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.

[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.

[Murugan]

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.

Why is that again?

Try playing a Paradox strategy title "properly" without reading a manual or any outside information. Stop embarrassing MMO players by insisting that none of us know how to read, think for ourselves, or look for answers to our questions beyond a gaudy two hour tutorial, overly simplified mechanics, and the equivalent of an entire tarmac crew guiding us through the game.

You people and your "everything's too complicated" mentality speak for yourselves, you certainly don't speak for me or all MMO players.

[zed32]

Why is that again?

Try playing a Paradox strategy title "properly" without reading a manual or any outside information. Stop embarrassing MMO players by insisting that none of us know how to read, think for ourselves, or look for answers to our questions beyond a gaudy two hour tutorial, overly simplified mechanics, and the equivalent of an entire tarmac crew guiding us through the game.

You people and your "everything's too complicated" mentality speak for yourselves, you certainly don't speak for me or all MMO players.

Exactly . This is why we can't have nice things - the basic gamer is now illiterate and wants everything handed to him. If they can't load up a game and play then game = bad. Games now get ridiculed if they actually *gasp* require you to read a manual. Example: IGN gave Witcher 2 a lower score because they had to read the manual. There was too much depth for them. When did this start?

RPGs, once a staple of strategy and tactics now are just mindless hack and slashes. The RTS genre which evolved to having such strategic elements as cover, stance, unit morale, ammo quantity, environmental and weapon physics, unit alertness and such have all reverted back to brainless 90s era Starcraft style. That good stuff is just too complicated! Just build - attack!

Then...FPS games... the original Rainbow Six was one of the most tactical of all shooters, required mission planning, team placement, realistic wound system and guns. Same for OpFlash. Now we get FPS games where you just hit a button, watch explosions AND THEN HIDE BEHIND A CRATE AND REGAIN YOUR HEALTH...

And don't even get me started on racing/flight sims - I'll just say its sad when a Pentium 2 was able to produce better racing/flight physics compared to what we have today. Seriously. Go look at any hardcore racing/flight forum and odds are they actually race/fly on games that came out in the late 90's. Actually here's a link to Falcon 4.0's manual - http://cache-02.gawkerassets.com/ass...manual4_01.jpg Yeah Falcon 4.0 SUCKS cause you have to read all that...

This exact topic sums up the decline in gaming perfectly. "It's a joke I have to look outside the game to learn how to play the game"... Please. It's a joke that now a days they charge 60 dollars for a game that lacks so much depth that you can literally hop in and play with 0 preparation and never reading a manual. Oh my pop tarts are done, I'll stop now. ok bye!

[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.

[Onidemon]

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.

Thats why FFXIV needs in game tutorial. The game should start with a series of quests that explains how to play the game and the many systems. These quests should take you around town, show you the different locations, controlls, mechanics etc...

[Cairdeas]

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.

Most of the basic info like default keys for controls were included with the game on a little placart that had a full keyboard layout. No one READS THE FRACKING MANUAL THOUGH.

[JackDaniels]

Most of the basic info like default keys for controls were included with the game on a little placart that had a full keyboard layout. No one READS THE FRACKING MANUAL THOUGH.

It really wouldnt be hard to implement a key map in the menu at all.

[Haji]

Most of the basic info like default keys for controls were included with the game on a little placart that had a full keyboard layout. No one READS THE FRACKING MANUAL THOUGH.

That's becouse if one is seasoned player one can usually play the game instinctivaly. For example, from MMOs alone I played ultima online, RYL beta, DnDO, WoW, Rift beta and Aion and I never had to check the manual. In the case of FFXIV I nearly gave up, until my friend (who dragged me into this game) spent some time and helped me.

While it's good that they work on the tutorial, this is not the only problem. Controls for one (thank the gods they allowed to drag the map with the mouse instead of only ilkj buttons).

At the same time almost all players right now are those who play on/off sporadically not new players. So while those things should be high on the priority list, they should not nessecerly be on the top.