When do the training wheels come off?

[Nixxe]

I'll be the bad guy.

I don't know why we talk about new players as if they were defenseless babies. When I started playing during 2.0, I picked the tank role up and I KNEW that I had to wear heavy armor because I have to eat damage and better armor gives better reduction, right? Like every RPG ever. You learn while doing dungeons that, as you progress, better gear will drop (Green big numbers with a plus sign indicating it's an upgrade) And that's a something you have to be aware of, specially when you know you will get paired up with other people. So I feel it's just laziness. It's an attitude that I've seen plenty of times in this game no matter what level.

So what you're saying is that you were able to successfully handle the basics of the game because past experience had prepared you for it.

Did you ever consider that not everyone has that past experience?

[Vahlnir]

So what you're saying is that you were able to successfully handle the basics of the game because past experience had prepared you for it.

Did you ever consider that not everyone has that past experience?

I do think that this is part of the issue, for sure. For a lot of people FF XIV is their first MMO experience. Imo, it's SE's fault for not giving people a proper explanation of their jobs/roles. Hall of the Novice should be a requirement before anyone is sent on their way through the MSQ. And even then it doesn't teach anywhere near enough as it should.

[Kotacha]

I do think that this is part of the issue, for sure. For a lot of people FF XIV is their first MMO experience. Imo, it's SE's fault for not giving people a proper explanation of their jobs/roles. Hall of the Novice should be a requirement before anyone is sent on their way through the MSQ. And even then it doesn't teach anywhere near enough as it should.

This. My god, so much this. Don't even let them into Sastasha without having completed their role quests. At that point, it can at least defuse all this "maybe they just don't know" talk and force some culpability on the new players. They've already added a "put best gear on" button. How much simpler do you need to make it for someone? The one caveat I'll give is they should autoequip soulstones for all the classes that aren't scholar/summoner.

Edit: I should add that along with the soulstone bit, they remove all the base jobs from all gear below lv 35. Once you're past trial account cap, you must use your job restricted gear. And I thought the best gear button was fixed so it didn't suggest DoM equipment for DoW classes and vice versa.

Regarding the lev 30 job announcement thing, it was there at least in the early 2.x patches. Yes. You saw one.

[Tanama]

I do think that this is part of the issue, for sure. For a lot of people FF XIV is their first MMO experience. Imo, it's SE's fault for not giving people a proper explanation of their jobs/roles. Hall of the Novice should be a requirement before anyone is sent on their way through the MSQ. And even then it doesn't teach anywhere near enough as it should.

Agreed. 10

[Lilseph]

So what you're saying is that you were able to successfully handle the basics of the game because past experience had prepared you for it.

Did you ever consider that not everyone has that past experience?

The game literally has a quest at the begining that won't let you proceed if you don't reach certain ilvl. Quests and dungeons give you gear that has tags indicating that it's suited for certain jobs. Upon reaching Garuda, you've done plenty of quests and dungeons already.

[Nixxe]

The game literally has a quest at the begining that won't let you proceed if you don't reach certain ilvl. Quests and dungeons give you gear that has tags indicating that it's suited for certain jobs. Upon reaching Garuda, you've done plenty of quests and dungeons already.

Garuda is still low enough level that dungeons are dropping combined tank/drg gear that's a complete trap, as well as gear with randomized stats that may actually be a downgrade if it rolls poorly enough. Accessories are not limited by DoW/M at that level, let alone by role, and thus give no indication who they're intended for if you don't understand how stats work in this game.

[Lilseph]

Garuda is still low enough level that dungeons are dropping combined tank/drg gear that's a complete trap, as well as gear with randomized stats that may actually be a downgrade if it rolls poorly enough. Accessories are not limited by DoW/M at that level, let alone by role, and thus give no indication who they're intended for if you don't understand how stats work in this game.

I understand your point with mixed DRG/tank gear. Accesories are good at that level, but not gamebreaking. However, allow me to correct you on something: Garuda is more than 110+ MSQ in, you probably did 8 obligatory dungeons (Not counting the ones you unlock with your GC) and both Ifrit and Titan, though the later don't drop gear. Also, don't you receive a message when you reach level 30 that you can finally unlock your job? The randomnized stats of pink gear are secondary, the main stats (STR+VIT) remain the same in accordance to the gear's ilvl. This is not a concern for the new player: Better gear -> it has my job's tag on it = Should use that one.

[Hawklaser]

Well on ARR initial release the training wheels pretty much were fully off by Hauke Manor and Brayflox Longstop. 28-36ish if remember right. The mechanics in those two tended to weed out the lazier ones a bit, and required knowing job basics and such then.

With all the rebalances and expansions, I'm not sure where it moved to. Depends on how far vets are just willing to carry people.

[Forever_Learning]

Well on ARR initial release the training wheels pretty much were fully off by Hauke Manor and Brayflox Longstop. 28-36ish if remember right. The mechanics in those two tended to weed out the lazier ones a bit, and required knowing job basics and such then.

With all the rebalances and expansions, I'm not sure where it moved to. Depends on how far vets are just willing to carry people.

I'm getting the impression that there's a general consensus that things were more difficult in ARR?

I played during that time and I don't remember it being harder.

Things were sometimes harder for the WRONG reasons - like the fact our cooldowns didn't reset after a wipe!

My team and I spent most of the night chatting frankly since the time between pulls was always a couple minutes.

People also weren't exactly sure how to play their job back then - healers were hitting enemies with their books (that's stopped, right?)

Rather than the current mantra to avoid macros, they were being used all over the place.

There were also teams reporting they were having an easier time because their healer did a lot of DPS (with their books), while other teams said healers priotizing DPS was silly . . . some things never change.

Hauke - people maybe wiped at the last boss due to the lamps, but that still happens. People unaware they should click return after the second boss was a bigger issues, and remains so. The ease of brayflox largely depended on how much your tank wanted to pull, which I think remains the case.

I always felt the only difficult dungeon pre-50 was Stone Vigil. The challenge with level 50 dungeons like Wanderer's palace was trying to get it done in under 10 minutes.

I don't know if anyone was carrying anyone back then, but there wasn't much communication, and it was mostly just wiping over and over, which also happens now.

If you have been playing consistently since ARR, the increase level of experience may make those dungeons seem really easy now, or they seemed really hard in ARR, because you were new.

As someone who played and raided in ARR, I haven't seen this disparity in difficulty level that I often see mentioned.

We also lacked the third party programs that "help with your rotation" nor the ones telling us when certain actions happened. Dive bombs, you just counted in your head and hoped for no lag!

It reminds me of Classic WoW, which people said it was so much more difficult because it took so much longer to complete, but now that they have released the original content, people are realizing that they were hard for reasons unrelated to the game and that outside Naxrammas, they are possibly the easiest and most casual-friendly raids in WoW ever created.

At any rate, that's my memory of ARR.

P.S. People were totally pugging coil and beating it. I saw someone post that no pug was ever able to beat Coil, which is very far from the truth.

[HakaseNyan]

stuff

Here's a short and quick refresher:

WAR didn't get tank stance until 30, and PLD didn't get tank stance until 40 (the struggle was real). SCH also didn't get an esuna for Brayflox, which had a lot of poison during final boss. (Antidote cooldown didn't help) Jobs also required leveling a sub-class to 15, and any tank without a job stone was basically useless for holding enmity.

Compared to now - ARR was much more difficult. The messed up part of all this is I didn't run into as many facerollers in ARR as I do today. Perhaps because the population is much larger now, but does that excuse work when things have been made so much easier?