How would you design a new player start expansion?

[Sigma5]

not having a 600 hour mandatory story, 12 hours tops.
have the new bad guy kill half the scions for good. replace them with new characters.
retcon alternate timeline garbage.

[PyurBlue]

At the beginning the player would be asked "What is your past?" and is presented with the option to select previously completed expansions or nothing. Depending on the choice, extra dialogues and cutscenes could be added at different moments in the story to connect to previous content as needed. As an example on the lead up to a dungeon a player with past experience would have the normal sequence of events while a new player might see an additional cutscene introducing relevant characters, like trust NPC's, first.

Mechanically I'd like to see far less stat scaling between levels. The goal would be to remove levels as a hard requirement for content so that players of different levels could meaningfully interact. New skills could still be unlocked via leveling so that max level retains an advantage but the gap between min and max would no longer be a thousand or more percent increase. Instead the gap would be akin to the one between an optimal max level rotation and a max level character using only their basic skills or combos. With this system in place non linear progression through the story becomes easier to implement since a character would be able to meet the requirements for most content even at base level. New players would see a variety of content much faster as a result while more experienced players wouldn't have to worry about trivializing content if partying with low level players.

[Catwho]

Think a sort of level reset in another shard's the only real way they could make it work, given how well-known and powerful the WoL is in the source at this point. Wake them up in another shard with amnesia (on a chocobo-like carriage if we're feeling daring) or just put the player in the perspective of another shard of Azem while the WoL's out in a coma or something.

Start players off with new versions of all jobs with refreshed kits from then on, while allowing their lv100 versions to be used in past content so the devs don't have to guarantee their viability in old hard content.

I thought of the amnesia idea as well. I think it might be possible, given that the people of Solution 9 are masters at manipulating memory (especially Calix), and it would be an easy way of getting rid of the WoL while they do their nefarious deeds.

And it'd work perfectly on another shard if you get mistaken for that shard's Azem. The NPCs will treat you like you have amnesia, and you're stripped of everyone you know from the Source.

MSQ could start out at level 1 in the new areas for everyone, but unlike the ARR tutorial, you've already got all the features of the game unlocked if you load in a level 100 character.

Players who already have level 100 on their character are quest synced at level 100. And the zones could be like the old 1.0 zones, where the mobs are level 1 near the starter zones but go all the way up to level 100+ if you go super deep in the woods. That way, all players can get a similar leveling experience in each of the zones, but the level 1 players and the level 100 players are fighting mobs on other sides of the maps for the same MSQ progression.

Could even have the WoL slowly re-unlock their memories as they progress through MSQ, and the finale at level 110 is you remembering you're the shard of Azem from the source, and summoning back in the Scions to help beat the big bad.

Edit: Thinking about this more, the new players would get an accelerated leveling process, but be locked out of standard Duty Roulettes since those are on the Source. Make a new custom duty roulette for the area that has a mixture of dungeons and trials. Add in dungeons at level 25, level 50, level 75, and level 100 - veterans will be synced down. Have trials at 30, 60, and 90 - veterans synced down again. Add a new Hunt Log that gives a bunch more exp and gil.

[Kandraxx]

New people don't uninstall this game because of the story or the catch-up they have to do. They do so because the gameplay is dogshit. 600 hrs of story is fine. 600+ hours of pressing a konami code (class gameplay) is not.

The game would already improve by 5000% if you'd replace the jobs with their pvp version.

[Exmo]

Other people here have shared ideas about handling narrative/lore concerns so I'll take a different approach.

The first 40-60 minutes of the game should be a series of cutscene montages and solo combat instances. The cutscenes briefly show the story highlights of each expansion, interspersed with combat instances to teach both job skills and battle mechanics. Think of it like a cinematic Hall of the Novice.

The solo instances can play with the chronology of events a little bit to speed things along while communicating a feeling of rising danger and stakes. For example, after a cutscene montages that introduces the ARR primals, you play a solo instance where you fight Ifrit, then Titan, then Garuda. In later instances, you might fight various lightwardens in sequence, then Vauthry.

This would give new players the feel of the game while communicating the basics of main characters and events without them needing to have an extensive understanding.

[Espon]

You wake up in the middle of Revenant's Toll at level 100 with a full set of ilvl 790 tomestone gear for the job you picked, except you have amnesia and a quest points you to the start of the next expansion. Everyone treats you like they treat someone who started from ARR except you get an extra dialog choice every once in a while that says "I don't know what you're talking about" and they just laugh and think you're joking and continue treating you like any other Warrior of Light player.

[Sililos]

I would take the 1.0 storyline and add it too the ARR onwards world all be it the involved zones aged back 5 years.

It wasn't all that long of a game and we can skip over the stuff like 1.0 crafting etc.
Just the 1.0 MSQ as a 'tutorial', Its notable side quests can be added as part of it etc.
That section of the game would need to be partitioned off most likely unless SE added a phasing system that lets players at different world 'age' stages be on the same map and see each other but also see the world matching the time period they are in.

[FuturePastNow]

I would start skipping players with a short (less than an hour) tutorial; the player wakes up, surrounded by the Scions, who say you've hit your head really hard this time. They establish that you don't remember anything, introduce themselves, and hand you the Unending Codex to read if you want to know more. Then they decide to see if you still know how to fight, and a battle instance begins that introduces the job and role you've started on and runs through what is essentially hall of the novice stuff. Then you're pushed out into the world to explore, good luck and ask other players for help

If you've completed this tutorial once on your account, you can choose to skip it.

[Yeonhee]

New players would be able to start the newest MSQ with Lv1 to balance this with the old players they would start with Lv1 as-well yet it would be a {blue colored} level.

Previous level cap would be a legacy achievment and still used in previous dungeons and so on.

Someone could say it could create a disbalance but to make it happen SE would actually need to re-balance each of the class so it's fun to play and downside of the button bloat on high levels and high level number itself it's that at some point it all will create this very issue we face right now.

So mine solution is old levels are legacy levels and new players cap at 50 where whole content is re-balanced towards that new level 50. ( whatever the number of legacy will be displayed for the old players.)

I feel like doing a full level reset will just cause a pretty big backlash from veteran players and make a lot of them quit. Personally, I have all but one jobs at max level, if the next expac everything goes back to 1 and I have to gain 50 new levels on all of them, I would more than likely stop playing. If they do the same with crafters and gatherers, it's even more people that are likely gonna say "fuck that"

[Nadda]

At this point it's not really possible to have someone start the game as a "New Adventurer" I do understand and kinda think it be good but ultimately not possible
because the story is intrinsically linked to your character being the WoL/Azem shenanigans.

You could do it for 2.0 because of the calamity and being a relative nobody adventurer still. Unless somehow we did a new expansion in another reflection and we play as a shard that rejoins with Azem and get a quick run down of the story and scions.

Also the game doesn't really need a new player experience.

When people talk about new player experience what they really mean usually boils down to the idea that playing through the MSQ railroads your progress.

So the idea of a new player experience is really how to leap frog closer to the current content.

The current content which people say there's not enough of or is too difficult or paradoxically too easy and that they hate it and that the story is bad as well and Wuk Lamat should die in a fire... a Big one. Look at this footage of people clearing a raid with no healers.
And I mean as exciting as all of that is and obviously everyone in their right mind would want to jump into that right away I'm thinking that for some it might be overwhelming.

I honestly have always preferred how FF14 is structured because while not being completely exact, you get to experience all the content that came before first hand like it's the first time anybody ever has experienced it.
I wouldn't want to trade that for anything personally because in my on-again off-again relationship with WoW I sort of hate how expansions don't really expand anything. In a vacuum, outside collections or achievements or some transmog piece, there is absolutely no purpose in visiting old zones or figuring out the story or the world itself - they just become places.

Now while you could argue in some ways FF14 is similar in that once you're done with an expansion's content you don't have to really revisit it except for similar reasons as with WoW... What I would say though is that going through the narrative gives the content purpose which is satisfying.

Imagine people going to Ishgard not knowing its story for example.

I much prefer the journey - NOW that being said.

If there was like a split between narrative and an adventurer mode where you weren't restricted in the zones you could travel and could do side quests and dungeon content freely and have some soft way of rerouting yourself back to the msq at somepoint I think that be alright. (Like Bard Ballads you could unlock by talking to a NPC of the Dragonsong War, the Liberation of Ala Mhigo, The One who Brings Shadow... etc to NG+ the experience but you could gain the EXP and rewards from ((Since you never did them before)) as a flash back)
People level faster than they make it through expansions so it only makes sense to let people have some ability to detach from it. I just don't know how it would work. (None of this means I'm against trying though*)