Yoshida: New Player 30/08/2011 Opinions

[JackDaniels]

Yoshida,

I'll try to make this short and simple.

I am a long-time on and off FFXI player who has played a handfull of other MMOs over the years. I went back to FFXI about 2 months ago and I took my boyfriend with me, it was his first MMO. He had a lot of fun, but even after playing for nearly 100 hours he was helpless without me. We heard about all the new updates coming to FFXIV so we decided to give it a try.

Before we started playing I had to explain the following to him, there was no way he would have gotten this on his own as his only other MMO prior to this one was FFXI:

Hot Keys:
I haven't played FFXIV since before auto-attack was implemented. It took the two of us almost 15 minutes to realise that "F" was the hotkey for engaging, that pesky Goobue was probably rofling at us the entire time. Would it be difficult to have an option in the menu to click on that would bring up a picture of the entire keyboard, showing us all of the hot keys?

Aetherytes, Anima, Homepoints:
He understood what a homepoint was, but all Momodi had to say was "Go to Black Brush, cya later idiot". Luckily she pointed out the way, but do you think my BF had any idea that we can use the aetherytes to teleport to and use as a Home Point after we 'touch' them per se? No.

Market Wards:
He got really frustrated with having to search for individual pieces of equipment, then having to go to the ward that the retainer boasting the cheapest prices was located. I can tell you right now he would have quit at that point if it wasn't for me to hold his hand along the way. This retainer system can NOT stay hereif you want new people to come to the game and stay. Learning the FFXI style auction house was hard enough for him, the retainer system just makes things even worse. It's guaranteed that the next time he plays, I'm going to need to hold his hand again. Also: he only has about 18 hours at most to play this game (a week), when it takes an hour to wander through wards and to search through endless menus it just takes all the fun out of the game.

Battle system:
He loves it! After the nightmare of walking him through South Gustaberg for the first time I was pleasantly suprised when he managed to engage leve monsters before I did. As the battle system stands, it's a massive improvement over FFXI's, we can't wait to see what adjustments are coming in the future.

Leve quests:
Leves are fine, a bit repetetive but straight forward which is appreciated for someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play. Could you possibly get Momodi and the starting NPCs to hint that we would be wise to check out the glowing counter (maybe even before we attune ourselves with our first aetheryte like they suggest), seeing as we are only going off of what they tell us to do.

NPC Linkpearl:
Maybe for the first message with the adventurers guild (right after the last opening cut scene and before we run off to attune to our first aetheryte) you could make the glowing yellow pearl a little more pronounced? Maybe even force us into the menu, but if you decide to go this route, make sure we can see the steps it takes to get to that menu, ie; have the menu open itself, then have the cursor go slowly down one by one from the top to the option "NPC Linkpearl", then maybe a little dinging sound effect to help show that that option has been selected.

Equipment:
Also, it wouldn't hurt if you could explain what each stat is for in our equipment. A basic (optional) tutorial accessable upon first entry to the market wards would be ideal. Maybe even give a quick example of a PC searching for repairs from other PCs?

Asside from what's mentioned above, my BF loves FFXIV, but if I wasn't here to hold his hand at the beginning he would have probably quit before he even made it out of the market wards the first time. Thank you for all your hard work into making this a fun game for everyone, and not just the angry FFXI niche market

[Nakiamiie]

Did you read the game manual and the information for new players on The Lodestone?!
Many of your dislikes are answered there.

[JackDaniels]

That's a joke, having to use any resources outside of the game is not acceptable. If that's the case then there should be no full screen option allowed.

[Xatsh]

They are working on tutorials for future patches and there is alot of info posted on Lodestone about almost all the things you mentioned, as well as the call of the adventurer or what ever it is at the aetherites which explains them.

AS for the wards they are a bit cumbersome but he should of not had that much difficulty in the wards... the item search literally takes him right to the person with the item I do not see a major issue here.

Take time to read the guides SE has provided for us and take time to figure out the game controls and things should be fairly strait forward once you get everything down. Just like FFXI it takes some time to figure out XIV as a new player.

[Chardrizard]

Did you read the game manual and the information for new players on The Lodestone?!
Many of your dislikes are answered there.

You should never need to read outside resources just to know the basic of the game. This is where SE got it all wrong, there is no harm in doing ingame tutorial.

[Sypherblade]

i have to agree with the OP....the hardcore MMO players will prolly catch on faster which is logical...but from a business point of view...they should have all the things that was pointed out in the OP explained to the not so hardcore players so they can make more $$$. Happy customers = happy business..... Confused, angry customers = angry SE higher ups.

[JackDaniels]

The main issue with the wards is the time consumed to buy one weapon, one hat, one pair of gloves, one pair of pants, one belt, one pair of shoes, one shirt and jewellery. That's loading zones seven times, plus in and out of the wards makes nine times.

I understand the arguement "blah blah read the guides" but how is someone who's never played an SE mmo before supposed to know "oh i should go to the lodestone website and use their outdated and poorly laid out/written guides?

[AlexNiculaie]

This is where SE got it all wrong, there is no harm in doing ingame tutorial.

I understand the arguement "blah blah read the guides" but how is someone who's never played an SE mmo before supposed to know "oh i should go to the lodestone website and use their outdated and poorly laid out/written guides?

To which they have already stated they are adding ingame tutorials.

[JackDaniels]

To which they have already stated they are doing this.

Exactly, hopefully this is implemented correctly. We need extensive tutorials. My bf says that he would rather spend 2 hours in a tutorial than spend 6 hours learning how to do everything by himself.

[JackDaniels]

Also there's like 20 threads on 1.19 and there's not a single hint as to when the release date is? Am I missing something? Was it announced?