This game is inexcusably bad for new or returning players

Came back to the game after taking most of endwalker off (because, you know, after 6.0 it was awful) and holy crap I can't believe how bad it is to level one of the new jobs.

It's taken them a decade to utterly perfect the art of driving away new and returning players who would otherwise be excited to hop in and try the new jobs. Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

I've spent about 10 hours of gametime struggling to level my viper to 84 and I just can't do it anymore and I don't know how anyone puts up with this literal abuse from the devs at this point. I actually kept my sub going to keep my FC and player house and I guess I should thank the devs for giving me the nudge I needed to take their fangs off and get mad enough to give up my houses after years of paying to not even play the game to keep them.

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

I hope a Square employee reads this and feels literal shame, because this experience is shameful when there are so many other great games out there doing this so much better.

LOL what??

- Only failed a couple critical engagements (mostly Hunt for Red Choctober) and only failed 2 Castrum
- Join a group easy to get gold...hell with just 2 people me and my friend as picto i got gold in vast majority
- didn't do this so idk that
- ?? even on Dynamis my ques High lvl, MSQ, and leveling have been near instant since the expansion release
-ok?

WoW isn't a bad game its just different, where FFXIV is a slow burn and take a bit to get into the story and develops meaningfully WoW just speeds you through, its all about Mythic + now....even pvp has started to suffer because the game is fully designed around it.

Early access launch it took me a solid six-seven hours to level Viper to 90 just doing EW fates while I waited on the very long dungeon queues, far from the most optimal method but it wasn't that bad either. I just don't have Zadnor unlocked so I didn't bother with Bozja. Do your beast tribes, eat your food, keep fc buffs up, and you'll get through it, then when you reach Dawntrail you can quit the game in peace because its terrible.

Slow burn? Are you kidding? Why is there no on-boarding to new jobs other than "good luck with hour queues kid, go grind your balls out on fates" after all these years? It's ridiculous to the extreme. WoW Has like 5 different equally viable leveling paths to take. The fact that its STILL just "grind fates" to get characters leveled is utterly unreal to me. I'm just so proufoundly dissapointed because I really like Viper but god damn the leveling is just too repetitive and braindead for me to get on board with it. I'd be fine if it was at least fast, but god damn its slow as molasses.

Yeah man this isn't a "slow burn" its a painful, unfun grind.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Slow burn? Are you kidding? Why is there no on-boarding to new jobs other than "good luck with hour queues kid, go grind your balls out on fates" after all these years? It's ridiculous to the extreme. WoW Has like 5 different equally viable leveling paths to take. The fact that its STILL just "grind fates" to get characters leveled is utterly unreal to me. I'm just so proufoundly dissapointed because I really like Viper but god damn the leveling is just too repetitive and braindead for me to get on board with it. I'd be fine if it was at least fast, but god damn its slow as molasses.

Yeah man this isn't a "slow burn" its a painful, unfun grind.

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my viper is 100 so i'll say i didn;t have ANY of your problems, like i said Bozja from 80-90 took me a few hours, gold probably 90% of my fates did Castrum 6 times and only had 2 failures...so 4 success at 4.5mil xp and hour long ques??...think my longest que for daily roulettes has been 8 mins since early access started and im on the dead DC. Also 5 vaible lvling in WoW LOL ...lol when starting new classes generally is just dungeons and quest PvP has never been viable for lvling because you have to win and its too inconsistent and the world quest are maybe as effective as fates.

Honestly, I'd say to just take it slow and level your jobs off of just Leveling/MSQ/Alliance rouls and maybe pick either a dps that's already 90 or a tank/healer.

Queues are brutal for DPS because of having 2 new DPS jobs

10 hours to get to lvl 84, you are doing something wrong.

I did fates in EW (Thavnair till 86, then Elpis, it takes less than 3 fates to get 1M points) + the daily beast tribes in EW (about 3 mil points in 5-10 mins) and SHB (1 mil points) + daily frontlines (you can switch jobs inside and get xp on job you entered with, no wait time for dps as role don’t matter) + WT. You can also pick up EW’s daily and weekly hunt targets. With food and the GC item that grants a 15% xp bonus, I got to level 90 in about 5 hours with breaks included. Would have been faster with Zadnor but I still needed to finish my Shared fates and that was the occasion.


For Bozja, You need to go to Zadnor for the best xp and buy the riding map to keep up with moving to the next fate. Also join a party for guaranteed max XP if you are unable to build enough threat to get gold (valid for fates in EW zones too, just join a party in a level appropriate zone for max xp).

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

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Going straight to Viper or Pictomancer isn't the intended onboarding experience for new players. They're intended to start with one of the original classes then play through the MSQ starting with ARR then picking up the new jobs when they reach the required level. The option is there for them to boost and skip if they want but SE isn't going to create a special leveling experience just for them.

If you're having problems with queue times, make friends with tanks and healers. It's only to be expected that at the start of a new expansion, especially with 2 new DPS jobs. Queue times are going to be going through the roof as all the veteran players are playing through the MSQ instead of queueing for roulettes. As more players complete the new MSQ, queue times will start to fall.

If the game design isn't right for you, then it's not right for you. It's working just fine for other players.

Also, may want to watch some videos from content creators going through the WoW onboarding experiencing fresh without relying on friends. I have yet to come across one that considers it an okay experience let alone a good one between the story chaos and the attitude of veteran WoW players towards new players.

I don't have a problem at all but fate XP could easily be doubled and it would still be kinda meh.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

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This is false.

As other said, your option besides the aforementioned ones are:
-EW Daily Tribes, 5 minutes for 3 mil exp.
-Trust Leveling. 3 runs per level. If you have not leveled your Trust you can use the Duty Support.
-Challenge log. Doing 5 fates rewards of 1.5 mil. Doing 10 rewards you with other 1.5. Each fates in EW zones gives you around 350/400k. So it’s 3.5/4 mil for 10 fates.
-Cloe’s book. It gives half of the level exp no matter which is your level.
-Alliance and Frontlines qs are fast even for a dps and you gain more than one level.

It took me 3/4 hour day 1 to bring VPR from 80 to 90 and I am usually slow in this stuffs.
Guess it’s a matter of will.

I dunno, I'm sympathizing with OP on this one.

Leveling a job and playing it aren't exactly the same thing.
Having a lot of ways to level a job doesn't make it fun to do.

My idea of having fun trying the new job is not doing Fates and capitalizing on challenge logs and khloe. It's playing with actual people in casual content, dungeons in roulettes. The thing DPS players have to wait ages for (even if some of you did not.)

I heard the pain in the Picto player when they got Copperbell after a 90 minute wait.

I also think it's silly that the game design is just "new jobs are for people caught up to content only" after removing cross classing because it got in the way of picking up jobs. Having to get to HW for the HW jobs still feels ridiculous on new characters specifically. It get why it hasn't changed but it's still silly.

And you just have to learn to queue into lower level content or stand on a training dummy to pick up jobs.

Look, I come from fighting games and I'm a lab rat. Optimizing my resources for leveling, playing with my squadrons, sitting on a training dummy, watching YouTube videos, these are all things I enjoy.

But I agree, the new job onboarding process is abysmal in this game.

Here's your new job! Vomits the actions into your hotbar like a mother bird and leaves, doesn't explain anything

Read the tooltips! Haha thanks

Yeah, just quit if you get mad over such simple things. You can't be bothered by ques and other options in the game?
The first thing you're going to do is quit the game in a month and not return anyway, so why bother?

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Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS

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With an expansion launching with 2 new DPS jobs, what did you expect?

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Originally Posted by gllt

Here's your new job! Vomits the actions into your hotbar like a mother bird and leaves, doesn't explain anything

Read the tooltips! Haha thanks

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Do your job quest, the npc explains what abilities to use. It's not that hard. And yes, you should read your tooltips.
The game is not that hard to pick up new jobs, with all flashy buttons and many skills links into each other in 1-2-3 steps.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

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Why not use Duty Support NPCs?

skill issue

Ive leveled my viper to 90 in 4 hours

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Why not use Duty Support NPCs?

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Had just come here to say this too. It takes forever, but when you factor in the instant queues as dps, and trusts not really being able to ‘fail’ content, it probably evens out.

Roulette, dungeon and fates while waiting for queue, this has been my go to for alt jobs, aint mind blowing fast but its decent enough with the bonus of gems.

you have alot of resources at your disposal never settle for just roulettes, dungeons, or fate to level especially at higher levels.

you need to logout in city hubs or townhubs usually places with the giant aetherytes this will give you rested exp bonus to your leveling

you should also be using food and any accessory buff you might possess as well as fc/gc exp buffs

you also have the hunt marks you can do from HW-END and some even said the beast tribes which are also good options

dungeons can be done with npcs as well they may not be as fast to complete dungeons but you still get the exp for the clear and you get all loot drops for yourself

fates should really only be done if you want to do them same with sidequests they are there but not required of you to do as a sole means to level up

pvp also rewards exp and usually has faster que times (even though i dont think pvp should have exp as a reward)

Levelling picto to 90 was painless but I didn't try and do it in a day. I did some fates and otherwise just did roulettes each day. Gonna now do the same with viper. I still need fates done in EW zones so longer queue time isn't a bother to me at all. I'm killing two birds with one stone.

As a returning player that started over with a new character, i don't see how the game is bad for new players unless you have the WoW and other mmo mindset of rushing to end game for gosh know what reason over enjoying the main story and all there is to do.
Sure new jobs starting at a really high level can be a bit... odd and that they are kept behind needing to be that level too for the unlock quest to open up.
Most points by OP is pretty much irrelevant for a new player since they have ARR and the expansions before dawntrail to do before even getting access to the 2 dps jobs. Only relevant one would be if they picked a dps job to start with and have to compete with others for queue..

I was expecting a post about how boring jobs are from 1-50/60/70 and how little the game teaches you about playing it, not that Bozja is boring to spam and leveling Viper is 'hard'. I honestly really enjoyed leveling viper from 80-90 as it was just constant combat and gameplay vs what I knew was coming in the MSQ of little combat outside of instances and lots of cutscenes. It sounds like you want FF14 to be a single player game as you are complaining about having to join fate groups in Bozja and have friends/FC members to spam dungeons with for faster queues. I will point out that duty support is always an option for leveling as well since you can take 10 minutes longer to clear but not have any queues if dungeon spamming is what you want.

You don't have to wait 30 minutes to queue for a dungeon as dps, just use duty support. It allows you to run dungeons with NPCs and while it's slower than playing with humans, it's a lot faster than waiting in queue for however long.

Every single shill reply here of "why didn't you do [insert thing I didn't know existed/forgot exists here] 4head" is exactly the problem. This game assumes you have encyclopedic knowledge of the systems in the game and half the shit mentioned here I had no idea about and I've played this game off and on for years. If you are or returning after a long break and doing everything you know to do doesn't work, something is fundamentally broken with the experience.

If you like the game, good. If you are so immersed this all seems trivial to you, good. But it is a bad bad bad experience if you are new or returning. Objectively.

To conclude my rant (now that I've slept and am in fact still mad), why is leveling a non-stop chain of doing repetitive tasks? For example, if i could NG+ old expansions for experience, that would be a FAR better and more immersive experience than just spamming fates/roulettes/bozja-style content/etc. Every single thing the people in this thread have mentioned is brain dead repetitive content. Why can't i just play through MSQ storylines or quests for a more engaging and varied leveling experience? Square's approach of "just do this same shit over and over again" is lazy and it feels bad when you want to hop into the new stuff and feel good.

Is...Bozja such common knowledge for new people? Assuming they worked entirely through the MSQ, Bozja is easily missable, considering it requires the Ivalice raids to even unlock.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

To conclude my rant (now that I've slept and am in fact still mad), why is leveling a non-stop chain of doing repetitive tasks? For example, if i could NG+ old expansions for experience, that would be a FAR better and more immersive experience than just spamming fates/roulettes/bozja-style content/etc. Every single thing the people in this thread have mentioned is brain dead repetitive content. Why can't i just play through MSQ storylines or quests for a more engaging and varied leveling experience? Square's approach of "just do this same shit over and over again" is lazy and it feels bad when you want to hop into the new stuff and feel good.

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I do have to ask, is going through msq, repeating quests you already did, again and again for xp less repetitive braindead content then doing fates or dungeons?
Hint msq is riddled with dungeons too dear.
Every system is tied in and explained in quests too. So just do all the varied quests there are on the map and you will encounter all these alternative systems. And it vgets better these quests are specially marked too so you can easily find them.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Every single shill reply here of "why didn't you do [insert thing I didn't know existed/forgot exists here] 4head" is exactly the problem. This game assumes you have encyclopedic knowledge of the systems in the game and half the shit mentioned here I had no idea about and I've played this game off and on for years. If you are or returning after a long break and doing everything you know to do doesn't work, something is fundamentally broken with the experience.

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Did you utilize the pop up returning players get to join Novice Network and ask about the leveling systems available to you?

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

Is...Bozja such common knowledge for new people? Assuming they worked entirely through the MSQ, Bozja is easily missable, considering it requires the Ivalice raids to even unlock.

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No, its not what I'd call common knowledge. I started playing early in the pandemic and the friend that recruited me really wanted to do eureka so I did eureka with him. I came out of that experience loving (the idea of) adventure zone content, so when the bozja stuff popped up in Shadowbringers I jumped on it with him. It sucks in comparison (making it a leveling task completely ruins it because its just a zerg compared with Eureka where there is some sort of decorum about starting fates and such), so I ended up in that content by happenstance. But no, I would not say its well known. New players wouldn't have a clue about it. There were like 5 things listed in this thread I had no clue about either (I had to google what POTD was, for example).

I think that's the crux of my complaint and bad feels. This game has a ton of things like this under the surface but it requires a lot of background knowledge to understand and get into, and almost all of it is grindy and repetetive. I think other MMOs do this better because yeah, you can just start a character and go quest and at least there's a more varied experience to supplement repeatable braindead things like Fates (world quests), queues, etc. It feels like the only real way to level after you finish MSQ is to spam [insert boring activity here].

I skipped years of systems because I started in the pandemic and skipped a bunch of stuff to catch up a friend.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are

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They added 2 new dps jobs. Of course they, along with literally every other dps job, are going to have to wait longer in queues. Same thing happened with SAM and RDM when Stormblood launched.

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc...aFNa/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

I do have to ask, is going through msq, repeating quests you already did, again and again for xp less repetitive braindead content then doing fates or dungeons?
Hint msq is riddled with dungeons too dear.
Every system is tied in and explained in quests too. So just do all the varied quests there are on the map and you will encounter all these alternative systems. And it vgets better these quests are specially marked too so you can easily find them.

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I replied a second ago touching on this but no I didn't do a lot of that content. I started and joined friends that were already on current content in early shadowbringers and boosted/skipped to catch up with them. I'd love to actually replay what I skipped and get some good XP for it. I don't see any harm in allowing that. Even if it was less efficient I'd feel fine about it as I get to live through (or yeah, relive) the ostensibly and oft-lauded "best part" of the game (that the game/shop and your friends encourage you to skip if you try to join late).

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Came back to the game after taking most of endwalker off (because, you know, after 6.0 it was awful) and holy crap I can't believe how bad it is to level one of the new jobs.

It's taken them a decade to utterly perfect the art of driving away new and returning players who would otherwise be excited to hop in and try the new jobs. Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

I've spent about 10 hours of gametime struggling to level my viper to 84 and I just can't do it anymore and I don't know how anyone puts up with this literal abuse from the devs at this point. I actually kept my sub going to keep my FC and player house and I guess I should thank the devs for giving me the nudge I needed to take their fangs off and get mad enough to give up my houses after years of paying to not even play the game to keep them.

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

I hope a Square employee reads this and feels literal shame, because this experience is shameful when there are so many other great games out there doing this so much better.

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That sucks. The queue issue was solved by just having a friend queue as a healer with me.

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Every single shill reply here of "why didn't you do [insert thing I didn't know existed/forgot exists here] 4head" is exactly the problem. This game assumes you have encyclopedic knowledge of the systems in the game and half the shit mentioned here I had no idea about and I've played this game off and on for years. If you are or returning after a long break and doing everything you know to do doesn't work, something is fundamentally broken with the experience.

If you like the game, good. If you are so immersed this all seems trivial to you, good. But it is a bad bad bad experience if you are new or returning. Objectively.

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Returning players get the returner status and get to join the novice network, where they can freely ask questions and get helped by other players with stuff they forgot or haven't picked up yet. You posted a forum topic and got plenty of replies that pointed out options you could do that you didn't think of. Yet still you insist on blaming the game when the community and novice chat in particular are systems in place to help and support new and returning players. So idk what you actually want. Do you want to be helped, or do you just want to complain about the game for doing the things you say it isn't doing?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

To conclude my rant (now that I've slept and am in fact still mad), why is leveling a non-stop chain of doing repetitive tasks? For example, if i could NG+ old expansions for experience, that would be a FAR better and more immersive experience than just spamming fates/roulettes/bozja-style content/etc. Every single thing the people in this thread have mentioned is brain dead repetitive content. Why can't i just play through MSQ storylines or quests for a more engaging and varied leveling experience? Square's approach of "just do this same shit over and over again" is lazy and it feels bad when you want to hop into the new stuff and feel good.

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I find it interesting you praised WoW's levelling and you call this repetitive content when my WoW levelling experience (BFA) was much more repetitive lol. Do quests over and over and skip dialogue till you see ding.

Completely disagree with like everything you said. It’s so easy to level. You don’t want to do Bozja do dungeons with NPC’s as a DPS then. Problem I see with every mmo nobody wants to level anymore they think they should just be at end game instantly sorry that’s not how it works. Also my queue times as a DPS haven’t been bad at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PartyBarn

Came back to the game after taking most of endwalker off (because, you know, after 6.0 it was awful) and holy crap I can't believe how bad it is to level one of the new jobs.

It's taken them a decade to utterly perfect the art of driving away new and returning players who would otherwise be excited to hop in and try the new jobs. Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

I've spent about 10 hours of gametime struggling to level my viper to 84 and I just can't do it anymore and I don't know how anyone puts up with this literal abuse from the devs at this point. I actually kept my sub going to keep my FC and player house and I guess I should thank the devs for giving me the nudge I needed to take their fangs off and get mad enough to give up my houses after years of paying to not even play the game to keep them.

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

I hope a Square employee reads this and feels literal shame, because this experience is shameful when there are so many other great games out there doing this so much better.

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skill issue
roulettes and dungeons got my viper from 80-90 so fast.
Word of advice, while waiting in queue have you tried doing other things?
Oh wait, you're one of those who thinks after 6.0 the story went to shit
bait thread, move along everyone, here's your honorary reply

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Originally Posted by EXOMAGE

Completely disagree with like everything you said. It’s so easy to level. You don’t want to do Bozja do dungeons with NPC’s as a DPS then. Problem I see with every mmo nobody wants to level anymore they think they should just be at end game instantly sorry that’s not how it works. Also my queue times as a DPS haven’t been bad at all.

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The downside to NPC dungeons is that they take longer to run, but it's faster than waiting for a queue at the moment. Trial, Alliance and Normal Raid roulette wait times aren't bad for dps though.

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Originally Posted by EXOMAGE

Completely disagree with like everything you said. It’s so easy to level. You don’t want to do Bozja do dungeons with NPC’s as a DPS then. Problem I see with every mmo nobody wants to level anymore they think they should just be at end game instantly sorry that’s not how it works. Also my queue times as a DPS haven’t been bad at all.

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I call this the "WoW effect"...MMO's used to be about the journey (even WoW itself), and many still are. But ever since WoW went all-in on the e-sports thing and M+, they turned the "journey" into just an excuse to get you to max level. We're seeing that bleed into people's minds in other games now, too, where there's no desire to appreciate the journey and the only intention is getting to max level. No surprise it doesn't mesh well with a game like FFXIV that is in fact still very much about the journey and intends for you to take your time getting to end-game.