New player experience ( Changes needed asap, Feedback )

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Originally Posted by HammAndCheese

The one thing I'd like changed for new players is the ability to pick up AST, MCH, and DRK before reaching HW. Been playing on an alt recently and that is my number 1 complaint.

The main issue is obviously the job quest locations, so move them for the 30-50 quests (most are in ARR zones to begin with, the pickup locations are just in Ishgard), it's annoying that I can pick up SAM, RDM, DNC, GNB, RPR, SGE, VPR, and PCT without having to reach the expansions they were introduced. Feedback must have been intense for them never to do that crap again.

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While a good idea in theory, I doubt they'll ever do this, as this game is as we all know heavily story driven and HW jobs are literally tied to the city itself, aka MCH has its own area, DRK is just kind of there, AST has their own area as well, so in order for them to be moved to ARR, they would have to figure out how to move their respective areas in Ishgard to ARR areas, while I suppose they could just do it, from a lore point of view it wouldn't make much sense.


As for the rest of the jobs, I think the point was to follow HW route, but due to whatever reason they just decided to scrap each new job set have their own tie in, into the city for the most part like they did with HW. It's probably easier to just have them start in ARR.

FFxiv tutorial alone is the worst thing I have ever witnessed. Including myself when I started the game. Not voice acted NPC's, tons of clicking, spending 1 hour just for the 1st cutscene and few quests of the game before you get to actually play? Yeah that's the thing that makes most people uninstall immediately. When your first impression leaves a bad taste and mark, then your game has a serious issue.

A lot of other games out there have voice acting or at least a good tutorials. Here it's quite boring. This first thing needs to be changed.

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

FFxiv tutorial alone is the worst thing I have ever witnessed. Including myself when I started the game. Not voice acted NPC's, tons of clicking, spending 1 hour just for the 1st cutscene and few quests of the game before you get to actually play? Yeah that's the thing that makes most people uninstall immediately. When your first impression leaves a bad taste and mark, then your game has a serious issue.

A lot of other games out there have voice acting or at least a good tutorials. Here it's quite boring. This first thing needs to be changed.

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True, but sadly people are so enthralled by ARR as it is today that any change to it would be considered blasphemy by many. Even if it was a faithful overhaul not only to voiceacting, but well paced MSQ.
There's just too much attachment to something that's 15years old, even when those same people know how bad of an experience it can be for new players.

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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

• LvL 50 White Mage quest: "Heart of the Forest" is an absolute pain in the butt still to this day to newer players and reports of this quest being a pain goes back to 2013. And no it is not just the issue of gearing, sure you can brute force it by getting much higher level gear, but specifically for healers this quest causes a lot of headache due to how healers work in instanced solo content. They do not work the way that healers normally work. Even if you set it to Very Easy you can easily find yourself MP starved easily due to needing to spam cure 1-2 just to keep the damned tree alive.

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There is nothing wrong about this quest. Aside from maybe having the NPCs literally tell you "USE LUCENT DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which IS something White Mages are supposed to get used to when the party doesn't lend itself to avoiding all the damage it can.

I would like to see an option on alts -

"You have another character on this account which has surpassed [expansion name here]. Would you like to skip all [expansion name here] content, level to [level for expansion] and watch mandatory cutscenes which portray [expansion name here] story?"

Please allow alts to skip expansions (HOWEVER, make the cutscenes mandatory!)

I have played through the game countless time on various alts and I have to agree ARR is the biggest problem!!
The sheer WEALTH of experience given to you by the time you reach Heavensward sucks any and all potential challenge out of the game entirely. Even spreading experience across several jobs, I wound up overlevelled on them all by the time I hit Sastasha (the 1st dungeon).

Queue the next issue... now that you are so insanely overlevelled, you are then forced back down to level 16 while in the dungeon. So now you cant make use of the various skills you've obtained since becoming overleveled. All those skills you have grown accustomed to using for a good while are now unusable and you must make do with 1-2, 1-2, 1-2.. It is super freaking BOOORING! But then because of the dungeon exp, you get even further over levelled. So by the time you're done the first 3 dungeons you have likely gained some new skills, but now have ZERO clue what they do and by the time you get used to using those you'll be even more overlevelled and have even more!
When I finished ARR I was often 10+ levels overlevelled (even while spreading exp) and Heavensward and beyond became such a cakewalk I may as well have just watched the game (like a movie) rather than played throough it.

So my point is, the excessive amounts of experience (which are further enhanced on preferred worlds) is a glaring issue that needs to be addressed!

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

There is nothing wrong about this quest. Aside from maybe having the NPCs literally tell you "USE LUCENT DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which IS something White Mages are supposed to get used to when the party doesn't lend itself to avoiding all the damage it can.

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There is, 100%. I was literally watching my friend play it through a stream. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it requires SO much more in comparison to other jobs in terms of what you need to do and keep an eye out.
For a new player it is a lot and if you're even slighly under geared for it, you're going to get slapped real hard by any of the mobs that spawn and that don't insta aggro to the NPC's. Just the aspect of needing to keep Lucid Dream up is a task.
I really feel like people forget so easily what it was like when they started playing, for one you didn't even know exactly how important lucid dreaming is, or how important Holy usage is. You wouldn't even know that Regen draws enemy aggro unless someone told you that.

A new player is going to do so many unnecessary things on top of not having all that information, or not using certain skills correctly that the quest just becomes a mess. Which is why there are reports of it all the way from 2013.

When you compare it to other job quests at lvl50, you can just AoE spam even if you're under geared. I was literally doing my Paladin lvl50 quest and while I know the game better, I was still surprised about Heart of the Forest being so hectic.
One of the issues for example my friend was having was that the giant tree mobs would get in the way of the Guardian Tree and in panic they would cast heals on wrong targets.

And that's all for the course of being a new player and people seem to completely look past as if they themselves didn't struggle the same way.

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Originally Posted by LCROSSE

So my point is, the excessive amounts of experience (which are further enhanced on preferred worlds) is a glaring issue that needs to be addressed!

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I really don't know how you would even go about fixing this issue due to how it's set up. The problem is that as you level up, you gain access to more job quests which give you abilities that you should not have available in your MSQ journey.

So, the obvious fix would be to limit EXP gain, but that would directly effect how much EXP people gain on their ALT jobs, and slowing them down isn't ideal either cause it's already quite a tedious process beyond lvl40.
And ultimately I think people would be pretty mad about the EXP change if it was more linear considering people do like to overlevel to get to the good bits faster.

So you really have 2 options;

1. Limit EXP gain on your main/first JOB, but add the current exp buff on any alt jobs you are doing. And the game considers your "main job" the one with highest level.
2. Move job abilities from job quests to MSQ. This way even if you over level, you're still limited to whatever your MSQ prog point is.

And neither of these changes feel good to me.

The only other thing that comes to mind is;

3. Allow players to use all abilities in all content, no matter the level.

But how do you balance that? Or do you just allow early level dungeons from lvl16 - lvl50 be completely unsyched nonsense?

NGL, that sounds like any average mmo healer supposed to feel like. I didn't recall my own struggle dealing with that quest (WHM was my 2nd job leveled after my SCH main, and leveled quite close to one another at any given time up to lv60 in ShB days). On that very specific case, it feels like one that requires "take step back, deep breath, calm yourself, and focus"-kind of approach than to just encouraging 'brute force' everything for the sake of 'new player experience' that SE have tried so hard to appeal... for what exactly? (see the last census' new player numbers, they're not appealing anymore new players lol)

EDIT: one thing that I'd agree though, earlier solo duties NPCs are not receptive to players' AoE beneficial actions. This includes your AoE heals and buffs. The pain point in this quest would be the hassle of having to click the tree to heal them individually. The only 'workaround' for the moment is to focus target the tree so it'll remain clickable easily on UI, but they can definitely do better on this front.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

NGL, that sounds like any average mmo healer supposed to feel like. I didn't recall my own struggle dealing with that quest (WHM was my 2nd job leveled after my SCH main, and leveled quite close to one another at any given time up to lv60 in ShB days). On that very specific case, it feels like one that requires "take step back, deep breath, calm yourself, and focus"-kind of approach than to just encouraging 'brute force' everything for the sake of 'new player experience' that SE have tried so hard to appeal... for what exactly? (see the last census' new player numbers, they're not appealing anymore new players lol)

EDIT: one thing that I'd agree though, earlier solo duties NPCs are not receptive to players' AoE beneficial actions. This includes your AoE heals and buffs. The pain point in this quest would be the hassle of having to click the tree to heal them individually. The only 'workaround' for the moment is to focus target the tree so it'll remain clickable easily on UI, but they can definitely do better on this front.

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Yea, and that's what makes that quest specifically so hectic, because of the unique position healers are in with AoE heals and how targets work in solo duties. I honestly didn't even know that focus targeting in solo duties makes it pop in the UI myself, but it's been such a long time since I did a healer solo duty myself.
And for sure it's IS indeed about taking a step back at times, assessing the situations etc. But when you look at other job quests, there isn't that type of stuff going on, you just AoE spam until enemies die. It feels somewhat unfair for healers to be in that situation.

I do give it points for actually giving a bit of a challenge for players, I am not against that. But when the game actively fights against you in solo duties and in healer ones specifically is when I want to say something about it.

If you can't kill the monsters fast enough that you can use the break between waves to fully heal the tree, I'm sorry, but it's a skill issue. Again, you have A ONE BUTTON DPS rotation. And if you really must, you have an AoE that stuns. And not only do you have more than enough time to heal the tree but the NPCs exist as a training wheel to supplement the healing...
A healer that struggles with that quest would do a very mediocre job at Lv70+ 24 player content...

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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

I really don't know how you would even go about fixing this issue due to how it's set up. The problem is that as you level up, you gain access to more job quests which give you abilities that you should not have available in your MSQ journey.

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I had a few ideas for this. Since the vast majority of the overlevelling comes from dungeon exp and post game quests, I figured those could be starting areas to address with a redistribution of experience point gains. Other ideas I had were to reduce exp gains, but add in gear, accessory, or food rewards. Another thought was a potential token system as reward in lieu of exp. The tokens could be used to purchase gear, weapons, accessories, materia, etc for that expansion's level range.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how they could address the massive overleveling, but a redistribution and potential reduction of experience points gained across main scenario quests in A Realm Reborn and its patches seemed the most promising area to start with since thats where most of the overlevelling issues occur.

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Originally Posted by LCROSSE

I had a few ideas for this. Since the vast majority of the overlevelling comes from dungeon exp and post game quests, I figured those could be starting areas to address with a redistribution of experience point gains. Other ideas I had were to reduce exp gains, but add in gear, accessory, or food rewards. Another thought was a potential token system as reward in lieu of exp. The tokens could be used to purchase gear, weapons, accessories, materia, etc for that expansion's level range.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how they could address the massive overleveling, but a redistribution and potential reduction of experience points gained across main scenario quests in A Realm Reborn and its patches seemed the most promising area to start with since thats where most of the overlevelling issues occur.

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> overlevelling issues

That's the least of the issues that this game has with story progression system.

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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

I really don't know how you would even go about fixing this issue due to how it's set up. The problem is that as you level up, you gain access to more job quests which give you abilities that you should not have available in your MSQ journey.

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I don't think that's really an issue because most MSQ solo duties sync you down anyway so you can't overpower them/use skills you learned ahead of time. It's only the handful of MSQ missions where they send you to kill something without a glowing white NPC/object nearby that you can bully low level mobs/bosses by being over leveled/geared. Same with dungeons where unless you specifically go into the settings and choose to do them unsync, queuing throws you into the synced version, and even Duty Support/Squadrons/Trusts are synced too.
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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

It feels somewhat unfair for healers to be in that situation.

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To be honest, this game is unfair to healers in general. Doing FATEs is agony with only two buttons to attack with, and group content treats you like a vestigial limb where the tank does most of your job now.

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Originally Posted by LCROSSE

I had a few ideas for this. Since the vast majority of the overlevelling comes from dungeon exp and post game quests, I figured those could be starting areas to address with a redistribution of experience point gains. Other ideas I had were to reduce exp gains, but add in gear, accessory, or food rewards. Another thought was a potential token system as reward in lieu of exp. The tokens could be used to purchase gear, weapons, accessories, materia, etc for that expansion's level range.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how they could address the massive overleveling, but a redistribution and potential reduction of experience points gained across main scenario quests in A Realm Reborn and its patches seemed the most promising area to start with since thats where most of the overlevelling issues occur.

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To be frank I don't think dungeons are the issue for new players, very few actually do dungeons that actively. The bigger XP boosts comes from hunting log anyway.
So they really would need to start hammering XP from every piece of side stuff a new player would enjoy doing, and let's be real a new player really enjoys the leveling process when it's fast, it gives you the constant rush of progression.

The fix would have to be something more nuanced than cut down XP. For which I have no solution for outside of maybe transfering job abilities to the MSQ and making job quests largely a place to get nice looking gear from.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I don't think that's really an issue because most MSQ solo duties sync you down anyway so you can't overpower them/use skills you learned ahead of time. It's only the handful of MSQ missions where they send you to kill something without a glowing white NPC/object nearby that you can bully low level mobs/bosses by being over leveled/geared. Same with dungeons where unless you specifically go into the settings and choose to do them unsync, queuing throws you into the synced version, and even Duty Support/Squadrons/Trusts are synced too.
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For sure, I just meant that the problem of overleveling so easily causes you to have abilities you should not yet have, which causes the issue of removal of abilities when you get synched down.
And you end up in a situation where you have all of these abilities, but almost nowhere to use them outside of overworld and you kind of would want to practice using those abilities. And unless you know where and how to find optional dungeons for level 45-50,
Holy and Regen for example become abilities that are constantly greyed out when you do decide to hop onto a dungeon or leveling roulette.

And to that I don't know what the solution would be outside of moving job abilities away from job quests and into MSQ progression instead.
Or just allow all abilities in dungeons regardless, which probably would make low level dungeons from lvl16-40 waay too easy.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

To be honest, this game is unfair to healers in general. Doing FATEs is agony with only two buttons to attack with, and group content treats you like a vestigial limb where the tank does most of your job now.

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Yup and this is an issue across the games synched content.

Welcome to Eorzea.

This is probably someone from Korean/China MMO. (like BDO or Aion)

If you don't like Final fantasy theme/lore, this is probably the wrong game for you.

EXCEPT this one:

Duty Support does not allow 2 player parties, it would be such a positive things to be able to do these with 2 players & 2 NPC's. I play exclusively with my wife and found this irritating as well. We would like to learn new dungeons with NPC in the same party. Knowing SE, we are the minority and not in the priority list. Maybe 3 expansions later.

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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

For sure, I just meant that the problem of overleveling so easily causes you to have abilities you should not yet have, which causes the issue of removal of abilities when you get synched down.
And you end up in a situation where you have all of these abilities, but almost nowhere to use them outside of overworld and you kind of would want to practice using those abilities. And unless you know where and how to find optional dungeons for level 45-50,
Holy and Regen for example become abilities that are constantly greyed out when you do decide to hop onto a dungeon or leveling roulette.

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Ah okay I see what you mean now. Getting new skills and not knowing how best to use them is something I've wanted addressed too, preferably with job quests where you would THINK they would be designed to help you learn how to use the skills they JUST gave you or you leveled into, or how for signature skills like AOEs, every job should be getting theirs sooner because it's bread & butter for all dungeon runs and yet most don't get them until 30+.
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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

And to that I don't know what the solution would be outside of moving job abilities away from job quests and into MSQ progression instead.
Or just allow all abilities in dungeons regardless, which probably would make low level dungeons from lvl16-40 waay too easy.

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My suggestion in another topic is that all skills are indeed obtained on leveling up, no longer tied to job quests completion to unlock them. HOWEVER, completing at least one job questline is mandatory for MSQ progress (so you don't have to play every job, just the one you want to main), and the job quests ACTUALLY TEACH YOU how to use the skills and when. The job quest that gave you Regen no longer gives it to you for example, but completing the quest requires proper use of Regen to complete it. Other healer job quests would likewise account for how THEY work and wouldn't just be copied and pasted even when learning similar skills, so even for those doing all 4 healer questlines, they're still unique experiences.

The general theme of job quests is that you're picking up a new vocation, where in some cases you are literally the first person in CENTURIES to have earned the right to possess the job crystal. You'd think the game (both from a play and narrative perspective) would be better at emphasizing this point beyond "here you go, figure it out on your own oh and, we reserve the right to take away the skill we just gave you at any time when you sync down". The whole thing just isn't very intuitive and at times even counter-productive to getting people settled into their jobs and even their roles, and I would not be surprised if some new people don't even use parts of their kits because they don't really know when its supposed to come into play, and/or the skill feels redundant to something else they already use or teaches bad habits. (Freecure still being on WHM is mind-boggling.)