New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Penthea]

There is a few things i find wrong with your post. You make it sound like being a previous WoW player is a bad thing.

I'm a previous WoW player. I played it for over ten years.

The title of wow refugee just sounds bad, and especially in the context you used it.

They used the term themselves. I personally don't think it necessarily means a bad thing. I tend to think it means WoW players who quit during BFA. I quit at the end of WoD, before the term was commonly used.

Also sure they lied about it being for a friend, but i don't think that really makes it disingenuous, the problem is still the same whether it be for the OP or if it really was for the friend. Don't you think that the reason the OP lied is so they wouldn't get ridiculed? That just shows the fear of players being afraid to speak their minds, because they know its an unpopular opinion and they will get trashed for it.

It's disingenuous because they're claiming someone else cannot catch up to them, the implication of which is OP has already gotten to a late stage of the game themselves and is sitting there just waiting for their friend, and are speaking with the supposed knowledge that they probably cannot catch up. Well this isn't the case given OP was on about themselves thinking they would be unable to catch up before expansion launch.

I'm not sure how they would avoid getting thrashed for an unpopular opinion if they appear to agree with a friend who supposedly has said opinion.

Regardless, the MSQ is a problem, even though a lot of people on here don't think it is. But the forums is a tiny minority of the playerbase, so i wouldn't take it too seriously honestly.

I love the msq but it certainly has issues. The largest being the lvl 50 patch content. A lot of the quests require an excessive amount of travelling and teleporting, which could easily be fixed by having cutscenes bring you to the next zone (some in the game already do). Vesper Bay is awkward to get to. I know for lore reasons it does not have an aetheryte, and for this reason I disagree with it getting one, but that doesn't stop more ports having boats that go there. Maybe even give it an airship dock so it can be travelled to instantly from every city.

People are not thinking about the game in the long run of things. In two expansions from now, we are still going to be making new players go through 10 year old super dated content that obviously shows its age?

I imagine at some point SE would release a digested version of the story that new players can view, and they will begin the story at a later point if they choose to. But I doubt we will see something like this for at least another two expansions. 70 lvls isn't really that much. I know plenty of new players who did it in less than a month. Some in just two weeks. ShB is two months away. OP has loads of time.

And when i sit in novice network and i see sprouts complain about MSQ or people that ask when can they play DRK or AST, i have to tell them in 500 quests or so.

And by saying 500 quests you make it worse than it seems. Some of these quests take two seconds to do. Why not just tell them "they're unlocked when you reach the next expansion"?

And sorry but just because a player wants something doesn't mean they should be able to get it now. It's very common for mmorpgs to have classes that are unlocked later in the game. Why is it a bad thing in this game?

The fact that people can unironically argue that its a good thing is just beyond me.

I'm not saying the above is a good thing but how are you supposed to even unlock those classes if you can't even enter Ishgard?

[MsMisato]

Ah yes the Level 50 content patch (i call it the 100 quest bridge to HW). That part needs to be consolidated the most. But Limsa boat to Versper or be lazy and horizon and chocobo porter (I still use them even to this day).

Quest/Expansion walls are not going to go away anytime soon. Right now ARR and HW are for free at this time anyway. They have not invested in one dime in the game. First month is free. This is SE's game in the end, money is money. People are paying for skip msq and level up pots (besides the MSQ pots gives feathers for gear and gil) though i can't justify spending money to skip a game I am paying for thats just me though, but that is what is SE is hoping people will do. Spend that cash on those pots. also it appears both the level up pot and msq skip pot are on sale lol.


Play with your friend. They are here because you want them to be here. Play a job you never played or roll a new character to play with them. it takes roughly a good 3 - 4 weeks to complete MSQ in its entirety. That is still a month left afterwards they can go back and unlock extremes, 24 mans, CT, BCoB, and all that jazz.

[Melorie]

Play with your friend. They are here because you want them to be here. Play a job you never played or roll a new character to play with them. it takes roughly a good 3 - 4 weeks to complete MSQ in its entirety. That is still a month left afterwards they can go back and unlock extremes, 24 mans, CT, BCoB, and all that jazz.

Even doing that, you can't really play with them besides doing a dungeon when it finally pops up or a roulette. In many other MMOS, if I make a new alt, I can just spam dungeons forever with my friend or do whatever to level - and I'm not saying that this should happen with ffxiv, I'm just saying that here you can't "play" with someone. If they made the MSQ duties something you can do in a party, then yes, that would be true, but it's hardly the case. The only thing I can do is stay in discord with them or wait till they unlock something and help them with queue times going as a healer or tank.

I think that they should at least trim ARR quests and make optional content (such as dungeons, trials and such that are not msq-related) level based, which means that once you get that level you can get the quest to unlock x dungeon/trial/raid, instead of needing to finish MSQ to complete it. Also let people buy their gear once they are on the level cap and have the required tomestone. But really, trim ARR would be the most important change atm. The only person that I know that got through ARR slog and got to stormblood only did it because they bought the jump potion, and that shouldn't be a permanent solution or fix for this problem.

[Melichoir]

snipped

Pretty much spot on. As you point out, WoW refugees will have a bit of a learning curve to adapt to this game. The experience in wow after BC was everything you do up to the current xpac is just unimportant. See that guy, go see what he wants, gather 10 zebra hooves, turn it in. Here's a pat on the back, now go find another dude who wants you to collect some twigs. Good job. That's the leveling experience pretty much until the most recent xpac. You have very little to no impact on anything that goes on in the world. Where as in FFXIV, while you still have those kind of simple 'fetch' quests, you start impacting the world and story around you very quickly. You gain fame, people start recognizing you for the MSQ. Youre not an ambiguous hero in the horde or alliance that passes through an area and maybe does some things, but you're the WoL.


Dont get me wrong though, there are advantages and disadvantages to this set up. The advantages is you're more central and thus more invested in the game and story. But you cant 'skip' past parts of the story. It all builds off of previous parts of the story. WoW is more of these small vignettes of events. You can skip past parts because you dont impact things that deeply. Youre not as central to the struggle of the horde/alliance. So if you skip past Northred or Pandaria, thats fine. Someone else resolved those plot points. You werent there for those battles (unless you go back and do those quests). The game compartmentalizes and doesnt refer to specifics of what happened because you werent there.

This is the distinction people need to understand with FFXIV. Its a particular experience that is story centric. So skipping older content doesnt work as well here as it does in things like WoW, and thats fine. This shouldnt be a WoW clone in that regards. I like this structure, and would be disappointed if SE changed it so the MSQ didnt matter.

Some streamlining could be done with ARR 2.1-2.55, sure, but people should still play through it and not be handed a free pass.

[noxen]

Unpopular opinion; Everyone should run through ARR quests at least once as a new player. Yes, it's a grind, yes it's a slog to get through. SE are aware of it and they've hinted at consolidation during a live letter some months ago (I don't recall which one exactly, but I remember distinctly that it was an issue they're aware of and are looking to work on it).

XIV is, as someone else pointed out, a story/character driven game. It's not like WoW where you rush to the finish line and spam the highest level content and forget that a story even exists.

[van_arn]

Unpopular opinion; Everyone should run through ARR quests at least once as a new player. Yes, it's a grind, yes it's a slog to get through. SE are aware of it and they've hinted at consolidation during a live letter some months ago (I don't recall which one exactly, but I remember distinctly that it was an issue they're aware of and are looking to work on it).

XIV is, as someone else pointed out, a story/character driven game. It's not like WoW where you rush to the finish line and spam the highest level content and forget that a story even exists.

By that logic, everyone should start with 1.0 (be it through youtube, etc) so they have a full understanding of how the story and game developed into 2.0. Perhaps open the game with a three hour cutscene gallery detailing essential things, like escorting Sisipu across a featureless copy-pasted terrain to a random point on the map. It would make players *appreciate* ARR more. The story of Louisoix Leveilleur can only be understood with proper context from 1.0, after all -- and as FFXIV is a story-based game it is essential to enjoy 2.0 fully.

We can't expect players to get everything they need to know from 1.0 from the opening trailer and by actually playing the game. Playing 1.0 should be a required rite of passage, and obviously anyone that wants to skip it and its magnificent not-story is a filthy wow refugee.

[NanaWiloh]

Been interesting posting here and some good points made about changes that need to happen. But I will take my leave and watch nice to see everyone posting their thoughts.

[noxen]

See? Unpopular opinion.

[DPZ2]

By that logic, everyone should start with 1.0 (be it through youtube, etc) so they have a full understanding of how the story and game developed into 2.0.

ARR is NOT the same MMO as 1.0. Different story line, different combat systems, different play style.

Your suggestion is akin to "You must play Warcraft 3" to be able to have a full understanding of WoW. Absurd.

[van_arn]

ARR is NOT the same MMO as 1.0. Different story line, different combat systems, different play style.

Your suggestion is akin to "You must play Warcraft 3" to be able to have a full understanding of WoW. Absurd.

1.0 and 2.0 are very much continuations of the same story, and the reason I mentioned Louisoix specifically. We're a story-based game, after all, and it is essential we require every single person to play every single main scenario quest to fully appreciate that story, from Tanaka to Yoshida.
If story is as important as everyone seems to claim it is, then you must play warcraft 3 to appreciate wow. Heck, best to start with Warcraft 1. You also need to read the novels before stepping into any raids.

That'll weed out the people that don't want waste their time experiencing irrelevant content; gatekeeping is fun.