Concern for onboarding experience of new players

[Neva_Eilhart]

As a fairly new player, I thank you for bringing up this thread and I think some of the points made are relevant.

First and foremost, I feel like the story being offputting to new players isn't only because of the difficulty. There are other things at play here :
- AAR story delivery is definitely sloggish. It starts out of good intention (delivering basic MMO information on new players) but ends up being very slow. Neverending tutorials, neverending introductions to characters and places. Necessary, yes, but it could be more streamlined.
- The feature quests are disturbing the pace of the MSQ because they're all over the place and you level up so quickly that there's always tons of blue quests showing up and preventing you from really chaining up MSQ quests and get invested into it. It really feels overwhelming at times, especially at lower levels. This to me hurts the game way more than the difficulty. Nothing I dread more than reaching a new MSQ place where I open my map and I see a cluster of 10+ feature quests (not knowing beforehand which ones are relevant or not), while being involved in the plot so much all I'd want is to see what happens in the story next.

As for the overall difficulty, I think there are some things to consider first :
- All the important story bits are locked behind group content and even if it's easy so to speak, it still requires you to use all the abilities you have to get through and to pay attention to some mechanics, which is what a basic difficulty setting should be doing in my opinion. You can still die from some mechanics, you can still put some real stress on your healer if you stay in Aoes, you can still feel the difference between a good and a bad rotation dps wise. And you really feel it when one of your key players (let's say, the tank) is unsynced because barely at the level of the dungeon. It's suddenly hard again.
- The game makes it very important for the player to feel successful, which is something I think no one has brought up here but seems to be at the very core of FF14 philosophy. The game wants you to succeed. And then, when you have built enough confidence, tackle harder content. The story is reinforcing this feeling. It's trying to provide with a positive experience rather than a punishing one.
- Finally, and it's something more personal, but I play FF14 to relax. I'm also an avid GW2 player, which is way more action oriented and can be really difficult at times / the combat pacing at least is very fast, just as the story delivery. I enjoy FF14 because it's much slower and it allows me to settle down and take time to enjoy the scenery, to get deeper into the story and lore, and to just relax and take a breath from the real world. I'm glad the MSQ provides me with that.

To sum it up, what some find offputting (the lack of difficulty in MSQ), I find it to be the strengh of FF14. If I'd want to play a very punishing game, I'd play another thing entirely. I love that FF14 respects my playing time, I love that it isn't trying to tick all the boxes only to end up being stretched out too thin and being flavorless, I love that it acknowledges there are other games out there doing better than itself on some specific aspects and encourages me to go play these games if I want that specific experience. Overall, MSQ being sloggish is more related to how content is unlocked/provided to you rather than how you actually play the content in my opinion.

[Rhysati]

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

You consider a random mechanic that players have never seen before that'll fling them off the map as challenging?

[AlyaNimfa]

Dunno, I’ve enjoyed it all. My only concern as a new(ish) player is that after all these months I still can’t find a server/FC I feel at home in, so after I finish endwalker story I won’t have a reason to log in anymore.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I don't ask any IRL friends or anyone really to start this game anymore unless I know that they like/would like tell tale style games where its little more than an interactive movie. After hyper competitive game play in other games for years, ARR story and pacing was a welcome change to me. But it isn't for everyone. And that is okay.

[FrogDog]

I just have to say it's really weird for me to see people using HR terminology for playing a video game.

[Illmaeran]

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.

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.

I disagree with this. I also don't believe you're wrong. Challenge is relative and highly subjective, as is the content that engages different people.

Personally, I appreciated the way leveling worked when I was going through it in 2014 onward. My MMO experience started in 2005 with Vanilla WoW then LoTRO so my tastes and game style preferences were developed in the 2005-2010 era where things started out slow, there was a fair bit of grinding and LOTS of back-and-forth traveling. That's just how things were at the time.

I can see how someone who started MMOs from 2012 (ish) onward developed gameplay preferences that are different than mine since gameplay in MMOs had changed and the leveling experience in WoW (especially) had been dramatically changed to accommodate new players coming in 3-4 expansions after launch. It simply had to be streamlined and sped up to help people get to "the real game". There's nothing wrong with having preferences based on these experiences, please don't let my reference to WoW come off as any sort of insult.

The ARR leveling experience has been dramatically streamlined and XP gain has gone through the roof. As it's been a hot minute since I did ARR content at level on a fresh character, I made an alt over Thanksgiving and got her to the mid-50s by doing ONLY MSQ content after level 15. I did ZERO side quests, a few rounds of Roulettes here and there, and averaged 10 levels higher than the quests I was doing until the mid-to-late 40s. Memphina's Earring, the +XP to lvl 30 ring, food XP buff, and increased quest XP gain caused this. With your friends having at least one of the +XP itms, I can see how they over leveled and got bored quickly.

I just got the quest to start 2.4 content...

I will fully agree with a point you made after your original post: the MSQ is a downright slog for people doing it now. In its original form it was painful at times, but we had the benefit of doing the post-Expansion MSQ patches in digestible chunks. I can also see how that would be a significant turn-off to new players. Unfortunately for them, that's the game, and I can empathize with not wanting to deal with it. I got a wild hair when WoW Classic was launched and bought BfA. I had to go through the remainder of Cata and all the other content that dropped after I left. It wasn't the most pain-free gaming experience I've had.

After having played through ShB, I'd improved enough as a player that I found combat easier in ARR just as I can see how people used to more active combat in other games might find combat in ARR through SB easy since they honed skills in a different game.

Does that mean pre-EW content should be tuned to punish players if they make mistakes? I couldn't disagree with this idea more. MSQ dungeons, trials, and raids should in no way punish players for making mistakes. MSQ content should be tuned so that all comers are able to progress through it without wanting to quit the game over it.

XIV has become this successful for being what it is, not for trying to be what it's not. People are coming in droves, are enjoying their experience here, and are staying. I can't tell when you started the game so I don't know if you've enjoyed the game for a long time or are a recent comer from other games and are playing XIV to have an MMO to play that's not the game(s) you left. From what you've said, it's clear to me your friends are the latter, and I say this with zero malice; if the main gameplay focus of XIV isn't to their taste, perhaps it would be best to find a different game that does suit their tastes. I've joined and left multiple MMOs over the years for this reason and have been a happier gamer because of it.

[Jybril]

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

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

This thread stinks of troll.

"OP has an opinion about this game therefore he's a troll reee."

You see that? That's what you sound like.

[juiceboxed]

@Neva_Eilhart
I firmly believe chill gameplay has a place. It's probably, to be fair, the entire MSQ, and a good 90% of things outside all the EX and Savages. That said... pacing more than anything seem to be more disturbing in general with my friends who were new, and people who reply to this thread. If pacing was better, than maybe they would be willing to forgive other things they dislike.

I still am of the stance that if the group content were slightly more up to par for people who are synced down, where people are forced to move at least a little instead of comfortably tanking everything (a completely new BLM player told me they could just stand in nearly everything and continue dpsing), then it would be more engaging. Let it be easy, but not trivial.

[juiceboxed]

Does that mean pre-EW content should be tuned to punish players if they make mistakes? I couldn't disagree with this idea more. MSQ dungeons, trials, and raids should in no way punish players for making mistakes. MSQ content should be tuned so that all comers are able to progress through it without wanting to quit the game over it.

XIV has become this successful for being what it is, not for trying to be what it's not. People are coming in droves, are enjoying their experience here, and are staying. I can't tell when you started the game so I don't know if you've enjoyed the game for a long time or are a recent comer from other games and are playing XIV to have an MMO to play that's not the game(s) you left. From what you've said, my impression is you're the latter, and I say this with zero malice; if the main gameplay focus of XIV isn't to your taste, perhaps it would be best to find a different game that does suit your tastes. I've joined and left multiple MMOs over the years for this reason and have been a happier gamer because of it.

I don't want people to quit the game over difficulty either. I want people to slowly learn mechanics as they go through the game and understand what is safe and what isn't, and be punished for standing in bad things... because they kinda don't nearly as much since EW. This is what my friends told me, they could just cruise control through. I'm honestly willing to go with easy but not trivial for the game difficulty (it is currently trivial in MSQ) because different people's challenges. I'm glad you've tried the game out over thanksgiving, but are you sure it reflects the same after EW?

If I didn't love this game, I wouldn't be making a forum post about how it could be better. I'm trying to invite friends to play and they are turned off by the onboarding experience, mostly pacing now that another poster brought it up though. Anyway, improving the game is the whole point of the thread (I have all DoL and DoH maxed, everything above 70, and 5 90 combat jobs).

[EorzeaWanderer]

I know this is FF and this is how things are done. Lots of story. Fine. But break it up a bit more and give us something exciting to do.

This is not, actually, how other FF games are done. FF14 is the extreme outlier of the series, in terms of its cutscenes-to-gameplay ratio, if you do only MSQ.

The story is good, but it needs to be told in a more engaging format than "watching a TV show/movie, reading a visual novel" sort of experience. We are playing a video game after all.