New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Melichoir]

We need a movie cut of this thread lol. I've strongly disagreed quite a few times. I've never made Iscah's points so add that to why I think "no it's not solved". At this point beyond making my own thread detailing a new start not sure I can do much on the subject anymore, it's all circles.

I've already said it isn't. For many reasons, including the fact I actively don't like skip potions because they don't give enough points of attachment. I don't think 0 is helpful and I don't think 100 hours is required, which is why I started to use movie cut since I was imagining a new start option to the game that is about 2 hours long (that gets you the basics of the game and some back story of who you are and what you're doing).

You and your 'movies'. Gawd!

Joking aside though, More cutscenes may help alleviate the issue. But you have to be careful with that as well. People are playing a game, and if theyre watching pre-rendered cut scenes to often rather than playing the game, thatll also cause issues. You can easily see people saying "I bought this game to play, not watch cutscenes!"

Its been a while but was the player anymore then just a random adventurer till ifrit?

We were kind of a nobody when the game starts out. That's the point though. You have humble beginnings, but an extraordinary gift. You over time grow into the WoL role, being central to the events in the story. Youre seen on average being on the same footing as many faction leaders (youre there during negotiations, the faction leaders listen to you and your opinions, rely on your expertise, and treat you as an equal). The game doesnt treat you as a foot soldier.

This isnt like WoW where you forever remain the faceless soldier. Again, in wow youre a hero, where in FFXIV youre the hero

[Shougun]

You and your 'movies'. Gawd!

Joking aside though, More cutscenes may help alleviate the issue. But you have to be careful with that as well. People are playing a game, and if theyre watching pre-rendered cut scenes to often rather than playing the game, thatll also cause issues. You can easily see people saying "I bought this game to play, not watch cutscenes!"

NO U!

. Sorry if the movie part got confusing, most of it would be played (I made a short sketch idea of it like 400 pages back lol). I was using movie in that movies have to cut out a lot of legitimately important details to tell the story in "gotta go fast" mode lol. So there would be some cutscenes, and prerenders, but a lot of it would be playing the game.

Like for example a thought I was writing down for a thread later is when you first time approach a monster after being sent out, like a classic beginning to a game.. just some low level monster because of some quest to help the village get wolve fur or something cheeky, right before you get close enough and the wolve aggros then the screen cracks (like classic FF battle transition visuals) and Ultima's claw reaches out out of the shattering glass and fires it's line beam attack at you. In the sketch idea mentioned some pages back I started off the beginning of the game by tossing the player off a mountain and beginning them with a killer headache and some memory damage*, so Ultima coming out like that is more of a figurative restructuring of your memories than him actually doing that and also obviously helps SE tell some of the stories and set some of the events up for the player doing the new start option.

Where in you start the fight with your surroundings have been changed, during the fight you'll get some exposition from Lahabrea while you get some combat tips and hopefully shriek as the game just tossed a curve ball and an airship at you. I'd want to avoid long sitting and no doing periods of time if I was going about it. The fast start is to cater not so much to people who want the slow burn start which even I've enjoyed most of it myself (some of the food quests drive me nuts though lol).

*I feel some fun could be had with our single player standalone games in some of these starts. Like much much later when SB+ is like two expansions old we start at SB+ after falling into pure white aether (Cloud falling into mako) and perhaps an Ascian actually helps us get out (the visual contrast of the black robes against the white burned background could be fun). This would leave so many questions and spin on Ascian (of course SE shouldn't just do stuff willynilly). Also I would like to, and hopefully others, see these new starts be fun for us veterans so that we can do them as quest chains because we can do new game+ now .

[Miles064]

You and your 'movies'. Gawd!

Joking aside though, More cutscenes may help alleviate the issue. But you have to be careful with that as well. People are playing a game, and if theyre watching pre-rendered cut scenes to often rather than playing the game, thatll also cause issues. You can easily see people saying "I bought this game to play, not watch cutscenes!"



We were kind of a nobody when the game starts out. That's the point though. You have humble beginnings, but an extraordinary gift. You over time grow into the WoL role, being central to the events in the story. Youre seen on average being on the same footing as many faction leaders (youre there during negotiations, the faction leaders listen to you and your opinions, rely on your expertise, and treat you as an equal). The game doesnt treat you as a foot soldier.

This isnt like WoW where you forever remain the faceless soldier. Again, in wow youre a hero, where in FFXIV youre the hero

Again, you have not been a faceless hero for some time now in WoW. The last 3 expacs at the very least. Hell in legion you were the leader of your class with a one of a kind weapon(Ashbringer for Ret pally). Npcs call you by title(commander,champion of the horde/alliance,archmage) rather then name likely due to server limitations. That doesn't seem much different then what FF has.

[Melichoir]

Again, you have not been a faceless hero for some time now in WoW. The last 3 expacs at the very least. Hell in legion you were the leader of your class with a one of a kind weapon(Ashbringer for Ret pally). Npcs call you by title(commander,champion of the horde/alliance,archmage) rather then name likely due to server limitations. That doesn't seem much different then what FF has.

Then that's a design change theyre moving into, not one they were starting with. And this still doesnt change certain aspects because most of the game treats you as a faceless hero. If theyre trying to reverse direction by adopting some of FFXIVs set up, Im not opposed to it. But I dunno if thta would make the difference. Particularly with Gating turned off. Meaning, if Legion I dont care about the events and continue to just lvl, I can skip the back half of it and hit the newest xpac without resolving anything. That makes your actions less important. The world spins on and on regardless of whether you do anything. That isnt the case in FFXIV with the MSQ.


As for the movie, cutscene, it boils down to some of that. But it might be simpler (in some aspects) is start combining quests. For example, Meridianum and Praetorium could be combined, particularly since Merdianum is literally you just breaking into the facility and killing Whats-er-face. You could move her boss fight a lot earlier, remove the whole bit about having to take down the Shield towers, prop it up as it's just a heavily fortified base, and you just cut down a lot of time right there.

[Miles064]

[QUOTE=Melichoir;4973737]Then that's a design change theyre moving into, not one they were starting with. And this still doesnt change certain aspects because most of the game treats you as a faceless hero. If theyre trying to reverse direction by adopting some of FFXIVs set up, Im not opposed to it. But I dunno if thta would make the difference. Particularly with Gating turned off. Meaning, if Legion I dont care about the events and continue to just lvl, I can skip the back half of it and hit the newest xpac without resolving anything. That makes your actions less important. The world spins on and on regardless of whether you do anything. That isnt the case in FFXIV with the MSQ.


I'm not sure I understand what the problem is. If you skip the old story of course its going to have less impact. If you care to know what happened you can still do it. You have the option either way. You can even refuse to go to the next expac till you finish the one you are on if you want to keep the flow of the story, or you can just keep lvling up. FF just doesn't have that option and the more that gets added the larger the gate becomes. What kind of mmo forces hours and hours of mandatory single player fluff before letting you get to all the current group stuff? And I'm saying this as someone who is hyped as hell about the story going into ShB.

As for the world spinning regardless of the player, pretty much everything that happened in WoW happened for a reason. Zones will even change depending on your progress into the stories. The game just doesn't force you to go around the world and do it if you don't want too.

[Razard]

Again, you have not been a faceless hero for some time now in WoW. The last 3 expacs at the very least. Hell in legion you were the leader of your class with a one of a kind weapon(Ashbringer for Ret pally). Npcs call you by title(commander,champion of the horde/alliance,archmage) rather then name likely due to server limitations. That doesn't seem much different then what FF has.

The difference is that your title in WoW means nothing in the grand sceme of things. The "Real" stuff is done by the important "Real" characters kill stealing and doing important plot stuff with their Mary Sue powers. The plot can move on without you and not even know.

Whereas in FFXIV the plot cannot function without the main player. Despite being a voiceless avatar, the WoL has accomplished many great things and the characters on the world acknowledge those deeds, by name.

[Miles064]

The difference is that your title in WoW means nothing in the grand sceme of things. The "Real" stuff is done by the important "Real" characters kill stealing and doing important plot stuff with their Mary Sue powers. The plot can move on without you and not even know.

Whereas in FFXIV the plot cannot function without the main player. Despite being a voiceless avatar, the WoL has accomplished many great things and the characters on the world acknowledge those deeds, by name.

That is a fair point. Id argue that the player in WoW is like 80% of the reason things are even able to move on and that ff14 npcs seem completely helpless without the WoL around most of the time, but a fair point none the less.