New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Kalise]

To actually reach relevant content he has to go through a backlog of slog

Since when is ARR-SB story irrelevant?

I personally found it very relevant. As it was fun to go through and get the story.

Since, part of what FFXIV does well is that unlike other MMO's, it makes the JOURNEY important not just the destination.

I have a feeling he never will actually reach the content that he has paid for

Did your friend not pay for ARR? For HW? For SB?

Also, while the end of ARR story certainly feels like it takes forever to get through (God damn it Minfilia!) it will not take two years to actually get through to current content (Which is how long Shadowbringers will last for).

Heck, it's entirely possible that your friend can get through all of the MSQ from level 1 to the end of Stormblood before Shadowbringers actually arrives in 3 months time... Especially if he has a friend to help him get through MSQ required duties without obscene DPS queues...

I have a feeling a lot of new players have the same point of view, and will also never likely reach content in time (without paying for a skip) to actually play the new expansion.

If Stormblood is anything to go by...

Trust me, it's favourable if new players don't get to experience Eureka grinds because they're too busy playing through the pretty great MSQ content instead.

As that's the only real thing that you could "Miss out" on if you took your time to level. Maybe some Raids would be harder to complete, but if you have a decent FC and some friends it shouldn't be impossible to run through them during end of expansion lulls when everyone is overgeared to make them easier to do.

I do not think a skip is a good thing, not only for the intimidating price, but because these players cannot go back and do the story any longer, I would assume (I have never actually used one).

With Shadowbringers, they're introducing the New Game+ system, which will allow people to play through the MSQ again from the very beginning. Thus alleviating this concern.

They feel like they are just wasting time.

Perhaps they should reconsider why they're playing the game then.

If their only concern is reaching end-game and spamming Raids... Well... There's plenty of MMO's that cater to that type of gameplay. If they only want to farm Eureka... Well... They need to go see a psychologist because they're not right in the head xD

Maybe it's just me, but I play this game to have fun. I found the MSQ fun to do. I never felt that my time was being wasted, even though I took a break from mid-HW to mid-SB and slowly did the MSQ alongside other side activities. I wasn't doing cutting edge raids or progressing at the same rate as everyone else, but that didn't matter because I was having fun along the way.

I think there needs to be something in place, to alleviate this feeling. In WoW a new player has a boost, but can reach the relevant (expansion) content, and can go back and do older content at their own leisure.

WoW also has pretty trash actual story. With its entire focus being on "Get max level, spam Dungeons/Raids until the next expansion, rinse and repeat"

I think a way to go back and do the old story content (expansions) to catch up and do later, would be a good way to get players to relevant content, and keep them playing the game, while being able to go back and do the story content when they want to, so they don't miss out, and can get the full context of the latest story arch.

Personally, I feel that the opposite would be true.

I feel it would worsen the experience if players were easily able to get spoilers in the form of jumping to the latest content and seeing all the story it tells, before ever experiencing the lead up to this point from prior MSQ.

That's why I feel that people who actually care about the games story shouldn't use Story Skip potions, even if they are implementing NG+ to allow them to replay the story.

Since it would cheapen the entire story from previous expansions when you already know all the stuff that happened because of what's mentioned in the latest content.