[Feedback] A New Player's Perspective (Will update if there's interest)

[kaynide]

Minfilia's "pray return" is an overblown meme. I counted them up at one point when replaying ARR and it was maybe once per "chapter" and if I remember right, half the time it wasn't even Minfilia who said it.

To be fair, it's not NEARLY as bad as it was in 2.0; the tickets help and a lot of it has been cut out entirely. Now, when it does come up it makes narrative sense/acts as a scene change to move onto other locales/plot. Not perfect, but it's better than 2.0.

[Iscah]

To be fair, it's not NEARLY as bad as it was in 2.0; the tickets help and a lot of it has been cut out entirely. Now, when it does come up it makes narrative sense/acts as a scene change to move onto other locales/plot. Not perfect, but it's better than 2.0.

Tickets to warp back to Vesper Bay aren't going to help with how often you get told to come back to Vesper Bay.

I'm pretty sure I went through it before the edits anyway.

[SargeTheSeagull]

This is gonna sound mean but I don't care what a nine year old thinks about any MMO, 14 included.

[Saidosha]

I don't see the point of "game plays itself" games unless you're getting some specific enjoyment out of seeing the numbers go up, or whatever it is that they actually do. I'd be happy if a game played the grindy parts itself – in FFXIV terms, if I could set my character to automatically rack up hours of EXP in Bozja so I could come in to play the story and do each FATE once instead of ten times each, but not for it to clear the whole thing from start to finish so I never do anything with it. (Although even then I wouldn't mind start-to-finish for alts... but it's a bit different for something like FFXIV where you have essentially a set of different games bundled up alongside the main game. I wouldn't independently choose to play a Bozja-type game and then not actually play it.)

If there's one thing I've seen some mobile games do right, it's passive resource generation to basically offset the need to grind. The closest XIV has to this is retainers, but short of a rather lucky find, I'd argue they're not really worth the effort to maintain and cycle even if you could technically argue they're "free" if you give 'em hand-me-down gear early on.

Part of my own desire for a more meaningful open world is the option to assign your character a task when you're offline. You'll basically get tagged as a temporary NPC, but still be out in the world doing things relative to what you chose. And when you come back, a little EXP and loot to show for it. Pragmatically, it's not much different than rested EXP, but it would help to give the world a bit more life knowing you won't be doing something like FATEs alone at off-peak hours if other assigned players showed up to assist.

[kaynide]

This is gonna sound mean but I don't care what a nine year old thinks about any MMO, 14 included.

I mean that's fine, but then what's the point of your response? That I shouldn't post about whatever in what is a generic forum?

Or that you feel the need to say "I don't care about your post", rather than, I dunno, just not caring about the post and ignoring it?

[Vahlnir]

I mean that's fine, but then what's the point of your response? That I shouldn't post about whatever in what is a generic forum?

Or that you feel the need to say "I don't care about your post", rather than, I dunno, just not caring about the post and ignoring it?

It's best to ignore such posts, to be honest. Some people just want to look and sound edgy.

[Jojoya]

ESRB ratings aren't about whether a child is able to grasp game mechanics. It's based on whether a group of more conservative adults feel the subject matter and language is suitable for a child of a certain age.

Children tend to be more intelligent and capable of learning that many adults want to give them credit for. As some pointed out, attention span and patience are usually more of a problem.

With those out of way, I'm curious about the comparison between FFXIV and GW2 when it comes to learning how to play a job. I haven't played GW2 myself so please correct any misunderstand I have if you do player it.

My understanding is that while you can learn a fair number of abilities, you can only choose to have a small number active (4-5) for use at a given time. If that is true:

How much time has your daughter spent playing each game?

What does GW2 do to teach its players how to play a job that FFXIV isn't doing?

Is she making full use of the abilities available to be used in GW2 or just sticking to a couple of them like she does in FFXIV? Has she learned to add/remove abilities to change them for certain situations?

Does GW2 completely remake jobs on occasion like FFXIV does?

Does it have extensive tutorials on playing a job?

Is there anything else it does different when it comes to teaching a player their job?

With respect to adding job tutorials in FFXIV, as Mikey_R said it's pretty unlikely because that could mean completely rewriting any tutorials if they make substantial changes to a job. As it is, the original class quests that had been like tutorials are now pretty awkward because indirect references are made to how abilities act in combat but the actual abilities aren't learned until later. The level 5 Archer quest is a good example - at one point the dialogue says "For instance, you may choose to prime your weapon well and strike hard, or employ toxins to sap their strength over time.". Those are references to Heavy Shot and Venomous Bite - but the latter isn't even learned until level 6 now.

As nice as job tutorials would be, I doubt they would be practical to create until the game is truly on maintenance mode and there will be no further updates to jobs.

[NekoMataMata]

ESRB ratings aren't about whether a child is able to grasp game mechanics. It's based on whether a group of more conservative adults feel the subject matter and language is suitable for a child of a certain age.

Children tend to be more intelligent and capable of learning that many adults want to give them credit for. As some pointed out, attention span and patience are usually more of a problem.

You know, I genuinely try not to be the person who quotes people and tries to hit them with silly "gotchas" but I can't look away from the first part of the post here.

No one mentioned ESRB. People mentioned target audience. There's a bit of a difference. When you're critiquing a game or really any media it's necessary to keep the target audience in mind. Obviously the OP tried to separate some bits in their observations that might be due to those reasonings but it's worth keeping in mind. Even though, it might be a tiny bit saddening that most of the game's community is very much like a 9 year old in that they don't want to read.

Also, how to tell someone is American: they have to mention politics at every given opportunity. I can't tell if this is really you, or if you just came here to be contrarian.

She's playing solo with trusts, as a DPS. Trusts will literally clear most dungeons with zero player input, besides you needing to be present and dodging AOEs that would kill you otherwise.

It's not the same as being able to clear a solo game by doing that.

Going to second this. Even dodging with trusts is fairly easy. You just follow the trust NPCs. I did all of ShB/EW with trusts, and when I started doing roulettes later I was so clueless for this reason.

[Kacho_Nacho]

This tbh, you said everything I want to say.

So you want the game to cater to 9 year olds ?

It's just an interesting little experiment on the part of the OP and they are sharing their observations and conclusions. Personally, I agree providing players what they need to know visually and audibly would be an improvement over blocks of text. That's not catering to nine year olds. That's common sense and has been backed up by research for years. Different people learn things in different ways.

And somehow your daughter (who seems very lovely by the way) is behaving just like the Second Life crowd, which really says something about the adults in this game.

Why the parting shot? Is it so hard to let people (especially a child) play the game in their own way? If she gets more joy out of the social scene than going through the duties all power to her.

Also, why does it bother you that there are individuals who treat FFXIV as Second Life? Unless they are shoving their ERP in your face, it doesn't affect you at all.

Let go of this idea that people have to play Final Fantasy XIV just like you. All it'll do is frustrate you.

[kaynide]

How much time has your daughter spent playing each game?

I would say she has spent more time in FFXIV at this point if I'm being honest; She plays only about an hour a a day at most with a little more on weekends. I would clock her total time with either game at under 40 hours.

]You can only choose to have a small number active (4-5) for use at a given time

Your skill bar has more of a deckbuilding game feel; like Magic the Gathering or Yugioh.

The weapon you hold, on each job, gives you key binds 1-5. These are available from level 1. You can equip and swap weapons on the fly (usually 2 weapons at any given time).
1 is almost always a chain (so the 1-2-3 skills on most FFXIV jobs)
6 is some kind of healing skill. You can pick which, and which you choose has different effects (eg fast but weaker Cure-1 like, or bigger party-wide, or a defense buff like a tank might use)
7-9 are your build-related skills.
0 is an "elite skill" which you can only have one a time; This is usually your trump card.

All of these have very visual icons that show what they do if you're familiar with the game.

They all tend to also have very unique/visual elements to them when you do them.

If that sounds like too few abilities, remember FFXIV isn't really THAT different, it just has more buttons doing essentially same things.

As in, we could easily just combine Interject and Low Blow, and just give an extra charge. (It's not like Stun really even works where it'd be actually useful)
Or, Rampart-Reprisal-Sentinel; Could just be 1 def. buff with charges. (Sure I guess there are niche uses in savage where you'd stack them but I don't know about that stuff).

Examples:
(Ability 1 on a Guardian, using Greatsword):

What does GW2 do to teach its players how to play a job that FFXIV isn't doing?

It kills you, a lot, until you figure out how to do "the thing". The game is not as deep as FFXIV in story, but in mechanics and engine it's vastly superior.
The actual meta community is also much more active/lively. As in you can copy/paste/share builds.

Does GW2 completely remake jobs on occasion like FFXIV does?

The game has a rolling meta, that changes fairly regularly as the community figures out new synergies in skills. It's close to Path of Exile in this way.
In addition it adds specializations every expansion which is a similar jump from say, Archanist to Summoner or Scholar. It's the same core job but it adds a lot of lateral tweaking you can do. This is to say, we can both play the same job in GW2, but have VERY different builds and play styles.

The bad is that if you stop GW2 for a while and come back, you'll need to spend a minute re-checking your build(s), as they might no longer do what you set them up to do.

Here's a random Youtube vid on the Guardian job for interest/example; It's about 5 minutes long and gives a simple overview of how versatile the 1 job is.
Guardian Job Video

Extra info:

GW2 is not really an instanced game outside of certain story events; It's open world PvE for the most part. There's a lot of zone chatter and people asking for help to fight this or that, or just "hey guys new Guardian, what's a good build?"

The FFXIV-like dungeons are kinda..dead/old.

Also, their seasonal events can be epic. Super Adventure Box (a parody of 8 bit games) is awesome.
Super Adventure Box Commercial