New player experience ( Changes needed asap, Feedback )

[Shouko]

The one thing I'd like changed for new players is the ability to pick up AST, MCH, and DRK before reaching HW. Been playing on an alt recently and that is my number 1 complaint.

The main issue is obviously the job quest locations, so move them for the 30-50 quests (most are in ARR zones to begin with, the pickup locations are just in Ishgard), it's annoying that I can pick up SAM, RDM, DNC, GNB, RPR, SGE, VPR, and PCT without having to reach the expansions they were introduced. Feedback must have been intense for them never to do that crap again.

While a good idea in theory, I doubt they'll ever do this, as this game is as we all know heavily story driven and HW jobs are literally tied to the city itself, aka MCH has its own area, DRK is just kind of there, AST has their own area as well, so in order for them to be moved to ARR, they would have to figure out how to move their respective areas in Ishgard to ARR areas, while I suppose they could just do it, from a lore point of view it wouldn't make much sense.


As for the rest of the jobs, I think the point was to follow HW route, but due to whatever reason they just decided to scrap each new job set have their own tie in, into the city for the most part like they did with HW. It's probably easier to just have them start in ARR.

[MayuAmakura]

FFxiv tutorial alone is the worst thing I have ever witnessed. Including myself when I started the game. Not voice acted NPC's, tons of clicking, spending 1 hour just for the 1st cutscene and few quests of the game before you get to actually play? Yeah that's the thing that makes most people uninstall immediately. When your first impression leaves a bad taste and mark, then your game has a serious issue.

A lot of other games out there have voice acting or at least a good tutorials. Here it's quite boring. This first thing needs to be changed.

[Kirutsuki]

FFxiv tutorial alone is the worst thing I have ever witnessed. Including myself when I started the game. Not voice acted NPC's, tons of clicking, spending 1 hour just for the 1st cutscene and few quests of the game before you get to actually play? Yeah that's the thing that makes most people uninstall immediately. When your first impression leaves a bad taste and mark, then your game has a serious issue.

A lot of other games out there have voice acting or at least a good tutorials. Here it's quite boring. This first thing needs to be changed.

True, but sadly people are so enthralled by ARR as it is today that any change to it would be considered blasphemy by many. Even if it was a faithful overhaul not only to voiceacting, but well paced MSQ.
There's just too much attachment to something that's 15years old, even when those same people know how bad of an experience it can be for new players.

[ReynTime]

• LvL 50 White Mage quest: "Heart of the Forest" is an absolute pain in the butt still to this day to newer players and reports of this quest being a pain goes back to 2013. And no it is not just the issue of gearing, sure you can brute force it by getting much higher level gear, but specifically for healers this quest causes a lot of headache due to how healers work in instanced solo content. They do not work the way that healers normally work. Even if you set it to Very Easy you can easily find yourself MP starved easily due to needing to spam cure 1-2 just to keep the damned tree alive.

There is nothing wrong about this quest. Aside from maybe having the NPCs literally tell you "USE LUCENT DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which IS something White Mages are supposed to get used to when the party doesn't lend itself to avoiding all the damage it can.

[AyahM]

I would like to see an option on alts -

"You have another character on this account which has surpassed [expansion name here]. Would you like to skip all [expansion name here] content, level to [level for expansion] and watch mandatory cutscenes which portray [expansion name here] story?"

Please allow alts to skip expansions (HOWEVER, make the cutscenes mandatory!)

[LCROSSE]

I have played through the game countless time on various alts and I have to agree ARR is the biggest problem!!
The sheer WEALTH of experience given to you by the time you reach Heavensward sucks any and all potential challenge out of the game entirely. Even spreading experience across several jobs, I wound up overlevelled on them all by the time I hit Sastasha (the 1st dungeon).

Queue the next issue... now that you are so insanely overlevelled, you are then forced back down to level 16 while in the dungeon. So now you cant make use of the various skills you've obtained since becoming overleveled. All those skills you have grown accustomed to using for a good while are now unusable and you must make do with 1-2, 1-2, 1-2.. It is super freaking BOOORING! But then because of the dungeon exp, you get even further over levelled. So by the time you're done the first 3 dungeons you have likely gained some new skills, but now have ZERO clue what they do and by the time you get used to using those you'll be even more overlevelled and have even more!
When I finished ARR I was often 10+ levels overlevelled (even while spreading exp) and Heavensward and beyond became such a cakewalk I may as well have just watched the game (like a movie) rather than played throough it.

So my point is, the excessive amounts of experience (which are further enhanced on preferred worlds) is a glaring issue that needs to be addressed!

[Kirutsuki]

There is nothing wrong about this quest. Aside from maybe having the NPCs literally tell you "USE LUCENT DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which IS something White Mages are supposed to get used to when the party doesn't lend itself to avoiding all the damage it can.

There is, 100%. I was literally watching my friend play it through a stream. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it requires SO much more in comparison to other jobs in terms of what you need to do and keep an eye out.
For a new player it is a lot and if you're even slighly under geared for it, you're going to get slapped real hard by any of the mobs that spawn and that don't insta aggro to the NPC's. Just the aspect of needing to keep Lucid Dream up is a task.
I really feel like people forget so easily what it was like when they started playing, for one you didn't even know exactly how important lucid dreaming is, or how important Holy usage is. You wouldn't even know that Regen draws enemy aggro unless someone told you that.

A new player is going to do so many unnecessary things on top of not having all that information, or not using certain skills correctly that the quest just becomes a mess. Which is why there are reports of it all the way from 2013.

When you compare it to other job quests at lvl50, you can just AoE spam even if you're under geared. I was literally doing my Paladin lvl50 quest and while I know the game better, I was still surprised about Heart of the Forest being so hectic.
One of the issues for example my friend was having was that the giant tree mobs would get in the way of the Guardian Tree and in panic they would cast heals on wrong targets.

And that's all for the course of being a new player and people seem to completely look past as if they themselves didn't struggle the same way.

[Kirutsuki]

So my point is, the excessive amounts of experience (which are further enhanced on preferred worlds) is a glaring issue that needs to be addressed!

I really don't know how you would even go about fixing this issue due to how it's set up. The problem is that as you level up, you gain access to more job quests which give you abilities that you should not have available in your MSQ journey.

So, the obvious fix would be to limit EXP gain, but that would directly effect how much EXP people gain on their ALT jobs, and slowing them down isn't ideal either cause it's already quite a tedious process beyond lvl40.
And ultimately I think people would be pretty mad about the EXP change if it was more linear considering people do like to overlevel to get to the good bits faster.

So you really have 2 options;

1. Limit EXP gain on your main/first JOB, but add the current exp buff on any alt jobs you are doing. And the game considers your "main job" the one with highest level.
2. Move job abilities from job quests to MSQ. This way even if you over level, you're still limited to whatever your MSQ prog point is.

And neither of these changes feel good to me.

The only other thing that comes to mind is;

3. Allow players to use all abilities in all content, no matter the level.

But how do you balance that? Or do you just allow early level dungeons from lvl16 - lvl50 be completely unsyched nonsense?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

NGL, that sounds like any average mmo healer supposed to feel like. I didn't recall my own struggle dealing with that quest (WHM was my 2nd job leveled after my SCH main, and leveled quite close to one another at any given time up to lv60 in ShB days). On that very specific case, it feels like one that requires "take step back, deep breath, calm yourself, and focus"-kind of approach than to just encouraging 'brute force' everything for the sake of 'new player experience' that SE have tried so hard to appeal... for what exactly? (see the last census' new player numbers, they're not appealing anymore new players lol)

EDIT: one thing that I'd agree though, earlier solo duties NPCs are not receptive to players' AoE beneficial actions. This includes your AoE heals and buffs. The pain point in this quest would be the hassle of having to click the tree to heal them individually. The only 'workaround' for the moment is to focus target the tree so it'll remain clickable easily on UI, but they can definitely do better on this front.

[Kirutsuki]

NGL, that sounds like any average mmo healer supposed to feel like. I didn't recall my own struggle dealing with that quest (WHM was my 2nd job leveled after my SCH main, and leveled quite close to one another at any given time up to lv60 in ShB days). On that very specific case, it feels like one that requires "take step back, deep breath, calm yourself, and focus"-kind of approach than to just encouraging 'brute force' everything for the sake of 'new player experience' that SE have tried so hard to appeal... for what exactly? (see the last census' new player numbers, they're not appealing anymore new players lol)

EDIT: one thing that I'd agree though, earlier solo duties NPCs are not receptive to players' AoE beneficial actions. This includes your AoE heals and buffs. The pain point in this quest would be the hassle of having to click the tree to heal them individually. The only 'workaround' for the moment is to focus target the tree so it'll remain clickable easily on UI, but they can definitely do better on this front.

Yea, and that's what makes that quest specifically so hectic, because of the unique position healers are in with AoE heals and how targets work in solo duties. I honestly didn't even know that focus targeting in solo duties makes it pop in the UI myself, but it's been such a long time since I did a healer solo duty myself.
And for sure it's IS indeed about taking a step back at times, assessing the situations etc. But when you look at other job quests, there isn't that type of stuff going on, you just AoE spam until enemies die. It feels somewhat unfair for healers to be in that situation.

I do give it points for actually giving a bit of a challenge for players, I am not against that. But when the game actively fights against you in solo duties and in healer ones specifically is when I want to say something about it.