Want to run a dungeon? Hope you've done all the prerequisites.

"Want to Sell Your Crafted Wares? Go Into the Depths and Slay This Accursed Fiend!"

When FFXIV relaunched, one of the first changes it made was requiring players to get to level 10 in a combat class before they were allowed to switch to a crafting or gathering class. While this was a bit strange, most of us were fine with the change; now when we switched to crafting, we would have that questing money to help us kick start our crafting careers. While many players may have switched back and forth between crafting and combat, there are those players who wished to craft from the beginning. After all, they were told this was a valid form of progression and it's not entirely unheard of to find players interested only in building and making money; that's pretty much all I did in EVE Online. For those players only interested in the industrial and economic offerings of FFXIV, they might just as soon never fight again after they hit level 10 and can switch. Well... except they really can't.

While yes you can technically go full crafter/gatherer at level 10 and never pick up a blade again, you're missing some very key tools of the trade still. Let's say you're a Miner with bags full of ore or an Armorer with tons of crafted armor you need to sell for more crafting materials. In any other MMO you would just waltz over to whatever form of auction house is available, post your goods, then wait for the money to roll in. FFXIV has a slightly different system with its Market Board and Retainers. The Market Board is FFXIV's equivalent of an auction house: a searchable listing of all goods being sold by your fellow players. None of the names on that board belong to players however - those are all Retainers, NPCs used by FFXIV as a multi-purpose bank and auction control system. Ring the Summoning Bell, hand your Retainers whatever you want to sell with the price, then come back to collect your money. This system sounds pretty close to what everyone else has, so what's the issue? You have to earn your Retainers.

Earlier in this article I mentioned that first stretch of Duty Finder dungeons is at level 15 for your main story quest line. Beyond being your first official encounters with the Duty Finder system and instances, this section of quests is important because it's also what gets you your Retainers. That's right, if you want to sell your gathered ore or crafted goods, then you'll need to make your way through the first three dungeons in FFXIV to earn the right to do so. Makes you wonder what kind of epic quest chain the NPC vendors with physical stores had to go through to open those, huh?

Admittedly unlocking Retainers won't require a great deal of time on the crafter's/gatherer's part. They got to level 10 already to unlock their preferred classes, so that just leaves them nine or ten more levels, the associated main story quests and those three Duty Finder dungeons to knock out before they can switch back to what they really want to do. The question is: why should they? Once you've given them access to the classes they really want to play, why are you then forcing them to switch back to something else to unlock features that really have no justification to be locked in the first place? The Retainer system has no combat functionality and is essentially just putting a face (literally - they have you build them like a new character) on your bank vault and auction tabs. If you really feel the need to gate these, why not tie it to the class quest lines instead? You could make Retainer access a reward for finishing your level 20 class quest for all of the base classes. That way everyone gets access to them, not just the combat-oriented players.

Conclusion

There are some advantages to how FFXIV has tied dungeons and features to the story. I like how some of the dungeons have an actual place in the storytelling. For most MMOs, with the exception of end-game raids and patched in dungeons, the story skips over the early instances and they're left feeling like loot piñatas with one page of flowery quest text from an NPC at the front serving as your "story". By tying the majority of the dungeons to the story quests, they can have cutscenes and actual rationales for going into them beyond "there's loot in there, so let's go!"

The problem here is that FFXIV goes overboard in tying everything to the story. Level 19 and your friend wants to run Copperbell Mines? Tough - you still need Sastasha and Tam-Tara Deepcroft. Ready to begin your climb to the top of the Market Board? If you haven't done those first three dungeons, that journey will have to wait. There are reasons for gating players from features in MMOs, be it for pacing new content or requiring a certain item level for pick-up groups to give them better odds of survival. If you were playing one of the single-player console Final Fantasy games, you could gate content however you wanted and few people would complain because it would theoretically fit the story and the main character's motivations. This isn't a single-player game though - you have millions of players, all with different play styles, interests and motivations.

Some of your players will be interested in playing through your main quest line straight through, seeing dungeons when they're meant to be seen, experiencing the story the way the devs wanted it to be seen. Not everyone wants that though. Some players love chaining dungeons with friends and as soon as they're available, they would just as soon live in instances. Others would rather avoid combat and see the economy and crafting recipes as their endgame content. All of these players have perfectly legitimate play styles and they're all making use of content that the developers wanted to see used by the community. Why not just give them the tools to do so up front? When you gate all of that content behind activities they don't want to do, you're not really "controlling the story" - you're just interrupting their fun.

That's it for this edition of the Eorzea Examiner. I'm still missing that last eight-man run for the original main story, but should that happen this week, we'll probably talk about it next time. Otherwise, it'll either be class speculation time or a post talking about FFXIV's FATEs. Until then, see you in Eorzea.

Michael "Ragar" Branham