All Purchasable Copies of FFXIV Should Have a Level Skip / Story Skip

[Veritas-Ancora]

L 110 is insane.

Look, I'm HUGELY invested in the MSQ. I love it. I'm hugely invested in the story, the characters, the everything. But I'm playing an alt and the hill to climb is insane. ARR is just too long. It takes forever to get to Heavensward. And even longer for Stormblood. And Shadowbringers. And Endwalker. And (ugh) Dawntrail. Now Evercold.

Asking a player to go from L1 to L110 in this day and age is too long and exhausting. For some of you masochists, it might seem like a fun time, but for the casual player, it's a lot.

So why not give everyone a level skip and story skip? Make it part of the purchase that allows them to catch up.

You don't HAVE to use it. If a player wants to take that climb, let them. Maybe they'll use it on an alt. Who cares, it's their money.

If you want your friends playing this game, you want to play WITH them. Are you seriously going to invest months and months of playing MSQ with them? Come on, you're not. And trying to bring friends into the game is hard enough.

Every copy should include a skip. They have plenty of opportunity testing the game and the story out with the free trial leading all the way up to Shadowbringers. They can CHOOSE to go this route.

Square-Enix, bite the bullet and allow players to just skip up to their friends and have it included in the purchasable copies of the game.

[Fawkes]

If they play the free trial and think "I want to skip this" then why would they want to buy the game? To get to the unskippable part of the thing they didn't like? And if they did like it, why would they want a skip?

[Anwar]

hmm i am unsure about this. But to be fair. WoW includes the base game up to the present expansion with a level boost up to current content in their expansions i think. I may be wrong though. The game and its expansions will eventually become so many and so long, That square enix will have to do something eventually.

[Eastwall]

OTE=Fawkes;6808823]If they play the free trial and think "I want to skip this" then why would they want to buy the game? To get to the unskippable part of the thing they didn't like? And if they did like it, why would they want a skip?[/QUOTE]

l have a friend who tried it. he enjoyed getting to floor 200 in potd, then he quit because he doesn't want to deal with the huge wall of single player content. if he had the option to skip, there would have been more likelihood that he stayed.

[Heroman3003]

OTE=Fawkes;6808823]If they play the free trial and think "I want to skip this" then why would they want to buy the game? To get to the unskippable part of the thing they didn't like? And if they did like it, why would they want a skip?

l have a friend who tried it. he enjoyed getting to floor 200 in potd, then he quit because he doesn't want to deal with the huge wall of single player content. if he had the option to skip, there would have been more likelihood that he stayed.[/QUOTE]

> floor 200 potd

>doesn't want to deal with single player content

Is your friend named Oxymoron?

[Jeeqbit]

To be fair, I've come across a free skip in other games and chose not to use it since the story was the whole point I was playing it. So it can force the player to confront the reason why they are actually playing, very directly.

We reached the point of "the story is really long and takes many players years to get through" a long time ago now, and the decision has been made not to do anything about it. The question was confronted in Endwalker and its patches and they abandoned that "new adventure" 6.1 setup like immediately by bringing Y'shtola and everyone back into it and making it clear that the scions weren't really disbanded.

So the reality is now, that SE has decided it's fine if a lot of players are going to take years to get through the MSQ. That said, I do actually believe you can get through it relatively fast despite how long it is. It just depends how much time you have and how sidetracked you get.

Now, is it really a problem if people are stuck half way through the MSQ for years? Not necessarily. If they are enjoying the story and it causes our roulettes to pop then I suppose it's not that much of a problem. It's only a problem in that it could reduce the number of endgame players. But what do a lot of people do when they beat the MSQ? They just quit anyways. If people are particularly trying to be endgame players that do raids, then they have more of a motivation to rush through the story faster anyways.

[Arrius]

> floor 200 potd

>doesn't want to deal with single player content

Is your friend named Oxymoron?

Their friend wants battle content that challenges them, not story content.
Whenever WoW would be the better choice for that kind of mindset, I leave that in the room.

[HammAndCheese]

I don't see this as being unreasonable. The Zodiark and Hydaelyn arc is over, people should have the option to freely skip in and plop into DT at level 90. As the game progresses it will only get worse and a lot of people don't have the time or will to do hundreds of hours of content just to get current (I've seen countless people just stop because of this reason and this was back in ShB). If they wish to do that they can or skip and do it on an alt later. I think this idea can also have some good added bonuses. Assuming someone uses the skip it can be implied that all side content will be unlocked and "finished," leaving a good way for the writers to implement more side characters into the MSQ, which is something I really want to see happen. This implication could also impact existing players who have finished EW, finishing the arc assumes you've done it all, they can cliff note it if they don't want to do the content, there's enough Youtube channels that recap lore.

[Bryson]

If they play the free trial and think "I want to skip this" then why would they want to buy the game? To get to the unskippable part of the thing they didn't like? And if they did like it, why would they want a skip?

for the same reason they sell skips.. not everyone cares about msq.

[Chasingstars]

To me, if the assumption is right that players are going to come back for evercold after how many months of stop playing during dawntrail, then a story skip is kind of mandatory. As I would say there is plenty who were playing during like 7.0 and 7.1 and decided to quit, maybe temporarily or permanetly, and that they don't want to deal with a perceived slog of an expansion.