New People, Old Zones

I've noticed a lot of attention given to FFXIV lately on YouTube, different forums and newsletters. Even though this mmo is reaching a decade old (including 1.0) I see it is just now taking off.

With that comes lots of new folks just starting out the game. With the jump potions and Deep Dungeon and Heaven on High - its much easier for the new players to level up and catch up.

But with these methods of leveling I feel the new players are going to skip or lose out on the great story FFXIV has to offer. How do we address this?

My idea came from Pyros and the bunny fates. Yep! Put these in the old zones synced and spawnable by doing other fates in the zones or weather or whatever - I feel it will fill these zones again and allow the new players to participate in something other than quests and leves - which now they do by themselves.

Give these the bronze, silver and gold chests with significate rewards and I believe it will give something for everyone at every level to do - in the old zones.

Yes? No?

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Originally Posted by Ticks

But with these methods of leveling I feel the new players are going to skip or lose out on the great story FFXIV has to offer. How do we address this?

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I think side quests are enough if people want to know about the general lore, because there is a ton. The main problem lies in how 2.X MSQ stretches quite long, and can get players demotivated at the low points. I'd rather have the devs revise 2.X MSQ to streamline it a bit, get rid of the tedious FedEx quests, boost XP on important quests to make the difference.
Revisiting old areas is fine as it is now, as they are extensively covered in the MSQ.

People buying MSQ jumping items made a choice to do so, I don't think they'd really want to go back there. Not until they reach the endgame at least. And this could be addressed by the New Game + feature for 5.0.

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Originally Posted by Ticks

But with these methods of leveling I feel the new players are going to skip or lose out on the great story FFXIV has to offer. How do we address this?

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Why do we need to force feed lore and stories to new players who might not be that intrested in them in the first place?
And if they are intrested in them, dont you think they'll go looking for such things themself at somepoint? They dont need to discover everything in the level 30 area at level 30 - they can come back month later and see all the great stuff they missed intially too!

I'm also not really sure what you are refering to when you're talking about lore and great stories being missed - do you mean the FATE descriptions? Because if you do... yes, some of them are pretty good, informative or amusing. But they certainly dont offer that much of deep lore or amazing stories - some do, the majority doesnt.

They attempted to get us back in the old zones several times now - atmas, yo-kai, to an extend maybe bluemage - and each time people went, got their rewards within two weeks and left again because lets face it: The FATEs arent fun and once you have what you need, you rather not go back. This will end up the same way with your suggestion: Two weeks in which the vets will get their stuff and after that the old zones are deserted again.

And frankly I dont see an issue with that - FATEs scale their difficulty based on how many people did the last one in the zone, so for 95% of FATEs a newbie can solo them with their chocobo, if they wish to do so. Having a lot of people in the starting areas also doesnt really help to build a community or anything, because for the most part its just a bunch of people rushing from FATE to FATE and if they're communicating at all, its to /shout at each other about how they have to wait with the next FATE for everyone and what they're gonna do to your mom if you dont. Its just filling the areas with bodies, not with players.
And from what I've observed of new people they're either so dissorientated by all the new stuff they're confronted with that it doesnt matter to them if there are other people around or not - or they already played MMOs and are familiar with new zones being dead and real endgame being further down the line.

I dont know if you miss the FATE-trains we had in south shroud and northern Thanalan when FATEs were the best source of exp, specially for dps - I can tell you that I dont. And that I'm very happy for all the new people who dont have to go through that.
I also dont think we need to force anyone back into the old zones, just so newbies who might not be intrested in lore and stories to begin with, can fail at FATEs because you suddenly need 15 people to beat them instead of being able to solo them.
Those who care about lore, background, stories and exploring can and will come back - and those who dont, wont. I dont see a problem here.

I mean... They could just make Overworld content not a complete waste of time...

People miss out on all the content in the overworld because it's simply way more efficient to spam (Deep) Dungeons until your eyes bleed than it is to actually participate in things like FATEs, enemy chaining and side quests.

Things need to be worthwhile to do, in order to get people doing them and frankly 99.99% of overworld stuff is just crap. Crap EXP, crap Gil (Level 69 FATE... 120 gil... Woo -.-) and crap currencies (GC Seals from FATEs, gosh if only those were relevant ever... Also, if only you didn't get like 10x more from doing a Dungeon and trading in the loot you get for Seals...)

Essentially, buff up exp gains from basically everything in the overworld. Make FATEs give Tomestones (Poetics in 1-60, Mendacity at 60+, bump the Mendacity up when ShB comes out) and put in some gear at various levels that can be purchased with them. Make everything give Gil rewards comparable to Dungeons.

Make it somewhat meaningful to actually spend time in the overworld so people aren't just concerned with farming Dungeons 24/7 because it's 1000x more rewarding (Outside of BLU which you spend like 2 hours farming mobs with and you're level 50 because they went too far the other way with exp gains...)

People interested in the story/lore will still go to the old zones.
"Special" FATEs really just sounds like S-Ranks 2.0 where a few people will put in the effort to spawn them, then the call goes out and half the server swoops in to do the special FATE then disappears again. Including all the bickering Hunting involves like "early" pulls, people not getting into parties and all that jazz.

Two weeks ago or so I happened to be around for the fox FATE and Ixion, last week for the coeurl regina and really they pretty much felt like hunts.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Why do we need to force feed lore and stories to new players who might not be that intrested in them in the first place?

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Because it's a Final Fantasy game first and foremost and a MMORPG second (in other words, it's a FF game played online with thousands, even millions, of other players, rather than just a 'MMORPG with the FF name tacked on', and FF games (especially the SNES and beyond titles) are renowned for immersive narratives. And yes, that extends to the MMO titles, which broke the mould as far as MMORPGs went in showing that deep and immersive storytelling can work in online games. The mentality of "as it's a MMORPG it's all about endlessly grinding raids for shinez and street cred" is really not all that correct here.

Certainly there is endgame and raiding, but it's only part of the story, and I think those who take the above view of the game being all about the endgame are usually the ones who end up most disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Ticks

But with these methods of leveling I feel the new players are going to skip or lose out on the great story FFXIV has to offer. How do we address this?

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I think you're describing 2 different types of people.

The people I know that are using the skip potions AND are FFxiv first timers dont care about the story anyway. And the friends I know that REALLY care about the story arent wasting their money on skip potions because they will take all the time in the world going through every little piece of story. One of my friends started SB around the time I did and still hasnt hit endgame. ._.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Because it's a Final Fantasy game first and foremost and a MMORPG second (in other words, it's a FF game played online with thousands, even millions, of other players, rather than just a 'MMORPG with the FF name tacked on', and FF games (especially the SNES and beyond titles) are renowned for in depth narratives. And yes, that extends to the MMO titles, which broke the mould as far as MMORPGs went in showing that deep and immersive storytelling can work in online games. The mentality of "as it's a MMORPG it's all about endlessly grinding raids for shinez and street cred" is really not all that correct here.

Certainly there is endgame and raiding, but it's only part of the story, and I think those who take the above view of the game being all about the endgame are usually the ones who end up most disappointed.

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Just because its a Final Fantasy game doesnt mean people have to care about lore and story. While I agree with you that thats a huge part and selling point (and certainly the reason I started playing the game and stuck with it), I dont see why this has to be the case for everyone. I've met enough people over the years who didnt care much for the story, lore and characters, but still enjoyed the game for its gameplay - which to me is totally legit aswell.

I love that all that lore is there and I'm going out of my way to learn abut it - but that doesnt mean that everyone has to. The game is perfectly enjoyable without having to learn every bit of lore. New players are also already presented a good deal of lore and stories. And on top of all that I personally always felt that it was a lot more rewarding to figure out stuff "by myself" (for example by going out of the way to discover a FATE descirption, some NPC dialouge or a sight seeing spot) than being pushed at it by the game.

I'm not saying that new people shouldnt explore all that lore - but I dare say that they should do it on their own terms, at their own pace and according to their intrests. Specially during ARR they'll be busy with figuring so much basic stuff out that I cant imagine that pushing them towards MORE lore would lead to them enjoying any of it.
And as I said: FATEs can be solo'd with your chocobo, so there is no need to make veterans go back into old areas for the 2 weeks it takes them to get the rewards only to leave FATEs to the lonely new guy again.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Just because its a Final Fantasy game doesnt mean people have to care about lore and story.

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Pretty much.

People play games for different reasons. Let's knock it off with this FF cultism, trying to shove the story down their throat. If they don't care about it, they don't care. They may like the game for other reasons.

After finally getting the Pyros and Hydatos mount, I never want to look at another bunny Fate again. Just... no.

There's only one real solution and that's to streamline the lv1-50 experience. Give players more than 3 buttons to press. Prune and tweak those intentionally dragged out questlines like Titans dinner and crystals for Garuda. Put an aetheryte at the Waking Sands, lore or not. The story and questing experience has vastly improved in HW and SB, but ARR is where new players get their first impression. We've all had to tell a friend or new player at some point "stick with it, it gets better later".

If, after that, players still don't want to play the story, that's fine. Not everyone is into stories, preferences vary. You can't shove it down their throat and expect them to pay money for it.