New player(s) thoughts

[R041]

This is very good feedback, and if anyone's bothered to play any other MMO in the past year they'd realize the new player experience here is STILL really bad and is the largest firewall for new players getting into an MMO to this day. I'm embarrassed at how very little Yoshi/SE has done to crunch this experience, and at how out of control things have gotten. Yoshi has done a tremendous job of rowing existing players out into an ocean with very little visibility to the shore.


What you're typically going to find on these forums are players that have played through the expansions over a long period of time and don't understand that the barrier to entry is a 400 hour minimum visual novel. When a new expansion releases most people binge it for 3-6 days and then the post-MSQ story over a much longer period of time in small chunks. The players that somehow manage to actually play through the FULL MSQ within a month are either lying about skipping massive amounts of dialog, or are just completely deranged. They forget that actual casual play is 1-2 hours a day if you have any form of life, which means anyone trying to get to the MMO side through the MSQ with this amount of time can't play with their friends for nearly a year unless they do a full story skip.


I've been playing since 1.0, and have seen our MMO side of FFXIV slowly taken over by rabid Visual Novel MSQ worshippers that call the game an 'RPGMMO', when the MSQ is neither an RPG or an MMO, but a visual novel with a few linear dungeons sprinkled in and no coop interaction otherwise. I was able to make the excuse at the beginning of Stormblood that the visual novel side wasn't too bad and you'd be busy for a casual month, but it's gotten to an extreme point where it's actually impossible to invite friends to join the MMO side. We've been held hostage by our own MMO slowly boiling us.


A lot of people skip dialog, and the rule of thumb is to skip until there's voice acting. But if you're a new player and you want to play the MMO, my honest advice is to watch a youtube series on the MSQ and then just story-skip. It's a great story 10% of the time, but so are the other FF games and they're not 400 hours.


Whatever Yoshi is planning for 7.0 - If it's an actual new story with a new entry (I have some serious doubts), then this should have been done in 4.0. Our recent boom of a playerbase is not exemplary of our MSQ - WoW players didn't join because they heard of a new Visual Novel called FFXIV, they joined because they were upset at WoW and thought we'd have better MMO systems, well we don't. We have a ton of problems that need to be addressed with a significant amount of people pushing them under the rug with a wide grin and a welcome sign.


Do the MSQ if you want the Single Player experience.
Skip the MSQ if you want the MMO experience. (You can always go back through NG+)

[caffe_macchiato]

99% of FFXIV is single player. Each expac has at least fifteen hours of cutscenes. Endwalker alone has 23 hours (I wish I was joking).

I apologize on behalf of Square Enix and the FFXIV playerbase for the false advertising. This game should not charge a subscription, nor should it be advertised as an “online” game/MMO knowing full well that the vast majority of your time is spent in solo cutscenes. Fortunately, we have hope. World of Warcraft: Dragonflight comes out on November 28 and has a ton of new multiplayer content including raids, which are more than the amount of cutscenes. In fact, pre-patch is currently live, so you can play endgame content from the current expansion and level up quickly.

FFXIV is seen as one of the greatest and most beloved games of all time because of its story and amount of cutscenes, but not because of its gameplay. If you wanted to play a video game, you best look elsewhere. I mainly just keep subbed so I can take screenshots, since I already beat all the story quests.

[R041]

I apologize on behalf of Square Enix and the FFXIV playerbase for the false advertising. This game should not charge a subscription, nor should it be advertised as an “online” game/MMO knowing full well that the vast majority of your time is spent in solo cutscenes. Fortunately, we have hope.

That's the problem, it wasn't always like this. It used to be MMO first, but the focus these past 4 years has been to slowly turn the MMO into a Single Player experience with single-player systems and the widening gap of the MSQ into Post-MSQ (MMO) content.

I'm tired of it, and this is no longer something to praise Yoshi for. He fixed 1.0 and made a better MMO in 2.0-4.0, he didn't fix 1.0 to turn it into a single-player game.

[hagare]

This is very good feedback, and if anyone's bothered to play any other MMO in the past year they'd realize the new player experience here is STILL really bad and is the largest firewall for new players getting into an MMO to this day. I'm embarrassed at how very little Yoshi/SE has done to crunch this experience, and at how out of control things have gotten. Yoshi has done a tremendous job of rowing existing players out into an ocean with very little visibility to the shore.

hey, I'm pretty sure the devs have said they're considering a new entry point sometime in the future.
As proud as they are of their creation, they do admit the length is not a good thing for new players
And I do agree we need a new entry point if don't want to put off new players

[R041]

hey, I'm pretty sure the devs have said they're considering a new entry point sometime in the future.
As proud as they are of their creation, they do admit the length is not a good thing for new players
And I do agree we need a new entry point if don't want to put off new players

I know, but I have serious copium because every single friend I've invited to play FF has quit even trying to get to Heavensward. I'm going to start just handing out Story-Skips and watching an MSQ series because it's out of control. Then all of these content creators keep praising this insanely long MSQ and promoting the MMO I've loved for so long as a single-player game. I'm beyond salty, sorry.

Even trying to build an FC is difficult unless you're inviting everyone and you're absolutely massive to catch the 5% of players that stay. If anyone's ever tried to create an FC and you get a ton of sprouts in your FC, you start to see them all log off after a few weeks and never come back. It's heart breaking, and I try my best to make it a good experience, but I can only do so much - It's going to evolve into me just handing out story skips to people that stay in the FC longer than a few weeks.

[Lustre]

I dont blame OP everybody I tried to get into this game, with the exception of a single person (who happened to be both a MMO player and loved FF) quit before they even hit heavensward

[SannaR]

Then either you need better friends or need to be a better friend. Go do the dungeons, trials and raids with your friends. Go kill the open world mobs for them. Go through the story with them via NG+. To say the MMO part only happens at the current end game is silly.

[Iscah]

A lot of people skip dialog, and the rule of thumb is to skip until there's voice acting.

I'm not going to object to your disliking of the story, but for people who are following it, there is definitely important information in non-voiced cutscenes and even the stand-and-talk dialogue. Limiting yourself to the voiced cutscenes will get you an "action highlights reel" but you're not guaranteed to have the context for it.

[R041]

Then either you need better friends or need to be a better friend. Go do the dungeons, trials and raids with your friends. Go kill the open world mobs for them. Go through the story with them via NG+. To say the MMO part only happens at the current end game is silly.

They ultimately need to get through MSQ, and it over-levels them anyway. There's 0 reason to even do open world content when it gives no exp unless you're BLU. The only time we get to do anything with new players is once every 2-3 hours when they can finally do a dungeon, then at the end of each expac with a series of dungeons and trials. This is not a good new player experience, and does not welcome them to much coop opportunities. 10% of my very close friends are even still touching FF.

Go play WoW and you'd realize that literally everything a new player can do, they can do by themselves with ease, and you as a high level player can tag along with and sync to their level and all of their side quests and MSQ. FF has done everything in it's power to make this a mostly solo experience. It ultimately promotes anti-social behavior.

Wake up, we have massive churn. This is not a good experience for PLAYERS (Not just new) and we're likely going to be in a large decline soon. As an MMO, I'd like more opportunities to play with ALL players.

I'm not going to object to your disliking of the story, but for people who are following it, there is definitely important information in non-voiced cutscenes and even the stand-and-talk dialogue. Limiting yourself to the voiced cutscenes will get you an "action highlights reel" but you're not guaranteed to have the context for it.

I didn't say I disliked the story, but I will say it has way too much filler dialog. It could easily be cut down to 10% of what it currently is. I started skipping dialog during Stormblood.

[midnitdragoon]

That's the problem, it wasn't always like this. It used to be MMO first, but the focus these past 4 years has been to slowly turn the MMO into a Single Player experience with single-player systems and the widening gap of the MSQ into Post-MSQ (MMO) content.

I'm tired of it, and this is no longer something to praise Yoshi for. He fixed 1.0 and made a better MMO in 2.0-4.0, he didn't fix 1.0 to turn it into a single-player game.

This post here is painful... Not because it's true... But because I remember playing 1.0 and being promised that a realm reborn would be a polished version of 1.0. I feel like I was lied to... The moment I started up arr, attacked my first monster and noticed how quick the global cool down was and used quick combos to kill... I realized this was a very very different game compared to 1.0...

1.0 aside from all its flaws, was a mmorpg first.... You needed to communicate with others and form groups to exp chain, participate in dungeons, do leves... Eureka almost felt like a polished version of 1.0, all that was missing was a complete revamp of how weapon skills and attacks worked.

Here's hoping for changes come 7.0 and onwards.