The new player experience and how FFXIV fails as an MMO.

[TheRealDesastr]

Personally, I agree with this.

Any new player I've tried to get to join hasn't stayed. People tout 'oh the story is amazing though and it's not their game if they won't stay'. Sure. Maybe it isn't their game.

But that attitude won't attract new players, especially as older ones are bleeding away. I'm only here still because of roleplay - this game has so much less to offer than games like WoW, which is getting more true considering they're adding housing. All of my stories are tied to FFXIV though and thus, I'm staying.

But that isn't the case for many people, who will leave given the game just...isn't offering a point to play for many now, and not much to keep new players playing. People can yell 'well that's their fault they won't stay' all they want. It won't help the game grow.

There has to be something done but SE seems to want to continue listening to people who think it's blasphemy to offer a non-purchaseable skip.

In the very least, content shouldn't be totally blocked by story.

[Gyson]

Personally, I agree with this.

Any new player I've tried to get to join hasn't stayed. People tout 'oh the story is amazing though and it's not their game if they won't stay'. Sure. Maybe it isn't their game.

But that attitude won't attract new players, especially as older ones are bleeding away. I'm only here still because of roleplay - this game has so much less to offer than games like WoW, which is getting more true considering they're adding housing. All of my stories are tied to FFXIV though and thus, I'm staying.

But that isn't the case for many people, who will leave given the game just...isn't offering a point to play for many now, and not much to keep new players playing. People can yell 'well that's their fault they won't stay' all they want. It won't help the game grow.

There has to be something done but SE seems to want to continue listening to people who think it's blasphemy to offer a non-purchaseable skip.

In the very least, content shouldn't be totally blocked by story.

But this is an MMO that focuses heavily on story, and for some players that's the main appeal. I don't see a world where the story is essentially shelved and this game becomes another WoW-clone. That will only cause it to be appealing to a different audience, not necessarily a larger one.

I do agree that non-story elements in this game, particularly in the open world, could use a lot of improvement. For as much as FFXIV relies on FATES they have always been one of the game's weaker activities. Guild Wars 2 has their own version of FATEs which are, for whatever reason, much more interesting and engaging (to me) than FFXIV's FATEs have ever been. The presentation and execution of them is just awful.

Outside of that we just have field-combat in the open world, which I think is doomed to dull because FFXIV is a tab-target MMO. That will never be exciting, especially to the type of people you probably hope to attract. The only time it gets remotely interesting is with the occasional A or S Rank as they have more than two mechanics. I don't think we're going to see FFXIV turned into an action-combat game anytime soon. So how else can it be improved? I played WoW for 6 years and I can't really say it was any better there.. perhaps only a bit more fun because the open world encounters were more dangerous.

FFXIV's dungeons can be entertaining, as can trials and raids. And unlike most MMOs crafting is fantastic fun, at least until you start relying on macros and guides to essentially automate the gameplay for you (at which point you come to the forums and complain crafting is boring).

But outside of that it's the field-content in the open world and the story, and of the two the latter is definitely the stronger feature of this MMO. There is a lot of story content in FFXIV I still haven't consumed, and I will say that almost every time I pull at one of those random threads I walk away from the experience thinking how crazy it is that I almost didn't experience that hidden gem, and that's almost always because of the presentation and story.

[PyurBlue]

I don't see a world where the story is essentially shelved and this game becomes another WoW-clone.

Is anyone asking for that? The issue keeps getting framed as a binary one where the story has to overshadow every other part of the game or it has to be irrelevant. Those are only the most extreme options. The length of the story stops having downsides when it stops interfering with the MMO side of the game. I also don't see any benefit to making the story required when it comes to player interest. If anything, letting the player choose when to engage with the story should lead to the least burnout because there are no competing goals like trying to catch up with friends.

Going back and changing the structure of the game from ARR to DT would be a lot of work so there might not be many feasible ways to make changes there, but the future is an open book and I think the game could benefit a lot from allowing more player freedom and interaction.

[Gyson]

Is anyone asking for that? The issue keeps getting framed as a binary one where the story has to overshadow every other part of the game or it has to be irrelevant. Those are only the most extreme options. The length of the story stops having downsides when it stops interfering with the MMO side of the game. I also don't see any benefit to making the story required when it comes to player interest. If anything, letting the player choose when to engage with the story should lead to the least burnout because there are no competing goals like trying to catch up with friends.

Going back and changing the structure of the game from ARR to DT would be a lot of work so there might not be many feasible ways to make changes there, but the future is an open book and I think the game could benefit a lot from allowing more player freedom and interaction.

But you know the formula - the introduction of new (especially leveling dungeons) are usually woven into the story, which provides players with the option of running them with NPCs who are part of the story (and a reason for those NPCs to be there). What you're essentially asking for is to have that content separated from the story, which in turn will make the experience worse for those players who do enjoy the story. Or you're asking the developers to create twice as many dungeons so players can level and gear up via the story route or a non-story route, and I doubt that is feasible under their current development schedule given that they already seem to be struggling with their pace.

A story-skip option is available for those who want to catch up to the current expansion, and while I would never use one it seems like the entire effort to wrap a bow on the previous 10-year story was at least in part to provide potential players with a new starting point to jump to. And if they do and discover they actually like the current story they can always tackle the previous expansions at their leisure through the New Game Plus feature. It's not the perfect way to digest an MMO, but it's a pretty decent option, and one that is available *right now* without shaking up the formula in unwanted ways for long-time players who have actually enjoyed the design from the last ten years.

Between Endwalker closing off the last ten years, Dawntrail starting a new adventure, the New Game Plus feature and the story skip option all being available now, there has never been a better time to bring new friends into the game who have been holding back because they didn't want to progress through multiple expansions to reach the end-game. Can we at least agree on that?

[Kandraxx]

What they really should do is to split the MSQ from each expac apart and implement some sort of hub where new players would be able to choose which story/expac to pursue. That would also mean that they make the absolute baseline like materia melding, mounts, travel, etc a default and not a ARR progression.

For example, in Guild Wars 2 (which also locks content behind story progression) you can just activate/deactivate storylines from different expacs via menu and at least go where you want. Want to hop directly into the newest thing? No problem and you're not really penalized or at a real disadvantage either.

Now, obviously that is gonna create some kinda paradox and inconsistencies, where you would go from someone dead to that someone being alive again and so. But I think that still would be a lot better than the current implementation, where newcomers are asked to play for ~200 hrs to get to the first 'beacon of light' (which I personally think is Stormblood) or to fork out 25 bucks for something they might not even continue to play in a weeks time.

[0blivion]

do the gacha game thing where it asks "hey this is spoilers do you wanna do this content anyway"

[Altina_Orion]

Is anyone asking for that? The issue keeps getting framed as a binary one where the story has to overshadow every other part of the game or it has to be irrelevant. Those are only the most extreme options. The length of the story stops having downsides when it stops interfering with the MMO side of the game. I also don't see any benefit to making the story required when it comes to player interest. If anything, letting the player choose when to engage with the story should lead to the least burnout because there are no competing goals like trying to catch up with friends.

Going back and changing the structure of the game from ARR to DT would be a lot of work so there might not be many feasible ways to make changes there, but the future is an open book and I think the game could benefit a lot from allowing more player freedom and interaction.

Welcome to the FF forum, where everything is a false dilemma logical fallacy.

Also, people have been a big fan of the WoW story. DESPITE why people think, WoW is also a story driven MMO - its just broken into campagins. A lot of people are really enjoying the story of latest expansion TWW. I think the story is a bit short and can be confusing to players that havent played previous stories AND ALSO its an issue that they did shelf some earlier stories like classic when Cataclysm came out, but everything that happened before is still cannon.

Realistically, I'm not sure what the answer is, but even from a casual context, play through 500 hours of story so you can kill some things in OC with your friends is not the play, and the things available in ARR that Gyson described are largely either solo activities or largely dead content (with exceptions such as PvP). Like, thinking of level 50 content, really what is there? Gold Saucer, glam, pvp, and afking in limsa?

[Altina_Orion]

But you know the formula - the introduction of new (especially leveling dungeons) are usually woven into the story, which provides players with the option of running them with NPCs who are part of the story (and a reason for those NPCs to be there). What you're essentially asking for is to have that content separated from the story, which in turn will make the experience worse for those players who do enjoy the story. Or you're asking the developers to create twice as many dungeons so players can level and gear up via the story route or a non-story route, and I doubt that is feasible under their current development schedule given that they already seem to be struggling with their pace.

A story-skip option is available for those who want to catch up to the current expansion, and while I would never use one it seems like the entire effort to wrap a bow on the previous 10-year story was at least in part to provide potential players with a new starting point to jump to. And if they do and discover they actually like the current story they can always tackle the previous expansions at their leisure through the New Game Plus feature. It's not the perfect way to digest an MMO, but it's a pretty decent option, and one that is available *right now* without shaking up the formula in unwanted ways for long-time players who have actually enjoyed the design from the last ten years.

Between Endwalker closing off the last ten years, Dawntrail starting a new adventure, the New Game Plus feature and the story skip option all being available now, there has never been a better time to bring new friends into the game who have been holding back because they didn't want to progress through multiple expansions to reach the end-game. Can we at least agree on that?

Story skip is really a shitty solution to bring up, "Yeah buy the game for $60 or whatever than spend $15 on a sub then spend another $40 on a story skip and we can play together! Or grind out 500 hours of story!"

[Altina_Orion]

do the gacha game thing where it asks "hey this is spoilers do you wanna do this content anyway"

Runescape 3 started doing this and its actually kind of nice. They let you do 6th age story quests before you complete the 5th ones but RECOMMENDS you complete 5th age story first. Not 100% sure its the right solution, but I would probably propose a hybrid between WoW in FF

WoW forces you to accelerate to the current expansion.
FF forces you to crawl through 6 expansions of story to play content that isn't either dungeons or dead.
Why no create an accelerated path that perhaps catches you up to DT or whatever the current expansion is but gives the option to take the slow-msq route?

[Carin-Eri]

Runescape 3 started doing this and its actually kind of nice. They let you do 6th age story quests before you complete the 5th ones but RECOMMENDS you complete 5th age story first. Not 100% sure its the right solution, but I would probably propose a hybrid between WoW in FF

WoW forces you to accelerate to the current expansion.
FF forces you to crawl through 6 expansions of story to play content that isn't either dungeons or dead.
Why not create an accelerated path that perhaps catches you up to DT or whatever the current expansion is but gives the option to take the slow-msq route?

Oddly, it feels as if they could have done what many thought they might - namely let new players actually start from Dawntrail.

When you consider the facts that Dawntrail:
- Makes pretty much no reference to anything that came before Tural
- basically withdrew our 'Warrior of Light' title (I don't recall it being used at all, even by those who referred to our character by that title previously)
- Turned the Scions into generic friends
- Doesn't give us any narrative reason to return to Eoreza

I mean, considering the fact that it seems as if they went out of their way to ignore everything that happened prior to Tural/Dawntrail it does seem confusing that they didn't create a 'new player point'.