Irony?

[Havenae]

this is a fine idea while the game is still relatively young. But as it get older and more expansions come our way it will begin to be detrimental to pulling in and retaining new players.

For instance imagine if you began playing an older game such a World of Warcraft NOW and were forced to progress through all content from Vanilla to whatever expansion they have now before you even got to experience the things you saw the advertisement for that piqued your interest.

The current content would be far outdated by the time you got there to enjoy it. But then you're still required to progress through it even though all your friends and everyone else is doing this new thing.

I'm not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing at the moment to require this content be cleared to move forward. But there is going to have to come a point where they decide to let the older stuff fall off in favor of letting new players experience the current content. Because as it is it is building up. For a casual player it's not a matter of just doing some quests and clearing all the content just from 2.0-2.55 in a matter of a few days. It's a good month or more for most. Which isn't bad right now.. but later on say as early as 4.0 and having to clear from 2.0-3.?? Thats a different story.

[Zorvan]

I find it extremely interesting that FFXIV is suffering from too much end-game content coming into this next expansion when so many MMORPGs suffer from a lack of such content. Personally I enjoy having a ton of story that can't just be skipped over, because that means it's integral to the story line and it means that players can't just skip over story dungeons and not know how to play their class/job in a party setting.

In fact, while it may potentially burn out new users, it will definitely make them veterans of the game by the time they hit Heavensward content.

I'd be a lot happier if half of those level 50 quest had instead been spread between levels 35 to 49.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

"Shouldn't" and "don't" are two very separate terms.

.....are you telling me that you haven't encountered a terrible tank in Stone Vigil who obviously knew nothing about their job? Warrior's without Defiance turned on, Paladin's get Shield Oath at level 40 but going into SV with Sword Oath still on. Telling them to switch to Shield Oath only to find that they haven't done their level 40 Job quest yet?? And then, these tanks who refuse to pop into their stance also don't rotate cooldowns on big pulls or bosses. I've had a Warrior tell me he won't turn Defiance on because it lowers his DPS....in a 4man low level dungeon.


And heals who DPS is a legitimate problem? If a healer (especially a scholar) can keep the party alive and throw out some dots or any DPS at all it is an absolute delight to have in the party because it makes killing that much quicker. I won't be the one to chastise a healer who doesn't DPS, but in a lot of low level content if the tank is doing his job correctly there is a LOT of downtime as a healer. I had absolutely no problem DPSing twice as much as healing when leveling my WHM to 50 in every low level dungeon outside of the final 3, because the damage is real from Stone Vigil onwards.

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't clarify enough on that point. I'm fully agreeing with what you're saying, because yes, I've run into Tanks/Heals who haven't done their job quest yet, and the result is that the dungeon quite literally becomes impossible unless everyone else is over-geared. I was trying to say that by making it so that players cannot skip that content, it makes it so that (hopefully) this problem doesn't spread to the new content. I put "shouldn't" because you can't stop lv50 players from fate grinding out their brand new Dark Knight and then running dungeons with it to speed through the new story.

I've run into the tanks and healers that you describe, and I was trying to say that I see them as a very serious problem. Mostly because these people are usually apprehensive and possibly already have a lv50 class, but have never played their role before. It also doesn't help that these people can't really even be kicked, because if they have the in-progress option checked then they will normally just re-insert themselves into the group. That's not to say that they aren't all that way though, and I've helped players know what they need to do in order to unlock that job class and then kick them if it's apparent that the dungeon can't be done with how they currently are.

I'm not against heals dps'ing and I share your stance that it does in fact make the run MUCH smoother in level sync'd dungeons, I've legitimately met healers in the DF who think that they queued as damage. I specifically remember it happening in Cutter's Cry. They don't heal at all, and since most players are over-geared by now, it doesn't become apparent unless the tank speaks up or, in our case, when all of the adds in the first boss didn't follow the healer because he wasn't healing.

[GenJoe]

I didn't say they'd be experts, but they certainly should know a successful rotation as tanks/dps and heals should know how to best deal with a multitude of situations by the time they're done with story content.

Nah, I still only tank with flash, flash, overpower, overpower,1,2,3,1,2,4,1,2,3,1,2,4
It's even easier on WHM, I just use medica 2 and cure 2 and move around.

The getting the basics down you're talking about isn't something that's built over the entire game.. Sure that's what it's "intended" to do.. But more than likely, tanks hit a road block at some point where they have trouble holding aggro (depends on the person, some run into this wall in Satasha, some in Brayflox, some just don't run into that issue ever) then realize they're doing something wrong.. Google something, 20 minutes later, voila! They're good to go.


You're suggesting that 200 hrs of gameplay from beginning to 2.55 is necessary to teaching that to newcomers.. It simply isn't, when somebody hits a roadblock, they'll learn and improve. OR NOT, some just simply refuse to improve.. Point is.. MSQ, job quests, guildhests etc. don't shape a good player, it's the personal inadequacy each individual feels that will lead them to learn, disastrous dungeon runs usually have that impact on people, not the tedious 200hrs of repeated quests.

[KayoZ]

I find it extremely interesting that FFXIV is suffering from too much end-game content coming into this next expansion when so many MMORPGs suffer from a lack of such content. Personally I enjoy having a ton of story that can't just be skipped over, because that means it's integral to the story line and it means that players can't just skip over story dungeons and not know how to play their class/job in a party setting.

In fact, while it may potentially burn out new users, it will definitely make them veterans of the game by the time they hit Heavensward content.

A) Other games dont necessarily have less end game content, they just dont force to do weeks of taxi quests and gear grinds before letting them move ahead with the story. SWTOR's story was leaps and bounds ahead of FFXIV's yet managed to allow players to go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, minus some story-centric dungeons, if that (IIRC). They could at least go to any planet they wished once they left the tutorial area.
B) Forcing players into playing every single dungeon at least once isnt going to make them better or even competent. Plenty of horrible players now who have completed the story, and then some, yet are horrible at their job. Nor are any of the elitist thinking the same automatically better players than those who havent finished the story.

[myahele]

Are't they gonnafocus on 2 dungeons per patch in 3.0?

[Zumi]

I feel there is too much to do as well, getting all your jobs to ilvl 130 by farming coil, collecting all the pets and mounts, capping your poetics, crafting to make gil. Often it doesn't leave me much time for other games, but I guess that is a good thing that they offer so much to do. I never seem to run out of things to do in FFXIV.