A Realm Reborn Revamp / Lack of Race Diversity / Class locked glamours

[Geigerette]

I feel like WoW looks way more outdated than FFXIV does and characters have not aged well. It also has an extremely limited character creation, lack of hairstyles and animations. The bodies of the characters disappear into blocks when wearing robes and the clothes don't move in the wind. Honestly, I am happy to have players supporting the game, but I don't want to see a game like FFXIV overrun with people who are going to complain about it before even giving it a chance. If the content is too droll or outdated or not fun enough for you as it is now, then the game probably isn't for you.

[yukiiyuki]

It's just funny looking at this forum, people progressively asking for things that ruined WoW. What, ARR content is 'outdated' so players should be teleported to 4.0 automatically? Why this constant rush to the so called endgame? Let's just delete every area from the game except for the Limsa aetherite plaza. I mean, just to think that someone who plays and mmo would say ''ugh I have to level and progress my character, ugh screw this I'm quitting'' is just mind boggling to me.

And from everything else the OP has said, it is obvious the people in question want to play this game like it's a Sims game and dress up and have 0 appreciation of any other content in the game. And for people who want lvl 60/70 classes, slog through the game like the rest of us. I personally don't think that the dev team should cater to these players. I mean, if they want to skip from level 1 to afking in Limsa in 10 minutes, they can buy the skip.

Yes, another human being that ignored the fact, that only ARR quest chain is need to be reworked, everything else works fine. Yeah, let's ignore the fact that 1 of 10 new players drop the game, because they feel like all game quests will be about delivering wine to another NPC and run back to the place that don't even have aetheryte. Let people SKIP the GOOD part of the game, that was HW and SB story, just because they cant withstand very "interesting"quest chain that leads to HW. From what I heard, people just want them to rework it a little, OPTIMIZE it for the new players and only ARR content. But whatever, I know, that I will get the same answers and if nothing changes we still get only 1 or 2 people out of 10 potential new players.

Btw, dont even bring WoW to this topic, maybe days of glory has gone long time ago, but they still working on new animations, models and new textures, so the game looked at least decent, while our Limsa Lominsa still looks like a melted ice cream from the middle la noscea, we have servers issues and 200 slots/10 plates for glamour and many more issues that come to us with PS3 limitations.

[-Teria-]

Ways to make it less terrible.

1: Add an aetheryte right outside The Waking Sands
2: Have Minfillia be more willing to divulge information over the linkpearl.
3: Delete the entire company of heroes questline and just have people jump right to Titan. Rewrite that entire section if you have to. Nothing was more infuriating than going all over Eorzea to do a bunch of bullcrap for these people only for it to end up being for a party for me that I never asked for or wanted anyway.
4: Remove the need for company seals to get your Chocobo. Just get people that bird as fast as possible so the slow sloooow walking goes away as quickly as possible. The seals are a formality anyway.
5: Just flat out delete some of the side quests that serve no purpose but unlocking key features that just exist from the get go in every other MMO. We really, really don't need quests just to unlock the ability to glamour armor or cut our hair. That should just be available.
6: Revamp Thousand Maws of Totorak. Shorten the dungeon. Start it further in. Remove that leaden crap off the floor. That dungeon is hated by old and new players alike. I can't think of anyone who has ever said they actually like that place. I'm so convinced that it's impossible for a human to enjoy that dungeon, that for someone to claim that they do must mean they're an alien trying to imitate human emotions and failing miserably.
7: More low level actions. Rework a lot of the melee combo buttons into ranks if you need to. A new player would rather hit 4 weak buttons that combo into one big button at level 20 than sit there hitting two buttons. It Needs. More. Buttons. Especially now that ranks auto-upgrade when necessary.
8: My Fiesty Little Chocobo. Lower the level requirement. 30 is unacceptable now. The boring, dull drudgery of pre-ARR is made better when you've got your Chocobro to keep you company, kwehing and warking in your ear with promises that things will get better if you just stick together.
9: Increase the ARR story experience even more. Double it if you need to. Whatever it takes to get people through as quickly as possible.
10: Add actual dialogue options to the fetch quests where players can basically say "No. I'm not doing that." to NPCs, which allows them to skip much of the fetching, but remove gil rewards from the quests. This now gives the players a choice. Do this fetch quest and get paid, or skip that nonsense and move on with your life. At that point, the tedium is of the player's own choosing and not thrust upon them. This is especially necessary in the post 2.0, pre 3.0 patch quests where you're now a big hero and there are plenty of other lower Scions that Tataru or whoever can just say "Oh, you're busy...Well. I suppose I can ask Hoary to do it. He seems eager enough. Anyway, about that Primal-"

Bonus: Enable NPC marriage, but lock it behind ARR story completion.
Don't underestimate the power of using waifus and husbandos as the carrot on a stick to get a large subset of players to suffer through the story.

[Penthea]

1: Add an aetheryte right outside The Waking Sands

There is an important lore reason discussed by the scions as to why there is no aetheryte in that town. What SE could do instead is have quest cutscenes teleport you to your next destination. Many in the game do this already. I think they could also add Vesper Bay as a destination for more than one ship as well. Right now it's only the boat from the Arcanist's Guild. No reason why other ships couldn't expand their routes.

2: Have Minfillia be more willing to divulge information over the linkpearl.

This one is fair, but it would only work when the conversation is just you and Minfilia. It could get confusing if more characters are added to the conversation. Unless SE change the chatbox to make it clearer when someone else is talking when you have no other visual aid.

3: Delete the entire company of heroes questline and just have people jump right to Titan. Rewrite that entire section if you have to. Nothing was more infuriating than going all over Eorzea to do a bunch of bullcrap for these people only for it to end up being for a party for me that I never asked for or wanted anyway.

That isn't the only time the company of heroes are in the game. If you entirely delete your introduction to them, later encounters with them will either not make much sense or they won't have the intended impact. Also removing that questline would remove Brayflox's Longstop, which is a dungeon.

4: Remove the need for company seals to get your Chocobo. Just get people that bird as fast as possible so the slow sloooow walking goes away as quickly as possible. The seals are a formality anyway.

The seals absolutely do not slow down chocobo acquisition. 200 seals is nothing. Most players have beyond that by the time they need to get a chocobo and if they don't it's very fast to farm. It used to be 2000 seals. SE have already addressed chocobo acquisition speed. On top of that players can rent chocobo porters either as a taxi or as a temporary mount they can control. You don't have to run all the time if you use the services the game gives you. I'm saying this as a player who has several alts.

5: Just flat out delete some of the side quests that serve no purpose but unlocking key features that just exist from the get go in every other MMO. We really, really don't need quests just to unlock the ability to glamour armor or cut our hair. That should just be available.

Giving new players too many features can be overwhelming, and there is something to be said about earning things instead of having them handed to you with no effort. What SE should do is have the glamour and dye quests located near Gridania, Limsa and Ul'Dah so that you won't be forced to unlock the features later simply because your starting city is not Ul'Dah.

6: Revamp Thousand Maws of Totorak. Shorten the dungeon. Start it further in. Remove that leaden crap off the floor. That dungeon is hated by old and new players alike. I can't think of anyone who has ever said they actually like that place. I'm so convinced that it's impossible for a human to enjoy that dungeon, that for someone to claim that they do must mean they're an alien trying to imitate human emotions and failing miserably.

I hate this dungeon but I'd honestly prefer to see SE spend time creating new content than revamp an old dungeon that is already super easy just for the sake of convenience. That said maybe SE need to change their roulette algorithm because people get this dungeon A LOT even if everyone in the party is 50+.

7: More low level actions. Rework a lot of the melee combo buttons into ranks if you need to. A new player would rather hit 4 weak buttons that combo into one big button at level 20 than sit there hitting two buttons. It Needs. More. Buttons. Especially now that ranks auto-upgrade when necessary.

The problem with this is that by giving low lvl players more abilities, you would be making higher lvl players get more extra ranks and less new abilities. Extra ranks are boring unless they change how you use the ability. And even then they're still nowhere near as exciting as being given a whole new button to press. The higher lvls are already riddled with extra ranks and traits. Replacing even more abilities with those would really cheapen the idea of your character getting stronger.

Don't get me wrong, I find ruin spam extremely dull, but there comes a point in which you need to accept the fact that being low lvl means you don't have access to a lot of abilities.

8: My Fiesty Little Chocobo. Lower the level requirement. 30 is unacceptable now. The boring, dull drudgery of pre-ARR is made better when you've got your Chocobro to keep you company, kwehing and warking in your ear with promises that things will get better if you just stick together.

I find lvl 30 to be a logical choice. By then you have already spent a lot of time with your chocobo. You know each other better. At the same time you become high enough lvl to get your first job stone. Lvl 30 is a big combat milestone because it's when you start leaving the novice stage behind as both an adventurer and a chocobo handler.

However I wouldn't be opposed to the lvl requirement being lowered. I'm merely stating that the current requirement does make sense.

9: Increase the ARR story experience even more. Double it if you need to. Whatever it takes to get people through as quickly as possible.

There's only two points in which you might end up having the next msq quest be higher lvl than you are. And that doesn't happen all the time either especially if the player did a lot of side quests and their roulettes. By increasing the xp by as much as you say you could be dooming players to be lvl 55 and still stuck in ARR. I lvled up my first character in HW and I was lvl 52 by the time I actually got to 3.0 content, and that was without any sort of xp boosts.

10: Add actual dialogue options to the fetch quests where players can basically say "No. I'm not doing that." to NPCs, which allows them to skip much of the fetching, but remove gil rewards from the quests. This now gives the players a choice. Do this fetch quest and get paid, or skip that nonsense and move on with your life. At that point, the tedium is of the player's own choosing and not thrust upon them. This is especially necessary in the post 2.0, pre 3.0 patch quests where you're now a big hero and there are plenty of other lower Scions that Tataru or whoever can just say "Oh, you're busy...Well. I suppose I can ask Hoary to do it. He seems eager enough. Anyway, about that Primal-"

For 2.0 would be better if SE just consolidated a lot of those trivial quests that have cutscenes that teleport you to your next destination, like I said earlier in the post. This would be better than having the option of being sassy and losing out on xp and gil.

As for 3.0+ you're forgetting that a great deal of npcs have no idea who you are. You may be a big shot in some of Eorzea but you're a stranger to them.

Also I believe the scions themselves would be heavily opposed to the term "lower scions". They already have their own jobs anyway. You think Tataru is on holiday in Kugane? Hoary Boulder just wears the armour for show?

Bonus: Enable NPC marriage, but lock it behind ARR story completion.
Don't underestimate the power of using waifus and husbandos as the carrot on a stick to get a large subset of players to suffer through the story.

Considering how story-driven this game is...no this would be bad. This would open SE to backlash if something happened to characters, such as death or personality change. Never mind if SE have plans to make said characters to fall for a npc instead. Leave the marriage to npcs to player created copies of them or fan art.

[Legion88]

Ways to make it less terrible.

1: Add an aetheryte right outside The Waking Sands

Good Option.

2: Have Minfillia be more willing to divulge information over the linkpearl.

Good option.

3: Delete the entire company of heroes questline and just have people jump right to Titan. Rewrite that entire section if you have to. Nothing was more infuriating than going all over Eorzea to do a bunch of bullcrap for these people only for it to end up being for a party for me that I never asked for or wanted anyway.

The result of this arc is bad but the arc in itself is an important part of trials for recognition.

4: Remove the need for company seals to get your Chocobo. Just get people that bird as fast as possible so the slow sloooow walking goes away as quickly as possible. The seals are a formality anyway.

This is more or less already done by giving the needed seals for joining the GCs.

5: Just flat out delete some of the side quests that serve no purpose but unlocking key features that just exist from the get go in every other MMO. We really, really don't need quests just to unlock the ability to glamour armor or cut our hair. That should just be available.

I don't think this should be done.
They should introduce a basic version of this features, like glamouring via Prisms and basic post creation character costumisation, through the first MSQ and then set up siede quests to upgrade this features to the full version we have now.

6: Revamp Thousand Maws of Totorak. Shorten the dungeon. Start it further in. Remove that leaden crap off the floor. That dungeon is hated by old and new players alike. I can't think of anyone who has ever said they actually like that place. I'm so convinced that it's impossible for a human to enjoy that dungeon, that for someone to claim that they do must mean they're an alien trying to imitate human emotions and failing miserably.

I like this place. The leaden crap is annoying, but that's the only thing i would wish to change in this dungeon.

7: More low level actions. Rework a lot of the melee combo buttons into ranks if you need to. A new player would rather hit 4 weak buttons that combo into one big button at level 20 than sit there hitting two buttons. It Needs. More. Buttons. Especially now that ranks auto-upgrade when necessary.

This is one of my personal complaines.
In my opinion the skill acquisation in the low leveling range schould give most skills, except specific job quest skills, before the first couple of dungeons and then only expand them by traits.

8: My Fiesty Little Chocobo. Lower the level requirement. 30 is unacceptable now. The boring, dull drudgery of pre-ARR is made better when you've got your Chocobro to keep you company, kwehing and warking in your ear with promises that things will get better if you just stick together.

In my opinion this schould be a straight follow up to the chocobo acquisition quest.

9: Increase the ARR story experience even more. Double it if you need to. Whatever it takes to get people through as quickly as possible.

There is no problem in lack of experience gained through the MSQ of ARR.

10: Add actual dialogue options to the fetch quests where players can basically say "No. I'm not doing that." to NPCs, which allows them to skip much of the fetching, but remove gil rewards from the quests. This now gives the players a choice. Do this fetch quest and get paid, or skip that nonsense and move on with your life. At that point, the tedium is of the player's own choosing and not thrust upon them. This is especially necessary in the post 2.0, pre 3.0 patch quests where you're now a big hero and there are plenty of other lower Scions that Tataru or whoever can just say "Oh, you're busy...Well. I suppose I can ask Hoary to do it. He seems eager enough. Anyway, about that Primal-"

The problem is there is not very much you can cut out. You can cut out some unneccessary running forward and back and most of that is already covered with point 2.

Bonus: Enable NPC marriage, but lock it behind ARR story completion.
Don't underestimate the power of using waifus and husbandos as the carrot on a stick to get a large subset of players to suffer through the story.

How I hate the waifunisation of games, but besides this, which NPC schould be available. You can only create specific waifu/husbando charakters just for this purpose, every exiting waifu/husbando material is to tied up in the story and events to be available for this.

[NocturniaUzuki]

6: Revamp Thousand Maws of Totorak. Shorten the dungeon. Start it further in. Remove that leaden crap off the floor. That dungeon is hated by old and new players alike. I can't think of anyone who has ever said they actually like that place. I'm so convinced that it's impossible for a human to enjoy that dungeon, that for someone to claim that they do must mean they're an alien trying to imitate human emotions and failing miserably.

I guess I'm an alien. Though maybe that was never in doubt, given how much I clash with the mainstream.

So yeah, I like Toto-rak. Because it's the first dungeon where the dungeon itself actually feels dungeon-like. There are actually traps (admittedly not dangerous ones, but still...). You inadvertantly get sucked through webs, blocking off your allies. There are poison sacs all over the place. The mobs spawn using actual sneaky tactics, where some will spawn out of view then join the fight later, including from behind. For total MMO newbs, this might even be dangerous. It still feels neat to have to worry about mobs quietly aggroing on the healer from behind, while the tank can't see.

And as annoying as the green goo may be, please remember that there are hardly any mobs along that entire hallway. So it's actually faster overall than the earlier sections.

[Jandor]

Early game experience could use some tidying up. More actions, neater flow to gaining abilities, trimming down some quest-line fat (not excessively trimming though, just evening out the pacing a little.)

I'm also opening up to making glamour options a bit more free. I was always mostly in favour of the restrictions, until I found a cross-job glam I liked... I know I know, mega-hypocritical.

Looks pretty swell though IMHO. Very tanky healer top that.

[Mallagant]

For me, I have been playing this game for 9 Days. I played a bit last Saturday, bought the game, but didn't really start leveling/playing till Monday, think I was level 5 on Monday evening when I got home from work.
Mind you, I just cancelled my SWTOR sub on Friday. I have played that since release. FANTASTIC story lines. Yes, I'm very into a game's story.
I also cancelled my WoW sub on Friday. Played that since Vanilla.
Stopped playing EQ P99 to dedicate some time to this game.
I have a full time job, and take care of a sick mother, so my play time is rather limited. Last night, I hit 52 while doing the last part of the ARR MSQ. It took less than a week.
Now, I am not sure what to expect of the next two expansions worth of leveling, or what its going to take to reach 70, but I would gather not that much time.
To me, the leveling process is very streamlined, and I love the story as is. The speed at which I was able to level, the quality of the story line, the music, the scenery, all of this was enough to make me cancel all my other subs to games that I have been playing for a decade or more. In terms of leveling, I don't really know what else one could want. Granted, I have only leveled Dragoon. Haven't touched tradeskills or any other jobs, but I fail to see why they would change the leveling experience.

As for restrictions on glamours. Trust me, there is a limit. In SWTOR, which, in my opinion has the best "costume" system out of any game, there IS such a thing as too much. There, everyone can "transmog" everything. Robes on armor and vice versa, etc etc.
It completely ruins it imo. There is zero immersion. Just when you think you look great, putting together a nice outfit that perfectly matches your Sith Warrior, a Republic Trooper runs by you in the same setup, or a Sith Inquisitor dressing like a Gunslinger.
Trust me, it sucks after a while.

[Ceridwenae]

I guess I'm an alien. Though maybe that was never in doubt, given how much I clash with the mainstream.

So yeah, I like Toto-rak. Because it's the first dungeon where the dungeon itself actually feels dungeon-like. There are actually traps (admittedly not dangerous ones, but still...). You inadvertantly get sucked through webs, blocking off your allies. There are poison sacs all over the place. The mobs spawn using actual sneaky tactics, where some will spawn out of view then join the fight later, including from behind. For total MMO newbs, this might even be dangerous. It still feels neat to have to worry about mobs quietly aggroing on the healer from behind, while the tank can't see.

And as annoying as the green goo may be, please remember that there are hardly any mobs along that entire hallway. So it's actually faster overall than the earlier sections.

I am evidently an alien too. I love the !boing! noise of the green goo and also bunny-hopping through it like a small child.

[Takamorisan]

Just revamp combat to not be unsufferable at early levels. Have access to the main tools of the class early and the stuff like (Warrior wise) Inner Release, Shake it Off and the extras be locked behind levels. Newcomers should be aware of the resource managing features and spenders.