What most turns new players off from FFXIV?

Going by forums I frequent and reddit, the story is seen as a huge hindrance for even people who otherwise enjoy the game. Many do not actually dislike the story itself, but the myriad of fetch quests and content restrictions imposed on their progression. I've read plenty of posts where people finished 2.0 yet ultimately quit once they realized they still had another 100 odd quests left to slog through. Sadly, the only solution that wouldn't otherwise affect financial costs in relation to creating more content is a jump potion.

Another semi-common complaint is how slow the GCD iis whilst leveling. You unlock skills at suck a gradual pace, some people just cannot keep interest, especially given the aforementioned MSQ further slowing them down.

I'd say those two are the biggest hurdle for new players. More so those coming from other MMOs.

Being locked out of EVERYTHING while leveling and even afterwards. Who wants to do a quest for costumes, colors, and extra fights? The story locks you out of everything and I almost dropped this completely. The only reason I kept going was people kept saying " it gets better" But it shouldn't get better it should already BE better. The grind for everything I feel is what turns off many people to this game. Hell the forums lock you out until you have played for a decent amount of time. WHO DOES THIS?

Yeah it is how many lock outs there are along with lack of interest stats and the tome system. At least that is what all my friends who quit told me. Of course I cannot speak for everyone :)

In 1.0 we asked for tokens to help with bad RNG, not to revolve the entire game around lock outs and tomes.

I would think the mind-numbing, soul-crushing tedium of leveling any class beyond the first would be the big one for players just trying to get in...

Story is THE MAIN PART OF THIS GAME, everything has lore/litle tidbits to it and thats what FF fans enjoy. If you can't grasp that then you are in for a rude awakening because its going to keep happening even in 4.0. Get over it.

Just to repost this again because why not.


4. A lot of people are assuming that the 3.x cycle is going to mimic 2.x and end with Patch 3.5. Is this the plan? Can you tell us what patch you plan on ending with?

The official answer has not been revealed yet (laugh).

If we were to announce it, people would start debating about when the next expansion pack will be released. It will be heavily linked to the main scenario, so if you could please stand by until Fan Festival for more information (smile).

source- http://gamerescape.com/2016/08/01/e3...oshida-part-2/

I think the "be the errand boy" routine is what kind of kills the vibe for new players. I mean, who wants to feel like some delivery person in a world that's supposed to give you so much more than that? Besides, that formula is in most MMOs. Start out new, fetch these milk and cookies for some NPC, do this silly minor task for another. It's tedious and doesn't feel rewarding.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

Story is THE MAIN PART OF THIS GAME, everything has lore/litle tidbits to it and thats what FF fans enjoy. If you can't grasp that then you are in for a rude awakening because its going to keep happening even in 4.0. Get over it.

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At what point do you distinguish between lore or story and a fetch quest though? Was it lore because of the kind of pretzel I was delivering in an otherwise irrelevant task? Was it story because I was doing it for a certain group, even though the action, nor those particular NPCs, will never come up again? At what point is it more story content than excuse for task content? And under what balance are these scantily composed tasks acceptable for what amount they do give, even if, say, watering down otherwise good quest-lines?

To me, at least, a story-based game shouldn't just have some certain quantity of story-telling forced upon the player. First and foremost, what story-telling is given, should be of quality enough to leave an impression on the player that story was a large and memorable part, rather than merely the quests and their tasks that it was scattered among. I feel like that's where most of the complaints come from, not that a story existed, but that the weak elements within sour its overall impression.

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Originally Posted by Lokier

This forum.
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Probably the forced story content. People are so used to being able to do what they like, and do quests via optionals instead of forced content to get anywhere.

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Then they(these 'people'you refer to) should go find a sandbox MMORPG and stop complaining about FFXIV not being sandbox and complaining about the story in general.

I think from a new players perspective; that the training wheels don't come off until near endgame is a big turn off and those wheels are having to stay clamped on for longer and longer as time goes on.

From my experience constantly browsing the r/MMORPG subreddit during work hours, it's a few things:

As mentioned already, MSQ gating: Most new players will hit 15 before they get remotely close to the Sastasha story quest. A lot of players want to jump right into the dungeon experience ASAP, since quests present so little of a challemge, and being told yhey have to wait not just for their first dungeon, but EVERY piece of content thereafter is more than a little off-putting. (Even a lot of crafting and gathering unlocks have MSQ requirements; seriously, at that point it's just silly.)

Positively glacial combat while leveling: the 2.5 global seriously hinders this game, oGCD weaving and controller players be damned. Action combat MMOs are becoming increasingly popular here in the west, and pushing a button and waiting what feels like an eternity for your next button press really gives people a sour impression of the combat, even IF oGCD weaving makes it more dynamic later in the game. "Slow-ass combat until later levels" is the biggest detractor people tend to list for this game, even when they're actually recommending it to someone.

Three-button rotations until about halfway through your leveling experience: Namely, key skills are ludicrously level-gated, whereas other games tend to dole out most of your core rotation about 2/3rds of the way through the leveling experience. XIV's DRG actively discourages you from using it's second combo until you get Chaos Thrust, which is an ability you don't get until (the old) level cap. MNK's entire opener revolves around Perfect Balance, which you also don't get until level 50. Tanks actually don't get things that let them TANK until halfway to level cap or longer. Scholars have no cleanse until level 40. Skill dispensation in this game is honestly just baffling, and for a new player, being told "don't worry about what buttons you're pushing until level 50 because it'll all change on you then" is really jarring and inorganic.

Utter lack of quest variety: Very few quests require you to use an item on a mob or interact with a mob in any way except killing it. You never get to command a vehicle, and there are maybe two "disguise yourself and infiltrate the enemy ranks" quests, which is a shame because the story in this game is actually pretty decent, and it would be a great way to sneak in some story and insight behind the primary antagonists of XIV, rather than just using cutscenes as the vehicle. More diverse quest objectives might actually encourage players to read and give a crap about the lore, but then again, it might not. It would at least help break the questing monotony, though.

That's about all I can think of for now, being sleepy and bored at work at 5 AM. I'll add more if I can think of anything later.