New player(s) thoughts

[Deveryn]

I think I did the free trial for at least a month, maybe two before deciding to subscribe. As someone who's played a number of MMOs, I think it gave me a good enough sense of what the game was going to be like. I raised a few jobs to 50, got an FC invite and it got to a point with gil and such that I decided I may as well sub.

Restrictions are what they are. I've seen worse. They're not a "punishment". They're there for a number of reasons, which people have likely delved into. Other MMOs will do the same. If they don't, they're probably not worth your time.

[SannaR]

You can click on the quest arrows on the map you know. Those should then show you where you need to go on the map. And since ShB you should have an UI element that's default position is in the upper left of your screen that will tell you what MSQ you're on and if you have any job and class quests. So unless you turned that off or the quest UI that has a default middle right UI starting point you can always click on those for non MSQ quests. Unless again you've turned that off. They've gone and made the map easier to read and we can now thankfully have an easier time teleporting around a map. You can even filter the map to where quests hide or shoved to a lower layer than an aetherite. Though it would be nice if a lot of that information was easily accessible in game. I do think the new video guides might mention some of this?

[R041]

I've been playing since 1.0, and FFXIV has slowly become the least RPG of any MMORPG out here, people acting like this is an 'RPG MMO' and everything else an MMO are straight up delusional. It lets you dress-up for your cutscenes but that's as far as it goes in providing you opportunity to interact with the story in any meaningful way. We have LOST a TON of open world / class kit systems that allowed for more interesting player RPG interaction. It's a visual novel with MMO aspects AFTER you sit through all of the cutscenes, and the fun combat intricacies outside of L90 and high-end combat have been entirely lost, so that inadvertently guts old content we have like POTD.

If you can be terminally online, then I've probably found that people can also be terminally FFXIV. Go spend some time playing other MMORPGs for a month and you might actually understand why everyone else is saying FFXIV has become TOO safe and slim. There are plenty of games out there providing a good Coop capable RPG AND MMO in a single package. Being invested in a story for a decade doesn't make it a good one, and it certainly doesn't mean it's an RPG.

Systems have been slowly stripped and we're mostly just getting pocket experiences - It feels like we're shifting to turn XIV into a single-player Visual Novel with no multiplayer interaction necessary and very vanilla combat/kits. At this point we may as well just turn this into DDR with cutscenes, that's what it's being stripped down into.

I never even liked WoW, I thought FF was superior in every way. But I sat down and played BFA recently for the first time, and it's actually such a great Coop capable 'RPG' MMO experience. Breath of fresh air, with a ton of fun kits, random abilities, trinkets, things to do in the world, ways to coop.

I didn't think it was possible to have fun in an open world anymore because I've played too many MMOs in the past. I was wrong, I was complacent, I've become OK with how little FFXIV has to offer compared to everything else out now, and how many excuses myself and the community have made to allow for gutted systems, 'tech debt', low tickrate, separation of fun systems, and the absolute homogenization of our CORE systems. We laugh at other games, while we're now hemorrhaging old players and gatekeep new ones, this isn't going to end well. The last update barely made a dent in the charts.

[Jeeqbit]

We have emotes added regularly, fashion accessories, a variety of different types of mounts and minions, housing, decorating, gardening, explorer mode, say and /roleplay. These are all useful for roleplaying, but I have seen other RP features this game lacks. It's not the best at it and nor is the story because it's not designed to be played with others or to choose different paths and responses. But it's not like the only story is giant blocks of text that aren't delivered in speech bubbles and it's not like there are no RP features at all.

[R041]

We have emotes added regularly, fashion accessories, a variety of different types of mounts and minions, housing, decorating, gardening, explorer mode, say and /roleplay. These are all useful for roleplaying, but I have seen other RP features this game lacks. It's not the best at it and nor is the story because it's not designed to be played with others or to choose different paths and responses. But it's not like the only story is giant blocks of text that aren't delivered in speech bubbles and it's not like there are no RP features at all.

That's the issue, people are conflating us wanting RPG content with RP, just stop. I'm not asking for a 400 hour text adventure with after-credits of us collecting emotes for ERP. I want an RPG GAME with world content and more reason to play with all level tiers. Things to do that don't require doting in Limsa, or running around in circles as a Lalafell going "Waah!~".

I want more game, less MSQ. Our 'Game' has been stripped from all difficulty and nuance, the dungeons are all the same hallway with a different set piece, mob pulls pre-determined, classes homogenized, early content left to rot while we continue to frontload current-content with 'new' abilities and delete them from lower levels.

We get new content and even that's completely stripped of all life and no reward, where most 'Normal' difficulty content is now a spit in the face and completely lacks any life or thought. I feel like I'm losing braincells by even doing normal dungeons because they require no thought for any class, and negative thought as a DPS. As trash heavy as ARR dungeons were, at least they had some minor RPG and interaction, but we can't even have that.

We've been adding mini-games and calling them content, but nothing has changed the core experience, it's just been slowly boiled down further and further every year. All systems from ARR-Stormblood have been completely forgotten about and left to rot. Rest my Chocobo's soul, he's been a good boy but he's sat in the stable for years.

We need to shake things up, there are a ton of things we can do to make the core experience much more enjoyable.

[Azuri]

But it's not like the only story is giant blocks of text that aren't delivered in speech bubbles

It kinda is though.

[Jeeqbit]

We get new content and even that's completely stripped of all life and no reward

It usually has rewards, but maybe it's not the rewards you are interested in.

where most 'Normal' difficulty content is now a spit in the face and completely lacks any life or thought.

It does involve thought, but it's true that they are designed for the lowest possible item level they would expect a casual player to have, so when we go in there with out significantly overpowered gear, it doesn't feel like much. But all the recent mechanics I can think of in the normal mode do involve watching what is happening somewhere and reacting to it or the result is things like vulns, dooms or death. Relatively easy, yes, because it's a normal mode.

It kinda is though.

How is it? I said that the story isn't a giant block of text in a quest window. It's separated into small speech bubbles that are easier to read.

[R041]

They don't take risks anymore because they've been slowly boiling the core experience down further and further until it's completely homogenized with no build or experience diversity, where every minute we'll ever have in this game has now been pre-determined and orderly with little to no open world content. We know the formula now, and it's been gutted, and every reward we receive has been pre-calculated perfectly for our time spent.

This is my wishlist:

1. Let me build my own kit with a spec tree, stop pre-designing my rotation and forcing me to utilize EVERY button in a specific long order.
2. Expand my Chocobo with fun abilities, let me give it an actual full WOL class.
3. Let me do old content with sync and reward me for it.
4. Let me talk in PvP
5. Give me the PvP combo system in PvE
6. Give everyone an opportunity to have a house
7. Level sync world content so I can play with lowbies and reward us both with similar % exp.
8. Let me gain exp for open world content.
9. Let me use ALL of my abilities at ALL levels.
10. Increase the server Tick Rate
11. Add Marketboards and Retainer Bells to ALL towns.
12. Give us multiple branched paths in regular dungeons.
13. Don't pre-determine pack count in dungeons, let us learn.
14. Add more interesting trash mob mechanics. Force us to pay attention and use stuns/slows.
15. Unlock dungeons when you meet level threshold, don't lock them behind MSQ. (This is their own fault for designing MSQ this way)
16. STOP LOCKING EVERYTHING BEHIND MSQ!
17. Double or even triple the amount of various types of rewards we can receive from ALL content.
18. Let us collect all Retainer Items / Island items all at once, let us batch 'Accept' actions.
19. Make FSH more rewarding, stop treating it like a trash gather.
20. Give us Battlecraft Leves again
21. Add puzzles and random rewards in open world
22. Split the MSQ into 3 shorter paths, don't require everyone to do 1 full 30 hour path to reach current content. You don't have enough content for the amount of classes we level.
23. Make harder FATEs and give them boss mechanics.
24. Expand Guildhests to match current content to train on. Short 2-5min experiences of difficult mechanics.

I can keep going, and I don't want to hear excuses like "Tech Debt", or "People will find the most efficient way" - Doesn't matter, stop playing the game for me, let me find out for myself and give me tougher and more rewarding stuff to do.

Because it's gotten to the point where the most rewarding content for me is to just AFK at a Retainer Bell and collect items - You need to get me out and excited to do stuff. I don't want to repeat dungeons when there's no difficulty variable to them and I can't even use my full kit. It feels bad to play Lv15-79 dungeons, they're just set pieces with the same hallway now with almost no reward.

[Azuri]

How is it? I said that the story isn't a giant block of text in a quest window. It's separated into small speech bubbles that are easier to read.

A speech bubble contains a short phrase. Maybe a couple sentences at most. MSQ is nothing but six-seven lines monstrosities that might as well be a single block of text.

[Jeeqbit]

every minute we'll ever have in this game has now been pre-determined and orderly with little to no open world content. We know the formula now, and it's been gutted, and every reward we receive has been pre-calculated perfectly for our time spent.

Guess I just don't have a problem with this. I see it as they have sanded it down to the stuff people care about or actually use and removed useless stuff like clunky abilities that waste hotbar space, waste development time when nobody uses them or waste people's time such as waiting for cooldowns to reset between pulls.

1. The community will build a "best" rotation anyway. But the blue mage model sort of works so maybe it could be based on that.
2. I think raids and dungeons are a bigger priority than messing with chocobos. They don't seem interested in open world beyond hunts/fates/maps/sightseeing/gathering/beast tribes and this seems a development choice since release. It would require a complete change of direction from always instancing content and maybe you have seen how bad hunts get with congestion.
4. PvP is competitive and the sort of chat that could go with that would most likely be reportable.
5. The PvP combo system in PvE would probably not be received well judging by what people say about healers.
6. I don't really understand why housing is so much harder for them than other MMO games, but SE decided to use the speedier option of dedicated servers instead of cloud servers so they have to physically add more hardware to the machines to scale them.
9. Old content isn't designed for the abilities you have later and would ironically make sync issues worse.
10. The tick rate for h/dots? I don't experience this "tick rate" anywhere else, personally.
11. Market boards and retainer bells seem like a design decision to make people hang out at city states. And judging by Limsa Lominsa, it works.
12. Branched paths were tried in ARR dungeons. Did you know there are branched paths in Sastasha? Most people probably don't, because everyone skips them.
14. Trash mechanics were added in Shadowbringers with interrupts that significantly reduce the incoming damage and help prevent wipes and transformed the ease of a big pull, if you could identify the enemy to interrupt out of all the ones you pulled. So far I haven't seen this in EW unless I missed them, but there is still more of EW to go.
17. I think we get little gil from quests to make RMT difficult.
20. My guess is they didn't feel that Battlecraft Leves were popular. Why make something if nobody uses it?
21. Puzzles like what though? We have the sightseeing log. The version in ARR is very difficult to do, even though we can get them easier with flying now, we still have to figure out and watch the weather. The only other sort of puzzle I can think of here is something in the Ronkan ruins.
23. Harder than which FATEs? Harder than achievement fates? Harder than Chi? Harder than Archaeotania or Odin?

I don't want to repeat dungeons when there's no difficulty variable to them and I can't even use my full kit. It feels bad to play Lv15-79 dungeons, they're just set pieces with the same hallway now with almost no reward.

I too wish there was a hard mode version of them that just made simple changes like removing telegraphs or increasing the damage of the mechanics. Not actually adding more mechanics or making it a savage criterion version. Coincounter was a good example of how it could be and if its damage had been increased, getting a single thing wrong would have been deadly. As a plus, you could stun the swing to save people and that was fun.