Letter TO The Producer

[Masekase_Hurricane]

They've been asked about that and said they won't be doing it. They thought about it, but they get a lot of people coming to them telling them how much they enjoyed the story and were glad they got to experience it, and that wouldn't happen if they skipped.

Wouldn't really be a skip (Two separate stories unrelated) it would be a choice i.e Do you want to start from A realm reborn yes or no this can't be undone..

Yes Starts from A realm reborn
No Starts from 8.0

[ViinaS]

[...]
Customization

Viera and Hrothgar hats arrived, thank you. [...]

As a Viera:
No, no "thank you" for the lazy devs.
It took over HALF A DECADE to get a few hats. Not all by the way, including cash shop hats that still don't work.

That this took years only shows the devs didn't care and did some very easy things that are long overdue to make the unhappy people a tiny bit less unhappy.
Putting hats on Viera and Hroth took modders weeks I would have accepted if it took them a few months, but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.
This was not planned but "emergency implementation" I bet.
Cause if they had planned that earlier then they would not have created hats that won't work for Viera and Hroth all throughout Endwalker and Dawntrail.

Not to mention the hat-solution and chat bubbles are worse than what people did in their own free time for free.
No new models for hats, just lettign stuff clip and many still look weird when put on Viera and Hroth.
Chat bubbles... baerly usable for their intended purpose at all.

[Daralii]

As a Viera:
No, no "thank you" for the lazy devs.
It took over HALF A DECADE to get a few hats. Not all by the way, including cash shop hats that still don't work.

That this took years only shows the devs didn't care and did some very easy things that are long overdue to make the unhappy people a tiny bit less unhappy.
Putting hats on Viera and Hroth took modders weeks I would have accepted if it took them a few months, but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.
This was not planned but "emergency implementation" I bet.
Cause if they had planned that earlier then they would not have created hats that won't work for Viera and Hroth all throughout Endwalker and Dawntrail.

Not to mention the hat-solution and chat bubbles are worse than what people did in their own free time for free.
No new models for hats, just lettign stuff clip and many still look weird when put on Viera and Hroth.
Chat bubbles... baerly usable for their intended purpose at all.

Chat bubbles are something that they very obviously only considered kana and kanji for. The maximum length being what it is makes perfect sense for them, but is comically short for any Romance language.

[Shinku_Tachi]

I hope for the games health, that when the new story drops it has no prerequisite of the previous story. If they don't do that, then they are just killing off new players, as its ridiculously long now to get to the end (a catch up video would suffice each expansion and enter them at that point).

At best, I'd expect a sale of those skips on Mogstation.

But yeah, they really need to set a new start point (post-Endwalker), whether that be 7.0 or 8.0; for new players that start clean, without the need for Mogstation boost. If people want to experience ARR~Endwalker, let them get that via new game +

[Brandr]

Producers don't care about the quality of the product, they care about line going up. DT has made line go down, that's why the investors got mad at Kiryu and asked why he was cooking their only golden goose in the last investor's meeting. If you want quality, ask Mr. Yoshida. He IS the captain behind the USS XIV after all!

That's probably closest to the truth

[Catwho]

Wouldn't really be a skip (Two separate stories unrelated) it would be a choice i.e Do you want to start from A realm reborn yes or no this can't be undone..

Yes Starts from A realm reborn
No Starts from 8.0

As long as it's done on a per character basis. So if someone wants to play ARR-7.0 on a second character after they first pick the 8.0 locked character, they can.

Or make NG+ available starting from ARR for the players who blow through the 8.0 story and then decide they want to go to the older stuff after all.

Edit: Thing is you CAN do this right now if you pay them extra for a story skip and job level skip..... so perhaps bake that into a Deluxe 8.0 Edition that costs $20 more than the base expansion, but includes your choice of one level 100 job and throws you back into an updated edition of Hall of the Novice. Then you start the 8.0 story from scratch.

Maybe your character has amnesia coming out of 7.55 if you do this.

[Gurgeh]

... watching every FRU team get carried by Pictomancer felt bad to everyone. ...

Falsehood. I didn't know anyone, and I 'used' to know a lot of people, who gave two hoots, what was happening with job compositions in high end, and certainly not ultimate. It's what was only a minority of people, with no view much beyond their statics, and their fellow high end players they had any admiration for, who gave damn. Some of whom were a loud minority with their YouTube platform.

I'd sympathise, that all jobs ought to be viable for savage, but by the time you get to ultimate there absolutely no expectation of entitlement to clear.
If your job isn't meta, play the job that is meta. If your not good enough at another job it's ultimate, it's the one time you can finally just say "get gud". Or form your own static that agrees to a non meta comp, but if you don't clear, tough, it's ultimate. If the ultimate is too easy with pict that I sympathise with. Well then they should just tune it so you can only clear with 4-6 picts. Problem solved. It's ultimate, adjust, get gud. If the savage is too easy, go clear the ultimate.

[Sunhwapark]

but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.

I will honestly be surprised if they bother to even finish implementing the remaining hats before 7.55

[Masekase_Hurricane]

I feel like their "Road to 80/90" buff on Dynamis sort of WAS their attempt to create a "in-game story skip" of sorts by allowing new players to ding 60+ before they're even half-done with ARR thus making it easier to just unsync solo most of the game and clear parts of the story faster. But... even that approach comes with a lot of problems that keep it from being ideal, and the buff doesn't exist on data centers with no "preferred" worlds.

Another way is just unlink the story and leave level and ilvl as the requirement for unlocking content. I mean they could easily say "if you want to learn more consider doing X dungeons" throughout the story. If the story is good and the exp is good, people will still watch it and the usual skippers will still skip it.

[RedLolly]

That's probably closest to the truth

No, it literally is the truth. There is no hyperbole behind the statement that top shareholders speaking up about DT's shortcomings is why the devs suddenly upped some production quality in 7.3's MSQ and why they're starting to change the content cycle going forward. That's capitalism, baby!

And honestly, that's why I'm hopeful for the future.