New player feedback (AKA reasons why FFXIV has seems troubled keeping newer players)

[Nutz]

snip

I'm going to try to hit a few things everything here:
1- First, the GCD does feel insanely long at early levels, yes, and even sometimes at high levels. Often there are instances where you're doing so much that you have to weave off-GCD abilities in between your regular attacks though. I feel if anything, perhaps one or two low damage, very low recast off-GCD abilities that are learned early (and essentially become obsolete later) might improve the feel of the early levels, though it's not something I've thought much about (for reference I came to thins game from FFXI which had MUCH slower combat that worked mostly like a staring contest).

2- Main story quests are great, but I suppose they are a hassle when you're not all caught up. They're a pittance to handle as they're released and I'm always eager to dive into them after a long break. Given the number of times people have brought up this issue regarding new and returning players, perhaps they should consider an alternative, even if it makes no narrative sense (ie. let's go fight Shiva even though your character has no idea who, what, or where she is).

3- Tab targetting is terrible and oddly was better in FFXI, though maybe it just seemed that way because you almost always fought a single enemy at once.

4- Cross class skills are reduced to make way for an equal number of job-specific skills, which are almost always better. Additionally with a job your choices are severely limited such that there are few cases where taking more skills would be helpful. If anything this system is just stale in that there aren't really any significant choices to make.

5- No /tell in dungeons is by design, and I'd like it to stay that way for now at least because of the RMT menace. The original intent was to prevent harassment and talking behind people's backs. That's their official stance on it anyway.

7- No DF content with companion out is really annoying and they are allegedly working on it. That said, it's an issue that was raised very early and all we've heard on the matter is that it's been proving difficult to solve.

8- I've never had issues with invisible walls in this game, except for a few cliffs, etc. that you for some reason can't jump down from. To me this is a style issue/ no swimming issue (they have mentioned swimming, but that they wanted to only do it if they were going to commit -- basically a water themed expansion. They mentioned this long prior to the Heavensward reveal and essentially said they'd either do swimming or flying, but not both at once). I suppose it could feel weird coming from GW2 or similar where you can just jump off the map and die if you like.

9- For the reply function...I have no idea what's wrong with it or how to make it better. ctrl+r to reply, hit it again (and again) to reply to people further back chronologically. I'm unsure how to make it better as it's never failed me, but it's identical to the system FFXI used so I'd been used to it for several years.

10- Combo highlights seem very prominent to me, though I suppose options to highlight them even further (make them bigger, flashing, oversaturate the colors, etc.) would be welcome. Eventually you're so used to the flow (and the easily hit accuracy cap resulting in 0 misses ever) that you never really look at the bar at all.

11- High level roulette is interesting. I personally feel it's too bloated now (since it has been gaining 3 dungeons every patch). For a while you could use the roulette if you had even 1 dungeon completed. That's actually why they changed it. People would wait a couple of days after a patch to hear what others thought about the new dungeons and then only unlock the 'easiest one' so that the roulette could never put them in an unfavorable dungeon. Because the roulette is designed to spread players out to any dungeon that somebody has queued up (be it for initial completion or a quest later on) they changed the system to not make less popular dungeons a nightmare to complete.

12- Crafting RNG (at least eventually -- fully leveled and geared) is not bad at all. You have a lot of 'control' over the progress of your craft and whether or not it becomes HQ. The fail (NQ product) rate on high end crafts by well geared players is very low because all of the RNG you actually have to deal with is massively in the player's favor (typically the lowest success rate of an action you will use is 80%). This is probably less apparent at low levels and crafting has become something of a beast to get into. It's all fine and good to level up to the point that you can self-repair and what not, but getting to 'end-game' crafting takes a lot more time than getting to end game battle content. Apparently they are trying to use the expansion as a means of alleviating this (by 'this' I mean a lot of things, but in general the dedication required ot do any meaningful crafting).

13- They have so much invested in housing that I don't know what they might do at this point. I like that I have a house that other people could theoretically visit and admire at any time, but realistically nobody does and nobody cares about other people's houses. It's cool to have a 'neighborhood' but there are few of them -- mostly just the first couple of wards where all the houses are owned by (usually large) FCs so there are a lot of people. Higher numbered wards, even the ones that are sold out (most of them) are practically wastelands so even though it would probably sting to redesign this into instances, it would almost certainly make for a better experience overall.

14- In Heavensward you will be able to underman dungeons and retain your level and item level while doing so! Rejoice! (note that I believe this is only for 4 and 8 man ARR content)

15- Agree that the 'all or nothing' approach to visual effects is irritating. I'm probably just used to keeping it all on, though sometimes certain effects can be dangerous (looking at you meteor). I think they got a little excited about how 'pretty' they could make everything. I suppose you get used to it, though there are certainly players out there with graphics cards that can't 'get used to it' and rather than having some less flashy effects available, it's just nothing. Maybe in the DX11 client, but nothing that I've heard so far.

The style stuff -- well that's just sort of how it goes, though Heavensward is supposed to be a bit darker overall (apparently including the absence of an otherwise ever present light in front of your character). The glamour system is ridiculous though -- virtually everyone who has even a passing knowledge of it agrees. There are many petitions to fix it an I sincerely hope that they do.