Play Test: Outside looking in

[JaxPalion]

I asked my wife to play final fantasy for the very first time. I watched her go from the start to a level 10 character. This is a quick review report.

Sign up was smooth
1) Player did enjoy the setup of her character but,
"Name day and Guardian what's this for"
"Seems like it does not matter so I am just going to pick something."
2) Home City:
"Does it help my stats or anything on what city I start in?"
"Uldah, I will try this out find out if it helps me later I guess."

"Opening movie was really cool but once I was out of the movie there was no directional arrow to tell me where to go, several NPCS but they just talk"
She walks around for around two minutes and says...ok where do I go from here.
"Do I want to leave instance? am I supposed to do something before I leave?
She moves to next area and cut scene
For most of the next cut scenes she is excited to see them but feels there are too many and seems to get turned around alot trying to understand where she is to go. Again noticing there is not clear arrow on the map to say "Hey go here or you should talk to so and so or go do this." Lots of information and movies but they dont tell you what to do just tell a story.
I also observed that she did not read the text, just after the first set of long text she started to skip skip skip but this is a common issue with gamers they just want to read a short explanation and then be told what to do or where to go.
"That text is crazy long, I don't want to read a book, tell me enough to get me started and let me enjoy this cool world your showing in all these movies."
Once in the world she looks around and does not know what to do so starts going to her menu and does find the journal and she looks at her quest and tries to select it and hopes it will give her again some indication of where to go it does give her the location and she does find the map but once she closes it she keeps opening her map to navigate. She really wants some indication on the mini map of hey go this way.
Map issue: " All these NPCS have dots on the map that are green am I supposed to talk to them all? She does walk around and talk to half a dozen npcs and is frustrated that they dont help her in any manner.
Takes almost a hour before she finds the adventures area and finally selects combat leves but misses the crafting leves and moves out of the city to do her leves.
-------------Combat, UI and Map--------------
She looks at the map on the leve and of course it does not give her a name just a mark on the map..."there must be a NPC there or is it a camp? lets go see, she is frustrated that the map is not as descriptive as the map in the menu, she does make the connection but seems annoyed.
Before she makes it to camp she finds an enemy and wants to just attack it, she selects the enemy and targets it just fine, but does not know how to attack it, she hits enter and is too far away from the target and has no idea what to do. She walks up to it several times and nothing happens she gets as close as she can and starts hitting buttons randomly and hits enter again and the attack starts. Once the actual combat starts she enjoys the quick battle and goes around and just continues to kill things.
She levels up to level 4 quickly and notices she is getting upgrades but does nothing just continues to fight.
She finally makes it to the camp and walks around and talks to all the NPCS and tries to figure out who is going to give her those upgrades, does notice the marker for the camp and starts the leves with little issues.
She died a few times and thought the missions where alittle hard but had fun finishing them. She runs away several times because of low HP and litterly ran for three minutes (Yes I timed it) and the enemies continued to aggro her. She dies three or four times simply from aggro staying on her character to long.
Side Note: Dont know about her player had really bad aggro, it's not something I have experienced to much but sometimes aggro does not want to let go of players."
Side note: The leve that explains alot to her is actually the last leve she does, and she says, "well that would have been nice to know." Information Leve needs to pop up first, or some indication to do it first on her quest list. She suggested a title "Introduction to combat"
On the UI side she found it to be overwhelming and she said "This is the one time I played a game that had to much information on screen." "It seems cluttered to me"
She did try to minimize chat and combat window and was frustrated it did not dim or go away when it was not in use. She attempts to adjust this in config but finds it difficult to understand and simply gives up, she makes it as small as possible.
-----------Level Up now what?----------------
"When I level up what does that do? do I have to go purchase upgrades or?"
Finally at level 8 I point her to a wiki page and she finally upgrades her action bar with new actions and loves them. She does not die as much after this as she got more HP and was able to stay alive longer. Again something to indicate to the player hey you have something new to learn or do in menu area.
----------The Community of FFXIV--------------
She dies several times and someone tells her they will raise her, they also give her shell and other buffs, she wants to "Tell" and say Thank You, she selects tell and clicks on the player, thinking it will just tell him instead nothing happens, she quickly goes back and says thank you to him in normal chat, she starts asking quick questions about the area and she vents about not knowing what to do, he of course tells her to do leves and not to be discouraged

This is the best experience she has during the play test, she starts talking to ppl randomly for help and every single player is helpful. The offer her gear and even walk her in town and show her several important areas. They encourage her and let off fireworks and she is very excited about the community.

--------Lets continue I am Happy-------
She goes back to get more leves and can not get anymore,
"What do I do now?" She does find the crafting leves from the NPC but has no gear for it and has no idea what to do with them or how to start.
Again the player community points her in the right direction to buy crafting items and she starts to craft.
She crafts using the first option and does not understand the colors and she fails several times and then goes back to the community for help, they point her to ZAM and she reads up on crafting, but still finds it difficult to understand.
" I really really like the idea of a mini game for crafting but it's not fun, at all. Its a orb that changes color and really does not tell me whats going on, this should be fun not frustrating, it should at least make sense."
------------Weapons and selling items------------------
She never finds a place to buy her weapons, she does find the guild, but never finds a place to upgrade weapons. She does find the "Auction House?" but litterly laughs at having to go into it just to buy a item, this is past annoying to her and almost wants to stop as it seems so difficult to do simple tasks to upgrade.
The community saves her again, she walks up to a random player and asks for help, They do explain to her about retainers and even do a step by step help on how to get items but she has little money and most of the items cost alot. They offer her several items for free but she does not take them and insists she wants to learn it so she can do it on her own but is very thankful to the player for helping her out. She asks about how to add as friend and again the community explains to her how to do that.
"The items in this AH need to be sorted by rank its randomly set in the search and needs to be highest to lowest, I dont want to scroll down all these weapons to see if I can use any of them."
She ends the night on that note, she never did get upgrades to her weapons or armor and vows to find the place to do that next time, because the items are to costly in the "Auction House" but she says she is stopping play not just because of that issue but because, what is there to do once leves are done? just go grind? She finds out about the leve reset time from ZAM and decides she will just log off till she can do leves again.

-------------Aftermath--------------------
I then asked her what she thought of the game and her thoughts.

" It just makes me what to go back and play Warcraft."
"It seems like a BETA to me, I loved the community and I loved the look and even the gameplay it's fun but I got clear to level 8 before I even added things to my action bar."
" I had no idea what to do, if it was not for the community, I would have only played an hour, not because i didnt want to but because I was so confused and frustrated on what to do."
"Every game has baby steps, do this and then do that, the first hour needs to be simply go here and let the NPCS teach you, not the community."
"I want it to explain to me how to upgrade my character when I level up, I want it to show me how I can do other classes, tell me something besides the story because the entire start of the game is the story and not how to actually play the game."
"Tutorials on starter stuff in the menu would be fantastic!"
"If I have to goto an outside source, you know the NET or Community for the basics its to hard to understand and needs to be explained better."
"Please explain to me how to tell someone and add them to friends list, that was incredibly hard to do, there has to be a better way."
" Make crafting fun, If i am going to have to do alot of it, make it fun, not so robot like, if I wanted to have a job I would go out and get a real job and make money, seems like a job not a game."
"You can teleport?"
"What time can I go back and play for leves again?"

[Holland]

This is definitely something that needs to be added: A very good tutorial.

Gladly it has already been confirmed that one will be added.

[Irana]

Dunno...Im honestly a bit dissapointed in teh new generation of gamers that needs to be carried by the game to know what to do....

Give a new player Final Fantasy 1...a good rpg...and they will be running around the first city till they get bored of the game.

While I do agree a small tutorial is in need to encourage new players or hell...ppl who feel like trying their first ever mmo... I DO NOT want the game to cuddle me and spoon feed me the directions of where I want to go.... Such a big world is meant to be explored and discovered...not shown to us forcefully so we know what to do.

[JaxPalion]

Yeah i am excited for the updates in the next two patches. She will be going back in after 1.19 and trying things out. I thought it was interesting that a player with alot of MMO experience had such a hard time starting...Imagine someone that just picked the game up and had never played a MMO before. You as an experienced person could just have an option to skip tutorials but to those whom have no clue on this game at all..gotta have it, and I am going to Say WOW has a over done tutorial system but it does work as does its AH, I am not a fan of WOW but it has good things,
I am excited to know tutorials are on the way...Is there a way to lock your camera forward does anyone know? That was another thing that i caught, she kept trying to just run with the standard wasx and she kept asking how do I lock the camera forward?

[Holland]

Is there a way to lock your camera forward does anyone know? That was another thing that i caught, she kept trying to just run with the standard wasx and she kept asking how do I lock the camera forward?

If you mean to center the camera or restore it to original position. It's the "End" key.

Edit:

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...e/basis01.html

This should not be something the is outside of the game as it is now. Everyone just wants to jump into the game. But for the moment, the play guide tab on The Lodestone is really helpful for new players.

[JaxPalion]

Sorry for slow reply, no normally you wouldn't have to use your mouse at all, if you turn right the camera stays behind you and you just turn and the camera follows you. Shouldnt have to hit end if you have camera lock on it just stays behind you.