New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[NanaWiloh]

An example of a game with a coherent narrative system that doesnt feel like a slog is the original Guild Wars.

While it has its own flaws, its msq progression was "Go to this story dungeon and run it", because EVERY dungeon was a story dungeon. You could do all the side quests to get money and XP and lore, or you could run the dungeons back to back to back (minus the travel time which also had you exploring its worlds) in short order and get to the endgame first and explore later for all the stuff you missed.




I have a friend who just beat Shiva hard for the MSQ last night. He's 62 or 63 now. Just wants to get to the point where he can run actual content with us without having to spend 70 canadian fakebux to skip most of it. He hasnt picked up a single side quest. Its been a rather awful experience. He finished his free time and is having to debate if the sub is worth it.


The argument that with new expansions people rush to endgame is a good argument... for removing MSQ from dungeons, trials, raids and the like.

Let people experience the MMO content they want to experience in an MMO (like crafting, gathering, raiding, dungeoning, hard content'ing), and do the lore heavy (or sparse) single player slog experience on their own time.

Yes, people expect things in modern MMO's like multiple at level cap dungeons, multiple raids, and multiple side progression paths, at release, in every new expansion. Having those things is how you justify the box prices of subscription models.

Remove the MSQ slog and your stuck with the level and gearing slog. Gearing up in this game is only fast and easy if you got gil or crafting on your side other wise its months of running dungeons until your eyes bleed. So for new players who dont have friends with gil to spare or a crafter to make gear it turns into months of old content to get geared. Lets not even get started on crafting that makes the MSQ slog look like a joke by comparison. The MSQ needs a prune and some gating removed but a complete removal as Crushnight explained is asking for too much.

I dont want to see FF14 become like wow with quests that drop High level gear cause players are impatient and have to be caught up with everyone else RIGHT NOW!!

[Melichoir]

Funny, because the MSQ ACTIVELY PREVENTS YOU FROM ACCESSING CONTENT.

As in, to access actual content (dungeons, trials, raids, alliance quests, daily quests) you have to get through certain parts of the MSQ or you are completely locked out of those systems regardless of character level. Level 61 and in full stormblood gear but still havent finished a certain part of MSQ? Sorry, you dont have access to reputation farming, alliance raids, 8 man raids, extreme trials, the hunt system, the squadron system, player housing, something im certain im forgetting, and probably feel like theres not enough content in the game.

Guess what. MSQ is content. The class you play is content, the quests you take, the places you go. Its all content. Youre not being prevented from content in the sense the MSQ is stripping you from it, but youre being gated. Thats an important distinction because all it means is you cant just have your run of any content. You actually need to do things to access stuff other than just be a high enough level. You need to put in effort and investment. And people tend to forget that MSQ is important because its the central point of FFXIV. The whole game is built around it. FFXIV is a very plot centric mmo that isnt set up in 'episodes'. You want episodic, play WoW. There is a large over arching story, but the way the xpacs and what not operate, you can jump in mid XPac and be up to speed with current events going on in the world because the game doesnt focus to heavily on that overall narrative. It allows you to skip over content. Because you arent important individually. The story just behaves that if you didnt do it, someone else did. Cause the formula for their content is Baddy comes along, horde or alliance encounter it, stuff happens, baddie is resolved with some overarching lore getting slightly pushed forward. But your character specifically isnt tied into that over arching lore unless its the only character you ever make. The game makes it very clear that you are one of many heroes of the horde/alliance, where the bigger plot points are generally resolved by heroes like Thrall or Jaina and youre there to help them. Youre a hero, not the hero.

That isnt the case with FFXIV. There are other adventures, but you are, more or less, the warrior of light (if not one of the very very few WoLs.) Youre actions directly impact the overarching narrative. Its about you, the player. So it makes perfect sense you cant just jump into a dungeon cause your level is high enough.

This isnt even a new concept. In RPGs and MMOs generally, level isnt the only requirement for access to certain content. Where people are getting hosed up over is they think they should have access because of their level rather than realizing that the driving force behind access to certain content is questing. Can we stream line some of that? Possibly. Some of the quests in ARR are a bit overly complex. It would take effort on SEs part to rewrite those quest lines to be more streamlined. Thats a possible solution. But I think this whole notion of "THE MSQ PREVENTS CONTENT ACCESS" comes from a misunderstanding of FFXIV as a whole and what is defined as content. Does it gate people? Sure. Is it preventing access? No, not in the sense that is being argued typically.

[Iscah]

They already confirmed they are going to make some of the ARR MSQ fetch quests into side quests while keeping the main story intact, they said this will probably happen around patch 5.1.

Setting ARR aside bc both sides can agree that its a mess that needs to be worked (not to mention devs have mentioned they are in the process of fixing it)

Do we have a source for this?

As much as the quests could definitely use some streamlining, it's a more intricate process than just cutting out every 'tedious' quest and making it a sidequest. A lot of them move the plot forward - painfully slowly perhaps, but they still need to happen at that point in the story.

No, you don't need to sniff the chocobo, but you do need to get the Doman refugees onto that cart and traveling to Ul'dah. You can't remove that quest, you have to rewrite it to alter the point-by-point objectives.

Going through the entire plot like that would be quite an intensive process.

[SerLuke]

Do we have a source for this?

As much as the quests could definitely use some streamlining, it's a more intricate process than just cutting out every 'tedious' quest and making it a sidequest. A lot of them move the plot forward - painfully slowly perhaps, but they still need to happen at that point in the story.

No, you don't need to sniff the chocobo, but you do need to get the Doman refugees onto that cart and traveling to Ul'dah. You can't remove that quest, you have to rewrite it to alter the point-by-point objectives.

Going through the entire plot like that would be quite an intensive process.

It was at one of the recent Fanfest Q and As

[Anselmet]

Remove the MSQ slog and your stuck with the level and gearing slog. Gearing up in this game is only fast and easy if you got gil or crafting on your side other wise its months of running dungeons until your eyes bleed.

I'm a little confused by this statement. Atm due to running an overbloated msq players speed through levels especially if they are on a preferred world. Cutting it down would slow you down, but as is you're only running a dungeon once, maybe twice if you're unlucky and out leveling your gear quickly. A way to fix this when removing the msq bloat would be to add gear or merely make a point to have a quest that shows you where to buy from vendors in the city states. That gear is cheap and you don't need hq to do arr.

Do we have a source for this?

Going through the entire plot like that would be quite an intensive process.

Tokyo fanfest, I believe is where it was said. If it wasn't there then it was at Paris fanfest

[Krojack]

Playing with a friend of mine, returner from ARR content, I can already feel how demoralized he is trying to catch up in time. To actually reach relevant content he has to go through a backlog of slog, and I have a feeling he never will actually reach the content that he has paid for, and I have a feeling a lot of new players have the same point of view, and will also never likely reach content in time (without paying for a skip) to actually play the new expansion. I do not think a skip is a good thing, not only for the intimidating price, but because these players cannot go back and do the story any longer, I would assume (I have never actually used one).

They feel like they are just wasting time. I think there needs to be something in place, to alleviate this feeling. In WoW a new player has a boost, but can reach the relevant (expansion) content, and can go back and do older content at their own leisure. Granted, FF is very story based, and centered around your character (WoL). I think a way to go back and do the old story content (expansions) to catch up and do later, would be a good way to get players to relevant content, and keep them playing the game, while being able to go back and do the story content when they want to, so they don't miss out, and can get the full context of the latest story arch.

The more expansions and story content, added just make this worse, and worse.

I had a friend start fresh back in Feb and they are already caught up. They even took time going though the story, yes ALL of ARR story.

If you skip cut scenes you can get caught up in a few days easy.

[Physic]

Remove the MSQ slog and your stuck with the level and gearing slog. Gearing up in this game is only fast and easy if you got gil or crafting on your side other wise its months of running dungeons until your eyes bleed. So for new players who dont have friends with gil to spare or a crafter to make gear it turns into months of old content to get geared. Lets not even get started on crafting that makes the MSQ slog look like a joke by comparison. The MSQ needs a prune and some gating removed but a complete removal as Crushnight explained is asking for too much.

I dont want to see FF14 become like wow with quests that drop High level gear cause players are impatient and have to be caught up with everyone else RIGHT NOW!!

gearing is as easy as running dungeons. You get better than crafted gear, with the 100% buff you might run it 3 to 4 times before moving on. You can also craft things. Pretty much how people level second jobs.

[Penthea]

Guess what. MSQ is content. The class you play is content, the quests you take, the places you go. Its all content. Youre not being prevented from content

A lot of players tend to think "content I don't want to do doesn't count as content". This is certainly the case for some who have posted in this thread. This reminds me of players who sometimes complain that this game has no content, and then you have a look at what classes they have played and more than half aren't even unlocked. After some posts asking questions it turns out they never tried to do floor 100+ of POTD, they don't do maps, they don't do the gold saucer, they don't craft, they don't do beast tribes...they don't do a lot. The cherry on top is when their gear isn't even up to date enough to do the latest patch content.

You need to put in effort and investment. And people tend to forget that MSQ is important because its the central point of FFXIV. The whole game is built around it. FFXIV is a very plot centric mmo that isnt set up in 'episodes'. You want episodic, play WoW.

I reread some of the posts at the beginning of this thread, found some I missed and it turns out OP is actually a WoW refugee. That kind of explains a lot. In that game the real content doesn't start until you're close to max lvl. Everything before then is often seen as little other than an irrelevant road to be rushed through. And frankly because it is. The old content is most times stupidly easy to do so it's boring, and it rarely unlocks something else upon completion aside from a maybe a mostly identical harder mode version of the same dungeon. Lvling quests have even less relevance. The lvling content in WoW serves as little other than a way to gain xp fast so you can sprint to the end because the game doesn't really start until you're very close to max lvl.

I gather OP came to this game expecting it to be very similar here; that the game doesn't really start until you're 60+. But this isn't the case in FFXIV. Due to how roulettes and lvl sync work, you can play with max lvl players from the first fate you do and the first instance you queue for. And due to how everything is so closely tied to the msq you won't understand a damn thing that is going on in SB if you don't follow what happened in ARR and HW. Furthermore FFXIV has an incredible amount of side content compared to WoW, that has remained relevant even after other expansions are released, and these are unlocked as players progress through the msq.

FFXIV has a very different progression design and route. OP probably came to the game with certain expectations and doesn't seem to have realised that not all can or will be met. No one has to like the msq. But everyone needs to accept that it's there. The entire game is interwoven in it through lore and mechanics, and the vast majority of players are either okay with it or love it. The msq's role in the game won't change. Either find a way to deal with it, or play something else. Hoping for the most central element of the game to have its relevance removed is folly.

Because you arent important individually. The story just behaves that if you didnt do it, someone else did. The game makes it very clear that you are one of many heroes of the horde/alliance, where the bigger plot points are generally resolved by heroes like Thrall or Jaina and youre there to help them. Youre a hero, not the hero.

That isnt the case with FFXIV. There are other adventures, but you are, more or less, the warrior of light (if not one of the very very few WoLs.) Youre actions directly impact the overarching narrative. Its about you, the player. So it makes perfect sense you cant just jump into a dungeon cause your level is high enough.

I have some ex-WoW player friends who were not keen on the msq in the beginning, but when they understood that their character is the central point of the whole story for the game they began to warm up to it. Now they're ultra hype for any new msq content. Some of them didn't have any interest in it until much later in the game and ended up making alts so they could understand all the events that lead up to the point when they became intrigued. And a few never got interested in the story, but they just skip through the dialogue and cutscenes without complaint, because they understand the msq's role in the game and accept it.

[NanaWiloh]

I'm a little confused by this statement. Atm due to running an overbloated msq players speed through levels especially if they are on a preferred world. Cutting it down would slow you down, but as is you're only running a dungeon once, maybe twice if you're unlucky and out leveling your gear quickly. A way to fix this when removing the msq bloat would be to add gear or merely make a point to have a quest that shows you where to buy from vendors in the city states. That gear is cheap and you don't need hq to do arr.



Tokyo fanfest, I believe is where it was said. If it wasn't there then it was at Paris fanfest

gearing is as easy as running dungeons. You get better than crafted gear, with the 100% buff you might run it 3 to 4 times before moving on. You can also craft things. Pretty much how people level second jobs.

I was refering to end game gear, leveling gear goes fast. New players are also not going to be close to crafting end game crafted gear after reaching cap. As a Omni crafter I can honestly say forget crafting HQ end game gear beyond a certain point if you only level one crafter as you will be relying heavily upon luck. If a new player joins the game hits 80 in shadowbringers 6 months after release their going to get a rude awakening that without crafted or mb bought gear their going to be running dungeons for a couple weeks easy to catch up. Tomes as always will start with a weekly cap of 450 until lifted they will need tome or end game crafted gear just to enter the first 8 and 24 man raids.

There is a reason wow started dropping high end gear on people the way they are doing now. Players got tired of running dungeon after dungeon after dungeon as a way to catch up.

[Physic]

I was refering to end game gear, leveling gear goes fast. New players are also not going to be close to crafting end game crafted gear after reaching cap. As a Omni craft I can honestly say forget crafting HQ end game gear beyond a certain point if you only level one crafter as you will be relying heavily upon luck.

my siggestion was never to let new players do endgame activities instantly, just remove msq lockouts, they will still have to level. Also gear is pretty easy to get, and endgame stuff has its own gear based progression. You can go from basic gear to endgame fairly easily.