New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[FFgame]

Naa the story sucks. If it wasn't for dungeons and trials I would have never made it to max level. Story isn't why I resub to this game.
Also jobs play very differently at max level compared to start, I can't bring any other up because how crappy they play at low levels compared to my 70 blm, and I don't want to pay for potion.

[Penthea]

Some people in here act like wow doesnt have a story. Wow had lore for all the dungeons too. Only difference is you didnt need to go out and do all the out world quests to unlock the dungeon. If you cared about the story for them you could do the quests, if not you could do something else.

Actually nearly every player in WoW played through the story content at least once if not several times. All those quests in the open world are the story content. Yes those massive walls of text in the small window given to you mostly by very forgettable mannequin-like npcs that you were unlikely to ever see again after you left their location, that's the story content. But because it's presented in such a bland way, people don't often seem to consider that it is.

So even though it doesn't gate you like FFXIV's msq does, most players ended up playing it anyway. Often multiple times from trying new classes.

WoW has incredibly rich lore. But at least up until WoD (which is when I quit) it wasn't presented very well, so a huge amount of players just don't bother with it. They only care that they have to kill 10 wolves. Not why. WoW had (still has?) nothing resembling the msq and the central characters to the stories are all npcs. The story isn't about you at all. It's about how you aid these people by being one of many talented soldiers. You're not a major plot device because anything you didn't do, some other talented soldier (another player) did it. You're a face in the crowd.

In FFXIV you're the central character to the story. That alone means the story needs to be told very differently to something like WoW. You are even represented by a character in the expansion trailers.

While both games have very complex and wonderful lore, it is clear that the player's roles in them greatly differ, and that Blizzard and SE don't have the same ideas as to how a story should be told.

In short: they're different games by different studios.

[Squigley]

I can attest that the MSQ is in a very large part of the reason I am staying, and while I believe that being forced to do it has some added value / effect it also might be subjective.

Hmm! Now that you mentioned it, I remembered that I do have one friend who has actually quit other MMO's because of too much freedom. However, he did play FFXIV to level cap and MSQ end. He needs the game to tell him "Now do this" or he gets overwhelmed by possibilities, doesn't know what to do and gives up. For example Black Desert Online was too much for him. He liked the game but he quit because the game didn't make him move from one activity to another and set goals for him. So forcing the MSQ does have some positives to it even though I don't personally like the forcing at all.

[Physic]

Just realised there is so much drama in this thread for something every player only ever needs to do once.

You can do everything on the same character in FFXIV. If you want to start a new class, you don't have to do the msq again...because you have already done it.

Some people need to get over themselves. And if they can't there's the skip potion or other games.

yeaaa thats kind of the point, its just one part of why people play the game, so why lose prospective buyers by frontloading something they dont like, when its not actually inficative of how they will spend most of their time in game.


nobody has actually described how the game would suffer if people had an option to skip msq. The only argument is a cost/benefit analysis, and they can already unlock all story content(story skip) and they will soon have a means of revisiting story (new gsme+)

so the cost is minimal. The benefit is more players sticking with the game longer.

Most of the justification is that players should not be allowed into content without knowing the story, because it ruins it for them, when its already the case that many people skip the story via story skip potions, and manually skipping text/cutscenes. So that ship has sailed.

[Physic]

Hmm! Now that you mentioned it, I remembered that I do have one friend who has actually quit other MMO's because of too much freedom. However, he did play FFXIV to level cap and MSQ end. He needs the game to tell him "Now do this" or he gets overwhelmed by possibilities, doesn't know what to do and gives up. For example Black Desert Online was too much for him. He liked the game but he quit because the game didn't make him move from one activity to another and set goals for him. So forcing the MSQ does have some positives to it even though I don't personally like the forcing at all.

thats why my suggestion is not to change the basic setting, and have this content unlock and msq selection be something the player has to actively seek to do, like interacting with a specific npc/item/menu whatever.

[Tempest222]

I do think something needs to be done to make the level 1 to current level cap or current expansion process more streamlined and less tedious, as I do not doubt that the game loses potential long time players over this. Some people are super into lore and that’s great, but some people are not ad enjoy the game for other reasons. Yes, someone who has zero interest in lore can still have long term fun in a game like ffxiv.

Personally I really don’t have much interest in the story at all. I’ve tried to get into it at various points and have always found it incredibly dull tbh, and realized I was just forcing myself to slog through walls of text, and then just went back to skipping it. I’m not saying is objectively bad or irrelevant (it’s obviously not) or anything just that it’s not for me, but I do enjoy everything else about the game.

Now, despite this I was obviously not put off by the new player experience because I was used to the idea of unlocking things as you go, and I did enjoy getting to see all the new environments and slowly learning how everything works in the game as I leveled. But I’m sure there are plenty of people who quit who would have otherwise stuck around had they not been presented with 100s of hours of running back and forth to get to current content. And yeah, it is only going to get worse the higher the level crap goes.

I think it would be a bit odd to just make the story and thus the road to unlocking new things totally optional as that’s not how this game is meant to work, but really, something other than pricey skip potions should be done with ARR, and especially the bit between ARR and HW, because I wouldn't doubt there are plenty of people who burn out after finishing ARR and realize they basically still have an entire game’s worth of quests standing between them and the next expansion.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

yeaaa thats kind of the point, its just one part of why people play the game, so why lose prospective buyers by frontloading something they dont like, when its not actually inficative of how they will spend most of their time in game.


nobody has actually described how the game would suffer if people had an option to skip msq. The only argument is a cost/benefit analysis, and they can already unlock all story content(story skip) and they will soon have a means of revisiting story (new gsme+)

so the cost is minimal. The benefit is more players sticking with the game longer.

Most of the justification is that players should not be allowed into content without knowing the story, because it ruins it for them, when its already the case that many people skip the story via story skip potions, and manually skipping text/cutscenes. So that ship has sailed.

But they do currently have the option to skip.

[SerLuke]

Most of the justification is that players should not be allowed into content without knowing the story, because it ruins it for them, when its already the case that many people skip the story via story skip potions, and manually skipping text/cutscenes. So that ship has sailed.

What we're saying that's most of what needs to be done and it has been done via jump potions if people want to propose a jump potion that skips relevant MSQ as well they can do that. Perhaps one thing that most of us are agreeing that could be done that and streamlining some of the ARR quests.

What most of us are highly opposed to is what people are proposing by instead of having jump positions is making the MSQ totally optional by disconnecting the MSQ from dungeons and trials and simply having level requirements like WOW does. I can't speak for anyone else but that would actually cause me to consider quitting this game if that change was made. One of the main reasons I love and keep playing is because of how the story is connected to everything, if that got changed I would seriously consider quitting the game. If people want the skip the story and play that's fine, its also fine if you want to propose free jump potions, but disconnecting the story from everything? That would cause people to leave.

[VirusOnline]

snip

WoW is everything opposite of what you said.
It's the reason why I quit that game which I played for nearly 7 years to come here during Heavensward.


In FFXIV, the story is a guide into this new world (as a new player). The quests needed a reason to exist and the MSQ gives it. The world made sense and dungeons didn't exist for the sake of leveling, but existed because it had a reason of being in the first place. Leveling is secondary. In WoW, leveling is primary as a new player the moment you get in game all you are doing is spamming dungeons and nothing more. In FFXIV, there is a questline for each and every class and profession, with rewards that make sense and are appropriate to level for the most part. This enriches the gameplay. Nothing can be said for WoW in this aspect.

Coming here years ago from WoW was admittedly hard. The GCD was longer. The MSQ was something I'd never encountered in an mmo. The profession system kicked my butt. (Switching from saying guild to FC ?!) The constant thought of "point me to the dungeons I need to spam all day long to level" was slowly being eroded, because here in FF I don't need to follow that WoW thought process. I can do ALOT of other things to level or have fun here. Yet everything has a reason in this game because of the MSQ.

I do agree that the MSQ needs work, but to eliminate it or locks acquired through MSQ for new players ? You're asking for a WoW clone.
The things that others are suggesting are game breaking. WoW survived only for so long in my opinion because at its launch and through BC it amassed popularity in the west as the de facto mmo to go to (and the only one). Now there exists other choices. In a recent 'documentary' like video I watched in how Yoshi went along creating the AAR, they studied mmos extensively and why they were successful and why they also failed. I honestly believe that the MSQ is a part of that decision making process in a successful mmo with a large playerbase.

[Physic]

But they do currently have the option to skip.

What we're saying that's most of what needs to be done and it has been done via jump potions if people want to propose a jump potion that skips relevant MSQ as well they can do that. Perhaps one thing that most of us are agreeing that could be done that and streamlining some of the ARR quests.

What most of us are highly opposed to is what people are proposing by instead of having jump positions is making the MSQ totally optional by disconnecting the MSQ from dungeons and trials and simply having level requirements like WOW does. I can't speak for anyone else but that would actually cause me to consider quitting this game if that change was made. One of the main reasons I love and keep playing is because of how the story is connected to everything, if that got changed I would seriously consider quitting the game. If people want the skip the story and play that's fine, its also fine if you want to propose free jump potions, but disconnecting the story from everything? That would cause people to leave.

make an npc who gives newbs a free story skip book, till the previous expansion, and when new game + comes, they will have solved this issue.

i think that would satisfy most people.

i would just add that i hope new game plus doesnt just start at the beginning, but can at least start at post expansion, and expansion story steps.