With the next expansion, the experience for new players should be revamped

[Eve_The_Witch]

The most common complain i hear from new players is "it is really hard to get into the game". To reach max level and the part where the fun starts, you have to complete hundreds of story quests and run dozens of dungeons with overgeared party-mates that are not challenging at all. The road to level 70 is already pretty exhausting and it will get worse if the level cap will be increased again with the next expansion.

[Super_Bee_Brian]

It really depends. I'm one of those people who actually find joy and fun from grinding. I don't mind grinding as long as it's nothing crazy.

[Eryna]

Probably SE will simply include 1 set of jump potions in the expansion pack like WOW instead of rework the old quests.
With the new game plus mode a boosted character could relive the MSQ again if they want.

[Daniolaut]

The most common complain i hear from new players is "it is really hard to get into the game". To reach max level and the part where the fun starts, you have to complete hundreds of story quests and run dozens of dungeons with overgeared party-mates that are not challenging at all. The road to level 70 is already pretty exhausting and it will get worse if the level cap will be increased again with the next expansion.

I cant agree with this mentality.

I really enjoy starting up a brand new game, figuring things out, fighting small creatures, gaining importance, exploring unknown and fresh new things and areas. Rushing to the end to be strong and standing around doing nothing cause everything is dead has never been my forte.

If people hate experiencing the ride, and just enjoy the stature, isnt there jump and boost potions that let you skip 90% of the game? Certainly doing 1 expansion and 10 levels cant be that completely exhausting right?

Edit:

In fact I kinda am anxious to be done with this game, so the next Final Fantasy MMO can be released so I experience something fresh and fun. I still very much enjoy this game, but I've been playing it for years now and Final Fantasy XVI seems so far away. My only option for the next 5-10 years seem to be VII remake, which wont be new, and this game, which also isnt new. Thats not me complaining, just saying I enjoy fresh new things. And other games for me just dont pale in comparison to Final Fantasy. I literally tried playing another MMO and the text dialog and the spoken dialog didnt even match. Its all garbage to me. Only Final Fantasy has ever been worth my money. (yep thats opinion there, lets not have a freak out if you dont agree.)

[Mikki]

In fact I kinda am anxious to be done with this game, so the next Final Fantasy MMO can be released so I experience something fresh and fun. I still very much enjoy this game, but I've been playing it for years now and Final Fantasy XVI seems so far away. My only option for the next 5-10 years seem to be VII remake, which wont be new, and this game, which also isnt new. Thats not me complaining, just saying I enjoy fresh new things. And other games for me just dont pale in comparison to Final Fantasy. I literally tried playing another MMO and the text dialog and the spoken dialog didnt even match. Its all garbage to me. Only Final Fantasy has ever been worth my money. (yep thats opinion there, lets not have a freak out if you dont agree.)

You're probably out of luck then. I believe SE has said that they won't be doing another MMO in the FF series after this. Although, since FFXIV is doing so well after its initial disaster, I wonder if they'll reconsider.

But to get back onto the main topic at hand...
I do think they need to revamp the original quests for ARR. Not because it's too hard to go from 1 to 70. But rather because the original ARR story is very ... all over the place. There was a thread about this on reddit just recently in fact. I think that ARR brings a lot to the table and helps to establish the world we live in and the relationships between the areas and people of that world. However, many of the quests feel inconsequential. I think they could cut down on this and make it a lot more of a concise experience. I think the focus that was paid to each quest and how impactful each quest felt was what made HW really stand out to many players. Every quest felt like it was moving the story along and is what made the story so gripping. ARR, on the other hand, was trying to piece together so many details that it felt like it lacked clarity and direction. If they could just condense the quests to what's most important, I think it would be highly beneficial for the new player base. I could replay Heavensward a million times and still enjoy it. But I cringe at the thought of redoing ARR. I enjoyed ARR at the time of release but that was largely because there were so many other people doing it with me at the time which really helped the experience a lot imo. But it hasn't aged well.

Additionally, I think adding a teleport in some way to the waking sands would help ease the frustration of the ARR quest line a lot. Even if they just did a band-aid fix like aetheryte tickets similar to the GC ones that bring you directly to your GC. Maybe give several of them as rewards for completing quests and allow the player to talk to Tataru to receive more for free.

[MistakeNot]

The most common complain i hear from new players is "it is really hard to get into the game". To reach max level and the part where the fun starts, you have to complete hundreds of story quests and run dozens of dungeons with overgeared party-mates that are not challenging at all. The road to level 70 is already pretty exhausting and it will get worse if the level cap will be increased again with the next expansion.

No, no. Max level is where the fun stops. The story quests on the way there is the fun part.

[Bright-Flower]

No, no. Max level is where the fun stops. The story quests on the way there is the fun part.

I guess it varies person to person. But for me, I find that unless you get into savage raids/ex trials...there's very little TO the end game and so no point in rushing to reach it.

On the other hand, ARR in particular has some rough patches that can be hard to find engaging, though I think the msq picks up in quality late in the ARR patch cycle. If someone doesn't like the msq at all though and just wants to reach the end game loot treadmill, they may be better off going to WoW that has more raids and raid fights for non casual endgame content.

In WoW I can see why someone might want to rush past the leveling experience and get to the end game asap, but in FF XIV, it just feels like a waste to approach the game from that angle because there isn't as much TO to the endgame.

[Shurrikhan]

I cant agree with this mentality.

I really enjoy starting up a brand new game, figuring things out, fighting small creatures, gaining importance, exploring unknown and fresh new things and areas. Rushing to the end to be strong and standing around doing nothing cause everything is dead has never been my forte.

If people hate experiencing the ride... <snip>

There's a difference between "experiencing the ride" and what we get now though. None of walking from place to place, easily nuking what few enemies you come across into oblivion, waiting in queues just to easily nuke the instances' monsters into oblivion without hide or tail of a difficulty curve or learning experience feels like a "ride" in any adventurous sense. It at best feels like a begrudging carpool. I wish it did have all that experimentation and learning available to it, but...

No, no. Max level is where the fun stops. The story quests on the way there is the fun part.

In many MMOs, I'd agree. In XIV, though? Not so much. The way there tends to be far too barren and unpolished for the endgame, even if scant, to be without significant value even to the most casual of players.

Weekly currencies, drops, and compounding expectations give a fairly short period of leniency before one feels effectively excluded from the main body of Savage/Ex runners so neither can I agree that there's no point in rushing to reach it, depending on when the next major patch is coming.

I'd much rather XIV's leveling experience were considered, by players and devs alike, as meant to be a real and enjoyable section of content in itself. But, for the time being, it just seems prelude, as much as I might have once enjoyed it (before endgame-oriented streamlining occurred without any repolish to the prior levels to compensate).

[Hazmick]

Personally I think the issue is that people believe max rank is required to enjoy the game, so new players feel that they need to rush through everything. This just means they miss all of the content that I consider to be the fun part of the game (story, lore etc.). Rather than the game changing I think it may be a case of attitudes requiring a shift.

[Stygian]

Well leveling speed definitely isn't a problem if you get the exp boost from an underpopulated world. I have my main job at 49 and two other jobs past 30 and I am at the point in the MS where the quests are roughly level 34. I have been switching jobs because I have been leveling far too fast to keep in line with the MSQ.

I know it slows down after 50, but I have breezed through so far
It is actually rather annoying getting scaled down for literally everything.