Concern for onboarding experience of new players

[HeyItsHestia]

I think the beginning of the game, before ARR even really starts, is a very big info dump that is kinda boring to get through if you aren't interested in the story.

I remember liking it a lot. It got me excited for how all that i learned is connected, what's going to happen next and what roles the characters i meet will play later in the game.

Granted there were a few moments, quite a lot actually, where i asked myself when all this is finally going to end, and I even started with Paladin too which was the only thing i played till about lvl 80 so i can't really speak about the early game experience with other classes, but in my opinion its not that bad. Leveling just for the sake of continuing some of the best class quest lines i have ever seen was a big motivation for me too.

[Illmaeran]

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).

1. If I'm understanding what your first paragraph is saying correctly, you're wanting combat mechanics to be more impactful, yes? When I read punishing, it brings to mind circumstances that cause people pain or severe displeasure. I can agree that increasing the damage of things like AoEs to make them something players notice and realize they have to avoid would be a good thing. "Punishing" players is going too far. People should not experience severe displeasure when progressing through the core of the game.

Case in point: I was very sick and going through harsh medical treatment when Stormblood released. Since I was home a lot I was playing a lot of XIV until the solo Nadaam duty. I simply could not get past it no matter what I did. The extreme frustration of the encounter and severe displeasure at being unable to progress through the MSQ due to a duty caused me to quit the game until a couple months before Shadowbringers launched.

We also have to consider the balance between ease of access, speed of progression, and Roulettes. I'd suggest that the majority of people progressing through MSQ duties are doing so with the help of higher level people running Roulettes. I know when I queue for a Roulette I want to get through it as quickly as I can, grab the tomes and move on. I don't want to be stuck in something like the Ivalice raids that take a long time and require actual brain power to get through. Including ease of access and speed of progression through the MSQ; making MSQ duties "punishing" will only serve to discourage first-time players and irritate people doing Roulettes. Anything that adds to first-time players' frustration and slows progress through the MSQ should be avoided. Make mechanics more impactful so players can't just stand in them without consequence, but don't make them so difficult that small mistakes cause issues.

Correllary to that: NON-MSQ duties could be more challenging, but that's also why we have Hard versions of them.

I haven't played my alt since EW dropped so I can't speak to how playing her through the MSQ would be different post-EW. I have played low-level jobs on this character (my main) and found those experiences to be similar to what I had on my alt in ARR dungeons.

I agree, the pacing can be *horrendous* at times.

[Hashtag]

I recently went through the new player experience with a friend who has been playing video games for many years, but never gotten into MMOs, hence FFXIV is her first time experiencing MMO mechanics. I am keeping this level of experience in mind when considering my feedback.

Short of dividing the early player base into two camps for fresh MMO experiences and those who are already familiar with the UI and general gameplay loop, we have to draw a line for lowest common denominator and ask whether we want to appeal to those demographics or not. This game is presently toeing the line for people who are already familiar with general video games, but may not be MMO buffs.

When it comes to group content... MSQ and optional content do need to be separated. I initially had small write-ups of every dungeon and trial 1-49, but SOME forums don't let me post almost 9000 characters. Harrumph! The cliff notes is that the MSQ dungeons are mostly bereft of challenge, whereas some optional dungeons and the trials (except Cape Westwind) actually contain interesting and challenging mechanics.

The first memorably difficult optional for me isn't until level 35 (Qarn), and the first memorably difficult MSQ dungeon is... oh. Well, that's disappointing.

This, I think, is emblematic of the problem. It is good and important to let new players ease into the difficulty, but the first 49 levels of required content have kid gloves on, and it honestly doesn't get any better for a long time--the game's saving grace is the trials, which are cultivated very well to introduce new mechanical ideas to players and test them without punishing them too hard.

Various class reworks, stat retoolings, and gameplay design changes have led to an early-game experience that offers little to no challenge even for new MMO players regarding required content, but I genuinely believe optional content 1-49 is in a good place as far as teaching newer players the ropes. I can only speculate that Square Enix wants the early MSQ dungeons to be entirely accessible to new players, hence the lack of difficulty, and this is to the detriment of experienced players looking for challenge.

There is a "Back in my day, we had to walk uphill both ways to finish MSQ! And we liked it!" undercurrent to the conversation, because MSQ dungeons *used* to be that level of challenging, but they aren't anymore (at least until ShB), and the compounding factors that have led to them being such mechanically simple content could easily be construed as too beginner-friendly--a sentiment I do agree with at its core. When I finally did Aurum Vale with my friend and she had her first shaky dungeon experience, she got scared, because the training wheels had been kept on so long that she was afraid to be challenged.

When I think of how FFXIV used to be and how it is today, I'm glad that my class (PLD) doesn't feel like total shlock, but wish it hadn't come at the cost of early-game difficulty.

[juiceboxed]

1. If I'm understanding what your first paragraph is saying correctly, you're wanting combat mechanics to be more impactful, yes? When I read punishing, it brings to mind circumstances that cause people pain or severe displeasure. I can agree that increasing the damage of things like AoEs to make them something players notice and realize they have to avoid would be a good thing. "Punishing" players is going too far. People should not experience severe displeasure when progressing through the core of the game.

Case in point: I was very sick and going through harsh medical treatment when Stormblood released. Since I was home a lot I was playing a lot of XIV until the solo Nadaam duty. I simply could not get past it no matter what I did. The extreme frustration of the encounter and severe displeasure at being unable to progress through the MSQ due to a duty caused me to quit the game until a couple months before Shadowbringers launched.

We also have to consider the balance between ease of access, speed of progression, and Roulettes. I'd suggest that the majority of people progressing through MSQ duties are doing so with the help of higher level people running Roulettes. I know when I queue for a Roulette I want to get through it as quickly as I can, grab the tomes and move on. I don't want to be stuck in something like the Ivalice raids that take a long time and require actual brain power to get through. Including ease of access and speed of progression through the MSQ; making MSQ duties "punishing" will only serve to discourage first-time players and irritate people doing Roulettes. Anything that adds to first-time players' frustration and slows progress through the MSQ should be avoided. Make mechanics more impactful so players can't just stand in them without consequence, but don't make them so difficult that small mistakes cause issues.

Correllary to that: NON-MSQ duties could be more challenging, but that's also why we have Hard versions of them.

I haven't played my alt since EW dropped so I can't speak to how playing her through the MSQ would be different post-EW. I have played low-level jobs on this character (my main) and found those experiences to be similar to what I had on my alt in ARR dungeons.

I agree, the pacing can be *horrendous* at times.

It appears we agree completely then, despite early misunderstanding. When I say punishing, I mean it needs to make you react a little more than veg out. That's about it, impactfulness.

[strawberrycake]

One of the things I always notice with posts like this is the general reaction to these type of requests. ANd I think a lot of the wording could be changed to make things more understanding. Words like *punishing will always evoke the *hardcore* players want *hardcore* content to be every where, when you're infact simply saying you want content to be more engaging across the board and require a small amount of actual work. But you've already changed that.

As a whole I agree though, combat, and combat overall should feel more impactful, and only does in content where the player has to interact with the content and rotation in tandem, this has been an issue XIV has been facing since it's inception. As a whole I think making content more 1 to 1, as well as making it so players get fundemental skills and abilities at earlier lvls could easily change that, but that only touches some of the base issues we face overall.

For example, we rarely have encounters where stunning and interrupting is important, these two abilities are also Mutually exclusive, you can't interrupt something with a stun, in vice versa. So to increase impactful game play make it so you can interrupt a cast with a stun, and make interruptable abilities more common. Another example would be enviornment based mechanics, such as jumping on Cruise Chasers back to avoid certain death, or Rathalos, all the while having the other players deal with adds.

By creating more content that focuses on player attention, and teaching them these things from their early lvls, it allows the devs to create more varied content. But that is to say, the players of XIV have to understand, just because content may have more difficulty, or may be more engaging, doesn't mean they should feel as if they're being alienated. I personally don't think a lot of people who make suggestions like this, even want to do that anyway, but from years of being the casuals in other MMOs, years of hearing MMOs are filled with nothing but try hards, it's not hard to see how many reach these reactions.

As a whole XIV can use more engaging content. Not content that will make playing impossible if you're casual, or just wanna log in and do your rouls, having a little bit more meat in the content within our content isn't a bad thing.

[Illmaeran]

It appears we agree completely then, despite early misunderstanding. When I say punishing, I mean it needs to make you react a little more than veg out. That's about it, impactfulness.

Holy s$^#, two people on the internet were able to ask for and provide clarification that led them to better understanding and agreement after having an initial disagreement? Is it the Final Days?! Hurry, everyone, board the Ragnarok and fly away!!!!

:P

[DragoAskani]

Bear in mind when you ask for more "punishing" mechanics that only ones you are "punishing" generally are your healers. I'm not saying I'm against the idea, but thats how some will feel.

[Retrisar]

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).

Game till SB is boring asf, lots of fetch quest and if you got some combat its gonna be with one-two npc , easy one to kill . If you looking mmo experience but not exactly into story there's a chance that you quit before hit lev 50. |Gap between new skills per lev is way to big. In next expansion i hope they address that with .. dunno, lev squish and new story which doesn't force you to go through ARR - EW.

[juiceboxed]

Bear in mind when you ask for more "punishing" mechanics that only ones you are "punishing" generally are your healers. I'm not saying I'm against the idea, but thats how some will feel.

I hope the devs can implement them in a way that they aren't punishing to the healers in any case.

[juiceboxed]

Holy s$^#, two people on the internet were able to ask for and provide clarification that led them to better understanding and agreement after having an initial disagreement? Is it the Final Days?! Hurry, everyone, board the Ragnarok and fly away!!!!

:P

I really just want the game to be better, so naturally I will look for points we can agree on. Thanks for the conversation