New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Physic]

You can go on:
Adventures
Fight Bosses
Level up

as you PROGRESS THROUGH THE MSQ. Not that hard. Again, if you come into an MMO late, you miss the early content for the first time and get the watered down version. It's not the end of the world. Deal with it.

Seriously. The entitlement is strong with some here. If you want to do Shadowbringers as it comes out, log on, level up like crazy. It's not the most difficult thing in the world to get a character to 70, and with the 900 genesis per week, you can get really good gear, run the alliance raids, farm the coins, and have a FULL 400 set for the expansion. Hell, just by running Orbonne you get 390. So at most it will not take that long. You even get an exp boosting item for preordering shadowbringers. Like...Jesus christ people.

I'm not salty about missing out on Creator, I chose to join the game midway through it. It's like being mad that you can't fight the final boss because you haven't done the tutorial of a game. "Waaaaa, I wanna fight Gwyn, Lord of Cinder!", "Okay, but first you need to fight Taurus Demon." "Waaaaaaaaa no! I wanna fight him RIGHT NOW!"

Essentially, that's everyone wanting it the easy way.

the problem is some dont like msq, which is a signifigant portion of your level up process. If the game starts out being 60% content you dont like, 40% content you do, many people wont make it through that first 80 hours. For those that are fine with msq, its no big deal, but imagine you dislike msq, now the game becomes unpalletable, with no end in sight. And while some may say msq is the most important part, its really not what most players spend time doing. Id say most people hunt gear and level up.

[LyraKuroneko]

If they don't like MSQ, really they should try other games. MSQ is the whole point of this game, of the FF franchise even.

If they don't like the main point of this game, what's the point?


Edit to try with an example :

Let's say there is a game about GoT (this serie should be popular enough to be usefull as an example)

GoT is all about the character and its story right?

And here I go saying, I don't care about the story just want some fights at the end (the endgame basically), get rid of the story.
Because there would obviously be part of the "bosses" that would be locked behind story.


In this example shouldn't I be better trying a game where I care about the story or without story at all?

[Physic]

I'll admit I agree with you on several points here. But here are my main issues with making the msq optional. If you are a new player, especially one that is not used to mmos then the msq serves as a great funnel towards the end of the game. My issues that I have had with other mmos where the story is either 1. irrelevant or 2. just plain mmo bad story is that I rushed aimlessly from one place to the next and felt extremely lost. Originally, to keep up with a friend in ffxiv I skipped the story from level 30 onwards and did not return to experience the story until I made an alt. This left me extremely lost and confused as to what I was doing as a new player to ffxiv. The msq grounded me more than any other mmo has. I hated the fetch questing and Minfillia, to a point then. I loath going through ARR now, but I have to respect it due to it at least being a compass.

But that is not the only reason I feel the msq is important. That funnel I was talking about leads players to a lot of exp. I cannot fathom what it would be like if the msq was marginalized and suddenly the whole game was open. The amount of wondering from zone to zone and stumbling about that I would have done as a new player would have honestly lead me to quit, if I'm frank. And as much as I hate ARR bloat, one of my worries to them removing quests is all that delicious exp we get will be gone in side quests. At the moment the exp gained from dungeon and msq allows players to rarely run into a road block. Hopefully they will realize that and make the msq quests just have more exp given.

Another reason I think that ffxiv is not doing what ffxi did is that the devs want it to be intentionally linear. To them, they may believe that this funneling of new players (new and old to mmos) will help guide them to end game. Instead of the end of the game just being a lvl number ffxiv ensures that you are at the level when you are finished at the end and have a good map of the game to explore. Excluding ARR's almost 300 quests, this game is very newbie friendly. And I have a feeling the dev team believes that the msq is newbie friendly as well and its why the chose this model. Not saying that they couldn't have designed the game another way such the games you have suggested, but merely the chose not to. And with them wanting to introduce newgame plus and reduce msq in ARR, I really don't think they will remove the msq to be optional.

This is fine, this is why my suggestion is more of an opt out, rather than an opt in. So normally the game plays the same way, but there is some npc/quest/area that allows you to skip around/unlock msq.

the story is definitely as you say, partially designed to control how players get exposed to the world. But there are a decent chunk who dont want/need msq. The thing you might hate, mucking around, exploring, grinding, is what they want to do. Some just want to play with friends without having to stop and do quests before tackling the next dungeon.

Its just an option, that those who actively seek to get out of/around msq can take.

[Physic]

If they don't like MSQ, really they should try other games. MSQ is the whole point of this game, of the FF franchise even.

If they don't like the main point of this game, what's the point?


Edit to try with an example :

Let's say there is a game about GoT (this serie should be popular enough to be usefull as an example)

GoT is all about the character and its story right?

And here I go saying, I don't care about the story just want some fights at the end (the endgame basically), get rid of the story.
Because there would obviously be part of the "bosses" that would be locked behind story.


In this example shouldn't I be better trying a game where I care about the story or without story at all?

the game is not all about msq. most people who subscribed have spent way more time playing other content than msq. Like 40% of the people i know dont read msq and skip cutscenes.

if msq is 150 hours across 6 years, how much time do you think people spend on other things? Do you really think people pay 15 a month for msq? wouldnt they all just unsubscribe after the first 2 months, and come back 3 months before the next expansion?

the gameplay is definitely not mostly msq in the long run.


A lot of people like the setting, the charachters, the jobs, the community, the dungeons, the gear, the trials/raids, the crafting, the exploration. They ll stay around if the game lets them experience that without the other.


What exactly is the game losing in this scenario?

[Awha]

If they don't like MSQ, really they should try other games. MSQ is the whole point of this game, of the FF franchise even.

If they don't like the main point of this game, what's the point?


Edit to try with an example :

Let's say there is a game about GoT (this serie should be popular enough to be usefull as an example)

GoT is all about the character and its story right?

And here I go saying, I don't care about the story just want some fights at the end (the endgame basically), get rid of the story.
Because there would obviously be part of the "bosses" that would be locked behind story.


In this example shouldn't I be better trying a game where I care about the story or without story at all?

Major issue with your example, no one is asking for the MSQ to be taken away. I do think most people who are against the MSQ would be happy if the content was level gated instead of MSQ gated. As mentioned before the quest tracker will still be a thing so if people enjoy and want to follow the story they can simply use the quest tracker. Also makes it so for people that enjoy the story they can enjoy the story at their own pace instead of maybe getting that feeling of being rushed by a static because they want to do the new raid ASAP.

[LyraKuroneko]

no one is asking for the MSQ to be taken away.

We didn't read the same posts I guess.

[Awha]

We didn't read the same posts I guess.

I have seen people state they do not like the MSQ, find it tedious, fedexing, wish for it to be opt in instead of out, trim it down. Though I do not recall seeing a post where someone said they should get rid of the MSQ, granted this thread has a lot of posts so I could have missed it.

[Melorie]

I have seen people state they do not like the MSQ, find it tedious, fedexing, wish for it to be opt in instead of out, trim it down. Though I do not recall seeing a post where someone said they should get rid of the MSQ, granted this thread has a lot of posts so I could have missed it.

People have been discussing several ways of how the MSQ can be presented in a better way for new players - try inviting your friend for the game and telling them that they'll spend at least a month just doing talk-and-teleport quests before thinking that the MSQ doesn't have faults - and yet all some people here read is "urrr i want to get to the end game fast and not read a single line!!! square pls delete msq!!".

[Crystal_Raven]

We didn't read the same posts I guess.

Please show us where someone actually wants to remove MSQ entirely.

I read through the pages so I guess I missed it as well, all I see are people asking for it to be trimmed down or some way to skip doing it. MSQ is a good FedEx roleplaying simulator.

[van_arn]

The only time this game is about the msq is patch day and expansion week.

Getting a new player to the point where they can play the game without eternal patch days and expansion weeks holding then back is where so many sprouts burn out.