I’ve posted in other threads against the gatekeeping in the Main Story Quest that requires a person who doesn’t enjoy grouping to group to progress the MSQ.
As a reminder - there are many ways to play an MMO and interact heavily with other players without needing to group up to do combat missions. Don’t fall for the no true Irishman fallacy by thinking a ‘true’ MMO player must group up to do content. I have no issue with group content, but do have an issue when a player is forced to do it to progress the MSQ.
As a relatively casual player, I’ve slowly been progressing in levels, but find my progression being heavily penalised for going into Brightwood and Weaver’s Fen. I’d like to, but it’s hampering my choices when it comes to faction missions. Too many of these are locked behind needing to group, such as in or near elite areas (e.g., the kill the skin wolves). And there’s a new gatekeeping method that further reduces the missions I can take – the one that requires harvesting wood from a mob, which requires Logging to be at 100.
I won’t argue the game design that lets a single character literally progress every skill to max level, but I will argue against the design actually requiring you to level skills beyond novice levels if you don’t want to level them.
So the end result is that I’m usually left being able to accept just a single mission, sometimes none at all. Given the missions don’t actually give much more reward than the missions in Everfall and Windward, I find myself sticking to those and doing a loop where I pick up shattered obelisk/lynx/graveyard missions in Everfall and the pirate/ancient missions in eastern Windsward and just do them in a loop.
Amazon, please rethink higher level faction missions. Keep in mind that not all players want to group to do content and not all players want to level all or even any crafting/gathering skills. Stop penalising players for not wanting to do all of the content.
It’s actually pretty ironic: you’ve made orbs and so many other craftable goods bind on pickup. You also lock content that requires grinding harvesting skills. So it feels like you’re saying you want players to solo the content, yet you then lock the MSQ beyond the group-up gate. This is food for another thread, but no craftable goods should be bind-on-pickup. Let crafters do what they do and try to sell. Let harvesters do the same. And mission grinders and pvpers. Sure, there are some players that want to do it all; but stop designing so much content that actually requires that.