Keeping the game basic for new players?

I was reading through the last live letter notes and came across this.

Q: Do you plan on adding buffer or debuffer roles?

A: At the moment we plan on continuing with the three current roles: tank, DPS, and healer. If we added more roles to these three, it would become more complicated to decide which job fits into which role, and I believe new players will be joining the game in 3.0 so we don't want to make it difficult for them to understand. For the time being we would like to keep the number of roles as it is as we move forward.

Really?? Keep in mind the question asked is irrelevant. The answer is where the problem lies "In Bold". Is the dev team assuming that new players are incapable of figuring anything out? This is not the mindset that i am looking forward to in the evolution of this game. That's fine if he wants to keep these 3 roles but his reasoning for doing so is not a good one.

I dunno, even current players seem to have a hard time grasping our simplistic combat system without anything else more complicated being thrown into the mix. You give your average modern day gamer too much credit.

It's because it's a "baby's first time" game, that's why. They got this game as simplified as you can get...
Semi off-topic but I remember in Beta forums, a lot of us asked for Cura - Curaga - Curaja x Fire - Fira- Firaga spells
instead of Cure I, II and III and they responded because they didn't want it to be to complicated to understand.
It's a little insulting to be honest and the games already watered down to even a caveman can play this game...
so that's a sad reasoning.

Yeeaaah that reason seems a bit....wonky. If his reasoning for not adding a new role is to not confuse NEW PLAYERS...then why not remove everything ever? Even tho I have played many MMO's I was confused when I started this game....every new player will be confused by SOMETHING when starting a new game. Even more so if this happens to be their first game, in which case the existing three roles will already confuse them anyway. I dont see the logic in this.....the "i don't wanna confuse new players" thing never stopped any other MMO from pumping out as much new content/roles/races as they could.

So I agree with you, the reasoning for not adding a new role makes little to no sense, I would like a more legit reason XD.

I'm sure they also said that they'll be keeping the same sort of stats on the gear, without having any sort of 'gear set attributes' because it would be too complicated. They must think we're all thick as shit...

Yeah. It's not just about the roles. That method of thinking goes into whatever new content they think about introducing. Straight from the horses mouth.

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

I like this game very much but the thing I dislike about it.

The combat forces you to play by their rules, no matter what each battle is the same just dodge attacks tank heal and fight you cannot back out of the fight and devise a plan or kite and revive targets keeping the monster alive till people's weaken wears off for another round.

You die retry - die retry like a revolving door that just takes you to the same spot over and over.
Even Paladin can't raise during combat.

I remember FFXI BCNM fights where whole party would wipe me as Paladin pops invincible raises whm. whm raises everyone else me kiting and if we won or lose at least we did it our way not the games way.

Here its if you croak its back to the drawing board.

Forgot to put my reason which is- let's say the healer is doing great but the paladin cant keep the hate which causes everyone to die but everyone else was keeping up or lets say DPS screws up now not enough damage to kill mob or healer cant heal good enough forcing the other healer to take all the weight. its punishing others if tank dies no recovery because even if hes revived weaken status or if 1 healer dies its not enough to keep them all up cost to much to revive other healer causing others to die.

then rewind and some people stop trying get bored of same fight begin to get sloppy.

Then you have the problem on your hands where a Whole Team says to themselves after trying the fight over 50-60 times do I wanna try this again for a item im burned out on this run and which no reason to go back and help others or do it again.

Causing less help. Other than this its a great game and fun I cant wait for the golden saucer.

i think that sooner or later, they must stop to think at the new player like this, indeed they need help for grow and learn. but dev are not the only one that must do it, it's too the community role to help the new one around.

they need too to free themself from WoW shadow and make them game stand by itself... but well it's another debate... a lot of thing must be changed in them way for increase the game value. the question it's do they will do it?

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Originally Posted by Magis

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

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Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

This is why Japanese developers are falling behind. Making a game simple is not going to make it better. Chess is probably the best example of a game that follows the "Easy to learn, Hard to master" that I feel every game should follow. Several games franchises that come to mind are Demon/Dark Souls, Street Fighter and Smash Bros. to name a few. Here are examples of games that easy to understand (maybe not so much for the Souls series since its aimed at hardcore/true-gamers) but difficult to fully master.

As for FFXIV keeping things simple is only a cover up for their very poorly implemented class/job quests that are all really just fetch and trigger event battle, quests. If SE took more time in some of these quests like explaining rotations or even how to use moves properly then new gamers will be more informed and thus more attune to their class and ultimately more comfortable in harder content.

Examples of quests I would do if I was in charge:

Marauder (level 15): Upon learning "Tomahawk" the player will be sent out to the farms in Lower La Noscea where s/he must help the farmers keep the Mandragoras away from the vegetables. However the player cannot enter the fields and must stay behind the fence to avoid stepping on the delicate patches so the must resort to using "Tomahawk" to grab the Mandragoras and keep them away from their targets. This teaches the player that "Tomahawk" can be used to grab aggro from a distance and also teaches them the range of Tomahawk while being fun and playful.

Lancer (level 26): Upon learning "Full Thrust" the player must talk to Godbert who will require your help in breaking some stones to help "feug sheui" his surrounding landscape. This, however, will require you to know the basic rotation TT > VT > FT and will require you to always keep up the Heavy Thrust buff to keep up the damage to break the stones. He will then join you half way an proceed to challenge you to a contest to see who finishes first. So in addition to the normal rotation you must now include "Leg Sweep" for extra damage. This teaches the player to always start with Heavy Thrust and reinforces one of the rotations that a LNC will need to know when s/he changes to a DRG. There will be another quest against him at 50 that utilizes both rotations along with cd's but not the exact "perfect" rotation described in the DPS section of the forums as that is a bit complicated for normal gamers.

These quests are examples of small QoL changes that should be made that allows a player to fully understand their class while still being fun and informative and not the usual go here/there, trigger event, enter battle, turn in quest. Quests like these solidify the importance of the skills they have on their class and their uses. SE please take note.

TL;DR, flesh out your class/job quests more and dont reduce them to simple fetch quests then players can feel more comfortable with their class since they understand how it works and plays and will in-turn proceed to harder content to test what they learned.

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Originally Posted by Armell

I'm sure they also said that they'll be keeping the same sort of stats on the gear, without having any sort of 'gear set attributes' because it would be too complicated. They must think we're all thick as shit...

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Err.. I bet a huge percentage of the playerbase has spent a tremendous amount of time playing WoW. Gear sets are sorta the norm over there. Hell, it's the Gold Standard of MMOs and, uh, it's 1000000x more complex than this game.

As for the lack of buffing... it makes me sad. I remember playing a priest character in other games and standing on the corner in noobville just so I could buff the crap out of lowbie characters as they ran out into the world for the first time. It was great.

He's got a bit of a point though... People playing this game have a hard enough time with the current classes and current content as it is. They have numbers we can never see, retention rates and exit surveys and everything. They can see what levels people get to, which quests cause the most headache, whether certain skills are underutilized.

If that data leads them to feel that complexity is anathema to this game's community then I am not at all surprised.

I'm pretty sure the "it's complicated for new players" reason you see a lot is just their token nice way of saying no and they don't seriously believe that.

The majority of the combat is based around the encounters, which would be fine, if it wasn't for the need to play within the rules of the fights. The problem is it's ALL encounters and NO player skill, if you mess up, it's because you didn't know the fight, or didn't do what the boss told you to, not because you played poorly.

This will be something that has to be looked into if the game is going to evolve and grow.

Unfortunately the new generation of gamers are used to the 1 hour tutorial each game has at the beginning. And tips and hints for boss battles. Remember playing zelda ocarina of time and figuring out how to beat certain bosses? That was fun but new generation gamers would generally have a much harder time figuring it out cause they are uses to pop up text boxes telling them what to do.

And unfortunately this game caters to players whove never played an mmo. Its a pity cause this game has potential to be a great with complicated and fun mechanics

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Originally Posted by Kiara1

And unfortunately this game caters to players whove never played an mmo. Its a pity cause this game has potential to be a great with complicated and fun mechanics

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While that is true. Everyone else also had a MMORPG that was their first. And somehow, we handled it well.

I would be kind of insulted if I was a new player and see how dumb they consider new players.

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Originally Posted by JimmyDean

I was reading through the last live letter notes and came across this.

Q: Do you plan on adding buffer or debuffer roles?

A: At the moment we plan on continuing with the three current roles: tank, DPS, and healer. If we added more roles to these three, it would become more complicated to decide which job fits into which role, and I believe new players will be joining the game in 3.0 so we don't want to make it difficult for them to understand. For the time being we would like to keep the number of roles as it is as we move forward.

Really?? Keep in mind the question asked is irrelevant. The answer is where the problem lies "In Bold". Is the dev team assuming that new players are incapable of figuring anything out? This is not the mindset that i am looking forward to in the evolution of this game. That's fine if he wants to keep these 3 roles but his reasoning for doing so is not a good one.

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I marked some parts

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Originally Posted by DenariusJay

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

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Is that due to the player base, or the way MMOs have been developed now? It seems content has become so basic and easy that players blow through it in a single month causing down time between patches. With a lack of some large overarching goal (cause taking time to get something is hard), players quit until the next patch due to having nothing to do. Heck, this makes sense giving your time frame of 2-3 months.... the time a patch takes to come out. I recall new raids in Vanilla WoW taking a month or longer to clear (some of it was because Blizz put up rooster blocks IE: BWL), and was appalled that the Naxx remake was cleared in what... 3 days? How is that even sustainable? Heck, when XIV launched, people complained of boredom in 2.0 and the excuse was "you blew through the content". Except this was being said 3-4 months down the line. The fact was one of the biggest tools MMO devs have to stretch content out was thrown out: leveling. It could have set the pace for people, and let the devs focus on a balanced end-game, rather than this "catch-up" that is happening. Heck, CT1 was suppose to lead into Coil day 1, but got delayed to 2.1, and now it's alternating ever patch (this may have been the plan from the start, so I may be wrong).

It doesn't help that this game's difficulty makes the grinds become more mind numbing and the super fast verticle progression make the rewards meaningless. This gives a terrible combo of: This content is boring and I don't feel motivated to do it. I myself have been jumping from thing to thing trying to keep myself entertained, doing high-level BTN now.

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Originally Posted by Amberion

While that is true. Everyone else also had a MMORPG that was their first. And somehow, we handled it well.

I would be kind of insulted if I was a new player and see how dumb they consider new players.

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Indeed. There are games with much more complicated system than XIV yet many players of all types play them (casuals and hardcore). SE shouldn't dumb the content down for new players, rather... they should uses system to help new players learn. They did that well with the quests and tutorial system, but still don't have faith the new players aren't complete idiots?

Lets focus on hardcore players and ignore newbies and filthy casuals.

Look how that worked out for wildstar.

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Originally Posted by Lebenoshl

Lets focus on hardcore players and ignore newbies and filthy casuals.

Look how that worked out for wildstar.

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A person can play casually and still want more complex and difficult content. How much time a person puts into the game has no bearing on the difficulty of content. There are "casuals" playing twice a week clearing coil. It's kind of sad that wanting a more complex system (and let's face it, the bar is pretty damn low in FFXIV), with difficult content is now considered "hardcore".

Tim Buckley did a great writeup about Wildstar which kind of illustrates the shift in player mentality. I will link to it here. I get that lots of people are crying out for hardcore content (not exactly the point of the OP but it ties together) but one thing this game is doing is taking the MMO genre outside of the traditional space of PC only. It's appealing to a whole other demographic.

People like my son who is 9yo. He is fully capable of playing and keeping up with me (he's level 50 now and we have been starting on end game content and getting his ilevel up) but only with the controller. The mouse and keyboard layout is a little overwhelming for him right now. He is no hardcore pro and his rotation could use some work but he's DPS and he does well enough. My wife is another one who is slowly learning to play. For the most part all she plays are games like Candy Crush, Bejeweled or once in a while Skylanders. Just like my son, she could never use the mouse and keyboard setup but can figure out the controller a little easier. As it is, the game is a little intimidating for her at times but it eases you in at a pace that seems to work well for her.

It seems that most people (posting on the forums) expect everyone who plays to be on the same level if skill that they are and if you arent on that level of skill, you shouldnt be playing. What a crummy way to look at it. I like the way that SE is handling this game, its something that is possible for people with little to no experience in MMO's or even games in general can pick up and give it a try. Who knows, people like my Wife and Son may become the next wave of hardcore MMO enthusiasts all because this one particular game was user-friendly enough to allow them that taste that got them hooked.

TL;DR
If your issue is the part you highlighted in bold because it "dumbs down the game" just remember that you are not the only type of player SE is targeting. There are other games coming out that may end up satisfying your needs if this game isnt cutting the mustard. This is but a single game in the Sea of MMO's Let it be it's own thing or at least offer ideas from within the parameters the devs are working within.

Making something accessible and making something with depth is not mutually exclusive. I feel like the OP completely misrepresents the quoted statement. Making something easy to understand does NOT mean the same thing as making something easy or simple or devoid of depth.

I agree that this game isn't doing a great job at showing players the basics. Better quests for classes/jobs or something along the lines of WoW's proving grounds could be helpful.

I think having /more/ job quests some being a requirement for progression in the end stream of content would be helpful. Some of the job quests teach but a lot of them are too easy to pass on knowledge indirectly (or too complex that the quest should just "ask" and directly teach the methods). The purpose here being players would be encouraged to go deeper, and then SE may design with a bit more leeway.

Can make them challange job quests that are fun and difficult and any of the very straining challenges would not be required for story mode. I know my rotations are not perfect on BLM but I've seen a lot of BLM who have no idea when or where to use their tier III spells, a quest could help them boost their dps so much (I help when I see it, and when they want the help - but again I'm not an expert either, perhaps SE could challenge and teach me.. I would honestly appreciate that).

Indirect teaching where possible but perhaps we need more teaching in general, and not the "press w to move forward" but alright 10 monsters in a coliseum all stronger than you, they will three shot you, you're a BLM - here are some tips, if you fail here are more tips, congratulations for being awesome here is " " (how to use sleep, lethargy, mana ward and wall, ect ect - can get funky with the objectives so long as they are sure teach). I think vanity gear would be cool reward but that might increase the cost of making these quests, perhaps then some other big payout giving encouragement for players to learn their class even if they have no plan of end game.

Also I really miss the ja, ga suffix XD.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

You give your average modern day gamer too much credit.

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Pretty much this.


I remember one of the quotes about why they took away our ability to check/uncheck quests in our log to show up on the hud was because "it confused people when their quest disappeared from the hud"

REALLY!? (for those who don't know until... phase 3 or 4. You could use the check boxes next to quests (like they ones they added in 2.1 but they were actually useful) to totally hide quests from your UI. Instead of the current system where if you have less than 4-5 quests you can't do anything about them showing up)

Also don't say "you can hide that UI element" it is also used as the timer/score board for every instance.

Too many of you associate simplicity with bad and complexity with good.

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Originally Posted by Zarzak

Pretty much this.


I remember one of the quotes about why they took away our ability to check/uncheck quests in our log to show up on the hud was because "it confused people when their quest disappeared from the hud"

REALLY!? (for those who don't know until... phase 3 or 4. You could use the check boxes next to quests (like they ones they added in 2.1 but they were actually useful) to totally hide quests from your UI. Instead of the current system where if you have less than 4-5 quests you can't do anything about them showing up)

Also don't say "you can hide that UI element" it is also used as the timer/score board for every instance.

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Yeah, I recall that post. That's the bar that has been set, ugh. As an "alternative" they made the recommendation window... which is totally worthless. Thankfully the tracker returned, though it's kind of dumb that the tracker will always track quests, I'd rather have it clear unless I am doing something important.

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Originally Posted by Lebenoshl

Lets focus on hardcore players and ignore newbies and filthy casuals.

Look how that worked out for wildstar.

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Lets look at how that worked out for every MMO prior to WoW coming along and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

EQ? Still releasing expansions and on a subscription based system.

EQ2? ^

FFXI? ^


Wildstar focus on hardcore? They let you solo your way to level cap. Yep really hardcore there.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

I dunno, even current players seem to have a hard time grasping our simplistic combat system without anything else more complicated being thrown into the mix. You give your average modern day gamer too much credit.

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This I ran too many titan ex with people who just suck , there was this one group where 3 peopele would die constantly form the first plume , they wouldn't stack tight behind titan`s booty, they would put gangolas real close together, after 4 wipes you would think they'd get the flow but nope, I even told them that they sucked, they did respond but saying I sucked which threw me off when I was always the last one alive

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Originally Posted by Zarzak

snip

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Don't forget that vanilla WoW and to a lesser extent TBC, would probably be considered "hardcore" now-a-days. Funny enough, those two games is where Blizzard saw the sharpest of their subscription gains, plateauing around Wrath, and then falling like mad after Cataclysm.

Short-sighted development and quick turn-around without a public test server means I can guarantee you at least one of the following things, if not all of them, will coincide with the release of Rogue and Ninja; it will not be well balanced, it will have at least one broken or useless skill, it will have at least one or two skills with a bug or unintended effect, it will have at least one useless cross-class ability, and it will be confusing for veterans and new players alike for a month or two until they straighten it out through patches and fixes; once those are done and people figure out how to use it - it will be "balanced".



"Keeping it basic" is code for "we're scared we'll make even more mistakes".

It has nothing to do with newer players.

Nothing at all.

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

I believe it.

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Anyone who played 2.0-2.1 as a Warrior knows what I'm talking about~

I, too, have a problem with Yoshi's statement. At some point--and I would argue that point has already passed us--one has to say "Okay, the flow of new players has slowed enough that it's time to stop catering primarily to them." Think of the game as a bag of microwave popcorn. Leave it in the microwave too long trying to get those last few kernels to pop and you'll end up burning the rest of it and ruining the whole bag.

And I don't know how Yoshi gets the idea that the expansion is going to bring in a substantial influx of new players. What it will bring in is a bunch of players that aren't new, but got bored and moved to something else. And if the game is still same old same old they still won't have a reason to stick around.

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Originally Posted by Dhex

"Keeping it basic" is code word for "we're scared we'll make even more mistakes".

It has nothing to do with newer players.

Nothing at all.

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I believe it.

The fact that new players can lv up 1-50 in a week and have access to hl dungeons with bad gears and no experience by skipping 50% of the game doesn't help at all either imo.

Anyway some of us say that the game should teach each job better to players, come on the game won't show them how to use their brain, they have just to read skills descriptions and test it, or listening advices from others (when it's useful). We have very few skills, tutorials that no one read, guides on the net etc etc, if certain players are just lazy and don't care about the way they play, you can't blame SE for that ^^'

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Originally Posted by Loki

The fact that new players can lv up 1-50 in a week and have access to hl dungeons with bad gears and no experience by skipping 50% of the game doesn't help at all either imo.
Anyway some of us say that the game should teach each job better to players, come on the game won't show them how to use their brain, they have just to read skills descriptions and test it, or listening advices from others (when it's useful). We have very few skills, tutorials that no one read, guides on the net etc etc, if certain players are just lazy and don't care about the way they play, you can't blame SE for that ^^'

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Well you can compare XIV in terms of XI with this one picture:

http://i.imgur.com/Gr2pAUy.png

The tools needed for newbies to learn the game is ALREADY in place, it helps them learn the basics. Outside of that... players should learn from experience (the point of leveling from 1-max level) and their fellow players (sadly the DF and speed of combat in general stifles player communication outside of the <Hello!> and <Thanks for the party!> messages). As a bit of nostalgia, I did like XI's way of throwing you into the world to figure things out on your own. I didn't seem to mind it back then, probably because everything was new and full of wonder. Than again that is the case with most MMOs.

Stripping any depth or complexity to the game just makes it more boring, and is a poor excuse implying that newbies are too stupid to learn. The case is most people will learn given enough time, through experimentation and player interaction. This can be further helped by using quests and the like to teach players how to utilize their job correctly.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Don't forget that vanilla WoW and to a lesser extent TBC, would probably be considered "hardcore" now-a-days. Funny enough, those two games is where Blizzard saw the sharpest of their subscription gains, plateauing around Wrath, and then falling like mad after Cataclysm.

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While the original 40 man raids were alright.

I can't support calling anything where the primary mode of leveling is "solo following yellow ! marks" a MMO. The simple fact that you can reach end game without ever communicating with another human being in a MULTIPLAYER game is the problem with today's MMOs.

That is without (to use the Southpark reference) "staying in the forest killing boars" aka killing stuff MANY levels below yourself for TERRIBLE amounts of experience and taking MANY MANY times longer than actual group play.

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Originally Posted by Zarzak

While the original 40 man raids were alright.

I can't support calling anything where the primary mode of leveling is "solo following yellow ! marks" a MMO. The simple fact that you can reach end game without ever communicating with another human being in a MULTIPLAYER game is the problem with today's MMOs.

That is without (to use the Southpark reference) "staying in the forest killing boars" aka killing stuff MANY levels below yourself for TERRIBLE amounts of experience and taking MANY MANY times longer than actual group play.

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While it was easier than previous MMOs, it has no comparison to what exists now. The world was much more open back then. Players would be constantly exploring, fighting, questing, and just traveling through Azeroth. Leveling took time (though not as much as FFXI), giving players ample time to learn their class as skills came in. Elite mobs and even other players brought danger to the world (for anyone who remembers those damn sneak T-Rexes in Un'goro). Later on though, flying mounts let players skip most battles, leveling has been so nerfed you can buy max level characters, and everything became instant teleport like FFXIV is (which is probably where they got the idea from).

While you technically could level to 60 without talking to anyone, you'd have a very difficult time completing elite quests which required a party of at least 2-3 people, and you'd miss out on dungeon gear and quests. There was no LFR or LFG system, so player interaction was a must. Also it was all on your own server, so people knew each other to an extent. If you were a ninja looter, your name would be black marked, spread on the realm forum.

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Originally Posted by Magis

There was no LFR or LFG system, so player interaction was a must. Also it was all on your own server, so people knew each other to an extent. If you were a ninja looter, your name would be black marked, spread on the realm forum.

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While the elite quests n such weren't necessary so wouldn't contradict what I said originally. You are right on this point. At least early on WoW still had SOME redeeming qualities (such as still putting some value on a reputation). But Blizzard took what was already a "baby's 1st MMO" and destroyed the whole MMO community. And are basically the sole reason trolls exist in MMOs. Prior to WoW the idea of a troll was pretty much unheard of in an MMO beyond the noob levels because they would never make it to high end.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

Too many of you associate simplicity with bad and complexity with good.

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And why do you think that is? Maybe because its 2014 and we had simple already back when Atari was around.