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(05-26-2015, 11:41 AM)Melkire Wrote: By that admittedly old-school logic, I don't see any issues with expansion content requiring progressiom through the pre-existing narrative, barring the sole exception of the new jobs. If those are also gated for good reasons - narrative, or technical limitations - then I can understand and accept the situation as-is.
A lot of our discussion is hinging on a question that, as far as I know, remains unanswered:
Will brand new characters be able to select the new jobs and get to ANY of the new content?
As has already been discussed, if someone is lured to the game for the first time by the offers of flying on dragons and firing shotguns at everything, and they find they can't DO these things without grinding through everything else, then we'll have an unsatisfied new customer. If SE doesn't really care about that, and is only aiming the expansion at established players, then it's their decision, but from a financial standpoint, isn't the smartest one they could pick.. IF their goal is to make money off the expansion.
Returning players will have a bit of grind to do, too. For someone who got through most of the story, got to, say, ilvl 100 or so, and is lured back by Shiny New Stuff, they may or may not be put off by all the catch up they're gonna do, and we've had plenty of arguing about Steps of Faith already.
I agree with Aya that we can't really invoke WoW as a comparison; otherwise, we gotta invoke every other game out there. OPINION WARNING: WoW's position in gaming was brought on by good timing, heavy earlier investment and a powerful lack of effective competition at the time of its meteoric rise, and it's surviving on accessibility and the numbers game. But at the risk of violating my own warning, I could compare things to Age of Conan, also, which started offering existing players the choice of starting a new character at level 50(out of 80, at the time), giving idle characters free experience (therefore removing some alt grind), and now I think that game will even let a new character be made at level 80. Now, AoC isn't exactly a powerhouse in the game market, so the comparison may not be all that apt.
I'd also like to see FFXIV lighten up on a game policy that contributes to the difficulty of making alts: the heavy restrictions that prevent a player from sending gear to alts. Compared to other MMO's, ours seems to HATE HATE HATE HATE the idea that the thousand hours you might spend getting gear could result in sending a nice piece or two of what you collected to an alt; hell, we can't even send GIL to our own alts without the intercession of another player. Sellable gear for the 50+ set is ridiculously expensive to make, and thus rather expensive to buy, therefore forcing alts into the dungeon grind. It seems an odd decision in a game that so endorses crafting as to let any character potentially make anything... but then, this could descend into a downward spiral about the game's economy that probably won't go anywhere until we know how the expansion is going to affect the market. Are we going to get flooded with great new gear for lvls 50-60, gear that is easy to get? Or is it gonna be stingy? The answer will have major repercussions not just on leveling, but on making gil, and the craft system.
Now, one could argue that discussing alts could be irrelevant, since FFXIV is a game that seems inherently unkind to alts (why we have eight character slots is a weird mystery to me, considering this design decision...), but the Expansion is introducing a new RACE for the first time since 2.0, and three classes that we're told don't behave like any previous ones and start at level 30, and which we're told may be gatelocked so as to be inaccessible to new players. The result is that what we're going to see will be a very solid confirmation from SE about whether they really CARE about the new player money, or if this expansion is truly aimed 100% at persistent, patient existing players who have appeased the Designer Gods by tromping through the (not always well-written, I'm sorry but it is true) MSQ.
What scares me about it is how really hush-hush SE has been about a LOT of these questions. We're less than a month from release, and we don't have (as of today, May 26) answers for a lot of very, very relevant questions that directly impact... dun dun DUUNNNNNN... people's willingness to preorder this thing. After seeing so many friends get burned by other games' offers of "Pay Us Now, Find Out About Game Later" (I'm looking at you, Everquest Next, and every "Founder's Package' ever offered for games that tanked), my Suspicion Sense is tingling.
I'm reading back up at all this... and seeing how I've been wandering about from topic to topic. Eh, gonna leave it as is, because it seems weird that we don'y yet have answers to some very, very critical questions in the home stretch of this expansion, and at the same time that we're being told to preorder and Please Look Forward To It.
"But in the laugh there was another voice. A clearer laugh, an ironic laugh. A laugh which laughs because it chooses not to weep."
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