Keeping the game basic for new players?

[Magis]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

[DenariusJay]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

[Magis]

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

Is that due to the player base, or the way MMOs have been developed now? It seems content has become so basic and easy that players blow through it in a single month causing down time between patches. With a lack of some large overarching goal (cause taking time to get something is hard), players quit until the next patch due to having nothing to do. Heck, this makes sense giving your time frame of 2-3 months.... the time a patch takes to come out. I recall new raids in Vanilla WoW taking a month or longer to clear (some of it was because Blizz put up rooster blocks IE: BWL), and was appalled that the Naxx remake was cleared in what... 3 days? How is that even sustainable? Heck, when XIV launched, people complained of boredom in 2.0 and the excuse was "you blew through the content". Except this was being said 3-4 months down the line. The fact was one of the biggest tools MMO devs have to stretch content out was thrown out: leveling. It could have set the pace for people, and let the devs focus on a balanced end-game, rather than this "catch-up" that is happening. Heck, CT1 was suppose to lead into Coil day 1, but got delayed to 2.1, and now it's alternating ever patch (this may have been the plan from the start, so I may be wrong).

It doesn't help that this game's difficulty makes the grinds become more mind numbing and the super fast verticle progression make the rewards meaningless. This gives a terrible combo of: This content is boring and I don't feel motivated to do it. I myself have been jumping from thing to thing trying to keep myself entertained, doing high-level BTN now.

While that is true. Everyone else also had a MMORPG that was their first. And somehow, we handled it well.

I would be kind of insulted if I was a new player and see how dumb they consider new players.

Indeed. There are games with much more complicated system than XIV yet many players of all types play them (casuals and hardcore). SE shouldn't dumb the content down for new players, rather... they should uses system to help new players learn. They did that well with the quests and tutorial system, but still don't have faith the new players aren't complete idiots?

[HeroSamson]

I like this game very much but the thing I dislike about it.

The combat forces you to play by their rules, no matter what each battle is the same just dodge attacks tank heal and fight you cannot back out of the fight and devise a plan or kite and revive targets keeping the monster alive till people's weaken wears off for another round.

You die retry - die retry like a revolving door that just takes you to the same spot over and over.
Even Paladin can't raise during combat.

I remember FFXI BCNM fights where whole party would wipe me as Paladin pops invincible raises whm. whm raises everyone else me kiting and if we won or lose at least we did it our way not the games way.

Here its if you croak its back to the drawing board.

Forgot to put my reason which is- let's say the healer is doing great but the paladin cant keep the hate which causes everyone to die but everyone else was keeping up or lets say DPS screws up now not enough damage to kill mob or healer cant heal good enough forcing the other healer to take all the weight. its punishing others if tank dies no recovery because even if hes revived weaken status or if 1 healer dies its not enough to keep them all up cost to much to revive other healer causing others to die.

then rewind and some people stop trying get bored of same fight begin to get sloppy.

Then you have the problem on your hands where a Whole Team says to themselves after trying the fight over 50-60 times do I wanna try this again for a item im burned out on this run and which no reason to go back and help others or do it again.

Causing less help. Other than this its a great game and fun I cant wait for the golden saucer.

[silentwindfr]

i think that sooner or later, they must stop to think at the new player like this, indeed they need help for grow and learn. but dev are not the only one that must do it, it's too the community role to help the new one around.

they need too to free themself from WoW shadow and make them game stand by itself... but well it's another debate... a lot of thing must be changed in them way for increase the game value. the question it's do they will do it?

[Marxam]

This is why Japanese developers are falling behind. Making a game simple is not going to make it better. Chess is probably the best example of a game that follows the "Easy to learn, Hard to master" that I feel every game should follow. Several games franchises that come to mind are Demon/Dark Souls, Street Fighter and Smash Bros. to name a few. Here are examples of games that easy to understand (maybe not so much for the Souls series since its aimed at hardcore/true-gamers) but difficult to fully master.

As for FFXIV keeping things simple is only a cover up for their very poorly implemented class/job quests that are all really just fetch and trigger event battle, quests. If SE took more time in some of these quests like explaining rotations or even how to use moves properly then new gamers will be more informed and thus more attune to their class and ultimately more comfortable in harder content.

Examples of quests I would do if I was in charge:

Marauder (level 15): Upon learning "Tomahawk" the player will be sent out to the farms in Lower La Noscea where s/he must help the farmers keep the Mandragoras away from the vegetables. However the player cannot enter the fields and must stay behind the fence to avoid stepping on the delicate patches so the must resort to using "Tomahawk" to grab the Mandragoras and keep them away from their targets. This teaches the player that "Tomahawk" can be used to grab aggro from a distance and also teaches them the range of Tomahawk while being fun and playful.

Lancer (level 26): Upon learning "Full Thrust" the player must talk to Godbert who will require your help in breaking some stones to help "feug sheui" his surrounding landscape. This, however, will require you to know the basic rotation TT > VT > FT and will require you to always keep up the Heavy Thrust buff to keep up the damage to break the stones. He will then join you half way an proceed to challenge you to a contest to see who finishes first. So in addition to the normal rotation you must now include "Leg Sweep" for extra damage. This teaches the player to always start with Heavy Thrust and reinforces one of the rotations that a LNC will need to know when s/he changes to a DRG. There will be another quest against him at 50 that utilizes both rotations along with cd's but not the exact "perfect" rotation described in the DPS section of the forums as that is a bit complicated for normal gamers.

These quests are examples of small QoL changes that should be made that allows a player to fully understand their class while still being fun and informative and not the usual go here/there, trigger event, enter battle, turn in quest. Quests like these solidify the importance of the skills they have on their class and their uses. SE please take note.

TL;DR, flesh out your class/job quests more and dont reduce them to simple fetch quests then players can feel more comfortable with their class since they understand how it works and plays and will in-turn proceed to harder content to test what they learned.

[Caraway]

He's got a bit of a point though... People playing this game have a hard enough time with the current classes and current content as it is. They have numbers we can never see, retention rates and exit surveys and everything. They can see what levels people get to, which quests cause the most headache, whether certain skills are underutilized.

If that data leads them to feel that complexity is anathema to this game's community then I am not at all surprised.

[SarcasmMisser]

I'm pretty sure the "it's complicated for new players" reason you see a lot is just their token nice way of saying no and they don't seriously believe that.

[Estevo]

The majority of the combat is based around the encounters, which would be fine, if it wasn't for the need to play within the rules of the fights. The problem is it's ALL encounters and NO player skill, if you mess up, it's because you didn't know the fight, or didn't do what the boss told you to, not because you played poorly.

This will be something that has to be looked into if the game is going to evolve and grow.

[Kiara1]

Unfortunately the new generation of gamers are used to the 1 hour tutorial each game has at the beginning. And tips and hints for boss battles. Remember playing zelda ocarina of time and figuring out how to beat certain bosses? That was fun but new generation gamers would generally have a much harder time figuring it out cause they are uses to pop up text boxes telling them what to do.

And unfortunately this game caters to players whove never played an mmo. Its a pity cause this game has potential to be a great with complicated and fun mechanics