If you are a friend that really wants your friend to play an MMO that you love, create a new character and play with them!

I feel like a lot of people forget that old players like helping the new players and the people who are friends happily relive their adventures with the new players. At a gameplay point, people already buy class skips without learning their jobs, i do NOT want someone who has story skipped to the level 90 stuff and never seen any real mechanics they wouldve encountered naturally.

skips are a bad idea. I get why they exist and who they are for, but the problem isn't that FF14 is long, it's that ARR frontloads the slowest story sections of the game and the WORST combat feel for 30-40 levels. The solution to this is simple but complex: 1) Concatenate the makework "go to X and talk to Y, then pray return to the waking sands" quests by reducing the amount of travel and teleporting the player to the Waking Sands at the end and giving them a larger combined reward, remove and shorten the "wait" bars on quest actions. Give MORE gameplay moments. 2) Reduce the Hall of the Novice signifigantly into 1 or 2 lessons on basic controls for healer/tank/dps and rework the ENTIRE guildhest system to be guildhests available at various levels just before a dungeon unlock and a "final exam" test at like 35-40ish. These guildhests should teach mechanics that are actually used, like stack markers, avoiding AOEs, etc. Require players to play these at least once per account to unlock the next story dungeon. Increase the rewards from them. 3) Rework ALL classes to have at least 1 AOE attack by level 26-30. 4) Rework all tanks to give them a weaker but still somewhat complex rotation by level 25, same for healers (maybe more than their one damage button and DOT would be nice) 5) Give DPS a weaker version of 70% of their skills by level 40 so they have a good feel of their entire rotation by the time they hit 50 and they're not just pressing 1-2-3 for 30 levels. tl;dr, make ARR shorter and less makework, make low level combat less boring.

If you buy a skip then why bother playing the game at all? Its like saying i want to start final fantasy 10, but only after zanarkand. Skipping just robs yourself of a good story, they could shorten post msq quests in each expansion and condense the story as an option. Overall the story is just too important in jrpgs, skipping destroys all the world building.

Skips are a bad idea honestly there missing out on so much. Think how the original players who been playing for the longest. We played each part of FFXIV and worked our way through it. I think all players should be playing the game not skipping it. Some players that skip complain later on saying there's not enough content well if you don't skip it then you have tons of content to work with honestly. 1.0 player as myself love helping new players with content no matter how old the content is its awesome seeing new players reactions to things besides my own on the first play through you know. Skips are just bad for games. Even job books they are something that should not exist to players just starting out but once you get one job to lvl 90 or 100 then maybe it might be fine but still it defeats the purpose of learning the job and new players have no idea how to use said job yet. I know they want to play with friends but there friends can help them along the way on there journery. We have a lot of down time between patches to help our friends this is one reason way SE doesn't make you be on everyday like some mmo's you know. Its about the adventure in this game after all.

I started playing 14 in February this year with the Xbox beta and am almost wrapped up with patch 5.3, so I'm most of the way through MSQ at this point. I feel relatively confident at this point that there isn't really an easy way to implement a skip to new content. From a story perspective, skipping to the new arc Dawntrail is starting would be problematic since you wouldn't know any of the characters everyone else has grown to love, and you wouldn't know any of the rules that govern FFXIV from a lore perspective which will probably continue to be important in Dawntrail. From a gameplay perspective, skipping to level 90+ just to play with friends misses all of the teaching the game does through out ARR and Heavensward, you don't have a natural build for your character so you have SO many random abilities that do who knows what, and you completely miss some of the best moments of the game like Final Steps of Faith, pretty much every Shadowbringers MSQ trial (especially Seat of Sacrifice, ran that for the first time last night and holy crap that was incredible), and from what I've heard all of the 6.0 trials as well. Admittedly I went in to 14 knowing I wanted to experience the story first and foremost, and though ARR was a slog I didn't even overly dislike it at first and have thoroughly enjoyed my time since Heavensward. If someone went in with the priority of playing late game content, and in that case as much as it sucks the best move might be just doing MSQ and skipping a lot of the story, but even then I'd only recommend that if you gave the story a real chance and hated it that much. It's a tough problem to solve for anyone, but realistically I feel like a lot of people who are willing to play 14 at all have experience with FF as a whole, MMOs as a whole, or just long-ass JRPGs in general and would be willing to give it a chance beyond ARR, especially knowing ARR is the low point.

The whole roulette system would suffer if skips were free. Optional content thrives on people playing msq .

Don't skip story. Skip certain classes if you wanna, especially because the grinding just makes you replay dungeons over and over, but don't skip story.

People who want this story skip miss the entire point of the game lol it’s a FF game before it’s ever an MMO…so yes all parts of the story, even slower parts are essential

I just recently came back after a long break. I have joined a fairly new FC that is mostly made up of people coming back and brand new players and it has been amazing. Everyone is excited for their own reasons, those of us with higher level characters are happily making gear and glams for the new players so they can do things in style :) We have seen one person use a skip and they did it before they had a bunch of us say not to

I am a new-ish player to FF14. I started playing around a year ago. I made it in time to be prepared for the release of Dawntrial. It doesn't have a content problem, it has an ARR and post-ARR problem. The story is amazing. The content is amazing. They need to fix ARR and Post-ARR to make it more streamlined. Once you are past that hurdle, it is amazing. Older players were more than willing to help me out. Always helping figure out things I needed or when I was lost. Just fix ARR and at the moment, you should be good. It was so slow and so many filler still that did not need to be there.

I hardly ever skip; however, If you do skip story bits, id at least wait to see if the scene is substantialy important 1st.

I'm a WoW player and I recently started playing FFXIV while I wait for the new WoW expansion. Blizzard faced a similar problem, and their solution was to give players the option to level a character in the expansion of their choosing. That way, they can experience the full content of that expansion without being overwhelmed by the others.

If I start the game as a new player, does the game do a good job in guiding you through the entire main story through all the expansions?

Honestly if they skip you to dawntrail, they just need to put you at 6.55 and add a brief recap cutscene so you know who the scions are.

I started playing near the end about 2 years ago. by the time I got to end of current content I was majorly burned out.

I agree that ARR's weak opener is the main problem. Basically to the point that ideally they would cut 60-70% of ARR (keeping only the Scion introductions and the main primal plot points) and get new players in Heavensward as fast as possible. But as someone else said, it's not just the story, the combat and job design is incredibly weak. In the current version, jobs actually start around level 60--everything before that is filler and feels incredibly generic. Even the few exceptions like Red Mage and Ninja are missing core parts of their kit at lvl 50 (RDM doesn't have aoe melee attacks at all, and NIN's buff maintenance is super bad). The biggest offenders IMO are the two tanks you can play when starting out, Paladin/Gladiator and Warrior/Marauder. In ARR they're both just generic fighters, there isn't anything that really sets them apart besides one using a sword and the other an axe. And that is _criminal._ Like, why make a new player slog through 55 levels of Marauder before they get Warrior's main defining ability?? So even if they do nothing about ARR's story or quest structure, I really, _really_ hope they rework early job levels to actually feel good. They could do things like make important abilities available early but have longer cooldowns, or reduced potency, so at later levels they upgrade into the same version as now. Or have job gauges that fill more slowly at lower levels. It would be a lot of work but totally possible, and I think very worth it. And it would benefit veteran players who run roulettes and get level synced in Aurum Vale again.....

I think the only thing to do is to keep trimming and refining the ARR experience, because I agree with Yoshi-P: the story IS FFXIV. As a former 14-year WoW player, I saw firsthand how a game can go from simple, but colorful and meaningful lore, to, "I have no idea what the fuck is even going on here..." I don't ever want to see that happen to FFXIV. I don't want to see a new FFXIV player that has no idea what "The Burn: Savage" means, or "Welcome to Shadowbringers🙂," or even seeing Alphinaud go from a spoiled little bitch to the WoL's best friend and a really awesome character. Hell, that nutkin in the Dawntrail trailer only means something if you remember him covering Thancred's bits in post-Heavensward. There is no instant gratification for FFXIV unless you don't care about story, and it seems Yoshi-P understands this. You won't get the payoff if you don't go through the journey.

they could maybe do what arknights did. they gave the option to skip to the new arc and made an anime that covers the older arcs

Technically there's a free story skip. When a cutscene starts, press ESC and click YES. Of course not all cutscenes can be skipped.... I just don't recommend it. It's a good story.

I think the biggest problem with getting people interested is to cut down the post arr guff. Genuinely the weakest part of 14s problem. Is post arr ridiclous number of msq guff. A lot of its expansions are amazing but the post arr stuff is horrendously bad. Arr at the start is kinda lacking a wow moment early on in thanlan, girdania and la nosca.

My knee jerk reaction was "no way", but after giving it more thought, I think your suggestion of letting people have broader access to the story-locked content is decent. There is a lot of story and spoilers threaded through that content, but the people most likely to take advantage of the accessibility probably don't care. I am of the opinion that it isn't a big problem for the game, or at least, not an inappropriate one: People who love story are not going to mind so much, and people who don't like story are, honestly, probably playin' the wrong game. As for "but I want to play with my friends!", outside of level cap raiding, my response is "WTF is wrong with your friends that you can't play with them?". Almost everything in this game can be done across a huge level range. If you're not able to play with your friends, it is mostly them not being willing to engage in lower level content with you. To me, the way job skills are acquired is at least as big a barrier as the pile of story. Most of the jobs do not even start to be engaging until about level 60. To me, that is plain ol' dumb, and (mostly) an easier problem to fix than the story one. Lower level job quests being the fly in that ointment.

most of my friends get past ARR, stormblood is where they fall off usually in Ruby Sea. my fear if they do a skip now that hydaelyn zodiark story out we would never get fleshing out of Azem and remaining ascians.

One of the main reasons I play FFXIV is because all my other favorite MMORPGs all went pay-to-play and completely destroyed the experience by locking the most basic things behind a bunch of paywalls. Paying a subscription and having access to the entire game is a must-have requirement for me. It just so happens to be that the game is REALLY GOOD.

The games literally not that long lmao if u lock in and do the msq and just do that it actually can take about 2 months to fully catch up

Evwn tho dt is new it still builds off of the previous story i mean emet selch was the one who mentioned the city of gold

I disagree 100% on any type of skip, or a skip to raid as it was said. From my experience, the players that actualy raid consistently and that are very good at it, are the ones that played the msq and loved this game. The players that just come for the raid, i dont realy see them stay that long, they just do the raid and leave or they loose interest and leave. So a skip to raid is just a skip to leave in a short time in my experience.

No no no and most importantly. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The answer is no. Do not skip. Its a story focused game. Why the hell would you skip what is the primary purpose of the game? I agree with Yoshi P when he remained adamant about making everyone play through the story. Buying a story skip is just like paying someone to grind ranks in a game like Street Fighter or Tekken. Why bother involving yourself with the game at all when you aren't participating in its main feature?

Im BRAND SPANKING NEW to this game and the only thing thats saving me is pvp. Its so weird to me that people are against a skip. Lets say they do make a skip, and EVERYONE skips the story. Doesn't that say more about your story? The people who wont skip were never gonna skip. The people who cant stand it usually just quit the game outright. If a game has to force you to listen to a story, you need to do something about it.

I must say, i find the story skip concept to be acceptable... In other MMOs. Like World of Warcraft (the story you learn by buying books and watching Pyromancer) or SWTOR. 14 isn't a game with a story though, it's a story you get to play in.

The idea that there's a lot of content to work through isn't what's held back the people I know. It's been 1) monthly payments when most adults can only play once or twice a week, 2) The reputation of being the horny catgirl anime game, 3) tab targeting combat feels old, people wanted their combat to be more involved that 1-2-3 button pressing I think the bigger issue being MMOs aren't popular (at least outside japan, korea, china). Thegame has been growing in players but there's only so many people willing to make the commitment an MMO requires, no MMO will reach the levels of the yearly sports / CoD game which are designed to be super casual friendly.

I honestly think they sort of missed a trick with Dawntrail: Making it a new jumping-on point. (Spoilers for everything up to Endwalker, by the way!) Think about it, Endwalker's this big end of an era type thing. We've fairly neatly tied up all the plot threads we've had going on since ARR, and we've even disbanded the Scions, and we're even headed for the New World, a place that not even the most lore-intensive players know all that much about. This seems like a perfect blank-slate starting point for a new story, a chance to create an ARR for a new saga. In theory, the way things were set up at the end of Endwalker, it looks like there's no baggage that the story's relying on: The Ascians are gone, the Garleans aren't a big deal, you're not tied to the Scions anymore and you're on a whole new unexplored continent that needs to be introduced to both your character and every single player. Both people who have played ARR-EW and completely new players are on essentially equal footing. So... just start all over in Tural the way we started over in Eorzea in 2.0. Treat the story as a new story, not as a direct continuation of Endwalker, and re-explain any concepts that carry over in a major way, even if it causes a bit of friction for older players - reflections particularly seem like they're going to be a massive deal. Old players WILL want the Scions around, but your writers are talented enough to make them fall in love with a whole new cast of characters, and you CAN still have the Scions show up every now and again, just not as the super leading roles. Maybe there's an aetherological mystery around, and Y'shtola gets to hang out with you for a couple levels, or you run into Estinien getting fleeced at a market and he helps you with a dungeon or two. Hell, you can even have the twins still come along on all your adventures as mainstays if you want - just don't make understanding all these characters a pre-requisite to being in the story, and firmly center a new cast. Think of something like The Legend of Korra, which gives the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender a lot of screentime, but it's still decidedly ABOUT the new cast - you can even go harder on the Scions' presence than Korra does, since there's no massive timeskip. Having the Scions gone *feels* like a massive change in the moment, but think about it - Heavensward only really has Alphinaud and Tataru around for the vast majority of it, and Stormblood you're only really around Lysse and Alisae for the whole Doma section, both of whom are practically new characters (Lysse being nothing at all like the version of herself who pretended to be Yda, and Alisae having only REALLY been around for Coils, which a lot of people won't have done). The Scions being such a big deal has only been a thing for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Then, when you start a new character, you can either start at Dawntrail (and this "advanced" starting point STAYS at Dawntrail even in future expansions, since it's the start of the new saga), with your starting job at 90, or you can start at A Realm Reborn and go through all of the game. Vitally, even if you start at Dawntrail, you can at any moment choose to go do the old MSQ. When you eventually end the Dawntrail Saga in like 2034 you do the same thing again: Start at 12.0 - with its own new, fairly independent story - start at Dawntrail, or start at ARR. I honestly really thought that's where they were going after Endwalker, what with all the hubbub about it being the end point of the Ascian Saga, and the big deal right at the end about disbanding the Scions, with all of them going off to do their own non-adventurey things and the WoL going on all fresh new adventures - you know "Newfound Adventure" and whatnot. It really *feels* like that's where they're heading, and then, nope, we're still just going off with the Scions to the Void and Tural and it's very much still a continuation of Endwalker rather than a fully fresh start.

XIV already has New Game +. In the future, near or far, they could start you in the current expansion at level and highlight the New Game + feature for those that want a deeper dip into the story. That way, the story is always there without being forced on you.

I have never done any more than a smidge of the main story and skipped everything. I even stopped playing EW's story with In From The Cold (it really pissed me off when the thing happened). But I've just made a new character (i did boost to 80 ninja) with intent of playing the whole game as a viper.

They have to do something, 10 years of content is a huge ask. Maybe have a summarized story and start them at the newest expac but with the caveat of them completing an expanded hall of novice tutorial?

Obligatory WoW is on the uptick again I know it's cringe, but I feel the need to defend my 2nd favorite game. WoW still has more players than FF14 xD Unnecessary I know, FF14 is my favorite game but I still feel the need to defend WoW

Hot take, and this is coming from someone who loves the msq, but i think 6.1-6.5 does a really good job at briefly establishing the main players for the next arc, you get a lot of character interactions in a fairly self contained story, If there is a place for people to start new (and it would be a shame to skip over such a great story dont get me wrong) 6.1 is it.

Im in the end of stormblood rn, overall the story is good, but it feels like a walking simulator and a visual novel, too many hours of just go there, speak to that guy, come back... Not everybody has that much free time to read, and I think reading is also the problem, not much voice dialogs.. I mean I read a lot at work, I dont wanna read more during my little freetime.. well but thats just my opnion.

IMO if FF14 2 ever comes out there will be a enormous player increase not including the people already playing FF14.

if you want to only raid and do hard group content yeah, skip it no problem. Gameplay from 1-60 is complete ass, any competent MMO player will get a hang of the lvl90-100 class and mechanics language sooner rather than later. it's really not that hard. watch few vids on mechanics, watch few vids on your class, hit training dummy for a few hours with the parser and off you go to the races. I say skip, away! Just stay out of my PFs tho, lmao

FFXIV doesn't have to be for everybody. If people don't want to play allllll that story, then they can go play something else. Story skipping is not doing anyone any favors. Imagine popping into ffxiv and your very first dungeon is the TOWER OF ZOT. No idea how to play the game, and being a meneace in party finder: this is what a story skip does. it's bad for everyone involved. Maybe skips should only become availiable to people once they have a charachter on their account at that threshold, so you can still skip for alts.