New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Melorie]

Unpopular opinion; Everyone should run through ARR quests at least once as a new player.

Lmao that is easily the worst suggestion/opinion I've seen on this thread. Thank god it's unpopular just like you said.

[Mavrias]

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.

not the same combat system sure, but events of 1.0 are directly referenced in 2.0 and beyond so thats just flat out not true.

[Melichoir]

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.

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.

After all, 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.

This is almost reductio ad absurdum. Youre going to an extreme to try and disprove a general point.

2.0 actually addresses most of the events in 1.0 through the 2.0 storyline, and most of 1.0 is downplayed because of it being a flop and being a semi-separate game. For all intensive purposes, 2.0 and up and pretty much a new game. The problem with your criticism is youre trying to discredit the idea of playing 2.x and gating by seeing everything as a zero sum game. You either have to do every single lore thing and part of the game, or nothing at all and everyone should skip it. This purposefully looks past nuance of the issue. Youll notice that a lot of people here do recognize 2.1-2.55 is kinda long and maybe could use some careful and considered streamlining. Because that seems like a reasonable solution to the problems people have. What some of us dont approve of is the notion that gating content that relates directly to the core of the game is a problem, and that the devs shouldnt just have people skip 2.0 all together for free if they want to. Particularly since, you know, the entirety of the game is established in 2.x content.

This isnt like WoW, where Vanilla doesnt have that much connecting it to BC. Its like youre doing some stuff in Vanilla, then a semi unrelated event occurs and now you go address that. And once you address that, a new villain lines up for you to address. The overarching storyline thats going on? Thats being resolved by the real heroes, you know Thrall, or varian, or Jaina, or Sylvanus, etc. Youre there to help, as the soldier you are, but you dont directly resolve a lot of it. As I said earlier, in WoW, youre a hero, not The Hero. In FFXIV, youre THE Hero. You change the course of events, have a direct impact. Ala Mhigo doesnt happen if you dont resolve the events of HW, and that doesnt resolve unless you take care of events in ARR. Meaning, the world doesnt progress unless you progress it, unlike WoW.

You dont want to do the MSQ, then buy that jump potion. It's there for that purpose. Otherwise, you should understand the game isnt set up like WoW or other MMOs. There's an order to the game thats dictated by a story. If you dont honestly like that, and the only content that matters to you is the max level content and nothing else, then maybe you should choose another MMO. This one maybe isnt for you.

[van_arn]

This is almost reductio ad absurdum. Youre going to an extreme to try and disprove a general point.

2.0 actually addresses most of the events in 1.0 through the 2.0 storyline, and most of 1.0 is downplayed because of it being a flop and being a semi-separate game. For all intensive purposes, 2.0 and up and pretty much a new game. The problem with your criticism is youre trying to discredit the idea of playing 2.x and gating by seeing everything as a zero sum game. You either have to do every single lore thing and part of the game, or nothing at all and everyone should skip it. This purposefully looks past nuance of the issue. Youll notice that a lot of people here do recognize 2.1-2.55 is kinda long and maybe could use some careful and considered streamlining. Because that seems like a reasonable solution to the problems people have. What some of us dont approve of is the notion that gating content that relates directly to the core of the game is a problem, and that the devs shouldnt just have people skip 2.0 all together for free if they want to. Particularly since, you know, the entirety of the game is established in 2.x content.

You dont want to do the MSQ, then buy that jump potion. It's there for that purpose. Otherwise, you should understand the game isnt set up like WoW or other MMOs. There's an order to the game thats dictated by a story. If you dont honestly like that, and the only content that matters to you is the max level content and nothing else, then maybe you should choose another MMO. This one maybe isnt for you.

That is reductio ad absurdum, intentionally so. Because requiring a new player to go through this content for the misguided "importance" of the story is equally absurd, especially when every new player is already skipping content.

There is no need to require a player to go through ARR when the trailers and the context in the game tells players all they need to know to start heavensward IN Heavensward. Offering something for sale does not get Square off the hook for supplying an experience that is inferior to the last 100+ hours of the game, after they learned from some of their launch mistakes.

Not only that, but New Game + erases any other justification to keep this content in the required block.

Heck, if story were the driving force behind requiring so much MSQ then Coils would be required of every new player, and that's a whole new tier of asinine. That answers bigger questions than gobbie cheese or sniffing chocobos ever will.

[SerLuke]

Apology accepted.

I meant to reply to this earlier but I was out of posts I just want to say thank you for accepting my apology and forgiving me, it’s not all the time convos online go from heated to civil. I also wanted to say I admire your concern for new players and I think it’s admirable =) and now that understand you were referring to just the fetch quests I totally agree with you =)

[Melichoir]

That is reductio ad absurdum, intentionally so. Because requiring a new player to go through this content for the misguided "importance" of the story is equally absurd, especially when every new player is already skipping content.

There is no need to require a player to go through ARR when the trailers and the context in the game tells players all they need to know to start heavensward IN Heavensward. Offering something for sale does not get Square off the hook for supplying an experience that is inferior for the last 100+ hours of the game.

Not only that, but New Game + erases any other justification to keep this content in the required block.

Heck, if story were the driving force behind requiring so much MSQ then Coils would be required of every new player, and that's a whole new tier of asinine.

I addressed this in the edit above. The game is designed around you being the hero. World events dont move unless you make them move. This isnt like WoW where things happen regardless. You can go to Northrend, do some quests, then jump to Pandaria, never resolving anything in Northrend because the game treats you as a foot soldier. You dont have to resolve those events. This structure means you have less impact on the world. Not more. This isnt like FF, where the world is impacted by your actions through the story.

Also no, HW doesnt cover the entirety of events of ARR, nor does it create or build stakes in the player why what happened mattered. At best, it gives you a synopsis. A reminder of some key points, which is useful for the guy whos played it, but not so much for hte person who skipped all that. An anology for this would be like if you went to a movie and htey took the first hour of it, shortened it to a 2 minute trailer, and then gave you the last 30 minutes. Most people would rightfully point out "Well thats kinda crap, why do I even care about these characters or this struggle?" There is merit in taking time to build up and invest in the plot and characters of a story. Again, careful streamlining is a good solution. Skipping it cause "To Long dont care" isnt really one. All youre doing is encouraging new players to not get invested. If they dont like it, just skip it. All the fun things are at the max level right? Then we get those players who race to max level and spend the subsequent few weeks complaining about how there's nothing to do before quitting. You dont foster a player base by giving them everything and not having them spend time and effort investing into the game.

Also new game + doesnt resolve this, because that mode was designed for people to REPLAY the MSQ. Meaning, for new game plus to actually be used, you ahve to have completed that content. The idea of removing the gate on content stems from teh idea you should just jump into anything you want regardless of where you were with the MSQ. Remove the gate, and the game operates like wow. You can always go back and finish BC if you skipped 90% of it by lvling in WoW. It also means that the idea of you being the hero in FFXIV becomes moot, because things then progress regardless of what youre doing. It's like saying if you spent absurd hours leveling to lvl 99 in FFVII right outside of Midgard on Disc 1, you can go ahead and skip all the way to the Crater and fight Sephiroth cause youre high enough level. Cause gating content is bad!

Also, far as I remember, Coils has almost no impact on the MSQ other than dealing with where Alisaie is during ARR. It's a good side quest with lore that is great and addresses more of 1.0 stuff, but its not core to the current MSQ. In fact, the savage content generally doesnt impact the MSQ. Its a side event that you can participate in. For example, if you dont do any of omega, nothing in the MSQ changes. It still shows up, does its thing, then goes and crashes somewhere. The MSQ proceeds regardless of those events cause Omega weapon is a separate side story. Even so, if it does have impact, it was limited, which is fine. Im not saying MSQ is perfect, but that doesnt mean we should say screw it and not care all together. Again, this isnt a zero sum game. Theres nuance here.

[Lynesse]

I meant to reply to this earlier but I was out of posts I just want to say thank you for accepting my apology and forgiving me, it’s not all the time convos online go from heated to civil. I also wanted to say I admire your concern for new players and I think it’s admirable =) and now that understand you were referring to just the fetch quests I totally agree with you =)

Thank you. You are very sweet. Hugs.

[van_arn]

blah blah

You're being willfully obtuse, to the detriment of every new player that starts this game.

Especially your thoughts about Coils betrays your lack of understanding exactly what you missed, which actually makes my point for me -- a new player is perfectly fine skipping further into the storyline, where the gameplay isn't a poor example of what Square has learned to do, even if they don't have a full understanding of the storyline.

A player that skips right in is no less a hero that one who doesn't. It's no different than starting a TV series at season 3 instead of season 1; most players nowadays started at season 2. Will a player have things go over their head? Of course, and that's fine-- just as the importance of Coils went right over yours.

The only difference between starting a new player at the gates of Heavensward and ARR is the new player doesn't have to run the ARR gauntlet which does encourage burnout. I've seen it, you've seen it. Don't try to tell me otherwise.

Just saying "screw those guys" isn't something I'm ever going to get behind, not when there's a better game past the part that burns them out.

[Kamatsu]

Also new game + doesnt resolve this, because that mode was designed for people to REPLAY the MSQ. Meaning, for new game plus to actually be used, you ahve to have completed that content. The idea of removing the gate on content stems from teh idea you should just jump into anything you want regardless of where you were with the MSQ. Remove the gate, and the game operates like wow. You can always go back and finish BC if you skipped 90% of it by lvling in WoW. It also means that the idea of you being the hero in FFXIV becomes moot, because things then progress regardless of what youre doing.

The bolded part is exactly what these WoW refugees want. They want WoW, but not the WoW run by Blizzard as it is now. They have left that game because they don't like the direction it's going, things the company are doing, etc... and rather than trying to fit into the game they have moved to, they are trying to change this game into being the game they left prior to the changes that caused them to leave.

[savageink]

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.

Not that unpopular. Probably the majority opinion in most places.