Jump potions

Linnaete

sus
Staff member
Editorial Staff
Veteran
Joined
Feb 19, 2009
Messages
6,411
Location
UK
Gil
1,043
Andre the Adamantoise
Chocobo Egg
Accessory (Head)
Accessory (Arms)
Build-A-Member
Chocobo Egg
FFXIV
Aoife Linnaete
FFXIV Server
Lamia
Free Company
None
So the latest topic that has inspired outrage in SOME parts of the FFXIV community :-)ahmed:) is about hypothetical jump potions. The recent Famitsu interview with producer Yoshi-P has revealed that the team is currently considering the implementation of jump potions, with a majority of 7-3 in favour. How it works in other MMOs is that your character can instantly level up to the point where you can easily jump into new expansion content without having to wade through older content. It's been a permanent feature in World of Warcraft.

Of course, we don't know for sure whether it will even happen or what form it will take - i.e. will you be at level 60, is this going to be on a singular job basis, will this let you skip entire chunks of story? etc. Nor do we know what the requirements will be; will this be an expensive cash shop item like in WoW and the Chinese version of FFXIV that will deter most people from otherwise purchasing them at a moment's whim?

Soooo, yeah. Go ahead with whatever views you have about hypothetical jump potions, whether it's (misplaced and overblown) outrage or mild neutrality.
 
As usual people are just blowing it out of proportion. Gotta be outraged at everything, I guess! I have absolutely no problem with jump potions. In this case, by the time they're implemented all they would do is allow a new player to play the new expansion.

I'm seeing a few arguments against them.

1) Something about the new 4.0 expansion not making sense if new players can skip Heavensward. Putting aside the fact that they have no idea how the story is going to be presented, many people, including myself to be honest, could not tell you what happened during the 3.0 storyline aside from "Dragons", even though we played through it all. Nonetheless anything that happened in 2.0. You like XIV's story and know every detail? That's great. This changes nothing. It's silly to expect a new player to go through years of outdated and irrelevant content before they can even catch up.

2) Something about their "hard work" levelling jobs being made redundant. Lmao. Who even cares? No one makes you level different jobs to 60. You do it for fun. A jump potion isn't gonna bring a new player to level 70 and give them end game gear. They'll be on equal ground with everyone else come the expansion and they'll then be able to experience new content as it's made available.

The only real concern I have is that HW content could be phased out if people are able to skip that expansion. There's a lot of fun stuff there and it would be a shame to see. I can only assume SE would have a plan regarding this.

tl;dr: People are being silly. At least wait for some details before getting upset. Personally the idea doesn't bother me at all, but we'll see I guess.
 
The constant hot air about this being pay-to-win is just bizarre. :lew:

Pay-to-win

win

It's as though for over twenty years of my life I have completely misunderstood the definition of the word "win".

You've hit the nail on the head there. It's not like a jump potion is magically going to fast-track someone to level 70 with a full set of new artifact gear. Chances are, some schmuck is going to be fast-tracked to level 60 if he or she absolutely wishes to cut straight to Stormblood content. They're not going to receive any favours after that; they will still have to work their way through the story, level up, learn how to effectively play the job they just took a shortcut with, and ultimately they will still have to gear up like everyone else.

All you have effectively done there is pay for time. There is no meaningful way that a hypothetical jump potion would have given you any discernible advantage over non-payers. The people who bring up this P2W argument likely have not seen MMOs that genuinely are guilty of this, e.g. imagine if Grade VI Materia at the moment exist and can only be purchased from the cash shop? Now imagine if pentamelded Grade VI Materia does offer stats substantial enough compared to Grade V that raid groups deliberately prejudice a player who hasn't opened up their wallet? That would be pay-to-win. That would be insidious. That would be community-destroying. Fast-tracking someone to 60 would not and anyone suggesting so is being ludicrous.

If anything, I do agree that there is a danger of introducing a lot of clueless players into the game straight at 60 off the bat. I would be lying if I say I wouldn't mind some green leaf tank who has absolutely no idea what he is doing in a level 60 dungeon or trial. But still, I don't believe that this will be a widespread problem in practice. You will have some mavericks who think it's a good idea to jump straight into a high-level duty without even grasping the basics, but they will be the exceptions rather than the norm. I'm willing to give these players the benefit of the doubt, otherwise they will quickly have to learn the hard way to get anywhere.

The argument that this would somehow devalue the legitimate efforts of existing players who have worked so hard to get to level 60 is a strange one. As if your achievements were ever going to be static trophies. The game is a perpetual treadmill where numbers will always increase incrementally at regular intervals. It would be like arguing that all your efforts to grind out a perfect set of augmented lore gear are suddenly devalued in June, because some scrub purchasing the next expansion who may not have played in over a year will have plentiful pre-4.0 gear thrown at them for substantially less effort.

Unless a person electing to purchase a jump potion is such an egregious hindrance to a high-level duty because of their apparent laziness and less than tenuous grasp of the basics of the game, let them be supposedly lazy. That person probably sees their friends having fun with the newest expansion content and wants to join in and experience it with them, only to find that they have a few hundred quests or something to wade through first, and little time to do it. So this person may have a legitimate case to open up his wallet and pay for the convenience. Unless they are that hopeless at their job, I struggle to see how this is an affront to everyone else. Let them experience the game their way. The rest of us can be happy that we experienced the whole journey, and that everything we have learnt and overcome while leveling up multiple jobs have made us a better all-round gamer.

Ultimately, this is the juncture where SE will have to make a decision. The game likely does not have the best retention rate and is heavily reliant on new players to regularly join up. Now, a lot of these players likely want to be invested in the story and will want to meticulously play through the whole journey, not yearning to immediately jump into endgame as soon as possible. But it is also true that many new players don't want to sit through so many hundreds of quests (of mainly banal stuff, let's be honest. SE have never been great at designing compelling quest content) and don't care about the story. They just want to get to the newer content that may have attracted them to purchase the game in the first place. Perhaps they have a particular wish to play one of the new jobs and the aesthetic of monks and Ala Mhigo entices them. What would they think if they realised that it's a long marathon before they can even get to Stormblood?

The rest of the arguments against jump potions from what I have seen just revolve around the ol' slippery slope argument. If they're considering jump potions then [insert thing to fill in the gap] and the game will be dead, or something. These people then point to the Chinese version of the game, pointing out that its shop full of paid convenience items makes the game a soulless and hollow shell, without fully realising that soulless, hollow and disposable MMORPGs are what the Chinese market wants. The Chinese market has this strange propensity to like games where you can pay to essentially play it as little as possible. That culture is not going to resonate well with Japan and the rest of the world, so it's utterly ludicrous to look to China and see an ominous future for FFXIV. No, Square are not that tone deaf and stupid.

My own tl;dr - people on the Official Forums can calm their sodding tits. There's already a thread where someone is whinging about quitting the game if jump potions are implemented. I for one would not miss their whiny arse. Bye, Felicia.
 
Lol...?




Pay-to-win....what exactly?

Being level 60 makes you a winner...? I don't understand?

Who even says these potion will make it so that you've completed everything? Maybe they'll just unlock duties for you but you still have to complete them yourself. You might not even be able to use the Duty Complete in Raid Finder because you've never actually completed said thing before... Where's the solid information on these things? And if there isn't... why are people losing their mind? :lew:

Ross said:
2) Something about their "hard work" leveling jobs being made redundant. Lmao. Who even cares? No one makes you level different jobs to 60. You do it for fun. A jump potion isn't gonna bring a new player to level 70 and give them end game gear. They'll be on equal ground with everyone else come the expansion and they'll then be able to experience new content as it's made available.

Lmao? Exactly?

And if anything... The players using these potions are only making it harder on themselves, because they have to live up to certain expecations. They have to learn ALL skills at once instead of gradually working their way into them by leveling regularly.

If people don't have a whole lot of time to game, but would love to catch up to their friends, this is a great solution.

Some people just hate when others enjoy themselves. Wow. Talk about envy and being resentful... Let people enjoy the game they want to.

The only negative thing I can think of, is more people will wear the mentor crown who know nothing about how to play a class... but then I realised... 99% of the people wearing it now are exactly as I just described. :wacky: Just proved myself wrong. Problem solved!
 
While it is sort of P2W it's not fully P2W so I don't see the issue. It's only P2W for your character and not for the community so I don't see the issue. It's not like you can buy yourself some really good tradable items off the mogstation. Something like that would break the game and I'd never support something like that. My only issue with it is the possibility of people who use this item and not have any idea how to play their class by the time they get to SB/HW dungeons/trials. By that point you should already know what to do for your class and shouldn't need any teaching. New people get an instant jump to level 50/60? More power to them. I've been at this level for a few years prior to them joining so I don't care. Something like this would make the game more newbie friendly at the very least. Who would really want to go through HW and ARR just to get access to SB? That's a lot of repetitive fetch quests that you'd have to do all at once and I can feel their pain there. With maybe an occasional dungeon and trial. That alone will take at least 50 hours if you skip everything and that would be too long to wait for something you're really looking forward to. I think it should be an option at the very least.
 
Looking back on this, it's even more hilarious to think about how upset people were getting about the implementation of these jump potions. Admittedly I've ran into my fair share of boosted newbies who haven't the foggiest idea about what they're doing, but let's be honest here. There are people who have played through the entire MSQ and are exactly the same.
 
Back
Top