I am extremely concerned about this

[Eastwall]

Honestly.... When check queue, if everyone in party bought the related expansion, Just check if party leader unlocked it storywise...

[Taliriah]

Lmao, "extreme concern" about complete non issues mixed with a dash of gatekeeping and sprinkled with unwarranted elitism.

Never change, mmo players.

[Kinazu]

I honestly think that giving a skip to be pretty up-to-date with the current playerbase is a good thing. I think its long overdue. I have a few friends and colleagues wanting to play, but knowing that they have to go through hundreds and hundreds of hours of story is turning them off by a landslide. I do find 6.1 to be an odd place to start, I think starting on 6.55 Pt. 2 with a unique introduction quest beforehand that quickly explains what has been going on and who the new characters are, and a solo-duty that shows you a quick rundown of how the game's mechanics work (dungeon markers, etc.) would be a good start.

Though if they do actually let people start at 6.1 that is going to be a rude awakening to many if they don't have previous MMO experience. Some of the trials can be a bit... hectic for someone who just booted up the game, that much I will agree on.

But yeah, I'm all for it, even if it'll mean a couple of extra wipes in the 6.1-6.5 content range.

[Kaurhz]

Right now ppl can skip cutscenes, but not dungeons. So they still learn the basics of everything. They can go from low level 15 healer/tank to 80 healer through the game and still grasp the core gameplay mecanics. Which continue to intensify as the level bumps up. A full skip of 90 levels would be completely overwhelming to most new players. If u want to sell an expansion to new ppl make the new jobs start at level 1. Most ppl are already overwhelmed by there level 70/80 kits

If I am understanding your post right... - People can still skip cutscenes, and even if you imposed this on them, you're still putting them through 100-ish hours of pure slog, not to mention this is really a non-solution - The problem still exists wherein the story still accounts for 100-400 hours of work before they are at a relevant point in the game where they can play regular content with other players - Many of their friends whom may already be veterans of the game.

I'm sorry but putting players through 400 hours of story is far worse than the problem of dungeons being slightly elongated. My mentality with this problem is that if a player actually wants to learn their class, and wants to learn the game, then they are going to do so regardless of whether they elected to effectively skip to 90 or not. - Just in the same vein you can have many players that go through the entire course of the game with having little or no enthusiasm for learning the class. You can have people go through the entirety of Level 1 - Level 90, and not know a single thing about their class, or about the core gameplay elements of an MMO for that matter. -- It's entirely a decision on the part of the player as to what they do with that experience, and no amount of micromanaging a players experience is going to change that fact.

[Bun_Vivant]

I'm still for a story skip because all that MSQ is just too much. Just have SE implement some kind of tutorial and I think it'll be fine.

As I have six characters at End-of-Content and two currently doing Shadowbringers, I like story skip because Stormblood wasn't to my taste the first few times I played it.

[Avoidy]

Honestly I'm all for it. This story is "okay" and has some bursts of really good moments, but it's weighed down hard by the padded mmo pacing. There are so many great parts that happen and then get followed up with like 4 hours of picking up trash off the ground. Or awfully animated cutscenes where players /handover air to another character. Or the endless recycled fist-clenching in endwalker like a kid who just learned how to use semicolons so now he uses them all over the place; like he can't stop using them; he loves using them because it's still new to him; he's so proud of what he just learned how to do; naturally he has to show everyone. Like, they could've told EW's story in a fraction of the hours if they cut out all the running back and forth stuff, but then they wouldn't have been able to brag about "40 hours of content." They would've had a well paced story but it would've been significantly shorter. So we get "low points" that people will actually defend saying that stories can't be climaxing all the time, and that's true, but several hours of fetch quests and running from npc to npc (when that running could've been a cutscene, for example) is not even enjoyable to play. It's just a slog. Post-ARR loses so many people that it's memed as a filter. It's so hard to get friends into this game because they realize there're 80 fetch quests standing between them and the next expansion, and the payoff for that slog is an emotionally charged finale that leads right into more running back and forth and more fetching items off the ground... only this time, in Ishgard! If people want to skip this whole thing and jump straight to the end to play current content with their friends, I wouldn't blame them at all. I would warn them though, that this game's on such a drip-feed of content pacing that they're rushing to an end where there's nothing to do except stand around and ERP.

"Welcome to our awesome story-driven RPG, where we put in lots of extra work to allow players to do dungeons solo so they can enjoy them at their own pace. Also, don't do that. Skip the entire story. Don't play it, it's bad."

The funny thing is, by selling MSQ skips in the cash shop, this is what the devs have been implicitly saying all along.

[Jojoya]

They can go from low level 15 healer/tank to 80 healer through the game and still grasp the core gameplay mecanics.

Can do is not will do. They can go through dungeons auto-attacking if they wanted. Most parties aren't going to notice, those that do won't always kick, and if the player does get kicked they can always requeue.

At the same time, someone can skip all the dungeons then research and practice their rotations on a striking dummy before picking up the MSQ.

Again, those who want to learn to play the game competently (or better) will do so. Those who don't want to put in the effort won't.

[DiaDeem]

[Rithy255]

I feel like ARR is the biggest gatekeep to new players actually having fun.

I think the thing is that, this is because ARR is a terrible experience, The story for one is very boring, but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired, now obviously a new player shouldn't get everything at once. But the fact is most Jobs at 50 play nothing like 90 jobs, which is odd just feels terrible for one. Personally I feel as if they should invest more into making ARR and early content up to date, both for job design and time it takes, I'd argue that it could do with even more trimming and just making the fetch quests less annoying in general.

Would I be upset about a story skip? No I wouldn't I do like making alts but i don't really wanna go through ARR or pay a lot of money just to skip it quite frankly. I also don't think the story is important to everyone, you certainly might be confused if you skip content (I seemed to follow HW+ Quite well despite skipping 80% of ARR on my first playthrough), but I think it's such a hard ask at this point for people to just go through the entire story just to get to current content.

Thing is skips already exist, the only difference is you have to pay currently for a Skip, I think getting rid of that paywall is important.

[Kes13a]

all I am getting from the OP is "I sat through the entire MSQ and they dont have to...WHY NOT?"

really, if someone buys the game and is a new player, as much as incompetence is a valid argument, how they play, is up to them. its their money, if they want to skip, then why not? if they have zero interest in the story, why not?

if I tell the OP that they should do single pulls as a tank because it increases understanding and enjoyment, I would get yelled at (rightfully so) that its their money they can play how they want.

as long as SE sticks with skips I am fine with it... if they go the Destiny 2 route and vault huge amounts of content, thats where the game is no longer worth my money. it is, as always, up to the player to decide if the skip is worth it. it is not our call to be "very concerned" about it because that sounds more like a "we didnt do that why do they get to" whine.