I think I'm finished; a new player's final thoughts

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

So... what's to be done about the lack of direction in-game?

Other than publishing much of this hidden information directly on playonline.com (as has been done for XIV at finalfantasyxiv.com), every map page has a set of green markers that can only be set by NPCs. Use them!

Starter nations have NPCs in place specifically to assist new players learn some of the game mechanics. Some of them even directly suggest completing quests. Have these NPCs offer to set map markers for other NPCs they've heard need help with a quest (i.e. quests for which the player is currently qualified). Worst case scenario: it'd overwrite the work of the Merry Map Markers, which can be reapplied at whim.

Quest NPCs themselves could mark the relevant ???'s on your map if you speak to them a second time.

Outpost NPCs could offer to mark up your map with a few gathering spawns, provided you're the right allegiance.

[bungiefanNA]

Problem is there's really no guide online for this stuff. People don't make the guides, so there's no way to learn. I mean, look, I googled "ffxi wkr" and I get nothing that tells me what it is:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ffxi...47&oq=ffxi+wkr

New players don't like asking questions like that of people either. It's intimidating, and also can make you feel stupid for asking, especially when it's potentially a party you want to join up with (first step in is telling them you have no idea what they're talking about?). I might be willing to take the time and post all of this, and talk to people, but do you really think everyone else will? Or rather, anyone else?

That search doesn't limit to pages with just those terms, so you get some pages with just FFXI as the result, and there's a lot more of those. There's not a lot of guides to jargon for a lot of games that people would have unique jargon. Jargon is always an obstacle to someone new to the trade/community. If you don't want to ask the person using the jargon, you ask someone in your LS for clarification. This game also has multilingual jargon, because the JP community came first, so a lot of players will know terms that are abbreviated Japanese, like D2 for Warp II, because it's Dezone II in Japanese. Genkais are limit break quests. Renkei are skillchains. Someone on BlueGartr wrote up a guide to JP phrases and abbreviations so people can respond to those shouts and know what is going on. English has the 3 letter job abbreviations, while Japanese simplifies it to one kanji symbol per job, and not always the first one in the job name.

In short, the way you always learn jargon is by participation in the community using it. Guides are rare for that, and often out of date. I'm sure I'd have a problem with jargon in any other MMO of decent age if I started now. I also wouldn't be afraid to ask someone else.

[detlef]

The map marking system is so unwieldy. Remember when the Adoulin maps had Bivouac numbers truncated? That leads me to believe that anything involving the map marking system will have extreme limitations and be difficult to use. Plus you can only mark what, 20 things? And you can't do anything but stand in place or auto-run while viewing the map? Man, just thinking about it is infuriating.

Anyway, I think that anything involving maps or map marking will take this dev team at least a year to figure out. From a player perspective, looking up information online would be much easier to do than to have to navigate through the map marking system.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

From a player perspective, looking up information online would be much easier to do than to have to navigate through the map marking system.

And when that third-party information is out-of-date or just plain wrong?

[detlef]

And when that third-party information is out-of-date or just plain wrong?

Oh no! Even though your example is horrible, it's true that players can only go so far as the Wikis are updated.

Luckily, old content all the way up to Abyssea is well-documented in the Wikia and all endgame events after Abyssea are handled well by BGWiki. If a new player gets to the point where they need to be even more current than that, I expect them to know about Bluegartr.

[Crevox]

Oh no! Even though your example is horrible, it's true that players can only go so far as the Wikis are updated.

Luckily, old content all the way up to Abyssea is well-documented in the Wikia and all endgame events after Abyssea are handled well by BGWiki. If a new player gets to the point where they need to be even more current than that, I expect them to know about Bluegartr.

The problem is it gets to the point where you have to alt tab to do everything. There are hardly any quests in game that you can safely go "I understand what I need to do, I don't need to alt tab." Some of the ones that you THINK you know end up being tricky, and it's like "they tell you go to there, but you can save 3 hours if you go here first" or not even save time, it just would be impossible unless you knew you had to go somewhere else. It also doesn't help that there was apparently some cutscene bug? After nearly every single CoP mission battlefield, there was no cutscene on where to go next: and it took me a long time to figure out that there is supposed to be and the game is just bugged.

Ultimately the "game" becomes you just following a guide... are you really playing the game at that point? Sure, you could not follow the guide, but you'll also get nowhere in the majority of quests, and miss out on tons of gear, so...

Anyways:

What I'd like to see happen is removing them as a roadblock from unrelated content.

For the most part, yes. However, for some things like Mythic weapon quests, I still think there should be updated requirements or a new way to obtain them. Times have changed, and the game has changed.

[Demonjustin]

Ultimately the "game" becomes you just following a guide... are you really playing the game at that point? Sure, you could not follow the guide, but you'll also get nowhere in the majority of quests, and miss out on tons of gear, so...

Quite possibly the most simplistic thing that people against an easier quest system, a marker system, or even an ! system fail to grasp it seems. Without these systems the grand majority of people I can assure you are not actually piecing it together on their own, are not simply running around talking to every NPC in sight in order to move forward, no, they are doing just what is constantly mentioned, looking at wiki, looking at BG, detlef mentioned the very same thing above even.

How many people here can honestly say they think that even 5% of the playerbase on this game right now who have played more than a month, use no wiki, use no guide, and do not ask others to look up the information, but rather instead do it on their own by using context clues, knowledge of lore, logic, and the quest's description in order to not only figure out where to go or what to do but also complete missions and quests? If anyone can honestly tell me that they believe 5% of players do that, I honestly think they need to look around, because I know not a single person, nor have I ever met a person, who played without wiki in some form, be it through a PC, through a console Internet Explorer App, through a Phone, through closing the game every step of the way, or even through asking a friend every step of the way what comes next.

I would find it near impossible to believe that even 1% of the playerbase plays this way, and yet, it seems to me that many people think that by adding any of the aforementioned systems would somehow break the quests, break their immersion, and make the experience less enjoyable. It truly comes across as though looking away from the game every 2~3 minutes to find out where to go next was so immersive but to see some !s, markers, or additional information in your quest log, would instantly be nothing but a reminder you are playing a game, and take all of the 'fun' out of doing these quests.

[Afania]

Okay, I just had to point this out.

This is from the other topic. This is a great example of something that would be yelled in game and I would have absolutely no idea what it means. Nothing the wiki or guides can teach me would tell me what this means:



And no newbie player would understand it either.

If you pop in Uldah in FFXIV:ARR as a new lv 5 player, see a /shout like this

"Anyone know if you need full CT/DL gear and HQ relic to do T5 or you can get away with 3/5 DL?"

Putting my money on the table that no new player can understand wtf that question is about too.

Every MMO has it's own term that not every new player would understand. Not every MMO is on the same lv when it comes complexity of game mechanics too. Once someone told me it takes years to fully understand EQ, but it only takes a few months to fully understand WoW. It took me about a month or two to understand at least 80% of the game mechanics in ARR, barring the jobs I haven't lv and formula undiscovered. It took me years to understand 80% of the game mechanics in FFXI, barring the jobs I haven't lv to max lv/formula undiscovered. Not understand everything isn't unique to FFXI, but in every MMORPG. It IS slightly more complicated than games like ARR, but it's an EQ clone, so it's not a surprise. It is not a bad thing either. I find games too easy to figure out everything isn't as fun as comlicated game.

Thanks for calling me retarded.

This is the best community: a fine example of why I don't PM people asking what WKR is

*First time I joined instance runs in SWTOR one guy made a mistake, and another guy called him retard and voted kick, 3 min later I made a mistake too then same guy called me out.

*First time I solo queue PVP in GW2, the team lost then another guy called me out for having the lowest PVP rank.

*My FC mate in FFXIV once complained about how some guy in DF pt used rude words on his friend, and was in elitist mode because they were new to the instance.


I can name a lot more examples in almost every MMO I've played. I've played MMO for years, participate in several online gaming community for years, I've never seen any gaming community with zero negativity. NEVER. All games has negative opinion, all forums/online community about gaming has negativity. You can tolerate negativity in other forum/game, but you can't tolerate FFXI? Or are you having unrealistic expectation toward FFXI, that some how it's a magical land free from the curse of online gaming community?

Or you never meet any other player being rude/mean in other MMO? I can't believe it really. Unless you never interact with others.

Furture more, according to my experience with online community, negative attitude would spawn more negative opinions. You started negative/hostile attitude on the forum first, blamed community for every suffering you had in game(even though it's mostly because this game isn't your cup of tea), then somehow expect everyone reply something with a happy positive attitude?

It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen in any online community. Never seen it happen in any online community, unless you live in rainbow happyland.

I honestly don't know why you have such extremely unrealistic expectation toward this game that you have to keep posting complains after complain. Half of the complain wasn't even legit. Complaining about the lack of pt and lack of new player tutorial may be a bit legit. Complaining about the long term goal MAYBE can be legit, since long term goal is kinda unique to FFXI. Complaining about forum users reply your negative post with negativity AND not knowing every term in a MMORPG? Unless you can convince me that negativity attitude never exist in another MMO, or you can understand every MMO mechanics as a new player in another AAA title, you're just complaining for the sake of complaining. Can't blame other people for replying with something negative.

You digged your own grave.

[Crevox]

You digged your own grave.

Please stop posting in my topic. I've said this time and time again, go away.

Reported you this time, I've already asked nicely for you to stop harassing me, multiple times.

[Afania]

Quite possibly the most simplistic thing that people against an easier quest system, a marker system, or even an ! system fail to grasp it seems. Without these systems the grand majority of people I can assure you are not actually piecing it together on their own, are not simply running around talking to every NPC in sight in order to move forward, no, they are doing just what is constantly mentioned, looking at wiki, looking at BG, detlef mentioned the very same thing above even.

How many people here can honestly say they think that even 5% of the playerbase on this game right now who have played more than a month, use no wiki, use no guide, and do not ask others to look up the information, but rather instead do it on their own by using context clues, knowledge of lore, logic, and the quest's description in order to not only figure out where to go or what to do but also complete missions and quests? If anyone can honestly tell me that they believe 5% of players do that, I honestly think they need to look around, because I know not a single person, nor have I ever met a person, who played without wiki in some form, be it through a PC, through a console Internet Explorer App, through a Phone, through closing the game every step of the way, or even through asking a friend every step of the way what comes next.

I would find it near impossible to believe that even 1% of the playerbase plays this way, and yet, it seems to me that many people think that by adding any of the aforementioned systems would somehow break the quests, break their immersion, and make the experience less enjoyable. It truly comes across as though looking away from the game every 2~3 minutes to find out where to go next was so immersive but to see some !s, markers, or additional information in your quest log, would instantly be nothing but a reminder you are playing a game, and take all of the 'fun' out of doing these quests.

No, pop-up window and ! on the map in ANY RPG is terrible, no question asked. ARR annoyed the hell out of me with that pop-up window while I'm killing stuff.
That giant ! on every NPC and the map is the same. The best way should be providing hint through dialogue. You don't NEED silly pop-up window nor ! on the map to guide you to next goal if dialogue is done properly. Whoever can't tolerate a RPG without pop-up window and ! on the map would already quit and play WoW/ARR ages ago.

I don't want anything that reminded me I'm playing a game. This is a roleplaying game(aka life simulator/virtual world), I want game design that would create an illusion that I'm not playing a game.