stormblood

[Melsiren]

Just because a few people hate something that is the primary focus of the game does not make it a problem for the majority.

It just means said few people are not the games target audience, not every game has appeal to every person.

Which I don't understand, that people can't comprehend that maybe, just maybe the game was not made for them in mind.

Shit just look at WoW, pre transmog there was absolutely no life in the old pre current endgame content at all. Every single raid was a redundant ghost town bar the few at the time that had a boss that dropped a mount.

I mean, I always played on Roleplay servers so we had people running for the old raid gear to just stand around and RP in it.

[HAcoreRD]

It weeds out the gogogo players that make dungeons and raids a miserable, antisocial experience. There.

I cannot stand mutes in a party. Might as well be a run with NPCs at that point.

[dope_danny]

I mean, I always played on Roleplay servers so we had people running for the old raid gear to just stand around and RP in it.

Dude on my high pop pve server it was so bad it was considered a novelty when i set up a guild Ulduar run for players that never saw it before it was soloable content. You forget when XIV has scaling that other mmos effectively shut the doors, put up the tables and leave content to gather dust forever. I mean i was asked by the one friend i know still playing WoW to try legion and i had forgotten till i looked you actually get locked to a small number of dungeons in the games party finder. After years of FFXIV thats a monumental waste of dev resources. I loved dungeons like Scarlet Monastery but to think back on how i would out level them and never get them in a group finder ever again is insane.

[Scufflegrit]

But they are I'm still yet to see anyone propose a good reason why they think MSQ should be required. There are posters in this thread with reasons why it's detremental, but no one putting forwards reasons why it's beneficial.

The only argument being made against story being required is that it keeps new players away. Anything beyond that hasn't been a reason why it's detrimental, it's all been personal opinion - many times an opinion stated as a fact. And while requiring the story will keep some players away, I dare say it would also bring in some others for exactly the same reason. Maybe it won't bring in as many new players, no; but I'd honestly rather have a better player base than a significantly larger one. Better in this case meaning people with better attitudes than those in so many online games. People who enjoy the story for what it is and don't have that stereotypical CoD/LoL/WoW gamer mentality. And while, yes there are currently some people playing the game with that attitude, they seem by and large to be a significant minority. Should they ever become the majority... well I honestly don't see much the game surviving too long after that.

See, that's what you really don't seem to get: this is something of a niche game. It's not going to appeal to the same audience some other games will. It's not meant to.

Should the story be removed or skippable? No. Should certain parts of the story be streamlined as time goes by? Definitely yes, but it should still be required.

Honestly this isn't such a bad idea apart from the max level thing. However I don't agree with the separate DF/PF. The whole point of cross server PF is to bring the servers together without breaking server community. I imagine people would play on it but not giving them the same PF/DF would be more of a killing factor than allowing them to skip the story in my opinion.

But putting them in the same DF/PF would mean they then have to wait a whole 42.187 seconds while people watch intro cinematics which will eat into their gaming time. And people wanting to play that way aren't really part of the community as it is.

Honestly it would probably die fast. Without the epeen gear treadmill and the "its not important that i do well, but that other people know i'm better than them" players of that mindset would probably get bored very fast and quit. Its all about the skinnerbox and you take away the endorphin release trigger of tiny, incremental carrot on a stick upgrades then the thing they scream and holler for becomes utterly redundant to them most of the time.

Shit just look at WoW, pre transmog there was absolutely no life in the old pre current endgame content at all. Every single raid was a redundant ghost town bar the few at the time that had a boss that dropped a mount.

That was kind of the point. :P Removing all but one specific part of the game, which is effectively what they're saying even though they don't realize it, would kill most any game.

i had forgotten till i looked you actually get locked to a small number of dungeons in the games party finder. After years of FFXIV thats a monumental waste of dev resources. I loved dungeons like Scarlet Monastery but to think back on how i would out level them and never get them in a group finder ever again is insane.

They have kinda dealt with that with the advent of Timewalking dungeons, though that only deals with a small handful of dungeons, and only for a week at the time. I've seen people ask them to make it a permanent thing, but Blizz basically said it would take away from the value of current content or something like that. Doesn't stop them from recoloring monster #327 for the 12th time to use in that current content though.

[Thage]

I cannot stand mutes in a party. Might as well be a run with NPCs at that point.

I don't mind quiet partners in a dungeon. I vastly prefer runs like this trip through Palace of the Dead 21-30 I just did a bit ago, though, where we're all running around, cutting up and having fun. Helps break up the monotony for dungeons that've been run into the ground.

[Melsiren]

Dude on my high pop pve server it was so bad it was considered a novelty when i set up a guild Ulduar run for players that never saw it before it was soloable content. You forget when XIV has scaling that other mmos effectively shut the doors, put up the tables and leave content to gather dust forever. I mean i was asked by the one friend i know still playing WoW to try legion and i had forgotten till i looked you actually get locked to a small number of dungeons in the games party finder. After years of FFXIV thats a monumental waste of dev resources. I loved dungeons like Scarlet Monastery but to think back on how i would out level them and never get them in a group finder ever again is insane.

Dude, I've been -begging- since Cata for there to be some way to scale down my character to play with my lower level friends who are just starting WoW. When I heard the rumors of Timewalking I thought just maybe, JUST FUCKING MAYBE, Blizzard would do the right thing and let me scale down, letting me both play with my friends and make old content relevant again. No, instead I got some shit monthly event that is just the same old carrot on the stick motivator.

I was heavily resistant to trying FFXIV for the longest time for shallow reasons, and I regret holding out for as long as I did.

They have kinda dealt with that with the advent of Timewalking dungeons, though that only deals with a small handful of dungeons, and only for a week at the time. I've seen people ask them to make it a permanent thing, but Blizz basically said it would take away from the value of current content or something like that. Doesn't stop them from recoloring monster #327 for the 12th time to use in that current content though.

You have to doubt the self esteem of the design team if they're worried that letting players do older content as an alternative would take away from new content. Almost as if they're worried players want to do content from one expansion over another...

[Deleted]

I think people that try to defend having to play through the story should be a little more reserved.

It's ridicilous, it doesn't matter what FFXIV is and FF was in the past. You can only try to make a game good and popular and if the game has a big hurdle like that, it won't catch the attention of many new players, which in the end, is bad for everyone.

It really sounds like the biggest and utmost fanboyism when people try to defend that design decision. Not only doesn't it make much sense, because not having to play through the whole thing just means that you don't even get to understand the whole world-story since SQ are also part of it (like Bahamut).
So basically, the game forces you to play through a story branch, that is dropped along the way and leaves you with problems you never finish solving - great.

FF can be story driven, and that's all right, but what has that to do with the player having to play through content that several years old? Instead of making a recap-cutscene or something like that.
You don't even get to have a decision, or it doesn't matter what level your character is, you can be 50-51-52 and still have to play through Vanilla content, even though being 52 is already HW content itself. That's just silly.

[Katchii]

But they are Final Fantasy games and they are not story based ones. Ergo Final Fantasy games are not exclusively story based games which is why it's a poor argument.

I'm still yet to see anyone propose a good reason why they think MSQ should be required. There are posters in this thread with reasons why it's detremental, but no one putting forwards reasons why it's beneficial.

Story centric game, developer wants you to play the story, so they make you play the story so that's kind of the end of the discussion in my book. Deal with it.

Bolded part is the only reason they need. their game, their rules.

[Deleted]

So whenever a dev does something stupid or arguably optional that should be laid into the hands of the guy PLAYING the game, we can just say "dev wants it that way"

Cool.

"Why do I have to do a 360° with my camera whenever I want to attack someone" - "Because the Dev wants you to enjoy the scenery, deal with it!"

Thats.... just pathetic.

[StrawberryZebra]

It weeds out the gogogo players that make dungeons and raids a miserable, antisocial experience. There.

Does it? Practically every ARF I've ever done has started off with the words "Not this one again", followed by the tank pulling everything in sight in an attempt to get it finished ASAP. Whenever I end up with a high level group in a low level dungeon, it always results in all the trash being done in a single pull wherever possible. Even in Sohm Al and Baelsars Wall people just want to rush through and get their Scrip at the end.

If it does weed out the "gogogo" crowd, it's doing a lousy job of it. Plenty of them are slipping through anyway.

The only argument being made against story being required is that it keeps new players away.

It also keeps away returning players. And players who just want to jump in and play with their friends, and people who want to roll an alt. It's also a pain in the arse for those who are interested in PvPing, since you'll need to complete the ARR main story questline in order to unlock access to your level 60 skills. Having it tied into so many of the games systems means that everyone, regardless of whatever in game goals they persuit, has to do it.

It infringes on the players who want to play solo by forcing them to do group content they have no interest in. It's a hassle for players who just want to do group content by forcing them to do an arbitrary amount of solo questing to unlock the content they want to see. I even spoke to someone yesterday who plays FF14 for Triple Triad exclusively who was absolutely livid that he'd have to do Heavensward raiding content to get his hands on some of the cards.

Plenty of players I meet in game only grudgingly put up with having to do the story because they want to get to the "good" stuff the game has to offer. The people who've genuinely enjoyed playing it for it's own sake seem to be in a minority.

After years of FFXIV thats a monumental waste of dev resources. I loved dungeons like Scarlet Monastery but to think back on how i would out level them and never get them in a group finder ever again is insane.

But think how much you'd have run Scarlet Monastary in 10+ years of WoW if it was still valid max level LFG content. I'd be willing to bet you'd be more than a little bored of it at this point. It'll be the same with FF 14 too no doubt. The people doing the roulettes will get bored of running Copperbell Mines and Titan eventually.

It's a good idea, but it's not one without it's flaws too. How Squeenix are going to handle it when it starts becoming an issue remains to be seen.

[Faroth]

So whenever a dev does something stupid or arguably optional that should be laid into the hands of the guy PLAYING the game, we can just say "dev wants it that way"

Cool.

"Why do I have to do a 360° with my camera whenever I want to attack someone" - "Because the Dev wants you to enjoy the scenery, deal with it!"

Thats.... just pathetic.

That's a bit of a stretch. The argument of skipping a story in a story based game is more akin to complaining about having to fight in a fighting game or solving puzzles in a puzzle game. Final Fantasy is a story driven RPG series. Final Fantasy XIV is part of that series. There's a certain level of expectation there.

And it's interesting that the devs seem to be still holding off on the level & MSQ skip potions based on player feedback to the idea, even though they've noted that the use of the MSQ skip potion in China is fairly minimal. I suspect, however, that western players who have more of a demand for instant gratification would use it more than player in the East. And that takes it a step towards WoW's transformation when it opened up and became a cultural phenomenon with flood of the CoD/Halo types joining the traditional MMORPG demographic.

Yoshida and Square are very sensitive about things that could negatively affect the community and the community majority seems opposed to the idea so far.

Personally I'm fine with a leveling potion. Little less so on MSQ skip. I realize it would be a lot of work, but I'd rather see the MSQ streamlined where they take the list and relink Quest A > B > C > D > E > F into A > B > C > J with D-I becoming sidequests instead and the MSQ quests get xp buffed so they're exclusively all it takes to get through past expansions in a fairly timely manner.

That said, I swapped over to my alt who only finished 2.0 on Sunday and played her for about 45 minutes or so and got through the first 10 post 2.0 quests. That's 1/10th of the way. I was clicking through some text and reading some other text rather than speed clicking everything. Going to continue quite mindful of how long it takes to get to Ishgard.

- - - Updated - - -

But think how much you'd have run Scarlet Monastary in 10+ years of WoW if it was still valid max level LFG content. I'd be willing to bet you'd be more than a little bored of it at this point. It'll be the same with FF 14 too no doubt. The people doing the roulettes will get bored of running Copperbell Mines and Titan eventually.

It's a good idea, but it's not one without it's flaws too. How Squeenix are going to handle it when it starts becoming an issue remains to be seen.

As the dungeon list grows, the frequency of seeing the same ones repeatedly lessens. I wager players repeated Titan far more in 2.x than they did in 3.x and FAR FAR more than they will during 4.x series.

[Wrecktangle]

Sadly modern games have trained people that mmorpgs are a mad rush to an endgame skinnerbox treadmill where you pay a sub fee for a 'raid or die' idea where you ignore the world to spend months chipping away at the same instance and things like cutscenes and quest text exist only to be skipped. Its the bunny hopping "gogogogogogogogogogogogo" culture that kind of misses the point of mmorpgs really.

What exactly do you do in the world once you hit max level and high gear? From what I can remember nothing. The only content at that point is instanced content. PotD while a cool idea and gameplay element, doesn't count as world building or engaging in said world.

It's funny you keep mentioning the bunny hopping gogo crowd, yet the worst ever experience I've seen of that (IN ANY GAME EVER) was in this game. I simply refused to participate when people measured currency in brayflox speedruns. WoW finally had something similar in the Maw speedruns this expansion, and despite every single person in my group trying to get me to go with them I strictly told them I would do not more than 2 in a row (despite needing a really good trinket out of there). I know it's easy to paint something you don't like as the bad guy, but it is kind of hilariously inept to exclude clear and easily identifiable instances of the exact same behavior in the game you're defending.

Homogenisation in the name of 'wider market appeal' has watered down and neutered so many mmos and killed them off because devs listened to people whos only complaints were summed up to 'i dont actually like your game but want it to change to suit me and core audience be damned' and its become so common in gaming that its becoming a more common reaction that people react negatively to it because people have seen where it leads.

It still sucks if its a friend playing catch up of course but if you are the singular player who hates the quests, hates the story and wants to skip it all you gotta ask yourself what are you skipping to get to and why is it worth it to begin with?

I actually very firmly believe that homogenization is a good thing to a degree. I'd much rather have Warrior and Paladin be mechanically similar/equal, but be different by thematics/graphics and/or a singular gameplay element. One it'd make balance better and easier, and honestly I don't play a Paladin for its toolkit, I play it because its theme most centrally aligns with myself (you know, like the main reason people play RPGs?).

Yes it sucks if you're friend is playing catch up. That's kind of every single persons argument in this thread. A friend is at max level and you don't want to spend approx. 100 hours playing catch up for content that isn't relevant for your friend. That's the entire point of their argument. They're skipping to get to do content that they can both do together and enjoy and receive meaningful rewards from. What if said person only had 2 hours a night to play? It could very well take MONTHS to catch up before they could even play together. You honestly 100% believe that is a good thing? Do you genuinely believe that the existing design is optimal?

The game is set in an MMO, that doesn't make quests mandatory to do alone, that's your choice.

Please tell me you're kidding? The entire leveling experience is very solo driven. Short of a few dungeons every couple levels. I leveled from 1-50 back in 2.1 with my brother and an IRL friend. The amount of times we had to drop group for solo quests was STAGGERING. In fact doing the quests as 3 almost always took longer than just doing it solo and made everything so trivially easy it wasn't enjoyable. Add that to the fact that low level combat in this game is arguably the worst in any MMO in the past 10 years. Having my friend on follow while I am his bodyguard (not being able to see what quest he is on, where his quest wants him to go, etc.) killing mobs that I don't care about or need and pose absolutely 0 danger to me isn't fun. It honestly isn't fun for him either.

Do you even have a high level friend in FF14? some one who got you into it?because I've gone back and helped five of my friends from 15 to 60, I mean of course I couldn't help them with their quests, I did all my quests with my Fiancee baring the solo duties that forced us to drop group.

Heck, the level sync system the ability to play with my friends of any level as long as their lower than me is my favorite part of the game, I don't feel like I'm doing outdated content when I do it either I just feel like I'm helping a friend by playing the game.

I just don't feel the multiplayer argument holds much ground since you can do everything in game outside of the solo duties with other players.

I've been trying to help my friend get through HW content and it's been a slow going process. It's just run here run there, do x, do y, all fetch quests with 1 or 2 critical story moments. It's absolutely insanely boring for me to just sit there and be his bodyguard. None of this content offers me any reward for my time or effort. It is not engaging or fun or challenging me. Add to the fact that he has to hunt down flying just to keep up with me is also a buzzkill.

Level sync is bullshit. It isn't fun whenever it happens and it doesn't ever bring you back to the difficulty of the original entry. It overscales you so hilariously bad they honestly shouldn't have added it. The leveling experience is VERY solo player driven short of a few duties/trials, even a significant portion of the quests force me to drop group while he does some event.

2 things though.

1:Yes i can imagine going through all the previous expansion stuff, its what we did in WoW for alts pre WoD. The only difference is WoW has storylines for zones not the entire experience via questing.
2:WoW also does not scale anything from previous content updates so you are rushing to a tiny amount of content people still do as the rest becomes a redundant ghosttown used by people sick of the said tiny amount of endgame content to farm for transmog to convince themselves they are still getting their moneys worth. FFXIV scales all instanced content. You are not unable to do something like Syrcus Tower because its level 50 because everyone over 50 is still queing for it for relevant rewards.

I think thats the difference here. Other games have catered people to think this strange, malignant idea that an mmorpg is only worth playing if you B line to max level to do a tiny bit of content on repeat. Thats not how FFXIV works. Everything scales and for some reason or another remains relevant to players who long since outlevel it.

What relevant awards are you getting from ST? I don't remember ever setting foot in those places once I was finished getting whatever glamour I wanted. The gear was always DoA and once they added the thing to boost raid gear to it, it was a do once a week and be done. I don't remember the 24s offering any kind of meaningful reward post delivery. Could you clarify that for me? What exactly do you get from doing ST, say tonight? I didn't even get meaningful rewards out of ST when it dropped...

Because it does when a vocal minority are catered to by developers and change a game in a way that fails to draw in a new audience and isolates and drives away the others. 9 out of 10 popular ip's of the 2000's died to this change for 'wider market appeal' based on an assumption that a change would net a positive gain of an audience that is not there.

So you are a MMO game systems developer by trade? That's awesome. What company do you work for and what games have you worked on?

Sarcasm aside, how are you so confident in your analysis that you can state your opinion (as fact apparently) that by adding a feature such as a jump potion that it would 100% FAIL to draw in a new audience, and that it would 100% isolate and drive others away.

Explain that to me. How would a jump potion drive YOU away from continuing to play FF14. You state 9/10 IPs of the 2000's died to accessibility. Could you clarify those 9/10 IPs that failed? Which was the one that survived?

translation, because it does affect us when people demand the ability to skip all the content and jump into end game. The developers see people wanting to skip to story and put less resources to it because... why bother.

The game is the sum of all its content. Not just its latest patch. This has been forgotten in the genre and is a direct threat to this game. The attitude of story doesn't matter, all that matters is endgame loot is called poison for a reason. The term fits.

Looks like we have another game systems developer here. Just our of curiosity, what credentials do you have that allow you to state so adamantly that the developers would immediately jump to that conclusion?

I'd posit that if I had the data in front of me, I'd pose the data to the developers in the frame of x people are skipping story. What opportunities for improvement do we have here? Maybe there's too much filler? Maybe they want to play with their friends sooner and in a more meaningful manner? Maybe we should open jobs people actually want to play at a lower level? In the business we call this root cause analysis.

Do you now see how juvenile your analysis was? You make broad generalizations with no actual analytic insight.

So when I'm level 60 BRD and I walk up to you and you are level 60 WHM, we know exactly what each of us have done and given to the game to accomplish that goal. When we enter the raid or dungeon, I know you too have spent that time invested in the story to unlock them.

there is value in that.

This is probably the ONLY constructive for argument I have seen in this entire thread. I agree wholeheartedly that there is value in KNOWING what at a minimum someone had to do to get there.

There is this thing with the story where I feel like new players believe they can't play with friends, but becuase of lvl sync that's not entirely true.

So lets say I'm level 60 i260. My friend just bought the game and wants to play with me. He's a level 9 Pugilist. He has 2 hours a day to play.

Using this data, at what point can both my friend and I play meaningful content together? meaningful content is defined as content where we both we be challenged as players and receive rewards commensurate with that. Redoing story I've already done is not meaningful. Syncing down to dungeons I don't care about or need loot from, or that pose no danger to us is not meaningful.

Looking forward to your answer.

Why as a new player would you not want to experience the game in its entirety? You're looking at it from the view of someone who has already done it, but did you really hate it the first time through? I know I didn't. There are plenty of games out there that rush you to max level with little to no story. It's nice that there is one out there that is different.

As a new player playing solo your argument fits. The issue is that some people want to play with other people. That means that in order to experience the MMO side of it you need to be where the most players are, at max level.

Ok it weeds out people who lack patience abd may try to change the game in a negative way

It adds more content then alot of other mmo's get

It helps build the world in a very good and natural way

1) Weeding out players who want to try and play your game? Dear god I fear whatever business you may try to run. Hurting x amount of possible interested players to possibly reduce the amount of y players is hilariously bad business.

2) Forcing you to go through content isn't adding content... The content merely exists and you must travel through it. It in no way shape or form adds content.

3) Agreed wholeheartedly. That is certainly the main focus/benefit of the MSQ.

They should just make a new server type, where there's no story or anything even remotely like it, you start at max level, and you have best in slot gear for all jobs. And give that server type it's own duty/party finder separate from everyone else. I'd honestly be curious how large or small the long term population on that server type would be.

That's a terrible idea. That's the kind of solution that an enraged hormonal teenager would devise. That's also not even relevant to the existing discussion.

It weeds out the gogogo players that make dungeons and raids a miserable, antisocial experience. There.

LOL. I already covered this before, but you do realize this game had one of the worst instances of this ever to exist? Remember when the community WIDELY regarded currency as brayflox runs? it was widely accepted by the community. It wasn't some secret shell. It was on every single PF group.

Also fun fact, FF14 dungeons are some of the most miserable antisocial experiences I've ever had. No one talks. No one communicates and no one does anything. The dungeons are so hilariously trivial difficulty wise that no one needs to talk.

The only argument being made against story being required is that it keeps new players away. Anything beyond that hasn't been a reason why it's detrimental, it's all been personal opinion - many times an opinion stated as a fact. And while requiring the story will keep some players away, I dare say it would also bring in some others for exactly the same reason. Maybe it won't bring in as many new players, no; but I'd honestly rather have a better player base than a significantly larger one. Better in this case meaning people with better attitudes than those in so many online games. People who enjoy the story for what it is and don't have that stereotypical CoD/LoL/WoW gamer mentality.

Should the story be removed or skippable? No. Should certain parts of the story be streamlined as time goes by? Definitely yes, but it should still be required.

That was kind of the point. :P Removing all but one specific part of the game, which is effectively what they're saying even though they don't realize it, would kill most any game.

They have kinda dealt with that with the advent of Timewalking dungeons, though that only deals with a small handful of dungeons, and only for a week at the time. I've seen people ask them to make it a permanent thing, but Blizz basically said it would take away from the value of current content or something like that. Doesn't stop them from recoloring monster #327 for the 12th time to use in that current content though.

1) The problem with your analysis is that you're assuming that by adding more players you would be directly diluting the quality of the playerbase. You nor I have no real way to determine that. I could just as easily argue that there are nice players who wants to play, but just don't have the time or desire to go through a long solo leveling slog. You assume that by adding a feature you'd be directly increasing the playerbase by ONLY bad players.

Also - LoL/CoD are PvP games. The attitudes there will be MUCH different than what you'd see elsewhere in game, so hardly a fair comparison.

Regarding WoW. People say this on this specific forum a lot. However, in my experience I've seen more toxic shit in this game than I ever did in WoW. Maybe that's because I've always played WoW at a very high level so I've avoided the riff-raff? I've had situations where a DPS says that the tank sucks and is pulling too slow, and I'm looking at ACT and the other DPS is doing less damage than the healer. I've seen situations where someone kicks someone from a PF group saying they were doing low DPS (and they were), but the leader had died 2 pulls in a row and was doing less. I've seen healers literally go AFK an entire dungeon and just let their fairy do maintenance healing. I've seen people question it and get kicked for saying something. That's some backwards shit.

In WoW I've seen people get kicked for all sorts of things, but the overzealous defense or salt was never as bad as what I'd seen in FF14.

2)I'm not opposed to the idea of streamlining. I'd argue it's 100% mandatory honestly. They really need to clean up the 1-50 +xx slog. Then they need to clean up the 50-60 + xx slog. Hit the high points, drop anything that's not relevant to the main story.

With that said, I'm of the camp that I TRULY don't believe that this model is good. It's necessary, but I don't think its good. If I was a game developer I might have a better suggestion, but honestly I don't know what the solution is.

3) Jump Potion =/= killing part of a game. It simply gives more players the OPTION to choose how they want to approach leveling in the game.

4) Timewalking is fucking stupid. It's literally as bad as sync'd low level dungeons. Everytime I have to do 5 timewalking dungeons for the weekly I cringe. They aren't hard. I literally fall asleep every time I do them (no joke I actually fell asleep once). They're boring and the rewards from the actual dungeons are completely useless.

Whenever I end up with a high level group in a low level dungeon, it always results in all the trash being done in a single pull wherever possible. Even in Sohm Al and Baelsars Wall people just want to rush through and get their Scrip at the end.

If it does weed out the "gogogo" crowd, it's doing a lousy job of it. Plenty of them are slipping through anyway.

It also keeps away returning players. And players who just want to jump in and play with their friends, and people who want to roll an alt.

All valid points.

[Melsiren]

So lets say I'm level 60 i260. My friend just bought the game and wants to play with me. He's a level 9 Pugilist. He has 2 hours a day to play.

Using this data, at what point can both my friend and I play meaningful content together? meaningful content is defined as content where we both we be challenged as players and receive rewards commensurate with that. Redoing story I've already done is not meaningful. Syncing down to dungeons I don't care about or need loot from, or that pose no danger to us is not meaningful.

Looking forward to your answer.

Heck I'll answer.

Well under this horrible limited definition that you set it would take a long time. However, that's a you and your friend issue, they need to make more time or consider playing a different game together, because every game does not have to cater to everyone.

If I had a friend who could only put in 2 hours a day, I'd be fine doing -anything- with them even if it was "Meaningless Syncing." Which is just like, your opinion.

[Thage]

LOL. I already covered this before, but you do realize this game had one of the worst instances of this ever to exist? Remember when the community WIDELY regarded currency as brayflox runs? it was widely accepted by the community. It wasn't some secret shell. It was on every single PF group.

Had being the operative word. I haven't seen any of that in Heavensward content, nor have I had a single dungeon run in Heavensward or ARR content where people didn't talk or take their time when the tank or healer piped up and said it was a fresh run.

Also fun fact, FF14 dungeons are some of the most miserable antisocial experiences I've ever had. No one talks. No one communicates and no one does anything. The dungeons are so hilariously trivial difficulty wise that no one needs to talk.

My experience differs. I haven't had a quiet group yet, either in the dungeon queue or Palace of the Dead. It's not like I play on a super-pop realm like Balmung, either; I get plenty of chatter on Jenova. Fun fact, difficulty isn't what sparks conversation. Talking does, man. I know, cuh~razy.

Anyway, FFXIV is a game that wants players to go through the story; if you (general you, not specifically you) don't like it, it's not the game for you (much like Phantasy Star Online II isn't the game for you if you don't like an overwhelming amount of grinding to upgrade your gear). A story-skip potion should only let you skip up to the previous expansion unless you have a character who's already done the current expansion's base MSQ on your account.

As much as people want to try to argue this is for the newbies, most newbies I've noticed sit through cutscenes and pay attention to the story because they haven't done it already. It's not and people need to quit trying to use that as the justification. What it would be most useful for is rerolls for players who don't want to pay for a server jump or returning players coming back after an extended break who want to get ready for current content.

[StrawberryZebra]

That's a bit of a stretch. The argument of skipping a story in a story based game is more akin to complaining about having to fight in a fighting game or solving puzzles in a puzzle game. Final Fantasy is a story driven RPG series. Final Fantasy XIV is part of that series. There's a certain level of expectation there.

The fighting part of Fighting games is the interactive part of the experience. It's the only place where the mechanics of the game are availible to the players to use, and where the actual playing of the game takes place. The puzzle solving part of a puzzle game is the interactive part of those, where the games mechanics are availible for the player to use and the actual playing of the game takes place. The world exploration and combat is the interactive part of Final Fantasy, thats the only place where the mechanics of the game are availible to the player to use and the actual playing of the game takes place.

It would be closer to buying a fighting game for the story. They do have stories, not usually very good ones, but they are there. If you really want to play the story of Street Fighter V then no one will stop you. However one can also experience the story of Street Fighter V without ever having to pick up the controller.

Personally I'm fine with a leveling potion. Little less so on MSQ skip.

I would be interested on hearing why this is, I would have thought the opposite would be true. Most players seem to consider the leveling process a kind of elongated tutorial, with the expectation that by the time a player reaches Max level they have a pretty solid understanding on how to play their class. Quite a lot of the compaints around these kinds of things, in FF14 and other MMO's too, generally stem from players concerned over the influx of high level players who have no idea what they're doing.

Players who skipped just the MSQ however, could reach max level with any means they liked and would only miss minor context for some of the new areas. It might not be what you want, but I'd consider a player who doesn't get why we're fighting Nidhogg again less of a hinderance than a player who hit level 60 less than 30 seconds ago.

My understanding of the planned leveling potion is that it would allow you to both jump to level 60 and to skip the MSQ too. The idea of being in favour of skipping both the leveling and the MSQ, while being against skipping just the MSQ seems paradoxical.

As the dungeon list grows, the frequency of seeing the same ones repeatedly lessens. I wager players repeated Titan far more in 2.x than they did in 3.x and FAR FAR more than they will during 4.x series.

Very true. Given the number of times you need to fight Titan throughout the story, I'd be far more surprised if he didn't show up more often than most. Even with all the dungeons we have on the leveling roulette, I find myself in one thats below level 30 most of the time right now. Most likely explanation is that there are more people queueing for those ones intentionally, possiably even people doing the Free Trial or just new players who are progressing through the story. Just because the number of dungeons goes up doesn't mean they're all equally likely.

But the point was more "After 10 years of running X Dungeon semi-regularly, you would probably be bored of it".

If I had a friend who could only put in 2 hours a day, I'd be fine doing -anything- with them even if it was "Meaningless Syncing." Which is just like, your opinion.

When you have friends you want to game with FF 14 is really the wrong game for it. There are all kinds of difficulties you run into where you've constantly got to drop group to complete quests, you can't see what your friends are doing while they're questing and you spend a lot of time standing around waiting for them to finish their solo duties. As other posters have mentioned, it's much faster to drop group and do questing solo. So rather than playing with a friend, you've got to encourage them from the sidelines with the promise of being able to play with them when they're level 60.

I wouldn't subject a friend to that. Instead we'd go and play something like Rocket League or Dota. Something that isn't actively hostile to bringing your friends along.

I'd posit that if I had the data in front of me, I'd pose the data to the developers in the frame of x people are skipping story. What opportunities for improvement do we have here? Maybe there's too much filler? Maybe they want to play with their friends sooner and in a more meaningful manner? Maybe we should open jobs people actually want to play at a lower level? In the business we call this root cause analysis.

The most worrying thing about this hypothetical is that Squeenix likely don't have this kind of data to work with. The way the game works makes gathering data like this heavilly skewed in favour of people doing the story. It's a shame, having some actual hard data on just how many people would do the MSQ when given an alternative would be very interesting to work with.

[Deleted]

That's a bit of a stretch. The argument of skipping a story in a story based game is more akin to complaining about having to fight in a fighting game or solving puzzles in a puzzle game. Final Fantasy is a story driven RPG series. Final Fantasy XIV is part of that series. There's a certain level of expectation there.

Bah... when I'm playing FF13-2, I don't have to play through FF13 either, that's just BS.
Or the ones that are connected to the universe beforehand.

If you want to play the story, go for it, how exactly does it hurt if you if someone else doesn't?
Do you honestly believe that the guy who races to level 60+ to play with his friends gives a god damn shit about the story so far?
He'll lose interest by lvl 20, if not earlier. In the end, that's just a player lost for no reason. And if he manages to struggle his way till the end, he won't know anything about the story and 'fuck up your game' (or something) - I guess. or something. *shrug*
And as I mentioned, the story doesn't even really work without some major sidequests.
The whole Bahamut thing is pretty mandatory, but optional / not being done if you want to go to HW for example.

The Community itself might be casual_af, but that doesn't change that the "go to" attitude in duty finder is "as fast as possible". It's silly to assume that this is somehow supposed to protect a certain value... these values don't even exist in the first place and are certaintly not saved by making the game less accessible.

Same about the comment with what you believe the majority of the community wants. This topic has been a relatively important topic back during HW too. It wouldn't show up that often if it wasn't an issue for a considerable amount of players... and the "majority" probably doesn't give a fuck either way... because it doesn't involve them in any way whatsoever if they are fine with the MSQ and enjoy the story for the story

[Kazgrel]

Not gonna go back and quote and nitpick on countless posts so I'll use a broad brush:

- I'm very much a fan of having to play through the story for first timers. I am NOT a fan, though, of the 100 quest slog of 2.1-2.55 quests that were patched on. I would much rather see efforts to trim the fat there vs. a "MSQ skip" potion or whatever, even if the latter is the path of least resistance. Seems evident to me they recognized the problem; the amount of quests patched in from 3.1 to now about half as many, and given how the story for these patch quests is far better than the 2.1-2.55 equivalents (for the most part, and that's only my opinion), I don't see the 3.1-3.56 or whatever patch quests being near as awful a slog as the ARR patch quests, especially given that newer players going through those quests in Stormblood will likely be constantly showered in gear upgrades from those quests.

- Level syncing as a concept is fine. It's pulled off much better here than another game I've seen it in (GW2). Yes, the whole "I don't have xyz abilities due to down sync" is annoying as fuck. I fucking despise Brayflox and Sunken Temple of Qarn NMs because of it, even moreso than AV. But it's a mechanism that allows higher level players to help out upcoming players without it being a "herp derp let me run through and one shot everything" snoozefest.

- I'm not a huge fan of how the MSQ is largely single player. Seems strange to have such a mechanism in a MMO, even though it's far from the first time such a thing has been done (hello, SWTOR). Storytelling wise, though, it makes sense That being said, side quests as a means to level up become largely irrelevant in this game thanks to the other ways/grinds available to obtain xp...and those happen to be group friendly (ye ol' FATE farming and PotD).

Friend of mine started playing the game about a month and a half ago. About to ding 59 now, and that's without playing every single day, so if someone is honestly into the story and/or the game world itself, it's nowhere near the burden that people make it out to be (except for that ARR patch quest slog I touched on...my friend was at the "ugh when will this end" mindset around the #60 out of 100 mark).

[Katchii]

So whenever a dev does something stupid or arguably optional that should be laid into the hands of the guy PLAYING the game, we can just say "dev wants it that way"

Cool.

"Why do I have to do a 360° with my camera whenever I want to attack someone" - "Because the Dev wants you to enjoy the scenery, deal with it!"

Thats.... just pathetic.

1) That's a pointless comparison. You're example would directly hinder gameplay, whereas forcing people to play through the story doesn't affect how the game is played in any way (meaning how you control your character).

2) This isn't the FFXIV forums and we're not giving feedback to devs here, so on THIS specific forum that's the only answer that means anything. If you want to provide feedback and have a dialogue with the developers about your dislike for the mandatory story and provide alternatives, do it on the official forums where it might actually do something.

Also, I'm not opposed to certain parts of the MSQ being skippable or streamlined, because I agree there are a lot of filler quests that could be taken out or combined to significantly reduce and improve the new player and/ or alt leveling experience as it is a pretty significant barrier for new players to try and get to a position in game where they can play alongside established FFXIV players. I am however opposed to the MSQ being entirely optional simply for the sake that all content in this game was designed with some story flavor and I feel that having that context is valuable.

[Faroth]

Decided I'd put this at the start:

Let me begin by countering my whole post: it's kind of a meaningless debate.... those of us who don't favor the MSQ skip are going to lose that argument. I fully believe the MSQ skip is going to happen. My guess is about halfway through Stormblood they'll be implementing the potions. We'll just have to wait and see what, if any, impact that has.

I would be interested on hearing why this is, I would have thought the opposite would be true. Most players seem to consider the leveling process a kind of elongated tutorial, with the expectation that by the time a player reaches Max level they have a pretty solid understanding on how to play their class. Quite a lot of the compaints around these kinds of things, in FF14 and other MMO's too, generally stem from players concerned over the influx of high level players who have no idea what they're doing.

Probably because of an addmittedly MMORPG and RPG isolationist mindset. MMORPGs weren't mainstream prior to WoW and having the MSQ and the story still being a central part of Final Fantasy means the players who are playing tend to have at least a bit of a more likeminded interest in the approach to the genre, this series, and this game in particular rather than opening the doors to "I don't give a shit, just give me loot" mentality players. Sort of like the turning point of when WoW got more broad appeal and the community grew more toxic as wider and wider player demographics flocked into it. I'm not particularly thrilled about the concept of encouraging people who don't give a shit to jump into the game.

And let me expand a tad on the demographic content. It's my opinion that casting a wider and wider net was one of Blizzard's mistakes with WoW in that to keep those ever more diverse demographics playing they had to continuously dilute their focus and their vision to cater to them. As more focus spread out to include pet battles as an ongoing gameplay, PvP expanded from group to small group with Arenas, Raids became 25 man heroic/25 man/10 man heroic/10 man/LFG now adding in mythic, plus mythic/heroic dungeon split it seemed to grow more confusing and less focused on what they were trying to design/accomplish (though I'll admit Legion seemed to get things very much back to being focused on point while still juggling many of these, which is quite impressive).

My understanding of the planned leveling potion is that it would allow you to both jump to level 60 and to skip the MSQ too. The idea of being in favour of skipping both the leveling and the MSQ, while being against skipping just the MSQ seems paradoxical.

Your understanding is incorrect. Yoshida detailed that there are two potions - MSQ skip, level 60 boost. Their data shows more people use the level skip in China than the MSQ skip. My guess is that's probably people using a level boost on jobs other than their first. It was also uncertain if they would replace the MSQ skip with one that skips 2.x and 3.x or if they would introduce a separate potion for 3.x so players could skip 2.x but still do Heavensward rather than all or nothing.

With Palace of the Dead giving a decent example, there's a system in place to speed boost you up to dabble and explore the abilities and how they work. Implementing similar tutorial into the training hall currently used for new players to MMOs and making it a mandatory process for level boost, I'm not as concerned that people can't learn a class. I'm regularly learning level 50-60 abilities on my level 30 job through PotD.

Very true. Given the number of times you need to fight Titan throughout the story, I'd be far more surprised if he didn't show up more often than most. Even with all the dungeons we have on the leveling roulette, I find myself in one thats below level 30 most of the time right now. Most likely explanation is that there are more people queueing for those ones intentionally, possiably even people doing the Free Trial or just new players who are progressing through the story. Just because the number of dungeons goes up doesn't mean they're all equally likely.

Isolated experience isn't a standard experience. If it's trial accounts impacting representation, you'd be arguably getting Ifrit just as much, if not more, as it comes first and would be prior to people quitting/running out of time while Titan is further in.

Outside of that, why people would queue for the low level trial, I haven't a clue. For me, regarding the Primal trials, I get Garuda more than Titan when it pops up.

But the point was more "After 10 years of running X Dungeon semi-regularly, you would probably be bored of it".

I understand. My counter point is after 10 years you wouldn't be running X semi-regularly. It would become more and more infrequent as the pool grows larger.

When you have friends you want to game with FF 14 is really the wrong game for it. There are all kinds of difficulties you run into where you've constantly got to drop group to complete quests, you can't see what your friends are doing while they're questing and you spend a lot of time standing around waiting for them to finish their solo duties. As other posters have mentioned, it's much faster to drop group and do questing solo. So rather than playing with a friend, you've got to encourage them from the sidelines with the promise of being able to play with them when they're level 60.

In our FC, during Heavensward, we've added three or four new members who are RL friends. Two other people rolled alts to play through with them, but you could equally do it with your main, just on a different job, leveling alongside them. Some of the group/drop group challenges were brought up at Fan Fest and Yoshida said they're looking into ways to address that. Since you can queue for duty finder with your chocobo out, my guess is they're closer to addressing this for players as well.

I've seen it in action, players working through the story alongside friends and they've moved at a brisk pace and just got past Thoridan in the MSQ. This is with a friend that's on infrequently and maybe 1-2 times a week for any extended period they've been doing this with. Watching numerous people go through 2.x and 3.x while going to school and juggling work and the trappings of real life, it's not as monumental a challenge as some make it out to be.

The most worrying thing about this hypothetical is that Squeenix likely don't have this kind of data to work with. The way the game works makes gathering data like this heavilly skewed in favour of people doing the story. It's a shame, having some actual hard data on just how many people would do the MSQ when given an alternative would be very interesting to work with.

What makes you think Square has no such data for time spent on MSQ? Speed of leveling, time spent playing, and in China the use of MSQ skip potions are all various models of data that paint that bigger picture, yes?



Basically, the biggest heistation I have is the attitude of the people insisting on MSQ skip come across as the exact attitudes to try and avoid when you're IN the game. Why would we want to promote those attitudes even more?

Another aspect that concerns me is a trend that's been observed in the past with other MMOs. Demands to speed up or skip content seem to inevitably be followed by complaints of nothing to do and not enough content. Those who demanded to skip content are now geared up and lament that there's nothing left to do and anything that isn't raid or raising their ilvl is "not real content."

[StrawberryZebra]

1) That's a pointless comparison. You're example would directly hinder gameplay, whereas forcing people to play through the story doesn't affect how the game is played in any way (meaning how you control your character).

I think you'll find that it does influence peoples playing habits. More than you might think, actually. I would have gladly sat in PotD to hit 60 and completely ignored the MSQ. Instead I had to go out questing. No matter what it is that you want to do, you have to complete the MSQ. Be it just play Triple Triad for all the cards, collect minions, or do raiding content. The best way to make the content you want to do availible is just power your way through. You are forced to play the way Squenix intended if you like it or not.

Your understanding is incorrect. Yoshida detailed that there are two potions - MSQ skip, level 60 boost. Their data shows more people use the level skip in China than the MSQ skip. My guess is that's probably people using a level boost on jobs other than their first.

Thanks for clearing that up.

That would be my guess too. There's very little to gain by being level 60 and still having to complete the MSQ anyway. You get synced down, and probably don't have the means to get yourself geared up yet, so you're not gaining much of a power boost.

Isolated experience isn't a standard experience. If it's trial accounts impacting representation, you'd be arguably getting Ifrit just as much, if not more, as it comes first and would be prior to people quitting/running out of time while Titan is further in.

Outside of that, why people would queue for the low level trial, I haven't a clue. For me, regarding the Primal trials, I get Garuda more than Titan when it pops up.

I tend to get Titan more with the Trials Roulette. Ifrit is shockingly common when I do the leveling roulette, as are all the low level dungeons. It makes sense, lots of low level players around who need to get them done for one, and plenty of people leveling up their other jobs using the leveling roulette.

MMO populations tend to cluster at low levels and at max level. It's far more likely than not you'll get a lower level dungeon with the leveling roulette because there are more low leveled players in the queues.

What makes you think Square has no such data for time spent on MSQ? Speed of leveling, time spent playing, and in China the use of MSQ skip potions are all various models of data that paint that bigger picture, yes?

The issue is more that they can't produce data showing that only X% of people who have completed Dun Scaith have completed the MSQ, or that only X% of people skipped the ending of the ARR story to jump straight to Heavensward. The data is going to overwhelmingly show that 100% of the people who have completed Heavensward did so after completing the MSQ because that's how the game works. It doesn't mean that there's no useful data to be had, only that there's going to be a strong trend towards players completing the MSQ by default.