New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[van_arn]

I don't understand anybody who uses skip potions for the story, unless it's like an alt or something. If you don't find the game enjoyable to play, then why are you even playing it? I leveled to 70 and went through the main scenario entirely in the old fashioned, grindy way. No rushing. No power-leveling. I took my sweet time, and I enjoyed every moment of it. Yes, even despite the well-deserved memes of the post-ARR content before HW.

Why people enjoy the game is up to them. Perhaps they like to play the game, rather than watch a visual novel.

Some people like the story, but find the teleporting and fedexing tedious. For these people, there is the inn and skips.

Multiply that by two expansions and fifteen patches and someone with the patience of a saint can get bored.

[Voltyblast]

I guess you missed when WoW locked flying behind reputations and quest completion in Warlords of Draenor and every expansion after that.

EDIT: Oh and new races behind reputations and a quest completion as well!

Hmm not exact here: WoD flying is a combination of exploration and reputation, as well as treasure hunting and questing: I'm just checking my achievements on wow and nothing mentions actual main story...because there's no real main story to begin with, each area has their own plotline. And even then even if we were to count them as MSQ, the flying feature is an achievement which means it's skippable.

Same for Legion too: mostly exploration, questing, reputation etc and once again it's an achievement, not a main story feature.

HOWEVER BFA does lock this achievement behind a war campaign so I could say you're right on this one...too bad that you can do it just once and forget on the other alts. Did I forget to mention that these achievements are account bound?

Same for allied race and again, not story related but they are achievements and completely skippable if you don't want them: no story forces you to unlock them.

Heck I can only think of the gravel thing in Legion which actually requires to follow the plotline of Argus.

TL;DR: almost all of the content in WoW, and most other mmorpgs I played including SWTOR, can be entirely skipped because it's entirely optional.

In ffxiv you cannot do endgame without finishing the main story because it's mandatory.

[DumdogsWorld]

Why people enjoy the game is up to them. Perhaps they like to play the game, rather than watch a visual novel.

Some people like the story, but find the teleporting and fedexing tedious. For these people, there is the inn and skips.

Multiply that by two expansions and fifteen patches and someone with the patience of a saint can get bored.

Fair enough. However, I still don't like how people can buy both a skip potion for the story AND for a job/class of their choice. It should be limited to one or the other.

[van_arn]

Fair enough. However, I still don't like how people can buy both a skip potion for the story AND for a job/class of their choice. It should be limited to one or the other.

No need for the limitation, because those players have every right to decide for themselves if they want to experience Stormblood right now.

If their parties disagree with their self-assessment, then kick them until they can manage to blend in.

[DumdogsWorld]

No need for the limitation, because those players have every right to decide for themselves if they want to experience Stormblood right now.

Well, you lost me. Have a nice day.

[Shougun]

Exactly, there needs to be a better solution, as I have stated in previous posts, than buying a damn story skip. There should be something new in it's place for new players similar to WoW as outlined in this, reasonable, post:

I WIN THE INTERNET! You heard it everyone. Close shop for the day, internet off. I won. XD lol. [If it wasn't obvious I'm playing of course, no one rage please lol]

Although I do want to add to it if you felt that was actually something that could work for you. I've long held the notion that jump potions were an evil but necessary and a sloppy fix and that it was a shame we didn't have something else that was better. That and at some point in every MMOs life, that isn't hardcore at least and is story driven, they'll need to "skip" or lose [some] prospective players.

Many new players see expansion or friend content, this means the content they were interested in is behind 100+ hours of content they might not be interested in, that's a serious ask. At a certain point I think people should look at the expansions as separate connected games, how you can play Witcher 3 without having played Witcher 1 or 2, but that you might go back and tolerate some things (like slower combat) once 3 teased your interest (the brilliance of new game plus I think).

If SE added a new optional start to the game we could get a lot of value out of it, I think. Beyond accelerating introduction to the game:

• This would teach you some back story of the game (with explicit design to be bite sized).
• It could also give you direction beyond "WELCOME", what might you do next for example. Which is important in hooking players in (skip potion is dangerous in that the player may wander off in a less exciting direction and we want to hook people).
• It can provide some sense of earning beyond just using real life currency (rather than entering the game and have done nothing beyond buying a jump, there is a start and some reason beyond why you are as you are)
• It can teach you enemy mechanics (like the nidhog echo example, "remembering" key points in the story while also learning what the stack mechanic is, you don't need 100+ hours of game play to learn and decide if you're going to dodge the orange or not)
• It can teach you your own mechanics (by giving you an NPC to play or putting you in a a few time skips, like a level 30 bracket quest then, 40, 60).
• Everyone could complete them with the new new game plus concept, meaning it's not content just for new people
• May introduce new content revolved around it, like Ishgard Grand Company and because if you use the Ishgard start SE doesn't need to make level 1-X content for the GC (saving SE a lot of money and time).
• Opportunity to make a different style of introduction for different type of player, I guess is an important part to me in this because at least the first moments were things I had to get done to get to the good stuff (here in this game). I feel like that means it wasn't that great of a start (for my tastes/style). When people ask me about FFXIV I always talk up later and core systems like the jobs. The great things after you get in deeper because I can't mention the cool starting plot of the undead, the funny shenanigans of the goblins, the city phasing of worgen, the first time you enter a main city after being in small areas for a while, or whatever, just more like "there is a neat chocobo scene and then you're in to the city for a while with lots of dialog and then after that you'll have some real basic 1 1 1 1 1 combat I guess, but in a few dozen hours it gets really spicy as the boss music and visuals are amazing".

So I'd ask seeing it as starting your first witcher game at "3" rather than "1" and how for some people this is actually a /really/ good thing. Trying to get someone to play the older ones (before they have interest in the series as a whole) sometimes is rough because you're like "well the story is good but the combat kind of sucks compared to 3", vs its easy for me to be like "you love the story and world of 3? give 1 and 2 a shot! You'll have to get over the combat but it's worth it for the world you already love". Obviously some people would prefer to start at 1, but I didn't suggest removing 1 so they can still do that if they want .

Also imo the first few hours of FFXIV were kind of eh to me, compared to WoW (imo). I know its getting a bit confusing when talking new player experience because some people are thinking the first 10 hours, the first 60 hours, and I'm thinking like the first 2 hours lol. Hands down, imo, WoW wins the first 2 hours (FFXIV has a cool intro cutscene but once it plops me in a main town towards the inn I was just let down). FFXIV wins the war though (is a better game [imo lol]).

I think people can maybe picture it a bit like a different start mod for Bethesda games.

[AnnaRosa]

I WIN THE INTERNET! You heard it everyone. Close shop for the day, internet off. I won. XD lol. [If it wasn't obvious I'm playing of course, no one rage please lol]

Although I do want to add to it if you felt that was actually something that could work for you. I've long held the notion that jump potions were an evil but necessary and a sloppy fix and that it was a shame we didn't have something else that was better. That and at some point in every MMOs life, that isn't hardcore at least and is story driven, they'll need to "skip" or lose [some] prospective players. Many new players see expansion or friend content, this means the content they were interested in is behind 100+ hours of content they might not be interested in, that's a serious ask.

If SE added a new optional start to the game we could get a lot of value out of it, I think. Beyond accelerating introduction to the game:
(...)

[Sciwolf]

If a new player wants to skip everything i guess its their money. But they make threads here like "im at max level and there is no content."

[Voltyblast]

If a new player wants to skip everything i guess its their money. But they make threads here like "im at max level and there is no content."

MSQ is content? Because we're talking about the main story lock, not about content.

In the remote case it is, it's content that lasts 2 hours at best: 4-6 months for 2 hours of content it's not what i'd call worth your money, especially when you can read/watch it on youtube for free.

Even if I liked the MSQ i wouldn't pay a subscription to follow it: I loved the story in SWTOR and I still don't pay a sub for it.

[Awha]

I started playing FFXIV when HW was announced to play with friends at endgame and honestly could not get through ARR, I could handle getting up to ultimate weapon but that 100 guest slog before HW is what killed any desire I had to push forward. Story and job options are the only reason I am playing. It is not that I do not enjoy the story but I enjoy playing with my friends and the MSQ largely prevents that. I am glad I can go back and do the story at my own pace while still being able to do relevant content with my friends.