What most turns new players off from FFXIV?

IMO one big issue is there are too many servers so when you make a new character there are barely any other new players around playing with you so it seems like the game is dead. Another point to go along with that is it's pretty much impossible to try to find an FC or whatever yourself as there is no way in-game to do it (even the out of game stuff sucks). Also party finder should unlock right away.

I have invited three friends to join the game, and all of them told me that while they were extremely excited to follow up the story, the ridiculous amount of fetch/talk quests and the fact that between every bit of interesting plot developement there´s a dozen courier quests made them and a bunch of levels to obtain, frustrated them.

Precisely because they loved the story so much, they wanted to continue playing it, and not be pulled away from an epic evil god chasing to go collect 10 chocobo tails.

None of my friends will play with me because of subscription fee and time sink.

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Originally Posted by enthauptet

IMO one big issue is there are too many servers so when you make a new character there are barely any other new players around playing with you so it seems like the game is dead. Another point to go along with that is it's pretty much impossible to try to find an FC or whatever yourself as there is no way in-game to do it (even the out of game stuff sucks). Also party finder should unlock right away.

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What would seriously help with this is if there is an estimate of how many players are active displayed on the servers somehow. I don't even know how the server listings sort themselves in the char creation menus (least active top and most active bottom?)

Streamline the MSQ at the very least.
The get X and Y, then go to Z...and go back to Y then finally return to X just to go to the new A NPC is annoying when it
has nothing to do with what we're doing. Most of it is better pushed aside as a random quest if anything.
The number 1 one is the Tea thing for Titan, which was comically unnecessary.
Making the MSQ easier to push through will let new players catch up with us, people who like the story
get to it quicker, and those of us who want to push through be done with it. Everyone wins.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

because FFXIV is a mmorpg not a single player...if we could level with MSQ alone we would be done in 2 days.

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And to be honest, I am sure a lot of people don't really play 100% for the storyline to start with.
It's FF, yea sure but doesn't mean everyone's going to play for the story. It's not the best story in the series.
[IMO it picks up at HW. Horrible in 2.0]

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

The number 1 one is the Tea thing for Titan, which was comically unnecessary

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Are you speaking of the 'banquet' in Costa del Sol? I'm assuming so, since "Tea with Titan" doesn't appear on my list of completed quests.

What does that series of quest do for you? When you start, you have just finished up Haukke Mansion and are free of worries. Except for rumblings about Titan. Do you rush off at level 29 to face Titan? No! You don't even have a job stone yet.

In order to prove yourself worthy (and, basically, level up to 34 or 35) you are given tasks to ensure that you have the skills to beat Titan. Yes, it seems like a lot of "get me" quests, but it introduces several new areas to play in game while ensuring you gear up. You get an introduction to 'harder' instances with Brayflox.

I suppose they could have just had you go out around Costa del Sol and work at FATEs until you hit the appropriate level for Titan. No questing involved.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Care to post a link to support this? Perhaps you might want to speak for yourself and not for most people.

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I hear that every day from new players in my FC. Other things I hear, lack of large group content pre 60, too many fetch quests (tasks not quests), repeating everything over and over again i.e dungeons for story/ level lock out or tomes,lack of open world content, RMT, long PvP queue, lack of houses housing and very slow/long Duty finder queues (since Palace of the Dead).

All 50 end game gear is irrelevant, could fix this by bringing a system in to augment the gear with higher ilevel stats. Another thing why does palace of the dead need to be 15 why not just have it unlock from level 1. Players get used to partying with people from the start and get to see how others play.

Make FATES interesting why just leave quirky FATES just for events i.e doing certain FATES on mounts or all players changed into frogs you have to eat so many flies. Well anything except the same fetch,kill and escort that we see in FATES, levequests, quests, story, guildleves etc. At the same time stop with every new piece of content being involved in new/old FATES or repeating dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Underdog2204

Lets not forget Garuda's series of quests for a corrupted crystal...

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Yep. Oddly, this one didn't bother me near as much. I think because it wasn't obnoxiously long and at least had some small relevance to the story. Sure, the nonsense of you making the wrong corrupted crystal or whatever was silly, but it still played slightly into battling Garuda. Could be coming off the Titan fight left me with enough of a high to slog through it unnoticed though. I do love Titan. :D

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Originally Posted by Aylis

Another one that comes to mind was that hunter storyline from Dravian Highlands, the one with the Miqo'te girl. Some of the moments that stuck out in my mind as questionable. The first being where she wanted flowers, so we'd run to talk to her, after doing so the flowers would spawn right at her feet. Um, did you really need me to run all the way over here when they were right on your feet? The other was a point where you had to again talk to her, she would walk away and vanish, then we'd talk to her a spot maybe 10 feet away, this was repeated four times. Call it a lack of dynamics thing but quests like that would be far more interesting with the npc walking the whole way while giving live speech while we follow them.

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I... don't recall this one. Which probably says a lot about the quest itself, xD.

Damn fates for events and fetch quests, soooo many fetch quests...
As example, the Yo-kai event which as we all know is fates. I actually feel bad for players that are new as they may not get any credit, some do not even have mounts yet....
SE need to move away from the fetch quests and event or (Relic) tied into fates, it's just a bad decision and makes them look like they are not creative and use recycled content
I am still playing though after 3 years, do take breaks here and there though. Still like the game

The most commonly cited reason from those I know to have tried the game is the slow pace of combat in the lower levels. I ultimately think this comes down to two major problems:

1) The game takes far too long to give you any really fun abilities. The first 20-30 levels for many jobs is simply spamming a handful of skills mindlessly. I understand that this is likely intentional in order to not overwhelm beginners, but this really isn't fun for any player already familiar with MMOs.

2) The GCD feels too long at low level. This one is really frustrating to me because the pace of combat at higher levels is actually fairly fast as most jobs have multiple sets of OGCD skills to weave in constantly. Unfortunately new players don't see any of this for a long time, and since it's never explained anywhere most don't even realise they can do it. They end up sitting there for a full 2.5s waiting to use their next skill.

The solutions to these problems would be to lower the levels that many skills are acquired and to teach players about using OGCD skills. I also think the jobs with lower GCDs such as MNK and NIN could do with being highlighted as such for newer players to pursue from the start if they want a faster combat pace.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

I... don't recall this one. Which probably says a lot about the quest itself, xD.

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Yeah...lol. I only remembered it cos I did it maybe a day or two ago before that post. Had it been over a week I probably would have forgotten about it too, xD.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Also every city besides Gridania is a confusing mess to navigate through.

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Yassss.... played since beta test and I still get lost in Ul Dah (ala alts trying to attune/quests) :|
Mainly in the GLAD guild area...


The turn off when I started was some of the fetch quests that seemed more like side quests rather than MSQ...
Id did serve the purpose to lengthen things, but it also felt semi-pointless and tiring. That feeling you get when you're in a very slow elevator, playing elevator music, and waiting forever for the doors to open while you're late for a meeting. *Incessantly checks watch*
It could be said that it's to build 'relationship' of your character and the people of the area, but the early MSQs like that just didn't really seem to do it well. If that was the intention, it needed to be more than a typical fetch.

'I wanna make tea, go get me these things by killing deez dings.'
*runs halfway across the map, kills stuff, returns*
'Gimme thingies I shoulda told you about the first time you went out, but I'll just waste your time, instead'
*Runs to the other side of the map again to kill things*
'Great, now go fetch me the water over there'
*Throws bucket in water. Fills bucket. Takes bucket.*
'Cool, now go hand it out to the lazy bums nearby'
Me: "WHO THE HEL DO I GOTTA PUNCH TO MAKE PEOPLE GET OFF THEIR ASSES!?"

Worst offender was Y'shtola and one of the lalafel Immortal Flames in Horizon.
'Tell this person this stuff'
*Walks 5 feet*
'Awesome. Go tell that first person this thing.'
*Walks back 5 feet...*

The story definitely. Had a few friends and work colleagues who have picked up the game and put it down because of the story.

It's not even that the story is bad either. It's more that it was designed as the primary way to level and as a result there's so much tedium between major plot points. There's like 100 quests between ifrit and titan story mode battles 95 of which are totally unrelated to the story main plot points and irrelevant but you MUST do them.

There's so much junk in the story that many of the core points are lost. They could easily remove 90% of the msq quests with no real impact on the story as a whole. Make them optional side quests that way people can do them for exp if they desire. Or they can can just jump straight to the next real plot point.

If they did that I'd be more inclined to create a second character as well. As it'does be that much faster to get them caught up in the game skip all the chaff focus on the main plot points and get through. And I'd probably enjoy it a lot more as a result.

But yeah friends and colleagues various people I know have all said the same. The story has some cool points and moments but there's so much trash between them. It just detaches you from the plot

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Originally Posted by synesthetic

Having 3-4 hotbars packed with skills and macros is probably overwhelming for a lot of people too. But all those other buttons aren't there for alternative playstyles like in other games. They're there because you're somehow largely expected to know how/when to use everything. But since you can realistically be carried all the way to endgame, maybe there's not enough time or incentive to really learn combat. Alternatively, combat is maybe too complex or poorly taught.

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Wait, are you actually supposed to be switching between hotbars during combat? The fast pace of it all makes this cumbersome as all hell. I pretty much try to cram all of my skills (at least the ones I deem useful) into first two visible bars. I even changed the hotkeys for switching bars to make accessing these skills easier.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Wait, are you actually supposed to be switching between hotbars during combat? The fast pace of it all makes this cumbersome as all hell. I pretty much try to cram all of my skills (at least the ones I deem useful) into first two visible bars. I even changed the hotkeys for switching bars to make accessing these skills easier.

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The hotkeys shift-# for switching hotbars is very unintuitive for sure. I've turned it off on mine just because of how annoying it is to do accidentally.

My husband (who's much newer than me) feels the pace is VERY slow, he feels like it will take forever to accomplish anything. Too much is locked behind the MSQ, and while he enjoys quests and actually takes the time to read them (which I don't), he hates that his leveling is so intricately tied to the MSQ that grinding isn't even an option. He resubbed for POTD, but doesn't like they way it's implemented. He's currently back to Diablo 3 for the new season, so who knows when/if he'll come back to FF. He put in alot of hours and feels like he hasn't accomplished much in all that time.

Boring forgetful text reading story. Compared to other MMO's that have a talking NPC at every corner.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Wait, are you actually supposed to be switching between hotbars during combat? The fast pace of it all makes this cumbersome as all hell. I pretty much try to cram all of my skills (at least the ones I deem useful) into first two visible bars. I even changed the hotkeys for switching bars to make accessing these skills easier.

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I don't switch between bars, but the people I play with all seem to have their UIs set up to have at least three [combat] bars visible at all times, and they're packed.
Like I have one bar for just hitting plain #'s, one for Ctrl-#'s, and the last for Alt-#'s. I still mouseclick for a lot though. A couple of people I know have a fourth bar set up using Shift-#'s. And then if they're using a summoning class, the pet bar makes a fifth one.

Looking at my WHM, a class which I've seen people admit to playing when they "don't want to push buttons", I have 25 out of 36 buttons that I use frequently, then a handful more which I have to keep on ready access for emergencies. The rest filling in the last spaces are for those times I end up in low-level content.
It's about the same for my BRD. About 27 buttons that I frequently use.

It wasn't quite as bad before 3.0. But even in 2.0, I could not comfortably fit everything onto two bars, for any of the classes I played.

In contrast, other games I've played nowadays try to limit gameplay to requiring only about four buttons, give or take.

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Originally Posted by synesthetic

In contrast, other games I've played nowadays try to limit gameplay to requiring only about four buttons, give or take.

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How is limiting gameplay and content to 4 buttons ANY fun? Thats beyond stupid. FF is built around using a bunch of abilities and spells in fights, having the GCD at all hinders this system terribly. F*** the GCD system seriously.

I have an alt that I am using to re-experience the story, but I have to say that the "filler" quests in the MSQ is sapping my enthusiasm to continue further.

Here's an example:
The Ladle in the Darkness

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Sergeant Cracked Fist needs a hero to make a stew.

Desperate to raise the garrison's floundering morale, Sergeant Cracked Fist has taken a lesson from Gridanian history,and humbly requests that you make a stew and distribute it among the troops. First, obtain the three required chunks of basilisk meat.

You have obtained enough basilisk meat. Take it to the cookfire just outside Camp Bluefog's northern gate, and ad it to the bubbling cauldron.

It will take a little while for the meat to be cooked through. Watch the cauldron until the stew is ready.

Your keen instincts tell you that the basilisk stew is now ready. Scoop it from the bubbling cauldron.

You have three steaming bowls of basilisk stew expertly balanced in your hans. Make your way around Camp Bluefog and give them to the neediest soldiers.

You have doled out all the basilisk stew, which seems to have had the desired effect. Report your success to Sergeant Cracked Fist.

A jubilant Sergeant Cracked Fist thanks you for inspiriting his troops. They now remember their purpose, and stand ready to do their part in the impending phase of the operation.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

How is limiting gameplay and content to 4 buttons ANY fun? Thats beyond stupid. FF is built around using a bunch of abilities and spells in fights, having the GCD at all hinders this system terribly. F*** the GCD system seriously.

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I don't think anyone said to limit it to 4 buttons?
The point from my original post was that combat here has a much higher learning curve than in most other games I've seen, which makes the divide between good and bad players extremely wide here, and this clear division exacerbates the "this game has too many assholes" problem that I know has been a turnoff for newbies (or everyone really). For example, I'll see a good DPS parse for 1.6k on something in a dungeon, then another DPS doing only 300 on the same thing. Not even afk/autoattacking, some people legitimately -trying- do that little, even though a BLM spamming just Blizzard1 all day does more.

And that's just for DPS. Every class has points defining what clearly separates "good" and "bad" players, and frankly, content is designed towards players actually leaning towards the "good" end, but is meant to be loose enough to allow everyone to carry everyone on the "bad" end. And people get tired of carrying like that, and some people get indiscriminately cranky. On the other end, there are plenty of newbies who take any advice as a grave insult.

So again, the game in this way encourages unfriendly/intolerant player behavior and "maybe there's not enough time or incentive to really learn combat. Alternatively, combat is maybe too complex or poorly taught."

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Originally Posted by myahele

Here's an example:
The Ladle in the Darkness

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Funny thing about this and the other 4 quests that follow. Before HW hit, if you weren't level 50 by the time you got to Blue Fog, or slightly undergeared, this quest, and the others in the series involve you in a little bit of combat, explain what's going on in Norther Thanalan so close to the enemy and prep you for that last bit of XP you might need to get to level 50. You can't finish that 4th quest until you hit level 50.

Are they meaningless? Only if you don't believe you deserve that GC rank of Second Lieutenant. They are exactly the sort of things you would do to hearten the troops for the big push that shortly follows.

If you came late to the party, of course you want to whiz through this to get to the 'good stuff'. Perhaps SE will accommodate you, perhaps they can't without radically revising the story line: Cataclysm anyone?

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

Boring forgetful text reading story. Compared to other MMO's that have a talking NPC at every corner.

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Imagine that! A game that actually encourages you to use your imagination.... Shocking!!

The things I have heard from my friends who won't play.

1. Combat is slow and unexciting.
2. Fetch and deliver quests everywhere.
3. Artistic differences

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Originally Posted by Platinumstorm

The things I have heard from my friends who won't play.

1. Combat is slow and unexciting.
2. Fetch and deliver quests everywhere.
3. Artistic differences

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Then it's entirely possible this is not their kind of game. Halo is not my kind of game, but you won't find me posting (on it's official forums) proposals to fundamentzlly change it because I am free to do something else. By the same token if this is not someone's kind of game then they are free to do something else.

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Originally Posted by Platinumstorm

3. Artistic differences

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If I may ask, are we talking terrain and character/mob model aesthetics, zone layout, UI, or some less visual form of art?

For instance, the fact that at least on my lower end computer, ground terrain and brush seem to flicker constantly during movement and at-distance drawn portions of terrain can include some really huge features to be adding in at some 100 yards away (chunks of mountains, etc.), whereas I won't find those issues or certain not as much in MMOs with a more cartoony or watercolor-ish style. If I were to correlate those issues with the art style, would my dislike be due to artistic difference (preferring one style and what all it includes or what compromise comes with it, over another)?

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

Boring forgetful text reading story. Compared to other MMO's that have a talking NPC at every corner.

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I may be blowing anecdotal evidence out of proportion, but I do at least know that I'm not the only one who will turn off NPC voices because they prefer their imagination over the (typically mediocre at best) voiceactor.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

If you came late to the party, of course you want to whiz through this to get to the 'good stuff'. Perhaps SE will accommodate you, perhaps they can't without radically revising the story line: Cataclysm anyone?

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I apologize for how tangential this will be, but just some food for thought:

Let's say there's a MMO that added playable races as the game progressed, but had them locked behind certain bits of quest and particular levels. Similarly, that race would then start at the acquisition level, and, because they had a completely different MSQ from character creation up to a point some eight to fifth of the way to level cap beyond when you could acquire said race, they were automatically progressed in story as well. The idea is that you now get to see the 'other perspective', wherein the actions of your previous character can even have an effect on the side-MSQ of the new one, while simultaneously limiting the playerbase's "rarer" races and allowing races that are supposed to be naturally more powerful to feel more powerful at creation (in this case, because their entry level is some third or half way to level cap for another race) and allowing their MSQ to feel entirely their own so much of that development time being missed by, or outside the interest of, those players who will only play the traditional or humanoid races (hook em' with plots they already know and hopefully enjoyed, and make them enjoy it even more through just the right amount of variance to be new yet connected — ominous and provocative).

Okay, long intro, but here's the reiteratable part: you can release side-content, visible to both the original and redacted MSQ lines, that can replace or be substituted for the MSQ without having to cut out any of its prior development time, thereby wasting it, nor only attracting the interest of new players (not that they'd know there had even been a change, if the redaction had been made directly to the original line). In many cases, it can even have a much greater sense of identity, or can even build up fellow hero archetypes that might be used later, by the original or any other redacted line, as well.

I think the game could greatly benefit from having active skills come in alot sooner in the leveling process with the passive traits coming in later, namely weaved into your "job" levels so you are still getting an active every 5 lvls. This seems like a nice compromise between the current "to bring in new players into the genre" and the vet mmo-er that might want to give this a shot. Could also lead to a faster entry into teaching a new player their roles, for example if a player gets shield oath by 15 he has it as his tanking toolset when hes tanking already, then could get sword oath at 30 to potentially start toying with the idea of stance swapping for dps/phase pushes etc.

Adding my two cents here.

So my mother is a veteran World of Warcraft player, but as a Frost Mage, she was incredibly salty at the issues with her class and the Proving Grounds content which acts as a barrier to a lot of content. But wanting to try something new, I invited her to try FFXIV. Maybe this is a bad example, but she didn't like all of the unskippable cutscenes early on. They've been mitigated since then for sure, but there are still some that are unskippable.

I'm not saying I agree with her--on the contrary, I love FFXIV's story--but I get how new players might not want to invest themselves into the story of a game they're just trying out.

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Originally Posted by Gumbercules

I think the game could greatly benefit from having active skills come in alot sooner in the leveling process with the passive traits coming in later, namely weaved into your "job" levels so you are still getting an active every 5 lvls. This seems like a nice compromise between the current "to bring in new players into the genre" and the vet mmo-er that might want to give this a shot. Could also lead to a faster entry into teaching a new player their roles, for example if a player gets shield oath by 15 he has it as his tanking toolset when hes tanking already, then could get sword oath at 30 to potentially start toying with the idea of stance swapping for dps/phase pushes etc.

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One of the big things I'd like to see is just that we get our skills at a level in which we feel like we could really put them to use, or are basically just what were were looking for around the time we got them. The 10% Rampart mitigation at level 2 does nothing for a GLD at its point of acquisition. There's no situation at which we're going to find use for it until we're actually tanking multiple enemies, which only need occur if enemies link or someone in the party has an AoE (and even the earliest of those isn't for a while). Similarly, 51 levels, or 9 from the level cap seems an awful late point in which to add GLD/PLD's single hit burst mitigation. Every additional skill can be a way to add something to what it means to tank on your job, or recommend or allow some additional step or new paradigm in what it means to be a tank in general, and yet so many of our most identity driven abilities are given late, the basic scalar abilities (e.g. Rampart, Foresight) given too early to have a noticeable effect, and numerous other skills just provide more of the same (neither Bulwark nor Sentinel really all that different from Rampart; useful, but lackluster). If the game could just give a sense of class and job identity that much sooner, whether that involves accelerating ability acquisition in the beginning (and therefore slowing it later) or not, I think that'd help a lot with retaining trial players.

The requirement to plow through the story is the one biggest turnoff, from what I've seen. Even several of my friends who actually do play regularly and have done so since the open beta always sigh and complain when a patch is released and they're "forced" to skip more cutscenes. Naturally, if one doesn't want to be involved it becomes far less interesting, but the sheer scope of the ARR main story quests is an enormous wall to climb for those trying to catch up to the veterans. I don't know if a jump potion or a slimlining of the MSQ is the way to go, but they will have to do something to prevent this wall from growing even more in 4.0.

Biggest turnoff for the newcomers that I have met are:

1. Boring gameplay, for most of the classes untill you become level 30, you only use 2-3 skills max. WHM was my first class to reach level 30 and doing Stone and Aero was very boring. It does not help that ARR mobs were very easy to kill and do not do alot of damage (they fixed it for HW content though)

2. Story takes its time to develop and there are alot of fetch quests. Minfilia gives you an Eorzea's version of mobile phone and she never uses it to receive your mission report.

3. The rush crowd. One of the things that I dislike when doing a dungeon as a Mentor with another max level player and 2 newcomers is seeing that max level player push around the newcomers, so he/she can finish the dungeon run fast. Newcomers learn nothing, they do not get to enjoy the content and often they get bullied for being new to the content. When it comes to toxic community, FFXIV is a better community then World of Warcraft and League of Legends, but if you look at what happens both ingame and on the forum, you see a rise of toxic behavior.

I have heard many complaints from the experienced MMO crowd that combat mechanics are extremely dull

And that damn 1.5 GCD is a huge problem

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Originally Posted by Laerune

2. Story takes its time to develop and there are alot of fetch quests. Minfilia gives you an Eorzea's version of mobile phone and she never uses it to receive your mission report.

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TBF, Wiretapping is a thing and something Garlemald can be reasonable expected to be able to do. Not that it justified the sheer about of back and forth we had to do. If anything the scene of us receiving the LS could be cut out and the story would still make sense

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Originally Posted by Dalvy

I have heard many complaints from the experienced MMO crowd that combat mechanics are extremely dull

And that damn 1.5 GCD is a huge problem

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Might have been a typo on your part but it's actually 2.5 seconds.

I used to dislike classes with a 1.5 second GCD in WoW and preferred the ones with a 1 second GCD. By the Twelve, the things I would give to have even one class with a 1.5 second GCD and with less or none of the stiff animation locks in this game. It only takes me 0.5 seconds to swap targets and queue an ability and the rest is just... waiting. General movement, melee positioning and dodging happens independently from combat rotation with a proper setup for controls.