated within city hubs in that expansion. Obviously not everything but most players care about raiding content and the starter quests are usually placed within those hubs. And if we're talking about them potentially missing it, they wont as during the post expansion stories they'll be revisiting these old areas where they'll easily see those blue quests.

2. Gearing isnt hard, especially when players start doing roulettes daily as they can use the tomestones to buy that expansion's endgame gear if they dont want to spend gil on the marketboard. We're talking about sprouts progressing in their power through msq, they are easily capable of doing this as I have, as someone who never fully played an MMO before FFXIV.

3. You're really overselling this "ocean of content" that FFXIV has if we're talking about a sprout going through the game normally. Not everything is thrown at your face immediately. I'll admit the most this happens is really during ARR where you'll find many blue quests due to them introducing you the basics (mostly unlocking the usual features such as mounts,tribals,optional dungeons etc) but after you get into HW the blue quests eases up and most of the heavy stuff is available after you completed the expansion's main story, which is a nice setup for players to take a break from the main story and pursue those easy to find blue quests.