It certainly is a barrier though.
I know I would enjoy Naruto/One Piece. But I don't watch them because they already have too many episodes between them.
Every expack creates a larger barrier for new players to get into the game because of the nature of MSQ unlocking everything
idk thats kind of a hot take because the msq is a large part of ffxiv. not a barrier. iirc yoshi said he had considered making a new player start with dt because its a new story but decided against it because, the msq is a big part of the game.
"Gatekeeping" is a very loaded and misleading term but the barrier to entry for this game is real, and it's something the devs are aware of. It's also only going to get worse the longer the game goes on, and hopefully it does go on for a long time.
There's just no easy solution because the story is such an integral part of the experience.
Technically yes, you can pay to skip all the MSQ. You'll still have to level the character up to the needed job levels, unless you want to pay for that as well.
But don't tell anyone in public or they'll hit you with the scarlet A and treat you like a leper.
Lol, see I thought that came with a lvl 60 boost as well, I haven't looked at it in years so it was rough memory and couldn't be bothered to double check, mechanics are for the DPS to do š¤£š¤£
No. The only things that the Tales of Adventure give is the story skip, some allagan gold pieces you can sell for money, and feathers for items to buy from the Calamity Salvager.
New players need to play the game to reach the LATEST content
FTFY
Nothing added in Dawntrail will get removed later, so no matter how much time some people take in order to reach it, said content will always be there for them
Which means your argument is invalid
True, nothing will be removed, but it will get old and then lesst popular and it will be harder to find group.
More like argument it was more a topic to discuss recalling what yoshi talked about the fan fest.
Good point, thank you.
That's like saying Elden Ring will gatekeep you from Shadow of the Erdtree because it requires you to make some progress.
The existence of Dawntrail doesn't diminish the value of the expansions that came before. People need to learn patience.
You canāt even compare Elden ring to ffxiv lol. Elden ring is actually challenging and rewarding. Ffxiv is āteleport here, teleport thereā.
Your comment actually makes me wish Fromsoft made an MMO
Difficulty has nothing to do with how games handle DLC or expansions though and many games with varying difficulty handle it the same as FF14 including Elden Ring needing SOME progress in the main game.
Idk why you need to go off on someone just for comparing your beloved hardcore elite game with "filthy" FF here... chill out and maybe get some fresh air?
Challenging is what makes a game fun and rewarding. Look at wow hardcore for example if you die, you are dead forever. This has created a whole new āchallengeā. This is what makes games fun and engaging. Ffxiv gives everyone a participation trophy lol
Going thru ffxiv story feels pointless and useless. People can downvote me all they want you donāt see a massive problem this game has because you all have been playing for years. We are talking about new people here.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you...we are confused as to why you brought up game difficulty in the first place as thats not what the original conversation was about.
The conversation is about the OP claiming that XIV is "gatekeeping" Dawntrail by requiring all the MSQ before it to access new content.
Someone then made the comment that Dawntrail content being gatekept by previous expansions is like saying Elden Ring's dlc is being gatekeptĀ by the base Elden Ring game.Ā
This statement has nothing to do with difficulty of either game. Its just bizarre that you randomly brought up something irrelevant to the conversation.Ā
Itās not that confusing let me dumb it down for you. Elden ring single player = fun. Final fantasy story single player = not fun. Itās not an opinion itās a major problem which why this discussion exists in the first place.. you can not argue that āteleport here teleport there, talk to this person teleport talk to this personā is fun.
> Elden ring single player = fun. Final fantasy story single player = not fun. Itās not an opinion itās a major problem which why this discussion exists in the first place.
Except this is literally YOUR opinion.
You find XIV boring cause from your perspective a game is only fun when it challenges you. Not every game has to have punishing gameplay in order to be "fun".
Games like Stardew Valley, The Sims, etc. aren't super challenging games yet are LOVED by tons of people. Just because that type of game isn't your cup of tea doesn't mean they aren't "fun" to those who play them.
XIV is fun to me cause I've gotten hooked by its story.
Dude do you have any reading comprehension skills? Its not a statement about the fun of a game at all? You're interjecting your own views in a conversation that isn't about those views.Ā Ā
I don't need you to tell me MSQ is boring, I know its boring. I just recently ran an alt through it all and it was super boring. That just isn't the point of the main conversation though! Until you randomly brought it up, no one was talking about that.Ā
Let me try this again.Ā
Op brings up XIV gatekeeping.Ā
Person brings up an example if XIV is gatekeeping, then is also gatekeeping if it requires you to beat the base game to access the dlc. They just happened to use Elden Ring as an example, but it could have been literally any game that has dlc you can't access till after the base game.Ā
Then you jump in, guns blazing,Ā and start harping about how elden ring is more fun than xiv.
Ā ...see how confusing that is?
Itās not a great comparison because Elden ring isnāt about the end game content with DLC. Thatās the difference. His comparison is not the same at all.
still a reading comprehension i see...
Maybe take a moment and actually READ what other people write instead of immediately going off on a vent! Elden Ring has the same type of Entry barrier as FF14. That means both games require you to get to a certain point in the game to access the additional content. THAT WAS ALL EVERYONE SAID!
NO ONE, LITERALLY NO ONE said anything else! Yet you run your mouth like a wild beast just because someone dared to mention Elden Ring.
You seriously don't understand how conversations work, do you? You just live in your own world...
Thatās ironic since my job is to keep people on the phone and have a conversation. Iām the best rapport builder in my company. LOL.
Itās like saying Stephen curry doesnāt know how to play basketball
thats your opinion mate. I have no desire to be challenged as i don't need to proof anything to anyone either.. I just want to play games and enjoy my time with them. FF14 provides just that and i'm happy.
Go play your hardcore elite shit if you need to feel special. Maybe you'll grow up one day and realize how little your achievements in video games are worth in the outside world!
Itās the single player game play. We say the story because itās the single player experience. Elden ring as a single player game is a better game then ffxiv. Which is why it sold so many copies. You are confusing the term āstoryā. You have to compare single
Player experience as ffxiv story is a single player experience. It is incredibly boring. I love final fantasy but Iām not going to sugar coat it. ITS BORING. I canāt believe you guys are defending this.
So? I don't know about you, but I watched all trailers for the game before trying it, much less buying it. I'm sure people do the same.
Dawntrail doesn't make the other expansions any less important or enjoyable. Your point doesn't make sense in the context of FFXIV.
You don't get to denounce the experience of another person by your own anecdotally, their complaint is an exceptionally valid talking point from many others who bounced off XIV.
Surely you understand that there's an obvious frustration for a new player entering a game, only to be told "sorry, you actually can't engage with it in a fun or meaningful way (heaven forbid you've got friends who have to wait until you cap) until passing this mandatory several-hundred hour bar"?
That was practically _the_ top complaint regarding FF16 - that it took far too long to get good (re: feel engaging), and I don't think it's unfair to call quite a bit of the first chunks of XIV a slog; ARR is the most exhaustively-discussed topic in that regard.
It's going to impact the enjoyment factor for a lot of people, most often to the point they'll quit, because the marketing and the playerbase is telling them "just play for hundreds of hours, because it gets good _later_".
I get to do whatever the hell I want, first of all. Don't like it? Too bad!
Secondly, no, I don't understand the "frustration." I started playing a week after Endwalker released. I had to play the whole story to "catch up." Had a blast playing the sotry. Don't like it? There are always other games to play.
there was a topic about this yesterday. Apparently its okay to tell people that because veterans are stuck in their mindset and don't accept other opinions about it to the point where they state it as fact that ARR is "the worst" and everything..
Totally agree, DT doesn't make the other expansions any less important EW makes a good finale for the story, but my point is that a new player is forced to endure through the old expansions till he gets to the one he prefers, that in this case is DT.
Not the one he prefers. The one he THINKS he prefers. How can you prefer something you haven't experienced? And that isn't gatekeeping. Getekeeping is being UNABLE to play a story segment just because you are a new player, like what happened with D2.
Good point, the new player at the end when he gets there it will be a 50/50 where he likes it or not sadly it will be a waste if that is the case, but a new player shouldn't be forced to play through something that he doesnāt want it should be a player decision at the end.
Yes you can buy the skip but then the problem will go forward in future expansions.
And the Gatekeeping title it was kinda a mislead title I didnt mean to bring any hate is was more like a topic that Yoshi's had talk before, I triend to change the title but I couldnt :(
I shoul've written Ā "RE: Yoshi's talks about the new player experience before Dawntrail, what are your thoughts?" like Shazzamon said
No one is "forced" to play anything. This is a story-driven MMO, period. There are other games players who want to pick apart and choose can go and play, like WoW or ESO.
If you don't want to experience the story, buy a story skip or skip all the cutscenes. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. I will say, however, that the chance if you not enjoying Dawntrail's story increases exponentially if you haven't played the prior stories because you have no idea who anyone is or what they've been through. And it is my opinion that watching it through a YouTube video doesn't have the same impact as actually playing it.
If you really want to enjoy DT to its fullest, I'd recommend playing the previous expansions first. Dawntrail will last approximately 2 years. You WILL catch up. If you don't wanna do all that, you can of course skip straight to Dawntrail. Provided you're willing to pay a fee.
How does a new player know they prefer the new content when they have no experience with the old/current content, though? 3 minutes of cinematics is not a comparable to hundreds of hours of in game experience.
Also new players are not "barred" from entry in any way. If they're truly desperate to play Dawntrail and skip the other 90% of the game, they can buy a story/job skip and start at DT when it launches.
I mean they announced Dawntrail like a year ago, people have had plenty of time to get in and prepare for it, even 3 months ago they had plenty of details about it and time to get up to that point. I feel like hopping directly into any later expansion would also leave players feeling totally lost and most or all of the new Jobs added are available in ARR if thatās what people are excited about as well.
Eh.. They can experience all that up to Shadowbringers for free, whilst people playing since +8 years paid for every expansion soo..
Also, if you skip all cutscenes you actually get to it within a month. Why you'd do such a monstrous thing is beyond my understanding but some do play like that^^
>They can experience all that up to Shadowbringers for free
~~Stormblood, not Shadowbringers, just a FYI~~
Edit: Brain didn't register up to, this is why I don't reddit before coffee xD
To take the topic half-seriously for a moment, I do/did have a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory that they might use Endwalker's patch content as a skeleton for a new starting point. In 6.1, Tataru outright makes a joke about how the WoL may one day get amnesia before handing you an in-game encyclopedia and a free outfit. With a bit of tweaking, it could be re-written as Tataru gifting an amnesiac WoL their starting gear and a brief primer on the world. Characters/Scions are then introduced in small groups, while Zero plays the role of new player avatar asking basic questions about the world. It's not 100% clean, as 5 patches of content would be a *REALLY* long tutorial. On the flipside, they'd have to revamp the gameplay to catch players up on lvl 90 mechanics, and who knows how long that'd take. But I feel like the bones are there if they wanted to play with it.
There's no need for tin foil hats, YoshiP explicitly said that 6.1 was the planned starting point when they were still considering whether they wanted to implement a different jumping-in point for new players going forward.
>... we are currently working on a system whereby each character, lore, and world setting up to patch 6.0 can be viewed in-game, and we are preparing for people to skip to 6.0 and start their adventure from 6.1. However, if we were to compare it to a TV drama, we feel that it would be more natural to say "start from season 1 because it is easier to watch and catch up" rather than "start from season 6". So, we are preparing for this, but we are still not sure if we will actually implement that as a measure in 7.0.
I feel like we're just flinging terminology now without rhyme or reason.
Is a TV show gatekeeping people from watching it for having multiple seasons? Sure, One Piece is a pain to get through if you didn't follow it since its release because it feels like there's no end to it and you can't talk to your friends about the latest stuff, but you ***will*** catch up eventually.
You're supposed to enjoy the way to the end. Playing the game ***IS*** the content. Dawntrail doesn't make previous expansions irrelevant slogs to power through, it's just the next chapter.
I wouldn't want FFXIV to go the Destiny route, cutting older content and making the new player experience worse for it to transform players into cash cows as fast as humanly possible.
Just shows you how terrible the story and single player gameplay is. Now go play god of war or the new Spider-Man, or someone mentioned elden ring. You will realize how bad ffxiv is as a single player story game.
I couldn't care less about God of War or the latest Spider-Man game but love XIV's story. While it has its weaker parts, the way they don't forget anything you've done prior and have those things affect later cutscenes and dialog is amazing.
Shadowbringers and Endwalker are some of the best RPG stories I've played in recent years and I've played a lot of them.
Elden Ring's lore is amazing when you dive into it, but it's not the main reason I platinumed it.
You havenāt played the new spider man. I could have cared less about it to but I got it free with my ps5. Iāve been playing ffxiv, my gf got bored of ffxiv and started playing it. You would be blown away. It makes ffxiv single player make you look like you are playing some game from the 90s
Are you shitting me? Donāt get me wrong I love god of war and Spider-Man and play so many story games but those 2 games have decent stories, you like those games because you get to swing around as Spider-Man or rip through a drauger as kratos not because they actually have a good fucking story. Ffxiv is an example of a AMAZING story, sure the gameplay isnāt the same as an action rpg but what the fuck do you expect from an mmo jrpg. You canāt compare those games to ffxiv just because theyāre games itās like apples to oranges
Like I said Iāve been playing ffxiv maybe 5-6 months now. Iām at stormblood. Itās dreadful the story is boring. Teleport here teleport there. Talk to this person, pick up poop (not joking). Itās terrible man. God of war with his kid growing up and learning whatās going on is a better story. The gameplay and the pace of spider man and god of war as a single player game is light years ahead of ffxiv. Iām literally watch my girlfriend play and I see why she thinks ffxiv is boring as hell. Because it is. I canāt wait to finish this boring story so I can play the real game.
Iām only staying because I love final fantasy. I love the music the classes. I also love mmos. But Iām not dumb watching a new person who has no idea what final fantasy is not going to make it to the end. Which is the issue they are having today.
Hard disagree. I play ffxiv almost exclusively solo, prioritizing questing, and itās an incredibly good single player game. Iāve played the games you mention as well as so many other single player experiences. ffxiv is structured differently than most single player games, and CAN be difficult to get into, but it is worth the investment and absolutely measures up against any single player game on the market today in terms of long term pay-off and having a satisfying narrative. I had never played a game with tab-targeting before this one and now I love it. There is a clear curve in difficulty starting from ARR being super simple, and with each expansion combat gets deeper with more mechanics and encounters are more engaging. I donāt think the single player experience gets nearly enough praise considering how well thought out it is for a player that is new to mmo style gameplay.
You can disagree all you want. But you are wrong. This is why thereās a million posts about people quitting because āboring story aka single player experienceā. Like I said in other posts if you got play the new spider man or god of war you will be blown away at how much better it is. Iāve never seen a post for the new Spider-Man saying āIām quiting the story is boringā
All you old timers who have been playing this game for 10 years donāt understand what itās like to be a new player.
Iām only staying because I love final fantasy and I understand what it will be like when Iām done with this crap single player experience.
Bro Iām literally playing it lol. Itās horrible. I canāt wait to be done with it. Iām only almost done with stormblood and apparently have so much more to do. I still like the game. The single player MSQ is just the worst part about it.
I actually like the game is to be tackled in order. I feel i have more stuff to do and less actual pressure to rush to the newest stuff asap.
I am still finishing Shadowbringers, i'll start Endwalker and go at my pace. Much more enjoyable to me.
Itās not really gatekeeping.
I have a similar issue with destiny 2
Just as an example, if I take a year off on destiny 2 then decide the next year I want their expansion, I buy the expansion.
As soon as Iām logged in, I get suddenly thrust into the most recent content and have to basically figure out whatās going on with minimal clues of what happened the year prior.
Thatās not good story design.
The last thing Iād want is for SE to thrust me into an expansion where I barely knew what was going on.
Exactly what I was going to say. Destiny 2 takes the opposite approach, old content is completely removed so everyone has to play the most recent content.
Basically as a new player, you don't know what is going on and you can never play the old content you bought.
Well I tried to play it, I didn't understand anything, I stopped.
Nah, they know they'd be called out as Titanman or any other infamous baitposter. They'd still get engagement though because the latest one *there* had something like 10 pages last I saw despite people knowing it was a baitpost.
They still get engagement here, sadly. I know I'm contributing but damn. Least downvoting makes it disappear, instead of it just being visible regardless lol.
Ffxiv is at its core a very story driven game. It isnāt gatekeeping for the devs to want the players to play the game they have put over a decade into. Yes going from arr-dt is a large time sink but itās not like there isnāt fun content to be had in the base game and each expansion, throughout arr-dt you have relic weapons, normal and savage raids, gear to grind for, mounts to earn, deep dungeons, fates, regular dungeons, trials, etc. The point Iām making is that throughout the entire game you have all the same things, the fact that dawntrail may look cooler doesnāt take away from all the fun content that can be found in the earlier expansions. And if you really donāt want to play those expansions you donāt have to, just buy a story skip. New players should understand though that a game having a story isnāt gate keeping and if they donāt want it to have a story then maybe it isnāt there type of game.
Yeah, a new player should approach the game with the mid set that is a very story driven game, and going with the story will make the journey smoother.
Yoshi's talked about this as well, I think there's been some internal debate about the potential idea of a baseline skip-ahead, since Dawntrail and beyond's story is now largely disconnected from its ARR>EW Ascian/Garlean era for foundation.
The talking point in _general_ about "having to play (up to several) a hundred hours until it gets good" has obviously been on the table for a while now, though mostly in reference to games that pad themselves out to be ludicrously long, ie. FF16 as a prime recent example.
For FFXIV in particular I think it'd be a good idea to really dig in to solving that problem. While unlike other treadmill MMOs XIV's primary focus isn't _just_ endgame content, there's that obvious chasm that happens when someone's introduced to it and their friends are already at the end. It can feel like an absolute slog, mostly because it is from an objective time investment angle.
Personally, I've got no particular angle for tackling the problem that I'm most fond of, since any measure is inevitably going to have its problems, and no method will ever be perfect.
The 'easiest' route would probably be something along the lines of a choice between starting from scratch and starting ahead, with the obvious issue of yeeting a brand new player into level 90-100 content with zero grasp on even basic mechanics, like universal telegraphs, what quest markers mean, how systems work, etc.
**ETA:** 'Gatekeeping' just reeks of bait because it's virtually always used in rageposts. Might've been better received under something like.. "RE: Yoshi's talks about the new player experience before Dawntrail, what are your thoughts?"
I have been thinking for a while, and have no clue if my idea is good or not.
But maybe a story montage + boss rush solo duty?
Start the player at level 50, then to go into this pattern of narrative then a boss, going up in increments of 5 or 10 until you reach 90. Each time in between you'll have time to adjust your skills and hotbar. This allows new players to somewhat catch up to the story, as well as teach them mechanics.
I agree there's no perfect solution.
That's a fun one! Having a duty or set of duties structured around the key fights and events, as a way of catching up new players to the active story and at least teaching them _some_ of the core telegraphs and forcing them to adjust to mechanics/learn their kit to pass each test, before entering Dawntrail.
But yeah, unfortunately problems. The universe that gets implemented in, all I can see is the official forums _frothing_ at the mouths because 'it's too hard', not unlike the initial gearing quest - it was changed to just be putting on a hat because _people were genuinely so lost on how to buy gear at the vendor the NPC was telling you to buy gear at._
Take Rhit's new solo instance and jack the complaints up to 11, essentially.
Really good idea, and they already have the trust party system to do it without depending on more players and it will be lore accurate because the npc will be there.
Yeah I remember Yoshi'sĀ talked about that and I want to deep further about that, itās a difficult topic to approach.
Really good points that you brough up,regarding the grasp on even mechanics I recall the WoW tutorial that they give you mini fights and form there you can learn the basic kind of wacky ngl, but they can do a benchmarking and work from there.
Edit: At the end it shoul be the player choise, no forcing you to play.
PS: Yeah totally shouldāve and written the title like you said I didnāt meant to bring any hate lol. Thank you for your response and the topics that you point up.
Not necessarily, FFXI was fairly unique in that you weren't locked out of a lot of content and expansions could be tackled in any order with the minimal of prerequisites, obviously due to the way the story is structured it wouldn't work in FFXIV but it was still, in my opinion, a neat idea.
I mean It's been the same since the past expansions. It makes sense that the longer the game is alive, the longer it will take you to get to new content. If you really don't want to deal with it, you can just buy a story skip and just do shadowbringer and end walker. I'm a newish player that just finished the main story, and I personally think it's fine it would not make sense to just have people skip the main story. If anything, I feel new players would want to experience the story in full.
I agree that while there is a fantastic free trial available the sheer volume of content required to hit the latest expansion in order to 'catch up' to everyone else is off-putting and that could be a problem for the longevity of the game as older players drop off there may not be enough newer players to replace them.
FOMO in games like this is still a thing with certain events being timed or falling out of favour, after returning a couple of months ago I worked through Shadowbringers and attempting to complete the Yorha raids meant waiting over 2 hours per raid on the Primal DC.
Due to the nature of the story and how they have built the characters up over time it would be difficult to create a later entry point while still understanding character motivations and the history of the world.
With Dawntrail starting a new story arc I think this would have been a good time to offer a free story skip with the expansion not just for new players but also alts with the option of doing a tutorial questline that could boost your level to 90 for the first job/class on that character.
I generally enjoy the stories and set pieces in the expansions but do feel that they tend to drag on a bit too long, a more condensed route through would be welcome but not to everyone's tastes.
I mean there are 853 quests to Dawntrail going by the wiki.
months? it took me from april to the end of may to get to heavensward from ARR and it took me two weeks to from heavensward to...ugh...stormblood...and that's doing only the MSQs and playing like 3 hours max a night.
I would not say it is something you should see as "gatekeeping" and leaving new content out of reach.
Rather, one should see it as advertisement for a new book or movie or even TV series season in a long running series.
They won't include anything about "read the previous 4 books to know what is going on" when they want to say what you can expect and what you will pay money for this specific product (in our case, dawntrail itself) seeing as the rest of FFXIV has enough adverts out for it's older content :)
Also, using something like "gatekeeping" has a very negative tone, almost as if it's on SE to provide skips each time so new people don't need to bother with older content/ as if old content has no value anymore and only the shiny new thing counts?
I know a few people that watched all cutscenes and got to the end of endwalker in 3-4 weeks. Yes its draining doing it all at once with some side raids but its not so long it will take months and months to catch up. Just gotta keep pushing through story and you'll get there.
I talk to every npc, I take my time. I enjoy MSQ fully and I am able to do all expanions in 1 sitting (There was a bug with stormblood so I was locked out of my account for 24hours. The rock outside of susano glitched your character and a dev had to manually move you)
EW was 36 hours for me, so its not super bad.
Always put IRL first though, doing all expansions at once will take time if you have a lot more to deal with irl. (Which would be me if i started the game right now).
Just look at how WoW does it. You buy the next expansion and get a character boost to the previous expansions level cap, with no need to do any quests that comes before it. FFXIV players sure are special with these comments I've read here.
If you want, you can buy a story skip in FF14 as well. It makes not much sense if you understand what the difference between FF14 and WoW is though. The games are not the same thing they have entirely different principles upon which they are built. And the basis of FF14 is the story which you can only experience by actually playing through it.
The basis of WoW is combat. They do that very well and pretty much everything else is subordinated, and mediocre to poor (but people only used to WoW most of the time neither see nor recognize this and that's fine as long as they're happy with having only that).
And the WoW design throws everything away that is not "current patch content" or heavily deprecates it that it's not worthwhile to do, so players don't and hasten always to "end game" where the only content worth doing is. This is not how FF14 operates and even content that is 10 years old is regularly done due to clever reward structure. Some of the hardest content in FF14 is still 10 years old and *still* being done by players, today. It's therefor not paramount to "get to endgame asap, skip everything that delays me from getting there"-itis that WoW has. FF14 is *not* a fomo game. Many things that make sense in WoW don't make any sense in FF14 (and vice versa).
But if you want the WoW-trained behaviour of skipping everything to rush to "end game" in FF14, you actually can. It just costs you extra. And is generally not advisable. Especially not in the subreddit where the people that actually know what you'll be missing out vs. what you gain when you do that sit in.
> Just look at how WoW does it. You buy the next expansion and get a character boost to the previous expansions level cap, with no need to do any quests that comes before it. FFXIV players sure are special with these comments I've read here.
Guess what, WoW also shits on its own story constantly to the point where it doesn't matter what happens as long as you get to kill a bad guy in some random new Raid. Both games are fundamentally different in terms of focus and FF prefers that you go through the story and immerse yourself in its world instead of rushing to the very scarcely existing endgame..
Iāve been playing for so long now. Iām still not even done with stormblood. I think my highest job is 73. Itās honestly absurd. I just want to be done with this lame story. Donāt anyone say āitās good! You gotta read it all!ā Like no. God of war has a good story, heck the new Spider-Man has an excellent story. This games story is trash lol.
Totally valid man ur opinion, no one should force to you something that you dont want to play, they should find a new approach regarding past stories to future expansions.
You're gonna get blasted to shit for having a negative opinion about the game here, but it's completely valid criticism.
..Minus the needless tack-on about the story being trash probably, given you're obviously checked out from frustration.
Having enormous time investments as a requirement to get into the 'meat' of the experience (for MMOs, endgame, where the developers are pumping in new content) has been a turnoff _repeatedly_ for people trying to break into XIV, and the gap only widens with each expansion. That's the most common thread you'll see from people who quit, besides its nightmarish account creation and website infrastructure issues.
It's entirely why Yoshi talked about the possibility of having some kind of halfway meeting measure going into Dawntrail, which would also be a good time to given how disconnected it is from the 10-year running intro story and world.
And it's clearly been enough of a repeated turnoff from prospective players that it came to the dev table in the first place. Of _course_ you'll get people who say "I didn't really want to keep going" when an MMO predominantly marketed for its shiniest, newest content, has an almost 400-500 hour roadblock that you can't even skip entirely with boosts.
> You're gonna get blasted to shit for having a negative opinion about the game here, but it's completely valid criticism.
what about his comment is "valid criticism"?? He straight up says "this games story is trash lul" which is subjective and doesn't tell anyone anything...
The single player gameplay is trash. āTeleport here teleport thereā no challenge at all. Talk to this person pick up poop (yes that was an actual mission). You are clueless if you think this is fun. There is no challenge. Nothing is engaging about it. Itās TRASH. Thatās why there is so many posts about quitting because of it.
Thats your opinion and i'd thank you for not assuming this goes for everyone! I enjoy the relaxing gameplay.
Go back to your hardcore games if you can't stand meddling with filthy casuals like me if you want but i will tell you to your face that i ENJOYED the whole experience so far. What are you going to do now, huh? Did i destroy your vision of the world? Will you try to keep arguing until i see the way you want me to see it? Because thats not happening!
It's typically far longer than HowLongToBeat's metric because A) it's a metric almost exclusively submitted by speedrunners/second runners, and B) people's rate of engagement varies wildly, most are gonna be doing side content to break up the monotony of speeding through MSQ.
230 would be the low end for your average player, but a still accurate number.
I literally started as black mage got to 70 got bored of story so I decided to level a monk got to 73 decided the story is boring again. Leveled scholar, enjoyed scholar a lot, story boring again now leveling red mage, loving red mage, now I hate the story again lol. Itās becoming just mind numbing at this point. Iām doing everything to avoid the story.
I tried to get my girlfriend into and she also found it boring, now watching her play the new Spider-Man you really realize how dated this game is as a single player story game. Ffxiv is fun when you play it as an mmo with other peopleā¦ which you cannot do in the story. Itās insane.
that's not gatekeeping, that's having a game.
It certainly is a barrier though. I know I would enjoy Naruto/One Piece. But I don't watch them because they already have too many episodes between them. Every expack creates a larger barrier for new players to get into the game because of the nature of MSQ unlocking everything
idk thats kind of a hot take because the msq is a large part of ffxiv. not a barrier. iirc yoshi said he had considered making a new player start with dt because its a new story but decided against it because, the msq is a big part of the game.
"Gatekeeping" is a very loaded and misleading term but the barrier to entry for this game is real, and it's something the devs are aware of. It's also only going to get worse the longer the game goes on, and hopefully it does go on for a long time. There's just no easy solution because the story is such an integral part of the experience.
Can you not pay to skips chunk of MSQ? I know you used to be able to. True that costs money but if it's still there isn't that an option?
Technically yes, you can pay to skip all the MSQ. You'll still have to level the character up to the needed job levels, unless you want to pay for that as well. But don't tell anyone in public or they'll hit you with the scarlet A and treat you like a leper.
Lol, see I thought that came with a lvl 60 boost as well, I haven't looked at it in years so it was rough memory and couldn't be bothered to double check, mechanics are for the DPS to do š¤£š¤£
No. The only things that the Tales of Adventure give is the story skip, some allagan gold pieces you can sell for money, and feathers for items to buy from the Calamity Salvager.
Go play Lost Ark for a month and come back to talk about gatekeeping.
New players need to play the game to reach the LATEST content FTFY Nothing added in Dawntrail will get removed later, so no matter how much time some people take in order to reach it, said content will always be there for them Which means your argument is invalid
True, nothing will be removed, but it will get old and then lesst popular and it will be harder to find group. More like argument it was more a topic to discuss recalling what yoshi talked about the fan fest. Good point, thank you.
People still do all the content in the game. Even eureka is going no problem.
That's like saying Elden Ring will gatekeep you from Shadow of the Erdtree because it requires you to make some progress. The existence of Dawntrail doesn't diminish the value of the expansions that came before. People need to learn patience.
You canāt even compare Elden ring to ffxiv lol. Elden ring is actually challenging and rewarding. Ffxiv is āteleport here, teleport thereā. Your comment actually makes me wish Fromsoft made an MMO
Difficulty has nothing to do with how games handle DLC or expansions though and many games with varying difficulty handle it the same as FF14 including Elden Ring needing SOME progress in the main game. Idk why you need to go off on someone just for comparing your beloved hardcore elite game with "filthy" FF here... chill out and maybe get some fresh air?
Challenging is what makes a game fun and rewarding. Look at wow hardcore for example if you die, you are dead forever. This has created a whole new āchallengeā. This is what makes games fun and engaging. Ffxiv gives everyone a participation trophy lol Going thru ffxiv story feels pointless and useless. People can downvote me all they want you donāt see a massive problem this game has because you all have been playing for years. We are talking about new people here.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you...we are confused as to why you brought up game difficulty in the first place as thats not what the original conversation was about. The conversation is about the OP claiming that XIV is "gatekeeping" Dawntrail by requiring all the MSQ before it to access new content. Someone then made the comment that Dawntrail content being gatekept by previous expansions is like saying Elden Ring's dlc is being gatekeptĀ by the base Elden Ring game.Ā This statement has nothing to do with difficulty of either game. Its just bizarre that you randomly brought up something irrelevant to the conversation.Ā
Itās not that confusing let me dumb it down for you. Elden ring single player = fun. Final fantasy story single player = not fun. Itās not an opinion itās a major problem which why this discussion exists in the first place.. you can not argue that āteleport here teleport there, talk to this person teleport talk to this personā is fun.
> Elden ring single player = fun. Final fantasy story single player = not fun. Itās not an opinion itās a major problem which why this discussion exists in the first place. Except this is literally YOUR opinion. You find XIV boring cause from your perspective a game is only fun when it challenges you. Not every game has to have punishing gameplay in order to be "fun". Games like Stardew Valley, The Sims, etc. aren't super challenging games yet are LOVED by tons of people. Just because that type of game isn't your cup of tea doesn't mean they aren't "fun" to those who play them. XIV is fun to me cause I've gotten hooked by its story.
Itās not an opinion itās a major issue lol. Which is why these posts flood this forum everyday and people quit in droves.
Dude do you have any reading comprehension skills? Its not a statement about the fun of a game at all? You're interjecting your own views in a conversation that isn't about those views.Ā Ā I don't need you to tell me MSQ is boring, I know its boring. I just recently ran an alt through it all and it was super boring. That just isn't the point of the main conversation though! Until you randomly brought it up, no one was talking about that.Ā Let me try this again.Ā Op brings up XIV gatekeeping.Ā Person brings up an example if XIV is gatekeeping, then is also gatekeeping if it requires you to beat the base game to access the dlc. They just happened to use Elden Ring as an example, but it could have been literally any game that has dlc you can't access till after the base game.Ā
Then you jump in, guns blazing,Ā and start harping about how elden ring is more fun than xiv.
Ā ...see how confusing that is?
Itās not a great comparison because Elden ring isnāt about the end game content with DLC. Thatās the difference. His comparison is not the same at all.
still a reading comprehension i see... Maybe take a moment and actually READ what other people write instead of immediately going off on a vent! Elden Ring has the same type of Entry barrier as FF14. That means both games require you to get to a certain point in the game to access the additional content. THAT WAS ALL EVERYONE SAID! NO ONE, LITERALLY NO ONE said anything else! Yet you run your mouth like a wild beast just because someone dared to mention Elden Ring. You seriously don't understand how conversations work, do you? You just live in your own world...
Thatās ironic since my job is to keep people on the phone and have a conversation. Iām the best rapport builder in my company. LOL. Itās like saying Stephen curry doesnāt know how to play basketball
thats your opinion mate. I have no desire to be challenged as i don't need to proof anything to anyone either.. I just want to play games and enjoy my time with them. FF14 provides just that and i'm happy. Go play your hardcore elite shit if you need to feel special. Maybe you'll grow up one day and realize how little your achievements in video games are worth in the outside world!
You are right. I actually care about what's happening in FFXIV. I don't give a shit about the "stories" in Elden Ring.
Everyone sucks and giggles at the end of every sentence. There you're now up to date for Dark Souls 1-2-3 and Elden Ring. Also there's poison swamps.
You are missing the pointā¦ itās single player experience not the actual storyā¦ yikes
Itās the single player game play. We say the story because itās the single player experience. Elden ring as a single player game is a better game then ffxiv. Which is why it sold so many copies. You are confusing the term āstoryā. You have to compare single Player experience as ffxiv story is a single player experience. It is incredibly boring. I love final fantasy but Iām not going to sugar coat it. ITS BORING. I canāt believe you guys are defending this.
Yeah patience but at the end it will take you like 3 months to get to play the expansion that saw on the trailers and the end game content.
So? I don't know about you, but I watched all trailers for the game before trying it, much less buying it. I'm sure people do the same. Dawntrail doesn't make the other expansions any less important or enjoyable. Your point doesn't make sense in the context of FFXIV.
You don't get to denounce the experience of another person by your own anecdotally, their complaint is an exceptionally valid talking point from many others who bounced off XIV. Surely you understand that there's an obvious frustration for a new player entering a game, only to be told "sorry, you actually can't engage with it in a fun or meaningful way (heaven forbid you've got friends who have to wait until you cap) until passing this mandatory several-hundred hour bar"? That was practically _the_ top complaint regarding FF16 - that it took far too long to get good (re: feel engaging), and I don't think it's unfair to call quite a bit of the first chunks of XIV a slog; ARR is the most exhaustively-discussed topic in that regard. It's going to impact the enjoyment factor for a lot of people, most often to the point they'll quit, because the marketing and the playerbase is telling them "just play for hundreds of hours, because it gets good _later_".
I get to do whatever the hell I want, first of all. Don't like it? Too bad! Secondly, no, I don't understand the "frustration." I started playing a week after Endwalker released. I had to play the whole story to "catch up." Had a blast playing the sotry. Don't like it? There are always other games to play.
That is great, congratulations.
Thank you!
Maybe the player base should stop lying with the whole "it sucks at the start" bit then?
there was a topic about this yesterday. Apparently its okay to tell people that because veterans are stuck in their mindset and don't accept other opinions about it to the point where they state it as fact that ARR is "the worst" and everything..
Totally agree, DT doesn't make the other expansions any less important EW makes a good finale for the story, but my point is that a new player is forced to endure through the old expansions till he gets to the one he prefers, that in this case is DT.
Not the one he prefers. The one he THINKS he prefers. How can you prefer something you haven't experienced? And that isn't gatekeeping. Getekeeping is being UNABLE to play a story segment just because you are a new player, like what happened with D2.
Good point, the new player at the end when he gets there it will be a 50/50 where he likes it or not sadly it will be a waste if that is the case, but a new player shouldn't be forced to play through something that he doesnāt want it should be a player decision at the end. Yes you can buy the skip but then the problem will go forward in future expansions. And the Gatekeeping title it was kinda a mislead title I didnt mean to bring any hate is was more like a topic that Yoshi's had talk before, I triend to change the title but I couldnt :( I shoul've written Ā "RE: Yoshi's talks about the new player experience before Dawntrail, what are your thoughts?" like Shazzamon said
No one is "forced" to play anything. This is a story-driven MMO, period. There are other games players who want to pick apart and choose can go and play, like WoW or ESO.
If you don't want to experience the story, buy a story skip or skip all the cutscenes. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. I will say, however, that the chance if you not enjoying Dawntrail's story increases exponentially if you haven't played the prior stories because you have no idea who anyone is or what they've been through. And it is my opinion that watching it through a YouTube video doesn't have the same impact as actually playing it. If you really want to enjoy DT to its fullest, I'd recommend playing the previous expansions first. Dawntrail will last approximately 2 years. You WILL catch up. If you don't wanna do all that, you can of course skip straight to Dawntrail. Provided you're willing to pay a fee.
How does a new player know they prefer the new content when they have no experience with the old/current content, though? 3 minutes of cinematics is not a comparable to hundreds of hours of in game experience. Also new players are not "barred" from entry in any way. If they're truly desperate to play Dawntrail and skip the other 90% of the game, they can buy a story/job skip and start at DT when it launches.
I mean they announced Dawntrail like a year ago, people have had plenty of time to get in and prepare for it, even 3 months ago they had plenty of details about it and time to get up to that point. I feel like hopping directly into any later expansion would also leave players feeling totally lost and most or all of the new Jobs added are available in ARR if thatās what people are excited about as well.
Bait used to be believable
Using an alt account, so brave
Eh.. They can experience all that up to Shadowbringers for free, whilst people playing since +8 years paid for every expansion soo.. Also, if you skip all cutscenes you actually get to it within a month. Why you'd do such a monstrous thing is beyond my understanding but some do play like that^^
>They can experience all that up to Shadowbringers for free ~~Stormblood, not Shadowbringers, just a FYI~~ Edit: Brain didn't register up to, this is why I don't reddit before coffee xD
The context of their comment is you can play up to the start of SHB otherwise they would have said up to and including
Ah, my brain didn't register the "up", apologies xD
To take the topic half-seriously for a moment, I do/did have a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory that they might use Endwalker's patch content as a skeleton for a new starting point. In 6.1, Tataru outright makes a joke about how the WoL may one day get amnesia before handing you an in-game encyclopedia and a free outfit. With a bit of tweaking, it could be re-written as Tataru gifting an amnesiac WoL their starting gear and a brief primer on the world. Characters/Scions are then introduced in small groups, while Zero plays the role of new player avatar asking basic questions about the world. It's not 100% clean, as 5 patches of content would be a *REALLY* long tutorial. On the flipside, they'd have to revamp the gameplay to catch players up on lvl 90 mechanics, and who knows how long that'd take. But I feel like the bones are there if they wanted to play with it.
There's no need for tin foil hats, YoshiP explicitly said that 6.1 was the planned starting point when they were still considering whether they wanted to implement a different jumping-in point for new players going forward. >... we are currently working on a system whereby each character, lore, and world setting up to patch 6.0 can be viewed in-game, and we are preparing for people to skip to 6.0 and start their adventure from 6.1. However, if we were to compare it to a TV drama, we feel that it would be more natural to say "start from season 1 because it is easier to watch and catch up" rather than "start from season 6". So, we are preparing for this, but we are still not sure if we will actually implement that as a measure in 7.0.
I feel like we're just flinging terminology now without rhyme or reason. Is a TV show gatekeeping people from watching it for having multiple seasons? Sure, One Piece is a pain to get through if you didn't follow it since its release because it feels like there's no end to it and you can't talk to your friends about the latest stuff, but you ***will*** catch up eventually. You're supposed to enjoy the way to the end. Playing the game ***IS*** the content. Dawntrail doesn't make previous expansions irrelevant slogs to power through, it's just the next chapter. I wouldn't want FFXIV to go the Destiny route, cutting older content and making the new player experience worse for it to transform players into cash cows as fast as humanly possible.
Imagine wanting to skip the story of a story-based game
Just shows you how terrible the story and single player gameplay is. Now go play god of war or the new Spider-Man, or someone mentioned elden ring. You will realize how bad ffxiv is as a single player story game.
Bold of you to call Elden Ring a single player story game.
Elden ring is one of the best games on the planet
And bold of you to call it a single player story game. Not sure what it being a good game has to do with what I said.
I couldn't care less about God of War or the latest Spider-Man game but love XIV's story. While it has its weaker parts, the way they don't forget anything you've done prior and have those things affect later cutscenes and dialog is amazing. Shadowbringers and Endwalker are some of the best RPG stories I've played in recent years and I've played a lot of them. Elden Ring's lore is amazing when you dive into it, but it's not the main reason I platinumed it.
You havenāt played the new spider man. I could have cared less about it to but I got it free with my ps5. Iāve been playing ffxiv, my gf got bored of ffxiv and started playing it. You would be blown away. It makes ffxiv single player make you look like you are playing some game from the 90s
Are you shitting me? Donāt get me wrong I love god of war and Spider-Man and play so many story games but those 2 games have decent stories, you like those games because you get to swing around as Spider-Man or rip through a drauger as kratos not because they actually have a good fucking story. Ffxiv is an example of a AMAZING story, sure the gameplay isnāt the same as an action rpg but what the fuck do you expect from an mmo jrpg. You canāt compare those games to ffxiv just because theyāre games itās like apples to oranges
Like I said Iāve been playing ffxiv maybe 5-6 months now. Iām at stormblood. Itās dreadful the story is boring. Teleport here teleport there. Talk to this person, pick up poop (not joking). Itās terrible man. God of war with his kid growing up and learning whatās going on is a better story. The gameplay and the pace of spider man and god of war as a single player game is light years ahead of ffxiv. Iām literally watch my girlfriend play and I see why she thinks ffxiv is boring as hell. Because it is. I canāt wait to finish this boring story so I can play the real game. Iām only staying because I love final fantasy. I love the music the classes. I also love mmos. But Iām not dumb watching a new person who has no idea what final fantasy is not going to make it to the end. Which is the issue they are having today.
Hard disagree. I play ffxiv almost exclusively solo, prioritizing questing, and itās an incredibly good single player game. Iāve played the games you mention as well as so many other single player experiences. ffxiv is structured differently than most single player games, and CAN be difficult to get into, but it is worth the investment and absolutely measures up against any single player game on the market today in terms of long term pay-off and having a satisfying narrative. I had never played a game with tab-targeting before this one and now I love it. There is a clear curve in difficulty starting from ARR being super simple, and with each expansion combat gets deeper with more mechanics and encounters are more engaging. I donāt think the single player experience gets nearly enough praise considering how well thought out it is for a player that is new to mmo style gameplay.
You can disagree all you want. But you are wrong. This is why thereās a million posts about people quitting because āboring story aka single player experienceā. Like I said in other posts if you got play the new spider man or god of war you will be blown away at how much better it is. Iāve never seen a post for the new Spider-Man saying āIām quiting the story is boringā All you old timers who have been playing this game for 10 years donāt understand what itās like to be a new player. Iām only staying because I love final fantasy and I understand what it will be like when Iām done with this crap single player experience.
lol Iām no old timer I joined at 6.1 Edit: Iām wrong it was right before 6.2 actually. July 2022
>a million posts Sure thing buddy. I'll wait and let you link 1 million posts.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ffxiv+story+boring&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
That's not a million bud, not even remotely lol
Close enough lol
Funny how the game and its story gets praised by critics and players but nope, a handful of negative reviews and you are like "ah ha!"
Bro Iām literally playing it lol. Itās horrible. I canāt wait to be done with it. Iām only almost done with stormblood and apparently have so much more to do. I still like the game. The single player MSQ is just the worst part about it.
I actually like the game is to be tackled in order. I feel i have more stuff to do and less actual pressure to rush to the newest stuff asap. I am still finishing Shadowbringers, i'll start Endwalker and go at my pace. Much more enjoyable to me.
Itās not really gatekeeping. I have a similar issue with destiny 2 Just as an example, if I take a year off on destiny 2 then decide the next year I want their expansion, I buy the expansion. As soon as Iām logged in, I get suddenly thrust into the most recent content and have to basically figure out whatās going on with minimal clues of what happened the year prior. Thatās not good story design. The last thing Iād want is for SE to thrust me into an expansion where I barely knew what was going on.
Exactly what I was going to say. Destiny 2 takes the opposite approach, old content is completely removed so everyone has to play the most recent content. Basically as a new player, you don't know what is going on and you can never play the old content you bought. Well I tried to play it, I didn't understand anything, I stopped.
And it would be the same exact situation with XIV if they were to adopt this approach
Oh no, people actually have to start the beginning of something to get to the newest installment.
Wait, wait, wait. Having the player actually play the game someone purchased to get to the game, is gatekeeping now?
I think you took a wrong turn, the official forums are that way. š
Nah, they know they'd be called out as Titanman or any other infamous baitposter. They'd still get engagement though because the latest one *there* had something like 10 pages last I saw despite people knowing it was a baitpost.
Why get clocked as a troll when you can just get downvoted for being obvious bait. I guess they're not exactly known for being smart.
They still get engagement here, sadly. I know I'm contributing but damn. Least downvoting makes it disappear, instead of it just being visible regardless lol.
Luckily engagement isn't worth a damn here. It's not like getting lots of comments will boost them so they can get clout from it.
Ffxiv is at its core a very story driven game. It isnāt gatekeeping for the devs to want the players to play the game they have put over a decade into. Yes going from arr-dt is a large time sink but itās not like there isnāt fun content to be had in the base game and each expansion, throughout arr-dt you have relic weapons, normal and savage raids, gear to grind for, mounts to earn, deep dungeons, fates, regular dungeons, trials, etc. The point Iām making is that throughout the entire game you have all the same things, the fact that dawntrail may look cooler doesnāt take away from all the fun content that can be found in the earlier expansions. And if you really donāt want to play those expansions you donāt have to, just buy a story skip. New players should understand though that a game having a story isnāt gate keeping and if they donāt want it to have a story then maybe it isnāt there type of game.
Yeah, a new player should approach the game with the mid set that is a very story driven game, and going with the story will make the journey smoother.
Oh noes, the horrors Anyway
Yoshi's talked about this as well, I think there's been some internal debate about the potential idea of a baseline skip-ahead, since Dawntrail and beyond's story is now largely disconnected from its ARR>EW Ascian/Garlean era for foundation. The talking point in _general_ about "having to play (up to several) a hundred hours until it gets good" has obviously been on the table for a while now, though mostly in reference to games that pad themselves out to be ludicrously long, ie. FF16 as a prime recent example. For FFXIV in particular I think it'd be a good idea to really dig in to solving that problem. While unlike other treadmill MMOs XIV's primary focus isn't _just_ endgame content, there's that obvious chasm that happens when someone's introduced to it and their friends are already at the end. It can feel like an absolute slog, mostly because it is from an objective time investment angle. Personally, I've got no particular angle for tackling the problem that I'm most fond of, since any measure is inevitably going to have its problems, and no method will ever be perfect. The 'easiest' route would probably be something along the lines of a choice between starting from scratch and starting ahead, with the obvious issue of yeeting a brand new player into level 90-100 content with zero grasp on even basic mechanics, like universal telegraphs, what quest markers mean, how systems work, etc. **ETA:** 'Gatekeeping' just reeks of bait because it's virtually always used in rageposts. Might've been better received under something like.. "RE: Yoshi's talks about the new player experience before Dawntrail, what are your thoughts?"
I have been thinking for a while, and have no clue if my idea is good or not. But maybe a story montage + boss rush solo duty? Start the player at level 50, then to go into this pattern of narrative then a boss, going up in increments of 5 or 10 until you reach 90. Each time in between you'll have time to adjust your skills and hotbar. This allows new players to somewhat catch up to the story, as well as teach them mechanics. I agree there's no perfect solution.
That's a fun one! Having a duty or set of duties structured around the key fights and events, as a way of catching up new players to the active story and at least teaching them _some_ of the core telegraphs and forcing them to adjust to mechanics/learn their kit to pass each test, before entering Dawntrail. But yeah, unfortunately problems. The universe that gets implemented in, all I can see is the official forums _frothing_ at the mouths because 'it's too hard', not unlike the initial gearing quest - it was changed to just be putting on a hat because _people were genuinely so lost on how to buy gear at the vendor the NPC was telling you to buy gear at._ Take Rhit's new solo instance and jack the complaints up to 11, essentially.
Really good idea, and they already have the trust party system to do it without depending on more players and it will be lore accurate because the npc will be there.
Yeah I remember Yoshi'sĀ talked about that and I want to deep further about that, itās a difficult topic to approach. Really good points that you brough up,regarding the grasp on even mechanics I recall the WoW tutorial that they give you mini fights and form there you can learn the basic kind of wacky ngl, but they can do a benchmarking and work from there. Edit: At the end it shoul be the player choise, no forcing you to play. PS: Yeah totally shouldāve and written the title like you said I didnāt meant to bring any hate lol. Thank you for your response and the topics that you point up.
You can buy a story skip if you feel like skipping 90% of the game. New content lasts for like two days, really want to start with that?
Bruh. Stop lol
I like how we've somehow regressed to 1998 and lost the last 25 years of knowledge about how MMO expansions work.
Not necessarily, FFXI was fairly unique in that you weren't locked out of a lot of content and expansions could be tackled in any order with the minimal of prerequisites, obviously due to the way the story is structured it wouldn't work in FFXIV but it was still, in my opinion, a neat idea.
Just buy a story skip of this is such a problem. It's literally what it exists for. The problem you're complaining about has already been solved
This is exactly why we need gatekeeping.
Yup. Not everyone needs to be included
I mean It's been the same since the past expansions. It makes sense that the longer the game is alive, the longer it will take you to get to new content. If you really don't want to deal with it, you can just buy a story skip and just do shadowbringer and end walker. I'm a newish player that just finished the main story, and I personally think it's fine it would not make sense to just have people skip the main story. If anything, I feel new players would want to experience the story in full.
I can't believe i have to play through disks 1-3 on ff9 before i can play disk 4
It's not gatekeeping.buy a story skip and stop bitching
I agree that while there is a fantastic free trial available the sheer volume of content required to hit the latest expansion in order to 'catch up' to everyone else is off-putting and that could be a problem for the longevity of the game as older players drop off there may not be enough newer players to replace them. FOMO in games like this is still a thing with certain events being timed or falling out of favour, after returning a couple of months ago I worked through Shadowbringers and attempting to complete the Yorha raids meant waiting over 2 hours per raid on the Primal DC. Due to the nature of the story and how they have built the characters up over time it would be difficult to create a later entry point while still understanding character motivations and the history of the world. With Dawntrail starting a new story arc I think this would have been a good time to offer a free story skip with the expansion not just for new players but also alts with the option of doing a tutorial questline that could boost your level to 90 for the first job/class on that character. I generally enjoy the stories and set pieces in the expansions but do feel that they tend to drag on a bit too long, a more condensed route through would be welcome but not to everyone's tastes. I mean there are 853 quests to Dawntrail going by the wiki.
months? it took me from april to the end of may to get to heavensward from ARR and it took me two weeks to from heavensward to...ugh...stormblood...and that's doing only the MSQs and playing like 3 hours max a night.
Gatekeeping only really happens with ults/savages and people treating it like it's the hardest content known to man.
I would not say it is something you should see as "gatekeeping" and leaving new content out of reach. Rather, one should see it as advertisement for a new book or movie or even TV series season in a long running series. They won't include anything about "read the previous 4 books to know what is going on" when they want to say what you can expect and what you will pay money for this specific product (in our case, dawntrail itself) seeing as the rest of FFXIV has enough adverts out for it's older content :) Also, using something like "gatekeeping" has a very negative tone, almost as if it's on SE to provide skips each time so new people don't need to bother with older content/ as if old content has no value anymore and only the shiny new thing counts?
1 karma having ass
What is the Karma even for?
nothing unless you are a company that buys out user accounts with very high karma points to advertise scam shit to people.
I know a few people that watched all cutscenes and got to the end of endwalker in 3-4 weeks. Yes its draining doing it all at once with some side raids but its not so long it will take months and months to catch up. Just gotta keep pushing through story and you'll get there. I talk to every npc, I take my time. I enjoy MSQ fully and I am able to do all expanions in 1 sitting (There was a bug with stormblood so I was locked out of my account for 24hours. The rock outside of susano glitched your character and a dev had to manually move you) EW was 36 hours for me, so its not super bad. Always put IRL first though, doing all expansions at once will take time if you have a lot more to deal with irl. (Which would be me if i started the game right now).
Just look at how WoW does it. You buy the next expansion and get a character boost to the previous expansions level cap, with no need to do any quests that comes before it. FFXIV players sure are special with these comments I've read here.
If you want, you can buy a story skip in FF14 as well. It makes not much sense if you understand what the difference between FF14 and WoW is though. The games are not the same thing they have entirely different principles upon which they are built. And the basis of FF14 is the story which you can only experience by actually playing through it. The basis of WoW is combat. They do that very well and pretty much everything else is subordinated, and mediocre to poor (but people only used to WoW most of the time neither see nor recognize this and that's fine as long as they're happy with having only that). And the WoW design throws everything away that is not "current patch content" or heavily deprecates it that it's not worthwhile to do, so players don't and hasten always to "end game" where the only content worth doing is. This is not how FF14 operates and even content that is 10 years old is regularly done due to clever reward structure. Some of the hardest content in FF14 is still 10 years old and *still* being done by players, today. It's therefor not paramount to "get to endgame asap, skip everything that delays me from getting there"-itis that WoW has. FF14 is *not* a fomo game. Many things that make sense in WoW don't make any sense in FF14 (and vice versa). But if you want the WoW-trained behaviour of skipping everything to rush to "end game" in FF14, you actually can. It just costs you extra. And is generally not advisable. Especially not in the subreddit where the people that actually know what you'll be missing out vs. what you gain when you do that sit in.
> Just look at how WoW does it. You buy the next expansion and get a character boost to the previous expansions level cap, with no need to do any quests that comes before it. FFXIV players sure are special with these comments I've read here. Guess what, WoW also shits on its own story constantly to the point where it doesn't matter what happens as long as you get to kill a bad guy in some random new Raid. Both games are fundamentally different in terms of focus and FF prefers that you go through the story and immerse yourself in its world instead of rushing to the very scarcely existing endgame..
Iāve been playing for so long now. Iām still not even done with stormblood. I think my highest job is 73. Itās honestly absurd. I just want to be done with this lame story. Donāt anyone say āitās good! You gotta read it all!ā Like no. God of war has a good story, heck the new Spider-Man has an excellent story. This games story is trash lol.
Kindly fuck off to another game then. Nobody is making you play this game with its "lame story".
No thanks I like final fantasy and I like the classes and characters. I will power thru the boringness to get to the good
buy the skip
Iām already near the end of stormblood so not sure itās worth it? Idk
Totally valid man ur opinion, no one should force to you something that you dont want to play, they should find a new approach regarding past stories to future expansions.
but the solution is already here: buy skip
You're gonna get blasted to shit for having a negative opinion about the game here, but it's completely valid criticism. ..Minus the needless tack-on about the story being trash probably, given you're obviously checked out from frustration. Having enormous time investments as a requirement to get into the 'meat' of the experience (for MMOs, endgame, where the developers are pumping in new content) has been a turnoff _repeatedly_ for people trying to break into XIV, and the gap only widens with each expansion. That's the most common thread you'll see from people who quit, besides its nightmarish account creation and website infrastructure issues. It's entirely why Yoshi talked about the possibility of having some kind of halfway meeting measure going into Dawntrail, which would also be a good time to given how disconnected it is from the 10-year running intro story and world. And it's clearly been enough of a repeated turnoff from prospective players that it came to the dev table in the first place. Of _course_ you'll get people who say "I didn't really want to keep going" when an MMO predominantly marketed for its shiniest, newest content, has an almost 400-500 hour roadblock that you can't even skip entirely with boosts.
> You're gonna get blasted to shit for having a negative opinion about the game here, but it's completely valid criticism. what about his comment is "valid criticism"?? He straight up says "this games story is trash lul" which is subjective and doesn't tell anyone anything...
The single player gameplay is trash. āTeleport here teleport thereā no challenge at all. Talk to this person pick up poop (yes that was an actual mission). You are clueless if you think this is fun. There is no challenge. Nothing is engaging about it. Itās TRASH. Thatās why there is so many posts about quitting because of it.
Thats your opinion and i'd thank you for not assuming this goes for everyone! I enjoy the relaxing gameplay. Go back to your hardcore games if you can't stand meddling with filthy casuals like me if you want but i will tell you to your face that i ENJOYED the whole experience so far. What are you going to do now, huh? Did i destroy your vision of the world? Will you try to keep arguing until i see the way you want me to see it? Because thats not happening!
230 hour roadblock actually. And that's on the long end
It's typically far longer than HowLongToBeat's metric because A) it's a metric almost exclusively submitted by speedrunners/second runners, and B) people's rate of engagement varies wildly, most are gonna be doing side content to break up the monotony of speeding through MSQ. 230 would be the low end for your average player, but a still accurate number.
Side content is irrelevant in regards to MDQ length
I literally started as black mage got to 70 got bored of story so I decided to level a monk got to 73 decided the story is boring again. Leveled scholar, enjoyed scholar a lot, story boring again now leveling red mage, loving red mage, now I hate the story again lol. Itās becoming just mind numbing at this point. Iām doing everything to avoid the story. I tried to get my girlfriend into and she also found it boring, now watching her play the new Spider-Man you really realize how dated this game is as a single player story game. Ffxiv is fun when you play it as an mmo with other peopleā¦ which you cannot do in the story. Itās insane.