[Feedback] A New Player's Perspective (Will update if there's interest)

Preface:

So, we had summer break. I read the forums of people hating on the game experience, so I thought why not... let's give it (another) try.

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.
I'm 40 (warrior), she's 44 Summoner nearing Stone Vigil.
I've made a point of NOT explaining anything unless she asks, or gets frustrated.

I purposefully played poorly: In dungeons w/ NPCs, I would run in and AOE/get aggro and then just do nothing unless I lost aggro; no other abilities, no dodging mechanics outside of bosses. In boss fights I just did normal 1-2-3 attack only. I would regularly AFK mid dungeon while NPCs slowly chipped away at the mobs.

Observations (Not all are the GAME's fault):

1. Kids are lazy; She will NOT read walls of text. She tried the originals, but it overwhelmed her quickly.
2. Similarly the ability blocks are a lot of text where icons would work better.
3. There really is no set tutorial on how to play a specific job.
4. She has been able to clear everything almost exclusively using Ruin/Ruin II. Everything else is unnecessary; Carbuncle "gets in the way".
5. If she ever makes it to endgame, she will be deep into glamours. She loves the dress up part, and loves creeping on people in Limsa.
6. The 1-50 job quests... I myself am not really learning anything. It's fun story-wise, but I'm not learning anything about what I'm supposed with Warrior/Marauder or how I'm supposed to play. "Hit the rock with ATTACK B!" indeed. Same deal for her on summoner.

Recommendations for the Devs:

1. Make time spent for job quests meaningful/educational, 4th wall be damned.
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   NPC: "Do 1! Great! Now do 2! Ok! Now 3! Ok, see how you've built up this gauge? Use it to do 4!"

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2. Refine your blocks of text. Say what you need to say in a simple picture or diagram. Use icons for things. Homogenize certain things like range numbers. It's less important that it's 5 meters or whatever than it is to understand "This is an AoE around you" and "This is a ranged attack with splash damage".
3. Similarly, instead of this grants "Blah Blah", which you have to interpret what that means/look up what skills it connects to, just have a graphical icons that shows [Current Skill] --> [Next Skill in chain, with shiny dot outline!] in the description.
4. -Added- Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

TL;DR summary, as a 10ish year vet watching a 9 year old noob:

1. The game does not do any favors making learning to be competent easy, nor does it really even seem to care that you ARE competent.
2. You can beat (at least to level 50) without really even playing the game; Good for non-gamers and first timers who are there to enjoy the sites, but not so much in replay value and long term retention.
3. The core story is fine; kid loves it. She even hates Minfilla just like everyone else.
4. For additional context, she plays in Japanese and has very minimal English reading skills. She can play and better understands HOW to play Guildwars 2 than FFXIV...which is entirely in English.

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

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Zitat von Amenara

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

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Yeah- for tutorials, I would love it to somehow gray the screen except characters and like... pause the entire world with arrows pointing stuff out.

Or do like God of War where it has a video showing it in action and explaining it.

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

it is an mmo though, there are things where they offload things like explanations to the community for them to explain to each other.

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Zitat von kaynide

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.

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Not to rain on your parade but the game isn't exactly meant for young children. Using someone that isn't the target audience kind of hurts the whole test.

The fact that a lot of the write up here just also happens to apply to a large portion of the adult playerbase is... unfortunate and says things that I'm not sure should be said out loud.

One thing I will say, this game is rated as 16 in the UK, you are using a 9 year old to determine how well the game presents information. Last time I checked, a 9 year old doesn't really have the patience to sit and learn something, they just want to play.

As for no tutorial on how to play a job, at low levels, they are fairly intuitive to play an if something doesn't quite make sense, you can just go after a striking dummy or overworld mob. Should make sense then.

However, the problem with making job quests telling you how to play a job, is the fact you would have to potentially go back and redo quests if you ever rework a job or change how something works.

As for using icons to display information, you still have to have a text box explaining what that icon means. I do wish the game would specify how wide of an arc a cone AoE is though as cones with the same radius can have vastly different areas that they cover.

As for buff management, they can be hit or miss as to how well they explain things, a quick example is PLD gets a trait at 80 which tells you it adds Confiteor Ready to Requiescat, however, DRG doesn't get one to say they added Dive Ready to Jump when you get Mirage Dive. So there could be improvement there. However, this could also be shown better if you use the compact view for the actions and traits menu. It shows any combos that are 100% guaranteed, however, it could be improved alot. As an example, for Heavy/Burst Shot on BRD, show that they do have a chance to proc Straight Shot/Refulgent Arrow, or Dancers showing that they have a 50% chance of procing something else. This could also be where they show Jump/High Jump procing Mirage Dive, or showing the full Confiteor combo (where they are in completely separate sections at the moment. All that to say, agree that it could show more clarity on some things.

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Zitat von NekoMataMata

Not to rain on your parade but the game isn't exactly meant for young children. Using someone that isn't the target audience kind of hurts the whole test.

The fact that a lot of the write up here just also happens to apply to a large portion of the adult playerbase is... unfortunate and says things that I'm not sure should be said out loud.

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This tbh, you said everything I want to say.

So you want the game to cater to 9 year olds ?
And somehow your daughter (who seems very lovely by the way) is behaving just like the Second Life crowd, which really says something about the adults in this game.

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Zitat von kaynide

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

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Some cutscenes actually do force weather and time events, so you know. I think there's an indicator of that when you look through quest cutscenes in the inn journal. I'm not sure why they don't do it with some things but do it with others. For example, the AST quests force nighttime, otherwise you wouldn't see the stars when she's explaining the Heavens to you.

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As to the tutorials, as long as it's opt-in/opt-out. I've played games for years. I don't need a gray screen tutorial slowing down every single Job quest to a crawl every time I pick up or level a new Job. "I get it, melee skills combo, I've leveled every tank and 4 Melee Jobs AND MCH; I GET IT ALREADY". Likewise, the icon trees vs text boxes should be a toggle. I do feel like the game needs to explain things like oGCD weaving - though that's a surprisingly complex topic - for example, how many weaves can you do between RDM enchanted melee skills...? :) - and some combat mechanics better. But I don't think forcing people into all the stuff you ask is necessarily good.

I also think part of the draw of this game is how friendly it is to players new to MMOs. It's why I never support "raising the difficulty" of MSQ content. That's not what MSQ is for. It's not really for replay, you're kinda supposed to do it once and then move on to other things. NG+ aside, there's no reason to do it again other than wanting to see more lore or see if you've missed any little details in the story. It's not supposed to be something you grind over and over again day in and day out that casual or non-traditional MMO players (or even non-gamers) are unable to do without banging their head into walls for hours.

EDIT:

Oh, I think they do have icon trees on the official Job pages site. Just for comboing abilities, though, but they could possibly have that sort of thing in-game, too:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/battle/

Yea, i'm not sure a 9 year old's opinion on this game is going to be worth any more than a player that only enjoys Call of Duty. Unless these are just your opinions behind the guise of your daughter.

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Zitat von Amenara

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

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Kinda like a Devil May Cry combo room. Hey here is your ability. This is what it looks like. This is what it does. Got it? Cool. Here is an immortal punching bag enemy. Do things. We will let you know if you did the thing right.

Uh, I wouldn't really use it as indicative as anything.

Learning to be competent in this game, to a certain extent is on the player, e.g., it gives text descriptions on buffs/debuffs, you get descriptions on abilities as well, etc., - It does not care whether or not you are competent because it is story mode content, and it is developed in a way that it can be completely by anyone, that is the point.

Getting to level 50 quickly or not, and without interacting a great deal with side-quests etc., I wouldn't really see it as having any bearing on retention, given how many expansions people need to get across, really. If the base game only included base ARR then I'd be inclined to agree - But they need to account for the fact it just isn't ARR. Sure, it would have greater longevity, but at what cost? How many people would quit? What does a profusely long leveling process offer? The repeatability and retention come from the content types, not just how long it takes to level.

On the note of the rain - It's actually interesting you bring this up because on the other hand forcing a weather change for a cutscene would be considered equally as clunky, even if it doesn't raise the same questions, which it might. "Why has the rain just suddenly stopped as soon as I went for pancakes" - Children have an absurd inquisitive nature about the world and its workings, even in general... Until education puts people through the treadmill assembly line.

So, some things:

1. I mean this respectfully: I'm obviously not doing a scientific or very controlled test here. Of course she's 9 and of course she isn't the target audience. It's summer, we're killing time on some hot days. My honest goal was to get her to practice reading and/or patience.
2. That said, if the game is so easy a 9 year old can beat this game spamming 1 ability, that does tell us adults at the very least -something-. Whatever that -something- is.
3. Her perspective gives me a more innocent take on the game and gaming in general. Like we all might assume "red barrel = explosive" because of our gaming history. She doesn't have that intuitive knowledge which leads to interesting takes. The game (obviously, I hope) does NOT need to change to cater to her or others like her, but I think some of her takes might be equally valid for a new adult non-gamer.
4. Ultimately, I'm doing this for fun and to get a different point of view. Kinda like when your kid wants to draw a cat and it comes out looking like a potato.

I'm curious how long she can play on this style before being brick-walled, and when she is brick-walled, does she give up or actually try to learn?

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Zitat von Kaurhz

On the note of the rain - It's actually interesting you bring this up because on the other hand forcing a weather change for a cutscene would be considered equally as clunky, even if it doesn't raise the same questions, which it might. "Why has the rain just suddenly stopped as soon as I went for pancakes".

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This is true. I don't know how she'd react- but she didn't bat an eye during the Rising cutscene, where it was suddenly night w/ fireworks then suddenly day. Maybe time of day is less intrusive than rain and thunder.




Tl;DR, exactly what Kaurhz said:

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Zitat von Kaurhz

Uh, I wouldn't really use (these observations) as indicative as anything.

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Zitat von Renalt

Kinda like a Devil May Cry combo room. Hey here is your ability. This is what it looks like. This is what it does. Got it? Cool. Here is an immortal punching bag enemy. Do things. We will let you know if you did the thing right.

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I am reminded of one of the CNJ quests where you have a bunch of NPCs fighting off the antelope and you have to heal the NPCs. It's janky and annoying but it teaches you how to heal and iirc it even tells you to DPS when you don't need to heal. It is a one off quest and you never have another that teaches you how to remove cure 1 from your bar after you unlock cure 2, so it's obviously not perfect, but it's an example of something they can do to teach you how to play your job inside of job quests.

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Zitat von Amenara

I am reminded of one of the CNJ quests where you have a bunch of NPCs fighting off the antelope and you have to heal the NPCs. It's janky and annoying but it teaches you how to heal and iirc it even tells you to DPS when you don't need to heal. It is a one off quest and you never have another that teaches you how to remove cure 1 from your bar after you unlock cure 2, so it's obviously not perfect, but it's an example of something they can do to teach you how to play your job inside of job quests.

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That or Archer was one of my first jobs so it's been AGES since I've done that quest. I vaguely remember it and yeah it does tell you to do both.

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She even hates Minfilla just like everyone else.

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Oh? Ive never heard anyone say they hate her. "Everyone else"? is...who exactly?

Im sorry but I have to call on this, no one I know has ever said they hate her at all. i know theres this "hate scions" meme but the fact is that the most common meme I have heard about Minfilia was that she should be wearing a badge that says

https://media.tenor.com/YXAO57mvMDgA...eve-torres.gif

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Zitat von kaynide

That said, if the game is so easy a 9 year old can beat this game spamming 1 ability, that does tell us adults at the very least -something-. Whatever that -something- is.

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She's playing solo with trusts, as a DPS. Trusts will literally clear most dungeons with zero player input, besides you needing to be present and dodging AOEs that would kill you otherwise.

It's not the same as being able to clear a solo game by doing that.

There's a reason that nine year olds are prohibited by the ToS from playing the game. I'm not going to comment on your parenting and I hope others don't, but given that she's playing in a foreign language (Japanese) and can barely read in her own language (English), maybe her difficulty in understanding things isn't to do with the game itself.

Thinking back to when I was 9 in the early 90s, the RPGs I played at the time weren't nearly as text-heavy as an MMO. There were occasionally words I didn't understand, let alone how to say them because voice acting wasn't a thing, but roughly had to derive context in those instances. And while I enjoyed myself, I wouldn't expect kids today to be in a better position even if gaming is arguably more accepted today. With how releases were done at the time, a lot were probably a year or two old in Japan by the time they hit the US or entered my sphere of awareness, too.

Mechanically, most were turn-based, so this obviously took some of the stress out of acting in the moment. AI party members you couldn't control were occasionally a thing, but most certainly not to the extent of Trusts. Ironically, I'd argue the slower pace and menu system yielded more tactical combat than XIV provides outside of "do the dance" ad nauseum, but that's basically shifting one difficulty for another. Do I think 9 year old me could play XIV well? Eh, probably, but not without some trial and error on harder encounters. I think it's somewhat undersold that Trusts can help players learn mechanics, too.

As others have said, though, definitely not the target audience. Nor should it be assumed pictures would convey more than text when it comes to UI gripes.

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Zitat von VelKallor

Oh? Ive never heard anyone say they hate her. "Everyone else"? is...who exactly?

Im sorry but I have to call on this, no one I know has ever said they hate her at all. i know theres this "hate scions" meme but the fact is that the most common meme I have heard about Minfilia was that she should be wearing a badge that says

https://media.tenor.com/YXAO57mvMDgA...eve-torres.gif

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Well, to be fair, it is less her as a character and more the Pray Return BS.

I mean, somebody even went through the effort to make a music video on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvTQCCZd2VE

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Zitat von Saidosha

I think it's somewhat undersold that Trusts can help players learn mechanics, too.

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I wish there was more to this. Like the Trust NPCs actually saying what's going on/advising the player on mechanics. At least for the 1-50 dungeons.

Something like a generic voice saying "Look out! We need to gather together!" or like "The beast is about to breath (as in a breath weapon)! Move away!"

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Zitat von Iscah

Trusts will literally clear most dungeons with zero player input, besides you needing to be present and dodging AOEs that would kill you otherwise.

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This seems to be unfortunately true (at least up to level 50); I'm not sure if it's a good selling point for the game though. Or if it's just the way games are trending now- I noticed a commercial for the new Mario game that had a line "And if you can't beat the level, that's fine! Just skip it and try a different one". Or the mobile "This game will grind for you while you're not playing it!" games.

Nine-year-olds used to be made of sterner stuff.

https://files.catbox.moe/s6eyw3.jpg

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Zitat von caffe_macchiato

Nine-year-olds used to be made of sterner stuff.

https://files.catbox.moe/s6eyw3.jpg

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not gonna lie, first time I was in Sarutabaruta, I saw a Yagudo and thought he was an NPC/player.
Me> Oh hai there!
Yagudo > Casts melt face
Me > D:

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Zitat von kaynide

This seems to be unfortunately true (at least up to level 50); I'm not sure if it's a good selling point for the game though. Or if it's just the way games are trending now- I noticed a commercial for the new Mario game that had a line "And if you can't beat the level, that's fine! Just skip it and try a different one". Or the mobile "This game will grind for you while you're not playing it!" games.

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Unless you're dealing with a pure gameplay, escalating difficulty game like Pac-Man or Tetris, I would definitely rather that the developers err on the side of letting players access everything, or at least a range of things – whether that means being able to get through the story or just have access to more than one puzzle (or platformer level) in a hub instead of having to do them all sequentially.

Obviously there's some kind of balance to be struck, and it depends on the exact nature of the game, but I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to be able to skip over a difficult puzzle and move on with the story. Either your personal drive for completion will bring you back there, or you won't care and nobody has lost anything.

I have a feeling I've played at least one game that let you skip levels, but with a limit on how many you could have in skipped status at a time, so you eventually had to clear at least one of your previous skipped levels before you could skip a new one.

I don't see the point of "game plays itself" games unless you're getting some specific enjoyment out of seeing the numbers go up, or whatever it is that they actually do. I'd be happy if a game played the grindy parts itself – in FFXIV terms, if I could set my character to automatically rack up hours of EXP in Bozja so I could come in to play the story and do each FATE once instead of ten times each, but not for it to clear the whole thing from start to finish so I never do anything with it. (Although even then I wouldn't mind start-to-finish for alts... but it's a bit different for something like FFXIV where you have essentially a set of different games bundled up alongside the main game. I wouldn't independently choose to play a Bozja-type game and then not actually play it.)

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Zitat von caffe_macchiato

Nine-year-olds used to be made of sterner stuff.

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I still remember the feeling of dinging level 10 multiple times in one sitting on the same job. La Theine was such a huge jump in mob difficulty as compared to Ronfaure.

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Zitat von VelKallor

Oh? Ive never heard anyone say they hate her. "Everyone else"? is...who exactly?

Im sorry but I have to call on this, no one I know has ever said they hate her at all. i know theres this "hate scions" meme but the fact is that the most common meme I have heard about Minfilia was that she should be wearing a badge that says

https://media.tenor.com/YXAO57mvMDgA...eve-torres.gif

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Do you have friends? Just kidding but how have you never seen it? It legit baffles me as I use to see it all the time when I used to have more common MSQ discussions.
Minfillia is hated the same way navy from Zelda oot is hated. Because she won't shut up with her "pray return.." all the time. And the fact she has no personality.

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Zitat von Iscah

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Agreed all around.

And regarding difficulty, I'm pretty sure it will ramp up for her in HW. I'm really just curious how far she can get before she -has- to take a minute and figure out her abilities.

Story of misadventure to be continued, I guess!

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Zitat von Boblawblah

Yea, i'm not sure a 9 year old's opinion on this game is going to be worth any more than a player that only enjoys Call of Duty. Unless these are just your opinions behind the guise of your daughter.

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Not really any guise here; it literally is my opinion having watched/listened to her commentary as we play together.

There's really nothing more to this than me sharing my experience and commenting on it. I'm just one dude with one dude's opinions. Not really expecting anything but happy if people have commentary or it makes for interesting discussion. No more no less.

I mean, if you check my post history, a lot of my original threads are just ideas that get thrown out there and generally discussed for a hot minute then largely ignored, and that's ok :)

Not here to change the world ;)

You all are trying to discredit the OP because they're playing with their 9 year old child but I've played with people 2-to-3 times that age and play similarly. (*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ))
At this point, it's not about people learning to "competent" at the game or their job, it's about teaching them the basics beyond "Use your spam weaponskill/spell on enemies", "Use Cure to heal HP", or "Use this one mitigation button when you're taking lots of damage". （*´▽｀*）

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Zitat von Amenara

I still remember the feeling of dinging level 10 multiple times in one sitting on the same job. La Theine was such a huge jump in mob difficulty as compared to Ronfaure.

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But do you remember those earth-shaking rams just appearing to make introductions to your poor poor face?

First time I thought it was a weird weather effect/earthquake. Didn't even see it coming- 1 hit I was dead.

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Zitat von Thurmnmurmn

Minfillia is hated the same way navy from Zelda oot is hated. Because she won't shut up with her "pray return.." all the time. And the fact she has no personality.

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Minfilia's "pray return" is an overblown meme. I counted them up at one point when replaying ARR and it was maybe once per "chapter" and if I remember right, half the time it wasn't even Minfilia who said it.

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Zitat von Iscah

Minfilia's "pray return" is an overblown meme. I counted them up at one point when replaying ARR and it was maybe once per "chapter" and if I remember right, half the time it wasn't even Minfilia who said it.

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To be fair, it's not NEARLY as bad as it was in 2.0; the tickets help and a lot of it has been cut out entirely. Now, when it does come up it makes narrative sense/acts as a scene change to move onto other locales/plot. Not perfect, but it's better than 2.0.

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Zitat von kaynide

To be fair, it's not NEARLY as bad as it was in 2.0; the tickets help and a lot of it has been cut out entirely. Now, when it does come up it makes narrative sense/acts as a scene change to move onto other locales/plot. Not perfect, but it's better than 2.0.

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Tickets to warp back to Vesper Bay aren't going to help with how often you get told to come back to Vesper Bay.

I'm pretty sure I went through it before the edits anyway.

This is gonna sound mean but I don't care what a nine year old thinks about any MMO, 14 included.

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Zitat von Iscah

I don't see the point of "game plays itself" games unless you're getting some specific enjoyment out of seeing the numbers go up, or whatever it is that they actually do. I'd be happy if a game played the grindy parts itself – in FFXIV terms, if I could set my character to automatically rack up hours of EXP in Bozja so I could come in to play the story and do each FATE once instead of ten times each, but not for it to clear the whole thing from start to finish so I never do anything with it. (Although even then I wouldn't mind start-to-finish for alts... but it's a bit different for something like FFXIV where you have essentially a set of different games bundled up alongside the main game. I wouldn't independently choose to play a Bozja-type game and then not actually play it.)

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If there's one thing I've seen some mobile games do right, it's passive resource generation to basically offset the need to grind. The closest XIV has to this is retainers, but short of a rather lucky find, I'd argue they're not really worth the effort to maintain and cycle even if you could technically argue they're "free" if you give 'em hand-me-down gear early on.

Part of my own desire for a more meaningful open world is the option to assign your character a task when you're offline. You'll basically get tagged as a temporary NPC, but still be out in the world doing things relative to what you chose. And when you come back, a little EXP and loot to show for it. Pragmatically, it's not much different than rested EXP, but it would help to give the world a bit more life knowing you won't be doing something like FATEs alone at off-peak hours if other assigned players showed up to assist.

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Zitat von SargeTheSeagull

This is gonna sound mean but I don't care what a nine year old thinks about any MMO, 14 included.

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I mean that's fine, but then what's the point of your response? That I shouldn't post about whatever in what is a generic forum?

Or that you feel the need to say "I don't care about your post", rather than, I dunno, just not caring about the post and ignoring it?

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Zitat von kaynide

I mean that's fine, but then what's the point of your response? That I shouldn't post about whatever in what is a generic forum?

Or that you feel the need to say "I don't care about your post", rather than, I dunno, just not caring about the post and ignoring it?

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It's best to ignore such posts, to be honest. Some people just want to look and sound edgy.

ESRB ratings aren't about whether a child is able to grasp game mechanics. It's based on whether a group of more conservative adults feel the subject matter and language is suitable for a child of a certain age.

Children tend to be more intelligent and capable of learning that many adults want to give them credit for. As some pointed out, attention span and patience are usually more of a problem.

With those out of way, I'm curious about the comparison between FFXIV and GW2 when it comes to learning how to play a job. I haven't played GW2 myself so please correct any misunderstand I have if you do player it.

My understanding is that while you can learn a fair number of abilities, you can only choose to have a small number active (4-5) for use at a given time. If that is true:

How much time has your daughter spent playing each game?

What does GW2 do to teach its players how to play a job that FFXIV isn't doing?

Is she making full use of the abilities available to be used in GW2 or just sticking to a couple of them like she does in FFXIV? Has she learned to add/remove abilities to change them for certain situations?

Does GW2 completely remake jobs on occasion like FFXIV does?

Does it have extensive tutorials on playing a job?

Is there anything else it does different when it comes to teaching a player their job?

With respect to adding job tutorials in FFXIV, as Mikey_R said it's pretty unlikely because that could mean completely rewriting any tutorials if they make substantial changes to a job. As it is, the original class quests that had been like tutorials are now pretty awkward because indirect references are made to how abilities act in combat but the actual abilities aren't learned until later. The level 5 Archer quest is a good example - at one point the dialogue says "For instance, you may choose to prime your weapon well and strike hard, or employ toxins to sap their strength over time.". Those are references to Heavy Shot and Venomous Bite - but the latter isn't even learned until level 6 now.

As nice as job tutorials would be, I doubt they would be practical to create until the game is truly on maintenance mode and there will be no further updates to jobs.

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Zitat von Jojoya

ESRB ratings aren't about whether a child is able to grasp game mechanics. It's based on whether a group of more conservative adults feel the subject matter and language is suitable for a child of a certain age.

Children tend to be more intelligent and capable of learning that many adults want to give them credit for. As some pointed out, attention span and patience are usually more of a problem.

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You know, I genuinely try not to be the person who quotes people and tries to hit them with silly "gotchas" but I can't look away from the first part of the post here.

No one mentioned ESRB. People mentioned target audience. There's a bit of a difference. When you're critiquing a game or really any media it's necessary to keep the target audience in mind. Obviously the OP tried to separate some bits in their observations that might be due to those reasonings but it's worth keeping in mind. Even though, it might be a tiny bit saddening that most of the game's community is very much like a 9 year old in that they don't want to read.

Also, how to tell someone is American: they have to mention politics at every given opportunity. I can't tell if this is really you, or if you just came here to be contrarian.

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Zitat von Iscah

She's playing solo with trusts, as a DPS. Trusts will literally clear most dungeons with zero player input, besides you needing to be present and dodging AOEs that would kill you otherwise.

It's not the same as being able to clear a solo game by doing that.

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Going to second this. Even dodging with trusts is fairly easy. You just follow the trust NPCs. I did all of ShB/EW with trusts, and when I started doing roulettes later I was so clueless for this reason.

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Zitat von FenyxRising

This tbh, you said everything I want to say.

So you want the game to cater to 9 year olds ?

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It's just an interesting little experiment on the part of the OP and they are sharing their observations and conclusions. Personally, I agree providing players what they need to know visually and audibly would be an improvement over blocks of text. That's not catering to nine year olds. That's common sense and has been backed up by research for years. Different people learn things in different ways.

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Zitat von FenyxRising

And somehow your daughter (who seems very lovely by the way) is behaving just like the Second Life crowd, which really says something about the adults in this game.

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Why the parting shot? Is it so hard to let people (especially a child) play the game in their own way? If she gets more joy out of the social scene than going through the duties all power to her.

Also, why does it bother you that there are individuals who treat FFXIV as Second Life? Unless they are shoving their ERP in your face, it doesn't affect you at all.

Let go of this idea that people have to play Final Fantasy XIV just like you. All it'll do is frustrate you.

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Zitat von Jojoya

How much time has your daughter spent playing each game?

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I would say she has spent more time in FFXIV at this point if I'm being honest; She plays only about an hour a a day at most with a little more on weekends. I would clock her total time with either game at under 40 hours.

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Zitat von Jojoya

]You can only choose to have a small number active (4-5) for use at a given time

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Your skill bar has more of a deckbuilding game feel; like Magic the Gathering or Yugioh.

The weapon you hold, on each job, gives you key binds 1-5. These are available from level 1. You can equip and swap weapons on the fly (usually 2 weapons at any given time).
1 is almost always a chain (so the 1-2-3 skills on most FFXIV jobs)
6 is some kind of healing skill. You can pick which, and which you choose has different effects (eg fast but weaker Cure-1 like, or bigger party-wide, or a defense buff like a tank might use)
7-9 are your build-related skills.
0 is an "elite skill" which you can only have one a time; This is usually your trump card.

All of these have very visual icons that show what they do if you're familiar with the game.

They all tend to also have very unique/visual elements to them when you do them.

If that sounds like too few abilities, remember FFXIV isn't really THAT different, it just has more buttons doing essentially same things.

As in, we could easily just combine Interject and Low Blow, and just give an extra charge. (It's not like Stun really even works where it'd be actually useful)
Or, Rampart-Reprisal-Sentinel; Could just be 1 def. buff with charges. (Sure I guess there are niche uses in savage where you'd stack them but I don't know about that stuff).

Examples:
(Ability 1 on a Guardian, using Greatsword):

https://i.ibb.co/M2B4FrJ/1.png

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Zitat von Jojoya

What does GW2 do to teach its players how to play a job that FFXIV isn't doing?

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It kills you, a lot, until you figure out how to do "the thing". The game is not as deep as FFXIV in story, but in mechanics and engine it's vastly superior.
The actual meta community is also much more active/lively. As in you can copy/paste/share builds.

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Zitat von Jojoya

Does GW2 completely remake jobs on occasion like FFXIV does?

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The game has a rolling meta, that changes fairly regularly as the community figures out new synergies in skills. It's close to Path of Exile in this way.
In addition it adds specializations every expansion which is a similar jump from say, Archanist to Summoner or Scholar. It's the same core job but it adds a lot of lateral tweaking you can do. This is to say, we can both play the same job in GW2, but have VERY different builds and play styles.

The bad is that if you stop GW2 for a while and come back, you'll need to spend a minute re-checking your build(s), as they might no longer do what you set them up to do.

Here's a random Youtube vid on the Guardian job for interest/example; It's about 5 minutes long and gives a simple overview of how versatile the 1 job is.
Guardian Job Video

Extra info:

GW2 is not really an instanced game outside of certain story events; It's open world PvE for the most part. There's a lot of zone chatter and people asking for help to fight this or that, or just "hey guys new Guardian, what's a good build?"

The FFXIV-like dungeons are kinda..dead/old.

Also, their seasonal events can be epic. Super Adventure Box (a parody of 8 bit games) is awesome.
Super Adventure Box Commercial