As the first on this thread, a serious question...

[Starcade]

It's going to sound like a troll, for sure:

But as far as what Square-Enix has (Abyssea) done to (Abyssea) this game (Abyssea)...

There are still new players to guide?

[Corres]

yes!

and no, his was not sarcastic. if you would visit the old cities like windurst or bastok youm would see them wandering helpless around knowing not what to do.

[Starcade]

I wasn't being sarcastic either.

Square-Enix spent most of the year of the three add-on scenarios (ACP, MKDE, ASA) catering to new and lower-level players, and basically found most of the game deteriorating. This was largely true due to the fact that if you did a search on all players, you'd find that only about 1/4 - 1/3 of the players was below the level cap.

For example, right now on Leviathan: 1:35 or so AM PST 3/8/11:

There are 1,457 players on.

Only 377 characters are NOT Level 90.

Hence my very legitimate question.

[Septimus]

I helped 4 players do Genkai 4 over the last 2 days while doing Magian trials. Fairly surprising, but also somewhat disconcerting that people can level up and not get Kindred's Seals. I wonder if it is a new RMT invasion...

[Trangnai]

Post Abyssea has killed this game for new players, not only does it make it hard to start the game, its impossible to do most missions without guidance, most new players arn't going to know what the Community Sites are. In this sense, these forums are great for those players. However sense Abyssea killed exp pts after level 30 and the gear market for the most part as well, newer players get stuck and even when you see a player at or around level 30 there still sub-jobless due to not knowing what to do, or being unable to get help doing it. Its upsetting honestly, breaking the required level caps on rank missions and increasing exp yeild will still help those that can't or don't want to use abyssea to exp past 30 and get rank missions done, it still doesn't fix the lack of player interaction at lower levels. Something that honestly, should be revived.

[Wade]

There are still new players, met one the other day and helped them get their subjob. There just aren't a lot. I see a handful of people at any given time without subjobs. So I imagine there are a few new people starting every so often.

[Yopop]

I've met about 4-5 new players in the past few weeks and sadly they played for a few days and I have not seen them since.

[Wade]

I don't think that Aby or anything has killed it for new players. This game has gotten a whole lot easier to be honest. I remember when I first started 4 years ago, then it was hard. I didn't know about wiki and trying to figure anything out sucked. Also, back then you only got 50 exp for a DC, so leveling was extremely slow when soloing. Now, you can reach level 10 in about 20 minutes. The only real problem I see for low levels is the lack of gear on the AH. If they would reduce the cost of gear and perhaps make more available from NPC's, I think that would solve a lot of frustration for new players.

[Draylo]

Actually a lot of the gear can be obtained from NPCs pretty easily in each starting city. I recently leveled my PUP up and found some of the gear on NPC's.

[Yopop]

Abyssea has done a lot of damage for new players in the bigger scope of the game.

When a player joins and is new they do what we all do. They look around and read and sometimes google to find information on the game. Some buy the *cough* Brady's Guide *cough* and use that to help them along their way.

Once they start leveling and get to the point of parties there's a good chance their going to catch a party with people trying to blow to 30 and key person in Abyssea. They get power leveled and boom before they know it they are in their 30's. They start to try to figure out what they are doing and due to the fact that they are leveling so fast because players they are partying with want to get to Abyssea they find themselves frustrated because they are still that same new player just 20 levels higher.

They are clueless about zones, mobs, or the concept of how to play their job. To them the game is a point and click game that takes no skill to play. They get bored and now they want a job at level 90. So what do they do? They sit and ask for help 24/7 instead of trying to learn the game themselves and grow. They sit and shout for help in Jeuno, they then go online and maybe buy gil so they have money to pay people to let them join in Abyssea parties.

This is just random things that i've seen new players do.

Once they hit 90 they end up quitting because they have no clue what this game offers and they got to 90 so far they "BEAT FFXI WOOWHOO" and go off to play something else.