New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Shurrikhan]

Eeyy! I never got to say hi after I was gone for a while, so hey man lol. Remember like waaaaay long ago (years) when we had that big ol' thread on ability combos (having abilities work together, sort of a skill/magic burst+ system). I think that was pre-arr haha.

Starcraft 2 might have been a better choice, thanks.

Welcome back. (I only just came back after a few months due to the free login campaign, myself.) And I remember it well. Yes, it would have been around 1.18 or 1.2? Damn that was a while back now... So many more iterations of those ideas since, but the core's still largely the same, oddly enough.

And I see. I guess we are of the same mind here too, then.

That said, that still leaves us with the question of how best to find a solution for losing players to the ARR experience or else potentially to the lack of investment later on as caused by "experiencing" the game "haphazardly" or out of order, as some others have put it.

[jadan2000]

i get where you're coming from but i dont see this as a good idea. firstly, the only content that really suffers from players moving on tends to be raid content. other then that, the duty finder pretty much keeps everyone doing the rest of the playable group content. Secondly the bulk of content will still have to be done even if they use a skip potion. i doubt the skip potion unlocks the dungeons, so it means you still have to go through all the dungeons/trials/raids one by one. Most importantly, the issue is about have a bunch of high level players that really dont know how to play.

[linay]

i doubt the skip potion unlocks the dungeons, so it means you still have to go through all the dungeons/trials/raids one by one. Most importantly, the issue is about have a bunch of high level players that really dont know how to play.

MSQ skip potion unlocks Normal/Hard dungeons, but doesn't flag you as having cleared them, so you will still have bonus when you enter them for the first time and you will be able to map the dungeon. It also unlocks some Normal/Hard trials, but no Extreme trial and no raid.

[DeusOcha]

Maybe its because I have more patience but FF14's ARR/"new player" experience isn't that bad. This is coming from me whose been playing the game since 2-3 weeks ago as of this post.

I'm a "WoW Refugee" of sorts (stopped playing/quit the sub around mid-February), but I'm fairly experienced/knowledgeable in other MMOs such as GW2 and ESO. Level 50 BLM atm and I'd say FF14 has the best new player experience beating the likes of WoW (which Blizzard has long abandoned bothering to fix/update since Cata) if not rivaling atleast ESO.

The only real problem I had in jumping into the game is how the lack of sub/free trial restricts chatting with other players and how dense the map of your starting citystate is filled with quest exclamation points; took me a week or so to learn that I don't have to complete everything I see on the map.

[Lordfurious]

I myself am a returning player and I agree with all your statements. I had not played since Heavens Ward first came out. I ground for days and days to get the main story done to get my first level 70. I was feeling good about myself until my friends let me know how much extra stuff there was to catch up on to be able to do the fun stuff with them. If anybody would to ask my humble opinion I would tell them that Final Fantasy XIV is only for extreme hardcore gamers. That casual gamers should avoid this title at all costs because the hours required to grind out to enjoy the fun contest are more than a casual player is willing to put in. I will be completely honest as a returning player I find myself completely overwhelmed and constantly thinking about leaving the game because of how difficult Square Enix decides to make every aspect of the game. I'm willing to put the time in but I shouldn't have to go to Google to find everything out about this game it would be terrific if Square Enix could do a better job of explaining a great number of things in the game. These are my own personal experiences and opinions.

[Adventica6]

When you read a book do you start at the last chapter or the first chapter ? use your head.

[Shurrikhan]

When you read a book do you start at the last chapter or the first chapter ? use your head.

When you start a long, kind of slow, and not tremendously interconnected show, do you always start from the very first season, or sometimes the one your friends have recommended?

[linay]

When you start a long, kind of slow, and not tremendously interconnected show, do you always start from the very first season, or sometimes the one your friends have recommended?

I would start at the first season so I can get the full impact of the part recommended.

[SerLuke]

When you start a long, kind of slow, and not tremendously interconnected show, do you always start from the very first season, or sometimes the one your friends have recommended?

The FFXIV story is tremendously interconnected, I can think of dialog from back in The Praetorium that is being addressed in the upcoming expansion.

[Iscah]

I ground for days and days to get the main story done to get my first level 70. I was feeling good about myself until my friends let me know how much extra stuff there was to catch up on to be able to do the fun stuff with them. If anybody would to ask my humble opinion I would tell them that Final Fantasy XIV is only for extreme hardcore gamers. That casual gamers should avoid this title at all costs because the hours required to grind out to enjoy the fun contest are more than a casual player is willing to put in.

The mindset of "grinding to max level where the fun content begins" is not what's intended by the writers of the game - and not how all players see the experience.

I enjoyed the entire journey of the game - the story, the locations, the characters - because I wasn't seeing it as an obstacle to be ground through. As far as I'm concerned, the story is the game, and the endgame raids are bonus content at the end - the sort I rarely bother clearing in a single-player RPG.

Also, define "casual" and "hardcore", because people use those terms in two very different ways: the amount of time that people will put into the game, and the difficulty of the content they're willing to challenge.

I spend a lot of time playing, but I'd never call myself a "hardcore" player.

The FFXIV story is tremendously interconnected, I can think of dialog from back in The Praetorium that is being addressed in the upcoming expansion.

Indeed! There are all sorts of things that get set up ages in advance, and replaying the story (if you care about it) is incredibly worthwhile. You catch onto details that seemed unimportant at the time, but now you know what they're leading up to.