The Leveling Experinece (Also the new player experience)

I'm not sure where to put this, so please mods feel free to move it if it's in the wrong place.

In short, the new player experience does a very poor job showing off the good qualities about the (non-narrative) gameplay, and it's getting worse over time, as positive changes pile up over time.

Lets use a really easy example,Paladin. As new things are added to the class, to prevent massive button bloat they have to remove old abilities. This is fine. However, almost all of the things they remove are old class buttons and old class mechanics, that do not get replaced until much higher levels.

In Heavensward at level 60 Paladin had 2 combos, one for mp regen and one for everything else, and 3 combo finishers (goring blade, rage of halone, royal authority) and what you should be doing was heavily dependant on the situation.

In endwalker, level 60 paladin has 1 combo, 2 combo finishers (royal authority, goring blade.) The rotation is 1-2-4-1-2-3-1-2-3 on loop it's *very* boring.
Also, this scares me away from any roulette with low level content in it. Do I want to que as a paladin and risk having only 3 buttons because I get a level 50 or 60 dungeon? No, I do not. I geninely believe this hurts que times for new players in dungeons that are not part of the current expansion. Because once the initial tomestone farming flurry has died down, I am usually simply not willing to risk getting an Alaxander run on the raid roulette or a Dzemael Darkhold in the leveling roulette. This problem is worst for tanks, who both have the simplest rotations to start with, and are the class most in demand for ques.

And every change that lead up to this situation was positive. Tank stance changes were net positive, paladins new moves were positive, ect. But the result is that the version of the class under level 70 or so is dull. And almost every class, including crafters, is in a similar state. For me, having to go though the base game and 2 full expansions before I can finally play the class I'm interested in in a way that's mechanically satisfying is a [B]big[B] ask. I believe that it is doing long term damage to the game, and that damage might be overlooked right now but I do not believe it will stay invisible forever.

In this specific example, I'd say that SE should look to red mage and samurai for guidance. Their entire, core rotation is in place by level 50 at the latest, and I believe this needs to be the case for *every* job. People should be having fun with the combat, not bored out of their head, suffering though it to get to the story for 100+ hours.

(PS, I love this game to death, I make this complaint in an attempt to help more new players love it as much as I do, instead of bouncing off the low level experience)

pretty sure combat was always simple until later levels
just tell the sprouts when u see them it doesnt get good till heavensward (story too)
free trial goes up to there for a reason

I think this is a Paladin issue. I actually quit FF14 from 2.0 to HW because i couldn't level gladiator anymore after 28.

20ish hours of gameplay i get a third attack button wooo!

Warrior is exhilerating at low levels. It all depends on the class.

Offensive wise PLD is snooze til later levels but it's defensive utilities and traits can't be available early game like clemency otherwise cheese.

I believe PLD is suppose to be "newbies first tank" so I think it's suppose to be a bit easier for newcomers to get into the swing of tanking so you won't get a whole lot to play with until later.

But it's not Paladin. Again, Paladin is a convinient example.
It's paladin and gunbreaker and dark knight and monk and dragoon and ninja, ect. It's not all classes, but *most* classes are just incredibly dull until level 60+ (often level 70+) because they simply do not have their core rotation in place.

That's why I used Red Mage and Samurai as examples. They do have their core rotation in place at 50. 90% of what makes them gun to play is there Red Mage is ~70% of the way there at level 35 (when it gets it's 2nd melee button and so melee is actually worth doing)

Warrior does come out looking better than the other tanks at low level, yes. But that doesn't negate the overall point.

Also, people shouldn't have to play though 80 hours of game before the mechanics are fun. It doesn't matter that it's free if the majority of that time is not spent having a good experience.

The reworked SMN is the same way. You're doing the same thing until level 86.

Some classes have always had horrible low level gameplay. And there are those of us around that remember spamming a whopping one button 90% of the time during low level dungeons while tanking.

Flash

Sure, things are truncated a bit more than they used to be at the lower levels, but in all honesty not much has changed. A lot of the things removed from the lower level gameplay weren't really a part of any rotation. Crowd Control skills, Ninja poisons, etc. And of course, the TP removal changed the need for some of what was removed, as you no longer need filler after dumping your TP gauge AoEing.

This is basically what happens when the class becomes too "bloated" and "button heavy" and it becomes their turn for a rework. Abilities get merged or baked into talents, quality of life is enhanced and the rotation becomes more simple as the new "foundation" for the job.

Sadly the negative aspect of it, is it becomes slightly boring as well.

Long standing issue in the game and only getting worse. Doing CT as a SMN is a painful experience, most boring it ever has been

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alklios

Warrior is exhilerating at low levels.

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Can you name anything that Paladin/Gladiator doesn't have that Warrior/Marauder has at level 28? Because I've leveled both and they have the same tools as one another at that point. The only difference is that Warrior has a cone aoe threat and Paladin has a point-blank aoe.

Unless you are only referring to back in ARR...but you said PLD is a snooze until later levels in a way that seems like you meant now.