Thread: Yoshi-P's "new starting point of 6.1" and an alternative idea?

I think that, if you're doing an alternate start, 6.1 is the best one you could have. It's not perfect, nothing is, but 6.1 covers every base I could reasonably think of for a good place to start, especially with story:

1. Introduces you to all the Scions in ways that get across their whole thing. (Especially helpful for Thancred and Urianger going into Dawntrail, where they're not taking a typical role.)
2. Is an enclosed 'bottle episode' that doesn't really need additional reading to function.
3. ...but at the same time, does show a glimpse of other stuff that's gone on in the meantime that you might be interested in going back to.
4. Has some pretty solid spectacle and FF references, without being entirely reliant on spectacle and FF references.

With something of a Runescape-style 'tutorial island' to get people up to pace on mechanics, you're looking pretty good. Yeah, as lore-heads we're by nature gonna want people to play the whole thing because we just can't abide by people skipping our precious story, but if you're going to? Yeah, 6.1 is the best choice.

The concerns for me are more in the difficulty. Alzadaal's Legacy and Troia are probably pretty solid 'first dungeons' after a tutorial, but... wow, their first trial is Barbariccia, that's gonna be a handful. Their first alliance raid being Aglaia will probably be fine even if I wish that raid was harder (but then, maybe being the new first alliance raid will mean Nald'thal gets to do their scales mechanic).

But the first normal raids being Pandaemonium? Hoooo boy. It's not even just mechanical difficulty making that one hard, imagine a newbie being faced with that story without context. It's already hard for some people to understand with context!