ARR: new player perspective

Just my 2 cents after finishing the ARR main quest for the first time.
I started playing recently and I find the game enjoyable, but ...
Sorry if I repeat things that have been said in the past.

The first 20ish levels are fine: the main story, the first 3 dungeons, they're good. What the game is great at - at that time - is holding your hand and showing the various things of the game. An experienced player like me will go fast on some things, but some other new to the game and to MMO in general will be able to understand things bit by bit.
The side quests of the classes are brilliant, there's a little story and it's really enjoyable (played archer/bard and marauder/warrior).

Level 20-35: what a drag. Getting to Toto-Rak is a pain. The Haukke Manor story feels pasted on (dungeon is ok) and the plethora of fetch quests are really boring. Brayflox is a good dungeon again in a really really un-heroic piece of storyline. And then Titan is a freaking hard fight (hardest I found until now), great indeed, but really painful passing it.
And then ... plot twist! Nice plot twist (predictable? maybe), juicy but...
It all resolves at level 47 onward, the whole 35-47 is another painful slog, especially Coerthas, it diverts your attention to something else, you're hoping to get to the bottom of the plot and the story keeps only going sideways. Damn. Stone Vigil and Garuda are the only enjoyable parts in that long fight with boredom.
And then it all resolves abruptly in 3 instances one after the other: Westwind (shortest I've seen), Castrum Meridianum and The Pretorium. With all lieutenants packed in, with the whole response to the Empire threat packed in a lot of cutscenes in the same couple of dungeons.
That could have been better spread, the "Eorzea rising" could have arranged to take levels 40-50, get into each castrum with each grand company and mabye battling each lieutenant independently (Rythan, Nero, Livia), leaving Gaius, Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea together like they are now.

Honestly, the last two dungeons being 8-man with forced cutscenes are a bit of a letdown, lots of high level people darting through, and me and my friends were not understanding what was happening... we got lost a few times and just skipped ahead when the major fight started ... meh! (Nothing against high level people, I know I acted like this in other games so guilty as charged, just perfectly clear that is bad when it happens to you).
I understand why 8-manning them, as most of the coming trials for the follow up quest will be 8 man, and these were meant as a "teching" experience, but together with all the cutscenes (stop yapping, Gaius, will ya?), and all the bosses packed together, the overall "story" ending was pretty ... underwhelming.

I know this won't change and the quest reduction coming with the new patch will not address this (creating few dungeons from scratch isn't an easy task), but damn what a great potential spoiled!

The Coerthas stuff is an important setup for later.

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

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I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

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There's definitely a lot of fat that could be cut. You could probably streamline the story down to about 8-10 hours without losing anything profound.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

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If people dislike the MSQ for the first 50 levels that much, they won't like the rest either.
Sure, the storytelling is a bit more focused in HW, but it is not all that different.

I'm recently in the same boat, and completely agree.

But you're not done with ARR yet (the worst is still to come, apparently!) - there's another 100 Seventh Astral Era Quests (post-Ultima content) to go through until the first expansion.

I was fully prepared for this and am now committed to the game (having bought the full release) but yeah, I won't be rolling any alts in a hurry.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

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Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

If people dislike the MSQ for the first 50 levels that much, they won't like the rest either.
Sure, the storytelling is a bit more focused in HW, but it is not all that different.

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Actually, I detested the MSQ of ARR so much that I quit the game for 2 years shortly after finishing it the first time - despairing of the game ever being more than this wooden vehicle for bad storytelling. It's only because I'm a bored MMORPGer who occasionally revisits stuff that I came back.

HW and ShB might be slower than some stories, but they at least have the same level of depth and character development that you see in other Final Fantasy RPGs, replete with some really interesting plot twists and turns. ARR is almost devoid of any of these things - the only time the story really pays off is the banquet sequence, and I imagine that most people who were unmoved by the narrative (or not at least stubborn enough to finish in spite of it) didn't get even half that far.

We should be getting a rework of ARR, there are parts that are a clear learning curve for the developers. A friend new to the game found it was a slog and we juat reassured that it gets a lot better for it in HW.

Nowt wrong with the plot itself, it could better streamlined to clear some of the filler, which I believe is what they are trying to do.

AAR is fine, it is the 2.X stuff that sucks and I hope that is the part that they spent the majority of their time fixing. Because the entire questline sucks so bad until the very end.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

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Not high hopes safe that they might cut some of the most boring part. That would help a friend who just finished the level 20ish stuff not being so bored there.

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Originally Posted by AduroT

The Coerthas stuff is an important setup for later.

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I had a hunch, but to be honest, it's the ballet of going all over the place and not getting to the final confrontation with the Inquisitor sooner which is YAWN

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Originally Posted by Refth

I'm recently in the same boat, and completely agree.

But you're not done with ARR yet (the worst is still to come, apparently!) - there's another 100 Seventh Astral Era Quests (post-Ultima content) to go through until the first expansion.

I was fully prepared for this and am now committed to the game (having bought the full release) buy yeah, I won't be rolling any alts in a hurry.

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I know about the next batch of quests (and it pains me as I'm looking to get into the machinist), just hoping it's not all gathering flowers and visiting all Eorzea with no fights.
Fun fact also: I managed to unlock the Gunbreaker before the Machinist... (and that looks like a slap in your face)

I expect the revamp to remove alot of quest that involve run here and talk to this person, then run all the way back to the waking sands... 100 times.

I do not expect them to change the dungeons/detailed quest with cutscenes/quest involving character intros at all. And the story obviously will not change since it is tied into all the expansions after it. Dungeons/Primal fights will more then likely not change at all.

The fetch quest and running back and forth were bad in ARR outside that it was in my opinion no worse then any other mmo I played. WoW, Aion, EQII, Archeage, ect all had the same design of quest.

ARR story is by far the weakest in ffxiv as they obviously had to develop it fast with the complete game overhaul between 1.0 and 2.0. but I do not see lvl 1 to 50 as bad though. No worse then any other mmo, a good bit below what you would expect from a final fantasy offline though in terms of storytelling. Now post 50 but pre HW that is horrible way way way too drawn out. HW is a big step up in story telling, SB is ok but alittle weaker then HW in the story department still good though, ShB is arguably the best story in any mmo to date rivaling the better offline ff titles.

If anyone absolutely hates the story in ARR though (the actual story not the fetch quest part), ffxiv might not be for you. While the telling of it improves drastically all the stories are tied together and future expansion expand on the existing story and explain what is "Really" happening.

I just finished the ARR story again last night and gotta say there's a LOT of setup on those quests for things you'll see in future expansions as well as important characters are getting set up (though there could be an argument that the developers only used those threats in later stories because the characters already exist)

I'll agree with you on the section in Coerthas. I felt like it was both too vague and too long. My original play through I felt like I didn't understand what they were talking about enough for it to prepare me for the story when that became relevant, so maybe a rewrite on that dialogue would help. There is also a LOT of fluff in that part of the story with no one in Coerthas being willing to talk to you at all until you get new letters of introduction that you have to get by doing other people's chores for them (if you hate that, then I have bad news for you about the Moogles)

But the worst parts to me were things like constantly being pulled back to Vesper Bay, yet the town didn't have an aetheryte, so it was just a waste of time to go to Horizon to get to the Waking Sands. They also could cut a little of the fluff before fighting Titan, and as they already said they're going to fix, there's that spot near the end where they have you at level 46 quests then jump you to level 49 the very next one, and if you weren't over-leveled, you have to go grind out three more levels on your job.

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Originally Posted by Klaleara

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

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Too add to what I said. As I jsut got the best example, why the hell does AST lose their card draw ability at lower levels!? It makes no sense to me at all why they do this. Not saying classes need their super nukes at level 10, but give em SOMETHING to enjoy.

ARR's msq steps being unbearable, especially after 3 sets of ability prune, is a pretty common theme.

I heartily recommend story and level skips to anyone I know from other MMO's that want to play, at this point. The first 55 levels are an extended, drawn-out tutorial now, and in an inverse of every other game in the genre, are more than half the time spent leveling to 80 if you just want to hit 80 (and its significantly less painful to do on an alt on a preferred server with a set of +xp equipment at a later date)

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Fun fact also: I managed to unlock the Gunbreaker before the Machinist... (and that looks like a slap in your face)

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SB and ShB classes just require the appropriate level + 2.0 completion.

You could unlock Red Mage and Samurai before you were close to the end of the ARR story if they didnt require completing Praetorium. (and if you only played when you had rested xp, you could possibly squeak out Gunbreaker and Dancer with enough +xp sources)

HW classes require you to be in Ishgard, which is anywhere from 6 to 15 levels worth of XP away from the end of praetorium.

It seems to be the unpopular opinion, but I really liked ARR just as it was - so much so that I went from a free trial to immediately pre-ordering ShadowBringers, and I can't say if any of the other expansions after that would have been enough for me to do that.

I will say that, I found 1 thing particularly disappointing, however: Livia sas Junius battle. Having that been included in the 8-man dungeon didn't give me that satisfaction of defeating her I *needed* after everything she'd done, and that I would have gotten in a regular FF game where you control all the characters. The Gaius/Ultima Weapon were a lot less personal, so having a giant group didn't detract from that the same way.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

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I mean I haven't played a FF game that wasn't heavily story-driven and content that was gated behind the story itself. Its what the series is known for and honestly it shouldn't be a surprise by the amount of story involved. As for the narrative being garbage, ARR story was being driven by 1.0 and the aftermath of the calamity essentially, so it sort of won't make sense if the person wasn't there so that part I get. I do believe intro video for brand new people upon starting up FFXIV but it only plays once. I also like to point out, it's easy for people to also not realize that ARR is about 2 years' worth of content with just the base game alone.

I do agree that some of the quests in 2.0 to 2.4 needs to be streamlined and hopefully, 13% of quests they are streamlining (honestly that's not a whole lot) are the silly fetch quests.

If one doesn't want to wait for the patch to drop and truly are not here for the story they can simply buy the MSQ skip pot and be done with it that is always an option and go to HW or Storm Blood and not worry about it.

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Originally Posted by Klaleara

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

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It's funny, the skills from the base class like lancer use to have debuffs attached to them (leg sweep was a good example as it placed a slow buff) for example and we had some cross-class skills we could use to add small variety.

I also think its harder to strike a balance without having to redo all the dungeons in ARR to compensate for adding an additional weapon skill. I mean honestly its all burned through in DF I think thousand maws is the only place that is freaking slow due to the slime you have to walk through.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

Actually, I detested the MSQ of ARR so much that I quit the game for 2 years shortly after finishing it the first time - despairing of the game ever being more than this wooden vehicle for bad storytelling. It's only because I'm a bored MMORPGer who occasionally revisits stuff that I came back.

HW and ShB might be slower than some stories, but they at least have the same level of depth and character development that you see in other Final Fantasy RPGs, replete with some really interesting plot twists and turns. ARR is almost devoid of any of these things - the only time the story really pays off is the banquet sequence, and I imagine that most people who were unmoved by the narrative (or not at least stubborn enough to finish in spite of it) didn't get even half that far.

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Well, that is your opinion, and I disagree with it. The storytelling in ARR is not bad, and the number of fetch quests is no worse than in most other MMOs.
The story is a bit unfocused because it is "our" story - the story of how we go from unknown adventurer to famous Warrior of Light. It also has to do a lot of worldbuilding and introducing characters and events that will become important later on. A few too many "pray return to the Waking Sands", but even that does not actually happen all that often.

Like everyone else said, the devs said the revamp is going to remove 13% of the ARR quests and streamline all the remaining ones (unless it introduces an important character).

I still believe they should have alternative starts to the game that come accelerated into content (later in the game/level) and prebaked with basic lore and combat tutorials in as exciting a way as possible (making tutorials that are fun and intuitive), ARR is great for some people but it's a near (or actual) game killer for others and the lore isn't /required/ to understand later content.

It certainly could help but any person prepared to leap forward and use their two gils to spin some logic together could piece a story that was handed to them, especially as the game's story isn't some terribly complex mystery crime puzzle (which means big concept explanations and clear actions in context could do well in the majority of circumstances). Like it would be nice to know about white aethercite in advance to seeing it the first time much later in the story, but eeeeh if you didn't know already what it was you could guess it did based on the context of people bringing it up and mentioning it again and the game even does a sort of "I assume you may have forgot about this" and vaguely explains it again at that moment. You miss build up but the value of build up is not equal for everyone for some it's meaningless and other's its why they love a certain character (like playing save forwarding single player games out of order, it's fine and some may prefer it differently which is also fine), and with the new game+ system they can just go back once they determine it's worth it rather than being demanded to pay it in advance of whether or not they'll actually care about it.

In terms of an MMO I found ARR's story not bad, particularly in comparison of having played a few MMOs with story I can't even try to recall because it just wasn't that interesting lol. There were a few moments ARR that had me annoyed though but (busy work quests, or sometimes info about characters I don't care about lol), I understand they're trying to cut down on that (though for example personally I don't really care for ARR Minfilla and she's not really a trim-able character lol). Yet if someone sold to me I had to do it and 150 other hours of other story to catch up to content that I was actually interested in I'd probably just bounce (assuming I was a new player, which in this case I'm not since I played ARR while it was new content). That would be a lot of time investing in something I didn't prepare to invest in (given the perspective of a new player seeing current content on twitch, youtube, or trailers for expansions- 150 hours is like how much time I put into doing almost all the content in Witcher 3 a game clearly designed around that single player value). Moreover the dev team has learned and improved over that time frame so if you experience their most rocky/unrefined content first and know you've many many more hours to go, unless you've a friend who can hype you along the way, you might just be out as it's not quite clear when it'll "get good". As I saw on reddit and here where people saying to those who don't live for the lore "stick with it, it gets good" and I think many players will think "why isn't it great already? why do I need to wait for it to 'get good'? . . . Okay I might be willing to wait but why is it nearly an entire 98% clear of witcher 3 worth of time to reach there?".

Even if they cut down story content, as they are, it's still significant of a required investment and cutting down isn't the only thing that could help (due to the structure of the MMORPG your compelling combat content, that tends to get restructured around expansions, is also delayed in that mountain, besides also potentially your friends and the general population of the game as a whole). While I don't regret doing the story, and so I don't want to set the perspective that it has to be purged because humbug, I don't think it's mandatory to understand the fairly straight forward story of this game and I think you'd gain more than you lose (both the to players and for the company as players may stick around easier) by offering an optional alternative accelerated meticulously crafted start to the game meant to be an introduction polished with all the knowledge the team has accumulated thus far. "The best we can do to start you off well" vs ARR which was "the best we can do in dev crunch hell as we revived the game from the ashes of 1.0, we're all so tired and we're all still learning and trying to grow together"- which is to say I don't think it was horrible but I think they could do better now given non-rushed time and the learned experience on deck. Also to note straight forward isn't an insult, but the game isn't hard to understand at least on first layer basis which is where most players will be at- not at the deep lore dive video level where questions are pondered.

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

It's funny, the skills from the base class like lancer use to have debuffs attached to them (leg sweep was a good example as it placed a slow buff) for example and we had some cross-class skills we could use to add small variety.

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I thing feint was the slow. Leg sweep was always the stun, although it had damage attached to it.

Funny enough that you mention LNC though, since that was one low level experience that actually improved after pruning. Previously you spammed impulse drive from level 12(I think?) to level 34.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Well, that is your opinion, and I disagree with it. The storytelling in ARR is not bad, and the number of fetch quests is no worse than in most other MMOs.
The story is a bit unfocused because it is "our" story - the story of how we go from unknown adventurer to famous Warrior of Light. It also has to do a lot of worldbuilding and introducing characters and events that will become important later on. A few too many "pray return to the Waking Sands", but even that does not actually happen all that often.

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There's definitely a couple times that the story takes a giant stomp to the face in terms of pacing for not very good reasons.

The company of heroes fetch quests made little sense in universe(although I'll give them credit for pointing that out), and it was all for some shallow vapid reason that I can hardly remember, but I do remember my reaction to wanting to grab my face and go "OH MY GOD GUYS THAT WAS SOOOOOO DEEP" melodramatically.

The getting the wrong aspected stone to pierce Garuda's wind barrier made zero sense in game and out of game. It serves literally zero purpose but padding.

Both of these moments happen right in the middle of an arc climax and just totally ruin things. Especially since you're likely to get 3 overgeared allies with you that will just trounce the boss for you without you even understanding what happened. Then you'll wonder why everyone was even worried the Primals in the first place when you could have just ordered a pizza and had some randoms take it out for you.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Like everyone else said, the devs said the revamp is going to remove 13% of the ARR quests and streamline all the remaining ones (unless it introduces an important character).

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Personally, I think 13% isn't going to be enough...

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Originally Posted by MoonPhaseAlpha

Personally, I think 13% isn't going to be enough...

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We'll have to see how much they streamline the remaining quests. >x>
Wished they'd streamline some of the cutscenes too. >w>

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Originally Posted by wereotter

But the worst parts to me were things like constantly being pulled back to Vesper Bay, yet the town didn't have an aetheryte, so it was just a waste of time to go to Horizon to get to the Waking Sands.

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I find it’s actually much quicker to get there via Limsa. Teleport in, aether network to the Arcanist’s Guild, and take the ferry to Vesper Bay.

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Originally Posted by AduroT

I find it’s actually much quicker to get there via Limsa. Teleport in, aether network to the Arcanist’s Guild, and take the ferry to Vesper Bay.

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My new character was placed (by Square, I didn't care what server I was on) into Gilgamesh, and people there LOVE to afk in Limsa. So with how long it took me on PlayStation Pro to load into Limsa, and then load again from the large crystal, it actually was faster to teleport to Horizon and go from there, at least once I unlocked mounts.

Though that is another thing I would point out that existing players can do to make the new player experience better is not all congregate, and stand around doing nothing in the same place. It just leads to annoyance for new players when they have to go to a specific zone, but the load time in takes too long. If people there are actually doing things and it makes the game feel alive, that's great, but when you're just standing at the aetherite plaza because logging off is too inconvenient for you, then that's not great for new player experience.

I have something different point of view at ARR.

I'm WoW's refugee, and when I played ARR i constantly compared in mind FF XIV to WoW. So (for me) it was so refreshing. When in WoW you had a three-minute cutscene and people (especially some well-known WoW's youtuber) rationalise how significant for development of character or story it was, but in Final Fantasy similiar scenes are just so much more common. Fetch quests, especially houndred quests maraton before HW was painfull, but (for me) it wasn't much different than WoW storytellng today. And we are talking about content from 2013. Speaking for myself, leveling experience in FF XIV ARR was much more satisfying than in WoW BfA.

Little offtopic, but I wonder if quests in Costa del Sol, where quest giver just bluntly tells, that we can't progress until we do some chore for him, still will be in game? :d

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Originally Posted by wereotter

But the worst parts to me were things like constantly being pulled back to Vesper Bay, yet the town didn't have an aetheryte, so it was just a waste of time to go to Horizon to get to the Waking Sands. They also could cut a little of the fluff before fighting Titan, and as they already said they're going to fix, there's that spot near the end where they have you at level 46 quests then jump you to level 49 the very next one, and if you weren't over-leveled, you have to go grind out three more levels on your job.

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Just a heads up, if you're going to Vesper Bay, don't go via Horizon. Port to Limsa, use the aetheryte shard to go to Arcanist Guild, hop on ferry to Vesper Bay. MUCH faster