[Feedback] A New Player's Perspective (Will update if there's interest)

Preface:

So, we had summer break. I read the forums of people hating on the game experience, so I thought why not... let's give it (another) try.

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.
I'm 40 (warrior), she's 44 Summoner nearing Stone Vigil.
I've made a point of NOT explaining anything unless she asks, or gets frustrated.

I purposefully played poorly: In dungeons w/ NPCs, I would run in and AOE/get aggro and then just do nothing unless I lost aggro; no other abilities, no dodging mechanics outside of bosses. In boss fights I just did normal 1-2-3 attack only. I would regularly AFK mid dungeon while NPCs slowly chipped away at the mobs.

Observations (Not all are the GAME's fault):

1. Kids are lazy; She will NOT read walls of text. She tried the originals, but it overwhelmed her quickly.
2. Similarly the ability blocks are a lot of text where icons would work better.
3. There really is no set tutorial on how to play a specific job.
4. She has been able to clear everything almost exclusively using Ruin/Ruin II. Everything else is unnecessary; Carbuncle "gets in the way".
5. If she ever makes it to endgame, she will be deep into glamours. She loves the dress up part, and loves creeping on people in Limsa.
6. The 1-50 job quests... I myself am not really learning anything. It's fun story-wise, but I'm not learning anything about what I'm supposed with Warrior/Marauder or how I'm supposed to play. "Hit the rock with ATTACK B!" indeed. Same deal for her on summoner.

Recommendations for the Devs:

1. Make time spent for job quests meaningful/educational, 4th wall be damned.
   Quote:

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   NPC: "Do 1! Great! Now do 2! Ok! Now 3! Ok, see how you've built up this gauge? Use it to do 4!"

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2. Refine your blocks of text. Say what you need to say in a simple picture or diagram. Use icons for things. Homogenize certain things like range numbers. It's less important that it's 5 meters or whatever than it is to understand "This is an AoE around you" and "This is a ranged attack with splash damage".
3. Similarly, instead of this grants "Blah Blah", which you have to interpret what that means/look up what skills it connects to, just have a graphical icons that shows [Current Skill] --> [Next Skill in chain, with shiny dot outline!] in the description.
4. -Added- Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

TL;DR summary, as a 10ish year vet watching a 9 year old noob:

1. The game does not do any favors making learning to be competent easy, nor does it really even seem to care that you ARE competent.
2. You can beat (at least to level 50) without really even playing the game; Good for non-gamers and first timers who are there to enjoy the sites, but not so much in replay value and long term retention.
3. The core story is fine; kid loves it. She even hates Minfilla just like everyone else.
4. For additional context, she plays in Japanese and has very minimal English reading skills. She can play and better understands HOW to play Guildwars 2 than FFXIV...which is entirely in English.

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

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Yeah- for tutorials, I would love it to somehow gray the screen except characters and like... pause the entire world with arrows pointing stuff out.

Or do like God of War where it has a video showing it in action and explaining it.

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

it is an mmo though, there are things where they offload things like explanations to the community for them to explain to each other.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.

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Not to rain on your parade but the game isn't exactly meant for young children. Using someone that isn't the target audience kind of hurts the whole test.

The fact that a lot of the write up here just also happens to apply to a large portion of the adult playerbase is... unfortunate and says things that I'm not sure should be said out loud.

One thing I will say, this game is rated as 16 in the UK, you are using a 9 year old to determine how well the game presents information. Last time I checked, a 9 year old doesn't really have the patience to sit and learn something, they just want to play.

As for no tutorial on how to play a job, at low levels, they are fairly intuitive to play an if something doesn't quite make sense, you can just go after a striking dummy or overworld mob. Should make sense then.

However, the problem with making job quests telling you how to play a job, is the fact you would have to potentially go back and redo quests if you ever rework a job or change how something works.

As for using icons to display information, you still have to have a text box explaining what that icon means. I do wish the game would specify how wide of an arc a cone AoE is though as cones with the same radius can have vastly different areas that they cover.

As for buff management, they can be hit or miss as to how well they explain things, a quick example is PLD gets a trait at 80 which tells you it adds Confiteor Ready to Requiescat, however, DRG doesn't get one to say they added Dive Ready to Jump when you get Mirage Dive. So there could be improvement there. However, this could also be shown better if you use the compact view for the actions and traits menu. It shows any combos that are 100% guaranteed, however, it could be improved alot. As an example, for Heavy/Burst Shot on BRD, show that they do have a chance to proc Straight Shot/Refulgent Arrow, or Dancers showing that they have a 50% chance of procing something else. This could also be where they show Jump/High Jump procing Mirage Dive, or showing the full Confiteor combo (where they are in completely separate sections at the moment. All that to say, agree that it could show more clarity on some things.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

Not to rain on your parade but the game isn't exactly meant for young children. Using someone that isn't the target audience kind of hurts the whole test.

The fact that a lot of the write up here just also happens to apply to a large portion of the adult playerbase is... unfortunate and says things that I'm not sure should be said out loud.

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This tbh, you said everything I want to say.

So you want the game to cater to 9 year olds ?
And somehow your daughter (who seems very lovely by the way) is behaving just like the Second Life crowd, which really says something about the adults in this game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

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Some cutscenes actually do force weather and time events, so you know. I think there's an indicator of that when you look through quest cutscenes in the inn journal. I'm not sure why they don't do it with some things but do it with others. For example, the AST quests force nighttime, otherwise you wouldn't see the stars when she's explaining the Heavens to you.

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As to the tutorials, as long as it's opt-in/opt-out. I've played games for years. I don't need a gray screen tutorial slowing down every single Job quest to a crawl every time I pick up or level a new Job. "I get it, melee skills combo, I've leveled every tank and 4 Melee Jobs AND MCH; I GET IT ALREADY". Likewise, the icon trees vs text boxes should be a toggle. I do feel like the game needs to explain things like oGCD weaving - though that's a surprisingly complex topic - for example, how many weaves can you do between RDM enchanted melee skills...? :) - and some combat mechanics better. But I don't think forcing people into all the stuff you ask is necessarily good.

I also think part of the draw of this game is how friendly it is to players new to MMOs. It's why I never support "raising the difficulty" of MSQ content. That's not what MSQ is for. It's not really for replay, you're kinda supposed to do it once and then move on to other things. NG+ aside, there's no reason to do it again other than wanting to see more lore or see if you've missed any little details in the story. It's not supposed to be something you grind over and over again day in and day out that casual or non-traditional MMO players (or even non-gamers) are unable to do without banging their head into walls for hours.

EDIT:

Oh, I think they do have icon trees on the official Job pages site. Just for comboing abilities, though, but they could possibly have that sort of thing in-game, too:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/battle/

Yea, i'm not sure a 9 year old's opinion on this game is going to be worth any more than a player that only enjoys Call of Duty. Unless these are just your opinions behind the guise of your daughter.