Thread: Changes to early game with 5.0?

I think it would also help if they made all the jobs available when you make your character. They can't do that for Dark Knight, Machinist, and Astrologian since they are in Ishgard, but Samurai and Redmage, Gunbreaker and Dancer are going to start in ARR areas. Even if they don't have job quests till the current level they could let people start them at level 1 when they make their character as long as they have the appropriate expansion installed.

I'm sure the 2.xx post 50 quests were fine at the time, gotta fill out that three year gap somehow.
But those 50 quests are pretty unacceptable now, it's easily the biggest deterrent to newer players when just to finish ARR you have to go through essentially a whole expansion worth of quests, more than 50% of which are menial fetch quests designed specifically to waste your time until the new HW expansion comes out which already happened four years ago.

I don't like streamlining just for the sake of streamlining, but something in there's gotta go.

Originally Posted by Hasrat

In all fairness the "constant back and forth" never really goes away. I literally just had to detour back to Kugane from Yanxia.......

HW and SB is are order of magnitude less than ARR's 'back and forth' especially the 2.XX questing line.

To everyone else, I'm not complaining because I hated it back at release. I loved it. More than enough to get through it and here I am still. But the attrition rates and new players quitting before they can experience or enjoy the game that we currently play... that is not a matter of opinion or debate. It happens. You and I want it fixed and so do new players wanting to join an excellent trinity role MMO rather than listen to the constant litany of "It gets better, I promise". Its rough. Try it if you dare, you'll be shocked. It makes sense why new player attrition rates are knill.

I listed the biggest issues they have. Anyone have tips as it seems Square will not be addressing it in 5.0? I have a couple:

- Start in Limsa (wide open areas and decent enough story) People seem to dislike the Forest (all looks the same to new folks)
- Arcanist class or Rougue (@lvl10). Arcanist gets a great healer and DPS options. Marauder is still fun as a first class (if they have MMO Tank experience)
- Avoid Conjurer till the early game skills are re-balanced. The only healer but horrid to play now (nothing like it was when I played through). Boring for a long while... I'd rather recommend Scholar if they wanna heal at 30
- Use have them use the Story Potion (if needed) after chocobo is obtained and they have a grasp on stuff. Heavensward or Stormblood depends on the person
- Its a mainline Final Fantasy game so make sure they know this is not WoW's gogogogogogo rush to endgame. That will set them up for a long disappointing slog.
- Lastly, SET EXPECTATIONS. The game you play vs the new person is vastly different. Lvl 30 and on the story really picks up. Let them know that story/skills/pacing all improve but it takes a while.



The goal is to get our friends to join the game we keep talking about or show raid boss fights too. Does anyone have other good tips?

Have to keep in mind the leveling process in ARR is VASTLY longer than any of the expacs, even if you level through a chunk faster even before all the xp buffs its 50 lvls vs. 10. And this mind set of "the real game" is probably killing more newbies than everything else combined, its like telling them the story is worthless once your 70 and endgame grinding your finally playing FFXIV.

For the record, I've done ARRs entire MSQ 7 times already, hopefully my last round of it will be done before Shadowbringers.

Originally Posted by Dyvid

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.

Well apparently, with New Game+, the redone quests still offer the exp they did before, so its another alternative for leveling up alt jobs, but don't quote me on that.

Don't get me wrong, as a whole I enjoyed the ARR story line.
The good parts are good.
But the bad parts of it... are really bad.

Originally Posted by OcieKo

Have to keep in mind the leveling process in ARR is VASTLY longer than any of the expacs, even if you level through a chunk faster even before all the xp buffs its 50 lvls vs. 10. And this mind set of "the real game" is probably killing more newbies than everything else combined, its like telling them the story is worthless once your 70 and endgame grinding your finally playing FFXIV.

For the record, I've done ARRs entire MSQ 7 times already, hopefully my last round of it will be done before Shadowbringers.

The mind set of "the real game" is killing newbies across the entire MMO genre.

The trend in MMOs these days is to run with an established system and not innovate. Innovation comes with inherent risk, so most MMO developers opt to take the slow death by the endlessly widening sea of dead content than try something new and potentially nuke their entire playerbase. As we can all see clearly in the wake if FanFest, even relatively minor changes to established systems can cause people to fly into a rage.

Some MMOs have tried to innovate. One of those that I have experience with is RuneScape. That innovation largely failed, and they paid a price for it, but the game is still going strong, albeit now as a divided community across two versions of the same game.

In any case, as someone who is tired and disinterested in the current trend, I'm all for FFXIV taking some risks and trying to innovate. However, the more likely outcome is that they will refuse to innovate, until possibly after FFXIV falls out of its prime. Once a new online FF is released and FFXIV stops receiving expansions, I think it will actually be a much better experience for new players.

That's some irony for you.