Concern for onboarding experience of new players

[juiceboxed]

I understand the game is a casual experience by heart that seeks to give players as much freedom and respect their time as possible, but it has become increasingly evident that the people I know, new to the game, feel as though they are going through a long and arduous trial by boredom, as far as difficulty, to get to something a bit more challenging.

Making a game just challenging enough, but not too hard, is important, or they will get bored. However, the current case is that there is no challenge at all. The bosses of the MSQ are trivial up until... memory forgets. There has not been a challenging fight since the end of ShB, and much less since the start of Endwalker. We are not scaling correctly with the bosses, and the new players are suffering for it. Please address early game boss, dungeon and trial balance. Players should be punished early for mistakes so that they are easier to join into harder things and become parts of the community, valuable to it.

A concerning amount of people I know simply will not suffer through the MSQ because the combat is not challenging even a little. They are interested in the story, yet they are forced to walk around like drones with no promise for difficulty. This is not fun in the slightest. This is especially exacerbated in ARR, but it doesn't end anywhere else.

TLDR; IF the MSQ is to be designed and delivered as it is now, COMBAT should challenge the player enough to engage them to engage in more MSQ. In its current state, it is not enjoyable until you are higher level. It needs to be better.
Please improve the onboarding experience for new players, and shave some bad downtime through simplification.

Edit: Difficulty in lower level content is especially evident when syncing down. The enemies in the game practically fall over and die. A semblance of challenge is necessary to preserve engagement, please. I don't even do my roulettes because I'll get something trivial myself, and its just boring.

[NegativeS]

As someone relatively new who remembers their onboarding experience quite well:

I understand the game is a casual experience by heart that seeks to give players as much freedom and respect their time as possible, but it has become increasingly evident that the people I know, new to the game, feel as though they are going through a long and arduous trial by boredom, as far as difficulty, to get to something a bit more challenging.

I definitely felt like that to begin with, but it ended pretty much the moment I hit level 10. Which... isn't that far into the game. Probably just a personal experience, though.

Something that I can tell you is that, people will inevitably think less of the game if you talk it up to them and try to hold their hand through the early parts. I tried, failed, and likely alienated several people trying to do this in the past.

Making a game just challenging enough, but not too hard, is important, or they will get bored. However, the current case is that there is no challenge at all. The bosses of the MSQ are trivial up until... memory forgets. There has not been a challenging fight since the end of ShB, and much less since the start of Endwalker. We are not scaling correctly with the bosses, and the new players are suffering for it. Please address early game boss, dungeon and trial balance. Players should be punished early for mistakes so that they are easier to join into harder things and become parts of the community, valuable to it.

I agree that a lot of the early stuff is easy, but it's kind of par for the course when it comes to MMOs at this point. I remember playing Deadmines, the first WoW dungeon, and was being pulled wall-to-wall by people at the minimum level allowed to run the dungeon.
Also keep in mind that new stuff is also being experienced by people going in blind, often without friends holding their hand, and so they won't have something on farm like a level 90 getting synced down would.

A concerning amount of people I know simply will not suffer through the MSQ because the combat is not challenging even a little. They are interested in the story, yet they are forced to walk around like drones with no promise for difficulty. This is not fun in the slightest. This is especially exacerbated in ARR, but it doesn't end anywhere else.

If you think the MSQ is boring or something you have to 'suffer' through, you are playing the wrooooooooooong MMO. I can name a few that are less story heavy if you want, or just shell out for a story skip.
When I was new I loved the ARR MSQ, and only ever felt like it started grinding during the Crystal Tower and in a few tedious EW quests. Which is like, 1, maybe 2% of the MSQ?

Edit: Difficulty in lower level content is especially evident when syncing down. The enemies in the game practically fall over and die. A semblance of challenge is necessary to preserve engagement, please. I don't even do my roulettes because I'll get something trivial myself, and its just boring.

Combat in the early game desperately needs a touch-up, as all the cool abilities have been backloaded into the late game. I know PLD suffers from this probably the most.

[Catwho]

Early level should be viewed as more of a classic skinner box, feeding you quick levels in rapid succession to get you hooked on the act of leveling itself.

By level 50, there's challenge enough, otherwise first time players wouldn't die in Titan HM like they still do to this day.

[juiceboxed]

If you think the MSQ is boring or something you have to 'suffer' through, you are playing the wrooooooooooong MMO. I can name a few that are less story heavy if you want, or just shell out for a story skip.
When I was new I loved the ARR MSQ, and only ever felt like it started grinding during the Crystal Tower and in a few tedious EW quests. Which is like, 1, maybe 2% of the MSQ?

Combat in the early game desperately needs a touch-up, as all the cool abilities have been backloaded into the late game. I know PLD suffers from this probably the most.

I firmly believe the early game MSQ is boring because the intermediate promise of combat and plot points that are supposed to be large and gamebreaking, fall over and are trivial memes because... they're too easy compared to what they were built up to.

I have 5 90's, I enjoy the MSQ.
I also agree that more of the "bread and butter" should be gotten sooner.

[juiceboxed]

The whole point of the post is to apply criticism to a game that is hard to get into, so that it gets easier to get new players to stay. Every person I've invited so far has quit because the early MSQ offers 0 challenge. Those levels you're referring to would also have more value if they were earned instead of slept through.

"Early level should be viewed as more of a classic skinner box, feeding you quick levels in rapid succession to get you hooked on the act of leveling itself.

By level 50, there's challenge enough, otherwise first time players wouldn't die in Titan HM like they still do to this day. "

I'm gonna go ahead and add that a JRPG needs the villains that it builds up to be at least not trivial. At least not trivial, otherwise expectations go down the drain.

[Mirhd]

While I agree with the other poster who said you're playing the wrong game if you think the story is a slog (though the entire Titan section of the ARR MSQ annoys me to this day), I've always felt that certain trial fights (heck, all trials even...) should be gear synced to a certain item level, particularly the final MSQ fights. You shouldn't be able to just steam roll the final trials for 3.0, 4.0, 5.0; those should be at least somewhat difficult given they're the culminating fights for those parts of the story.

[juiceboxed]

I have 5 90's, as I said in a previous post. I like the MSQ, its a slog early because the villains it builds up are too trivial.

We agree on MSQ fights.

[juiceboxed]

By level 50, there's challenge enough, otherwise first time players wouldn't die in Titan HM like they still do to this day.

People dying to a 1-shot mechanic and implying "that's enough difficulty" is a strawman. It's misleading to say that a knockoff that occurs because you didn't pay attention kills you is equivalent to difficult. You know as well as I that Titan HM dies very quickly, and most of his abilities do little damage. Endwalker, again, has left early game balance in a bad place.

[Shialan]

Every person I've invited so far has quit because the early MSQ offers 0 challenge.

Never ever have I heard anyone saying that the early game is not difficult enough and so they will quit. Also, have they told you this, or are you just assuming? Because not one of the big MMOs out there has a demanding early game/start. They all play like they are on easy mode. I can't even remember an MMO that was actually hard or offered any challenge outside of optional side content (like the BAMs in Tera).

[Conundrum]

Game not hard enough....need more epeen.

EDIT: Wait, this is OPs first and only thread and replies.

This thread stinks of troll.