Halls of the Novice seriously needs a overhaul, now more than ever.

With the constant revamps to jobs that comes with every expansion, I think we are at the point where the Halls of the Novice not only needs a overhaul but also needs to be a requirement in some form. I am still seeing, post 70+ people not understanding the difference between their Single Target and AoE abilities. I was in a Holminster's Switch with a BLM spamming Fire 2, not casting foul, using Blizzard 4 on trash, not using freeze or flare whatsoever. I simply can't process how you get 70+ levels in the game and not understand what the difference is by just reading the tooltips on your abilities and what they do.


To add to this, I think there also needs to be some kind of tutorial that shows how a job functions in differen't scenarios when someone boosts a job to 70. Many other games have this system and there is no reason why FFXIV can't also have a similar system in place. Yeah, this isn't going to really fix players who don't care or play how they want, but it's at least a start so that they are at least informed on the basic functions of the job they are playing.

Careful now, I suggested some job rotations to a player in another thread and got called an elitist, apparently individual players are entitled to play how they want regardless of whether it effects everyone else in the party or not.

Would an improved Hall of the Novice be welcome, definitely, but whether players will actually use that knowledge to get better in duties is a completely different story. Think enforcing a type of playstyle on others is now also a reportable offensive, just can't win really.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Careful now, I suggested some job rotations to a player in another thread and got called an elitist, apparently individual players are entitled to play how they want regardless of whether it effects everyone else in the party or not.

Would an improved Hall of the Novice be welcome, definitely, but whether players will actually use that knowledge to get better in duties is a completely different story. Think enforcing a type of playstyle on others is now also a reportable offensive, just can't win really.

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Yeah. That's why I decided to post on the forums about it. I generally dont even reach out to give someone "advice" unless they specifically ask for it and it's for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It's just not worth the trouble it brings.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Careful now, I suggested some job rotations to a player in another thread and got called an elitist, apparently individual players are entitled to play how they want regardless of whether it effects everyone else in the party or not.

Would an improved Hall of the Novice be welcome, definitely, but whether players will actually use that knowledge to get better in duties is a completely different story. Think enforcing a type of playstyle on others is now also a reportable offensive, just can't win really.

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Yeah, pretty much this, sadly. If you are going to try to help give someone tips about rotations and the like, be gentle and understanding, and not at all pushy. If they show any signs of not caring, drop the subject. It can be annoying to deal with things like a BLM who only casts Ice spells, or a RDM who never goes melee, or a SAM that just goes freestyle, or a healer who idles for no reason, or a healer who only DPS's, or a tank who's actually half-naked, etc... but you've really only got 3 choices on the matter if they don't want your help. Vote kick them, leave the group, or put up with them and move on after the run.

I fear an improved Halls of the Novice wouldn't help anyway. People will just play the way they want to play. Many people probably don't even do Halls of the Novice. They totally should, though, some nice gear and glamour in em!

I think the problem is also the players willingness to do Hall. Once someone uses a boost potion it recommends Hall of the Novice. I’m sure many just skip it cause they don’t care but it leads to these kind of issues.

Also people could honestly solve this issue by just reading lol I don’t understand why people don’t read their skills. I told a tank the other day that arms length is part of his CD kit, and he had no clue why it was simply cause he didn’t read that it is a slow barrier as well. People do not read!!! Lol

Needs to be mandatory for first characters jumping to 70. No ifs and buts about it. They can re-use a dgn but use the trust technology to do a forced tutorial based on the role they picked. At the end of the dgn, there's a single coffer waiting for them that offers a complete set of gear that will automatically equip itself onto the player.

The tutoial also goes over all the common mechanics that is in the game pre-shb and "pauses" the combat to explain what they are (lookinh at you stack marker)

Hall of the Novice won't teach you anything useful if you aren't completely new to the MMORPG genre.

WoW used to require a silver medal in the Proving Grounds before you could use the Dungeon Finder for heroic dungeons in Warlords of Draenor. While the requirement was a bad design choice, both because Proving Grounds wasn't an appropriate metric and heroic wasn't hard enough to matter, rest assured I still saw tons of ridiculously awful play in my dungeons. People will try (to the extent that it's personally necessary for them) in order to get the requirement done and then go right back to being lazy and/or bad. The content isn't hard enough to matter, so they can get away with it.

As a new player who cares about doing well and learning the job/class, I would appreciate the option to actually run a dungeon with NPC to get a better idea of the role I am playing. Halls of the Novice helped remind me of some differences between this MMO and the last one I played (ESO), but that's really it. I am not a fan of mandatory tutorials, however, I would be willing to make the exception when using an item to level skip from 1 to 70. I almost bought that, but then decided I wouldn't learn much about how the game plays if I did.

I am glad I did not buy it, because with the 100% exp gain on a preferred server, I am already past level 50 and I've only been playing an hour or 2 each day for about 3 weeks.

Hall of the Novice is not aimed at people at level 70+, nor has it ever been so. It does admirably to introduce instance mechanics - "see that orange circle? you stand in it often enough and you fail the session". It does not cover DPS AoE attacks. When it was first conceived, few DPS had an AoE attack at a level below the 20s. Whenever I go into lowest-level instances, I still find tanks pulling everything and then wondering why the DPS are't using their non-existant AoE attacks.

I suspect that for those who have been playing for, oh, three or four years now, the changes with AoE alone will take time to filter down. Physical DPS no longer have to worry about TP when using AoE attacks -- and it is glorious. Magical DPS still have to worry about MP, so I can see some of them being more cautious.

As for job boosted players -- I've been through the WoW "intro to level X" theme park, and it really doesn't begin to cover what you need to know.

Perhaps if enough people were willing, SE couldo skip an entire patch cycle to provide that "instruction" for every job out there, if you'd like.

There comes a point where it's really up to the player to piece together what's best for a situation. Hall of the Novice is there to show you what the role differences are, and the basics of combat.

But if you get an ability with the description "Deals damage to target and all nearby foes", you should be able to deduce "Oh, that'd probably be useful when fighting a bunch of things at once" without the game bashing it into your head.

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Originally Posted by Selova

With the constant revamps to jobs that comes with every expansion, I think we are at the point where the Halls of the Novice not only needs a overhaul but also needs to be a requirement in some form. I am still seeing, post 70+ people not understanding the difference between their Single Target and AoE abilities. I was in a Holminster's Switch with a BLM spamming Fire 2, not casting foul, using Blizzard 4 on trash, not using freeze or flare whatsoever. I simply can't process how you get 70+ levels in the game and not understand what the difference is by just reading the tooltips on your abilities and what they do.

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To be fair to the new person... I've been playing since day 1 and I don't really understand how to use freeze or flare either. BLM in my opinion is a very poorly designed job when comparing it to a traditional Final Fantasy Black Mage. So if or when I do get around to leveling it up I tend to just use the most basic attacks as well.

nothing can fix stupid, I hate to say it :/

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Originally Posted by Blindheart

To be fair to the new person... I've been playing since day 1 and I don't really understand how to use freeze or flare either. BLM in my opinion is a very poorly designed job when comparing it to a traditional Final Fantasy Black Mage. So if or when I do get around to leveling it up I tend to just use the most basic attacks as well.

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Their rotation is the most simple its ever been. They just turned Freeze into a targetable aoe that generates umbral heart. You Literally just go Freeze>Flare+Thunder 4 for trash followed by foul. It's also in the best and most fluid state it's ever been in.