Hey Dyllon

Thanks for checking the run out. I get what you and a bunch of other people are saying about the Road to 60 buff and I can 100% see why some people would think that it's not a fair method of play when it comes to speedrunning.

From where I sit as a long-time player though, I can justify to myself that SE will use the Road to 60 buff or some variation of it for the rest of XIV's lifetime as a way of expediting new players through the game. FFXIV is a game that unlocks 90% of it's content by playing through the Main Scenario and as such, SE needs to make sure that in 5.0, 6.0 and so on, that new players are not being gated off from the majority of the game simply because they're not able to level enough to unlock it. At this point in the game, the buff is used to direct people toward underpopulated servers in an attempt to balance the population values as people move to more heavily populated areas to take advantage of stronger markets and a more plentiful player base.

As such, they need the Road to 60 buff to entice newer players to stay on smaller servers and especially as the game continues to release content, it becomes more important to have it so that they can bring a wealth of new players to the game with the promise of content being available to them faster.

I also see it as just another type of run. In single player games you have for example New Game and New Game+ as separate categories where New Game+ will be much faster. Any% vs 100%, runs that enable the use of specific glitches, playing as specific characters and lots more depending on the game, are all different categories that are agreed upon by the community because there are so many potential ways to play the game quickly. To me, Road to 60 is just another category like all of the above where you can have a run with it or without it.

For me personally, it was just much more convenient to run with it because I'm not a speedrunner and hadn't worked out any additional method of optimising the run. On top of that it was the only opportunity I was going to have to spend 15 hours non-stop in front of the game and pretty sure if I had to do a single session on a server without the Road to 60 buff I would have died. =P

All the best with your run!

Hi all.

On July 1st, 2018 I streamed a run of FFXIV where I played through the entirety of the A Realm Reborn 2.0 Main Scenario in a single session, completing the run in 14 hours and 30 minutes (based on /playtime). I went in to this with a very specific set of rules so that it could be recreated fairly by other people. The rules included no Free Companies, no Party Finder, no preformed parties, no unsynced duties, no premium/veteran items (including exp boosting equips) and Road to 60 server. The idea being to see how fast a new player could complete the game in what can be taken as a "solo" run, whereby they get no help from anything but the Duty Finder.

The run was streamed on Twitch to show it was all done in one go and later uploaded to Youtube for permanence. The reason I chose to use a Road to 60 server was two-fold: Firstly it helped to eliminate hours of grinding and secondly the Road to 60 buff is assumed to be on-going in that new players to the game are directed to these buffed servers to start off, allowing them to catch up to more experienced players given that the game is now 2 expansions deep. Seeing as the point was to see how quickly a new, solo player can complete this content it seemed appropriate to utilise the features they would have access to as a fresh player, including this buff. Let me know what you think!

Part 1:

Part 2: