Gaming

This is a story skip. Many forms of character progress in FFXIV are gated by that individual character completing the main storyline quests.

A story skip boosts the character to the beginning of the current expansion tier, so it is not possible to use this mechanic to compete with standard players on current content. I think the intended use case is alt characters (which are less necessary in FFXIV because you can play all jobs on one character, but many players still have them).

Yeah, they're a skip to endgame content. But they're not any kind of "instant win."

The couple types of pvp aren't tied to your character level, and the most difficult raid content is best run with a group that you practice with. If you've never played, simply grabbing the game and one of those packages isn't going to give you an immediate edge.

XIV is sort of a single player game with a bunch of coop boss fights.

And, not to be cliche, but you can play through the entire first two arcs (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) completely free, with no real limitations. The only things locked out of the free tier are the more social aspects, and any content above level 60. A handful of jobs are locked, but there is a ridiculous amount of content available for free.

I've played a few other mmos and hated them all. XIV is something weirdly different. And the overwhelming majority of the community is chill and friendly.

Leveling up in Final Fantasy XIV is easy. Just play the story and you'll reach max level by the time you finish it.

These items are intended for players who create an alt and who wish to skip most of the stury if they already played it.

Also reaching max level is kind of where the game begins (raids, dungeons, gearing up, etc).

Also 500,000 Gil is pocket change...

I play FFXIV since 2014 and I honestly wouldn't recommend anyone to buy this. You're just paying to not play the game and skip the main quest (which locks up a bunch of content behind it).

Also: the included gil is a small amount. It's meant to replace the gil you'd earn from doing the story quests.

I forgot those exist because what kind of monster would pay to skip the story the story is the best part.

The money makers here want you to play their game. The more time you invest, the more money they make in subs. If you want to skip all that game and thus, in some ways, get all that progress done without having to pay all that sub, you’ve gotta fork over some cash.

You can buy agony infusions which are required for higher tier fractals but they're so cheap in gold no one should spend real world money on it and you'll earn it naturally if you're climbing the fractal ladder normally. A lot of guilds even give away the agony infusions if you are struggling to gain them. I recommend trying fractals at T1 even in LFG, you'll usually find other new players to fractals who are willing and expecting new players to it, but it won't hurt to watch a video if you're nervous

Gw2 really does a good job limiting power so you hit max power quickly that you really are just buying convenience.

This is pretty much only possible because most actual power is account bound and as you can hit near power cap so quickly, you're generally skill/knowledge bound instead of power bound

You can buy fractal infusions with gold for sure, but if you progress through fractals at a normal clip you'll also be able to just make them for yourself. It just expedites things or lets you more efficiently gear other characters, but that's severely overstating how easy it is to get infusions on other characters once you have enough to do t4s and CMs. They aren't dropped by dailies per se, but you DO get them while completing dailies. You can also technically buy infusions in the TP that are stat boosts for gold, but that's literally like. 500 dps out of 40k, at most. it's pretty trivial and stat boost infusions are only really useful for people doing benchmarks

I'm excited, too. It looks like a breath of fresh air for gaming with friends. I hope it hits the spot.

Story skip. Basically only journalists use them when there's a new patch and they can't invest the time before they review the next patch. Very few gamers use them.

Story skips are to be honest detrimental for the player because you suddenly don't know who the fuck any of the core NPC are, you have not bonded with them, and you are doing crazy shit with them. You miss out most of the story beats that make FFXIV worth playing.

In any case, about raid content, it is expected to be max level of an expansion within the week, being able to buy a skip to the beginning of the current expansion doesn't influence that at all because most players will already be there when the expansion launches.

The most PTW thing I can see in ffxiv is the ability to buy retainers who farm some stuff for you to have a very minimal edge in gold, but you get a free retainer and I've not sent it to farm because hold doesn't mean anything in this game tbh. Even if you want to get an edge with gold this again is super low tier because the only "competitive content relevant" thing you can buy is crafted gear than other players put in the marketplace, and usually if you play regularly you would naturally have enough gold to buy it anyway. The best ILVL items can only be unlocked through content.

As others have said, the story skips are kinda awful.

Plus, I gotta say that it doesn’t really make a difference. They don’t give anyone an advantage over anyone else and don’t impact the way you experience the game at all. If you don’t like them, just don’t buy them.

At worst, you’ll run into some guys who are really bad because they skipped a huge portion of the game to get to modern content. But it doesn’t give them any edge over you by any means.

Again, I can’t stress enough how these affect other players 0%.