When you Love the Story, but are Really Bad at the Gameplay

[Carin-Eri]

You indeed shouldn't be struggling at that point, or at any point in the story for that matter, and I'd say it's not the game but you dealing with failure here. And it's understandable since it's clearly not the most engaging and entertaining content. No point trying to improve over failure if you don't enjoy the journey.
And FF14's story doesn't teach you how to play the game, it's one mind numbing gameplay experience where things are handed to you at key points and fights, so you still don't know what you're doing until you tackle max level hard content.

Okay... but I outright admitted that it's a 'me' problem. I admitted that I'm a failure at this game. And yeah, I guess I'm not great at dealing with said failure - but therein lays the point; it doesn't help when experienced players say "you shouldn't be struggling at this point". Again I ask - by whose standards? I hate this idea that there is some fixed standard by which all players should learn/progress - does the fact that my 'sprout' disappeared (a few days ago) mean that I'm experienced/good by default? Sorry, but people who find gaming pretty challenging exist and I'm one of them. I mean, yeah, I blundered my way to where I am playing almost every evening (the only time I get) since December but I don't feel experienced and find the learning curve in the game pretty hard. I only persisted because I love the story and wanted to see it through.

[Illmaeran]

I only persisted because I love the story and wanted to see it through.

I know it's difficult, but try to ignore the less-than-kind commentary. Some people, and by that I mean a lot of multiplayer gamers, have no idea how to accept that people have differing levels of ability. What's easy for them is difficult for you and they don't know how to keep their fingers off the keyboard when people like you and I seek support or express difficulty with aspects of the game. That's on them, not you. Chances are good these people have played MMOs before and have the skills for this type of game built after years of practice.

Keep in mind that three months is hardly any time at all when it comes to MMOs; especially if you've got limited play time. It can take quite a bit longer than that to build the muscle memory and way of thinking that increases ability/success in MMOs. It's likely primarily a matter of time and practice/repetition for you.

I'd recommend getting your GC adventurer squadron together, start with the lowest level dungeon you can (Toto-Rak?) and run them over and over, going up to the next higher level one after 5 runs. If that's too much, do FATEs, starting with the low level ones. The level synching and repetition will help build muscle memory and reaction speed as you slowly build up familiarity with your skill set over time. Doing it this way will keep you from getting overwhelmed with all your skills and let you focus on digestible chunks of your class in small doses.

If the game gets to be too much, transfer to Atomos and I'll play with you!

[Dreamsoap]

Okay, to start at the beginning, I started playing FFXIV mid-December (last year), on a Free Trial account (I registered several months before but hadn't actually played the game) and was instantly hooked - the story the game is telling is amazing and really does leave you with a 'just one more quest/cutscene' feeling at almost every step. I've subscribed and played through to the post-Stormblood/pre Shadowbringers quests so far.

As much as I love the game and it's story... I'm really, really bad at the gameplay element. My character is at level 73 now although I'm not sure how I scraped my way to said level. I feel like I should have enough experience to play my favored job (Bard) at least fairly competently by now but that isn't the case - I don't think a single MSQ duty finder goes by where I don't spend a great deal of time being resurrected by healers, or just completely failing at a mechanic (repeatedly). Anything involving waiting for visual cues ends poorly because I'm usually either too slow on the uptake or staring at my hotbar and trying to figure out what I should press. None of this is coming naturally to me and I feel like I'm a burden to the teams I join when teaming is necessary. I did try reading guides/watching videos and such but haven't been able to put what I learnt to good use.

Point in fact - I hit a proverbial brick wall a few days ago. Try as I may (and I've tried repeatedly) I cannot complete the 'A Requiem for Heroes' duty - I can just about scrape past he first stage (playing as Hien) but when it swaps to my character Ascian Zenos just keeps wiping me out no matter what I do or try. To my utter humiliation I can't even defeat him when have tried setting the difficulty level to 'Very Easy'.

I've seen threads/posts on this forum referering how many feel the the game is too easy and tried talking to a friend who dismissed my comments as me being defeatist - so I have to ask - since I don't feel as if I am really competent enough to play the game at this point, should I continue?

Continue. I was like that for a year or so, it gets better over time. You're probably just not used to this style of game. It'll sink in over time with enough repetition. I didn't truly start to get it together until I started savage. I remember failing that duty a few times when SB was current. If you want to find material for improvement, I would look up material on the game itself rather than anything in particular about the job you're playing. And remember, it's fine to stop attacking to just focus on mechanics.

[Teno]

Okay... but I outright admitted that it's a 'me' problem. I admitted that I'm a failure at this game. And yeah, I guess I'm not great at dealing with said failure - but therein lays the point; it doesn't help when experienced players say "you shouldn't be struggling at this point". Again I ask - by whose standards? I hate this idea that there is some fixed standard by which all players should learn/progress - does the fact that my 'sprout' disappeared (a few days ago) mean that I'm experienced/good by default? Sorry, but people who find gaming pretty challenging exist and I'm one of them. I mean, yeah, I blundered my way to where I am playing almost every evening (the only time I get) since December but I don't feel experienced and find the learning curve in the game pretty hard. I only persisted because I love the story and wanted to see it through.

But it's not about "you suck and you shouldn't", it's about "you suck and it's fine, if you don't enjoy the journey which includes failure don't do it". Of couse if you want to see what's at the end and other contents you need to push through, but if you're interested in the combat then yes everything will be infinitely harder in comparison to the story. Because the standard is the playerbase at large I guess, which is why there is such a skill gap between casuals and raiders.

[LeonKeyh]

You indeed shouldn't be struggling at that point, or at any point in the story for that matter, and I'd say it's not the game but you dealing with failure here. And it's understandable since it's clearly not the most engaging and entertaining content. No point trying to improve over failure if you don't enjoy the journey.
And FF14's story doesn't teach you how to play the game, it's one mind numbing gameplay experience where things are handed to you at key points and fights, so you still don't know what you're doing until you tackle max level hard content.

OP: I'm having trouble
You: You shouldn't be.
OP: Thanks! I didn't think of that!


What wonderful value you've brought to this discussion.

You're like Icarus, you are flying close to the sun but aren't quite there. There is an overall failure on the part of the game when it comes to teaching and reinforcing good game play. The game relies on players inferring how their job should be played and/or using outside resources to learn them. On top of that, the game does a great job at moving out of the way if you fail, between "Very Easy" modes on solo duties and the fact that 1-2 people can sleep in the MSQ dungeons/trials means that there's nothing in the game teaching you to play and nothing forcing you to get better.

This means, it's the games fault if someone is suddenly failing that far into the MSQ. Not that person's. From a strictly UX standpoint, the game could absolutely use class/job based duties teaching you how to play your job at various levels (at least every 10, but ideally every 5 or so) as well as a "Hall of the Intermediate", "Hall of the Advanced", and "Hall of the Master"

[Teno]

OP: I'm having trouble
You: You shouldn't be.
OP: Thanks! I didn't think of that!


What wonderful value you've brought to this discussion.

You're like Icarus, you are flying close to the sun but aren't quite there. There is an overall failure on the part of the game when it comes to teaching and reinforcing good game play. The game relies on players inferring how their job should be played and/or using outside resources to learn them. On top of that, the game does a great job at moving out of the way if you fail, between "Very Easy" modes on solo duties and the fact that 1-2 people can sleep in the MSQ dungeons/trials means that there's nothing in the game teaching you to play and nothing forcing you to get better.

This means, it's the games fault if someone is suddenly failing that far into the MSQ. Not that person's. From a strictly UX standpoint, the game could absolutely use class/job based duties teaching you how to play your job at various levels (at least every 10, but ideally every 5 or so) as well as a "Hall of the Intermediate", "Hall of the Advanced", and "Hall of the Master"

The story and duties not teaching you anything is definitely true, but most jobs' skills literally light up one after the other when you press them. And even then there are dummies scattered about for people to experiment with and try out their skills. People need to stop the point A to point B gaming if they keep failing and blame the game, especially when it's already so lenient. Not everything has to be handed on a silver platter.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Was posting in another thread pertaining to the Endwalker MSQ's being too difficult, but thought I'd revisit this one since I don't want to say that the difficulty I've been experiencing is all about the game, rather that it's a 'me' problem.

I'm still absolutely terrible at the gameplay - I've somehow blundered my way through to Endwalker, mostly via pure dumb luck, but don't really feel like I've improved much at all and my enthusiasm toward the game has dropped to 'don't want to log in anymore' levels now, as reached "A Frosty Reception", died very early on (playing as Thancred) and realised that I'm not motivated to go through the whole 'try and try again' process. And lets say that, for arguments sake, I do somehow blunder my way through 'Frosty Reception'... then what? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that another Zenos fight will occur at some point, and I really don't want to repeat the utterly miserable experience of fighting him again.
And, according to the other thread I mentioned, I apparently shouldn't be struggling at this point in the game.

I'll also note that Google/guides are not necessarily the answer - I can't put those lessons into practical use.

Anyway, I'm not really enjoying the game anymore. And with that being the case, what's the point?

It could just be that while you like the idea of bard... the gameplay just isn't your forte, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm pretty bad at most of the dps jobs, and some of them I even use macros for! Using macros for dps is usually a bad idea but in my case I play certain jobs worse without them.

As much as you like bard, why not try out some other jobs to see if maybe they might feel better to you gameplay-wise? Who knows? You might fall in love with something unexpectedly! The dps jobs I've had the most success with are Bard (that I use a macro for), Red Mage, Summoner (post revamp) and Dancer. Dancer in particular is probably my favorite dps job to play for its simplicity with Summoner a close second.

Also remember that you don't have to be dps to do the story! I've been a healer main since I hit 30 as an arcanist all those years ago and realized being a scholar was way better for lvling than Summoner as far as I was concerned. I eventually swapped to White Mage and then Sage, but I've been able to do all the leveling content and solo duties as a healer when allowed to. Healer DPS is super simple and you have the tools to keep yourself alive through most anything that isn't a one-shot.

I'd suggest giving Dancer and Summoner/Scholar a closer look. Summoner/Scholar is particularly enticing since you get two jobs (and roles) for leveling one. And if you find you actually like healing, but scholar isn't quite to your taste, white mage is super easy.

[Claviusnex]

I noted here and in the other thread you specifically bring up the body swap scenarios. I'm not a fan of borrowed skills or body swaps which EW seems to use a lot of. With their reduced number of skills it still takes some time to get in a rhythm and figure out the best way to play them. As I dislike them so much I automatically fail the first try so I can go easy mode right off the bat to get the scenarios over with as quickly as I can. Even on easy I fail on some of the tries (for the get good folks out there it ain't going to happen as I'm in the stage of life where slow reflexes only get slower and eye sight only gets worse). I do like FFXIV for the main story line but would prefer to play myself for scenarios rather than be stuck with gimmicks that don't really advance the story being told. As to your situation all I can suggest is to not get bogged down repeating the scenarios endlessly. I've found when I fail once or twice it is best to relax and not go back to them for a day or two after which I will frequently be able to complete them.

In regards to your comment about a potential meeting with Zenos. I don't want to ruin the plot but you might be pleasantly surprised about how things go.

[hagare]

all I can say is keep at it.
Learn your class better.
The more you do the fight, the more you'll observe the cracks of the fight.
and if you need a break, try doing something else.
crafting, leveling alts, do dungeons etc.

[TaleraRistain]

I hate this idea that there is some fixed standard by which all players should learn/progress

There's not, at least not past what the game requires. People just try to gatekeep. They have opinions on who is "worthy" to come play this game. Just try to ignore them.

I'm sorry you're not having fun. The only thing I can say is take heart. In SE's Live Letter about the next 10 years, they mentioned they wanted to try to attract the fans who avoid their online games and only play the single player games. And since those players most likely aren't going to have years of MMO experience under their belts (or they would probably already be playing) then we can probably expect some adjustments to make the MSQ more tenable for more people.

Stormblood was a bit of a bear on some solo instances. They seem to have learned from the feedback and made some adjustments going forward (outside one or two annoying instances). So hopefully that will be some encouragement.

And there's nothing wrong if you need to take a break and focus on something else for a bit. The game will still be here when you come back. You will only come to hate your time more if you push yourself when you aren't having fun.