Thread: Changes to early game with 5.0?

I've been having a hard time getting new players to stick out the early game.

Even starting a new character myself to play through with them. It is terribly painful.


1. Main Story Progression: Heavensward and Stormblood are vastly more modernized as far as questing as concerned. But ARR mixes what feels like side quests into the mandatory main story line boring new players to death. Constant back and forth doesn't help either.

2. Classes availability: All 7 new classes are locked behind level or main story progression. Friends almost always choose a class that is not available at the beginning so they start with immediate disappointment and settling for something they don't want. For example, there is only one healer skill rebalance destroy it.

3. The skill balances from the last two expansions have destroyed early gameplay. Many skills were removed from early game to make room for those in late game. Classes like conjurer are so terribly boring people are quitting the game over it.



Potions of advancement are currently the best (only?) way I can deal with it. Even this is not a smooth transition though and most quit rather than deal with complicated process required to finally play Good content with the class they want (with a completed tool kit)

Does the product team know about any of this? What will be done in 5.0 to address it? Help me help you, SquareEnix

This is the problem that the standard MMO approach to content slowly causes to fester, and which tends to kill games over time. Even if they streamline it and make things easier, they can only do so by making it more boring, in most cases.

In the case of ARR, removing some of the boring errand quests may help, but it could also damage the story a bit.

Usually, MMOs take the same approaches FFXIV is: skip potions, buffed XP at lower levels, and content made easier. There are problems with those solutions, though. Skip potions are of no use for people who want to do the story, buffing XP is largely useless because players cannot access content until they do the relevant story, and making content easier for new players gives a bad impression ot the game.

As a new player in an MMO, here is how I usually feel:

I want to play through the story, even if it's not great. I want to feel challenged so that I can actually learn the game. And I want to be able to have fun with all the great content I pass by on thr way to end game.

As it stands, though the playerbase is the largest obstacle to that. Players are the ones that encourage developers to throw away old content and constantly shower them with shiny new things. Players are the ones that outright abandon perfectly good content, thereby encouraging the developers to throw it away. And this constantly moves the point at which new players can participate later and later, creating an ever-larger gap for them to cross.

If new players were able to enjoy end-game style content with an active playerbase, by Lv. 50, they would be able to have fun while doing the MSQ at their own pace.

In all fairness the "constant back and forth" never really goes away. I literally just had to detour back to Kugane from Yanxia, for, like, half a quest, just a few minutes, to go and pick up a package from Tataru, to take back to Yanxia. Ffs, we're building up for a war, and you want to send your star player on a gopher errand.

So, personally, I don't really understand how folks want to praise expansion stories while deriding ARR, when the causes for a lot of the complaints are still present throughout.

Don't get me wrong. From a game development perspective, I get it. The quests always serve one purpose or another. I don't terribly mind them either way. I just think players need to recognize that's simply what MMO stories do. They want to keep you busy. The more busy work you have to do, the longer you stay subbed.

I think if they put the teleports into ARR like they started doing in Stormblood when you and an npc are going to the same place right away it would help a little. Then there's the pacing of ARR that would need work two early examples are the Titan and Garuda bits where one has you go about getting items for a feast that's for you that you don't even know is for you until the end and the npcs are all why are you so mad? Then with Garuda it feels like the npc who we get the stone from along with his students don't even know their own research. So by the time you get the correct one it's already made you remember the Titan part of the story.

I don't know what else you'd do to make it faster or more enjoyable but at least it's not XI before the devs put in so many short cuts you'll trip over them and you had hour long jogs from one place to another sometimes through high level monsters that you had to sneak and turn invisible for.

Well this is a very story heavy game compared to other MMOs out there, maybe explain that too new players you invite to take it slow and enjoy the ride. Not sure what New Game+ is going to do but it might let you play along with new players through ARR main storyline?

ARR and 2.XX series was an odd beast because they really wanted to give players a lot of stuff to do in between patch which meant all those MSQ quest. As you said, HW and SB really streamlined everything for a better experience.

Wouldn't be so bad for new players if they just do away with teleport fees and add give out more gil for all the quests. Crafting quests cost you more to teleport and gather the mats needed for it than what make off it.

Last I heard they wanted to work on trimming the quests out so only the important ones are mandatory and moving some of the fetch ones out into optional quests. I believe it is something they have expressed interest in doing for a while now but currently don't have time for since they are in expansion crunch right now.

It’s those after ultima weapon quest right before HW, I made an alt and almost quit myself lol they need to do away with the 2.XX quest and tie it into one question and going into the steps of faith fight. HW isn’t bad and neither is SB but ARR is quickly killing this games new additions quicker then Titan hard mode when it was first introduced XD

Jokes aside I can’t keep friends playing either and they all quit before they reach HW because ARR is such a slog and becomes almost a chore to do.

I've been doing some science on an alt. I only just now cleared Heavensward, so I'd like to say the new player experience needs to be improved substantially. I keep seeing a lot of people treading level 60-65 and rolling dozens of alts but never even reaching Stormblood, which does them a huge disservice in terms of gameplay.

For Shadowbringers, I actually hope they let any new character start at level 50-60 on a job of their choosing, with all relevant content unlocked, so they can actually enjoy the real game. Players that are interested in the storyline then have the option of going to New Game + or, if they want to put less effort in, inn room cutscenes.