New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[FoxyAreku]

Honey, I'm the one that decides if I play this game or not-- not you. The same goes for any player that decides they aren't interested in the crappy fedexing through six phases to get to the present day.

If Square feels so passionately that everyone needs to do every quest, then they can make them worth doing. Until then, those players are well within their right to call a crappy series of quests a crappy series of quests.

If you want cutscenes, replace with youtube.

You get offended really easily if you took what I said as 'you shouldn't play this game', "Honey".

Work on that fragile ego first off, second off I was simply proposing that if you don't enjoy the main draw of the entire game, then it may simply not be for you. I wouldn't recommend Sekiro to someone that doesn't like challenging games, just as I wouldn't recommend FFXIV to someone who doesn't want a story driven experience. I'd recommend them Guild Wars or WoW instead, as they do the endgame focus quite a bit better. If you approach this game like those then you're going to be out of stuff to do within a week and be severely disappointed. I speak from experience, here. But, if you REALLY need to reach endgame ASAP, whether it be because playing with friends in the whole 4 raid fights we get every half a year or whatever is your only reason for playing, then the skip potion option IS ALREADY available to you, and there is nothing wrong with using that.

That aside, I actually don't completely disagree with you as I also stated in my previous post. There is a LOT of filler that needs a trim along the course of the plot, and I would be 100% for undoing needless nerfs like to Steps of Faith or other fights so they are more engaging, but I don't believe that will ever happen since this community tends to whine if anything requires more than two button presses to complete.

If I may ask how does having the MSQ be optional impact you negatively?

It doesn't, nor did I ever say it did, you may need to work on your reading comprehension if you thought I was saying it effected me. I'm just in favor of people enjoying their experience with the game. If the game isn't for you, then it's not for you, but there are plenty of games that are!

[Mavrias]

To be honest I think that’s a somewhat reasonable response, I tried WOW years ago, I didn’t like it, just didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t go on their forums and ask them to change the game to better suit me, why would I? Tons of people loved it and enjoyed it for what it was, who am I to tell someone they are wrong for enjoying WOW the way it was and they should change WOW to be a game for me?
I moved on with my life and played other games and was happier for it. At the end of the day can’t Final Fantasy be Final Fantasy and WOW be WOW and other MMOs be other MMOs?

except people arent asking for WoW. they may ask for ideas from WoW (mythic dungeons and the like), but no one is asking for complete removal of the story or anything. heck, most people are asking if there are plans to tighten up the ARR msq or make a skip potion free on new service accounts purchasing shadowbringers.

i dont think go play another game is a suitable response as it dismisses the other person's attachmemt to the game entirely.

[DumdogsWorld]

Honey, I'm the one that decides if I play this game or not-- not you. The same goes for any player that decides they aren't interested in the crappy fedexing through six phases to get to the present day.

If Square feels so passionately that everyone needs to do every quest, then they can make them worth doing. Until then, those players are well within their right to call a crappy series of quests a crappy series of quests.

If you want cutscenes, replace with youtube.

Nobody is stopping you from buying a skip potion.

[SerLuke]

except people arent asking for WoW. they may ask for ideas from WoW (mythic dungeons and the like), but no one is asking for complete removal of the story or anything. heck, most people are asking if there are plans to tighten up the ARR msq or make a skip potion free on new service accounts purchasing shadowbringers.

i dont think go play another game is a suitable response as it dismisses the other person's attachmemt to the game entirely.

They already announced they are going to tighten up post ARR MSQ at Fanfest and make some of the quests optional side quests but it won’t happen till at least 5.1. What worries me is some people on here seem to be asking for the story to be detached from dungeons and trials which would ruin the experience for many.

[Awha]

It doesn't, nor did I ever say it did, you may need to work on your reading comprehension if you thought I was saying it effected me. I'm just in favor of people enjoying their experience with the game. If the game isn't for you, then it's not for you, but there are plenty of games that are!

Was simply asking a question since it seems odd to me for someone to make the statement that a game may not be for them if they wish to bypass the MSQ. So I wanted to know how making the MSQ optional would negatively impact you. Since if you were truly all for people enjoying their experience making the MSQ optional as you said would have no impact so it would be a win all around, more players get to enjoy the game in the way they would prefer.

I never did say that you said it would negatively impact you, was simply a a question.

You mean besides changing the entire structure of the game which is heavily story based which people would know if they weren’t skipping cut scenes?

It will still be the story you love just optional for those that do not wish to take part in it.

[Anselmet]

I always felt that some quests could either be removed or condensed. Like is it REALLY important that I place perfume on these chocobos? Do I need to keep visiting Minifilia/Alphinaud after every quest? Maybe it is too much work to fix something like that, but if it were possible to cut out the random bullcrap of being an errand boy, that would be great.

That being said, se has made amazing strides alse where to make running arr quicker and more efficient. Going from 1-50 takes almost no effort and it becomes almost a drain on the wallet to keep up gear wise bc you no longer have to run Brayflox 7 times to get to Qarn. The msq alone almost never gets locked behind lvl if 1. Im doing my leveling roulette and 2. Hunting logs or an occasional fate. We used to have to fate farm to 50. Now northern thanalan is barren and empty. Sure part of this is do to potd but even without doing potd or squadrons as a newbie means you still shoot up in levels. So overall se HAS made getting through arr much easier. Back in hw I made an alt before potd existed, and it took me almost a week of grinding as a tank to get to cap. Now I can casually level to 60 in that time while avoiding squadrons and potd.

On top of it all, we are getting new game plus. So skipping cutscenes and taking the msq exp and running wont be an issue.

[yukiiyuki]

If the game isn't for you, then it's not for you, but there are plenty of games that are!

I have a brilliant idea, let's just tell everyone who would like to play a game but can't bare with ARR quest chain go play TESO or any another MMO. Like that our community will surely help game that we love!
That's how business works, right? Just tell that product that someone wanted to buy from you is not "that person" thing!

[Vercinotrix]

I have a brilliant idea, let's just tell everyone who would like to play a game but can't bare with ARR quest chain go play TESO or any another MMO. Like that our community will surely help game that we love!
That's how business works, right? Just tell that product that someone wanted to buy from you is not "that person" thing!

We also shouldn't change the core aspects of our game and its experience to cater to people from other MMOs either. In the end it's up the developers, and I personally don't have a problem with skip pots or if they cleaned up the MSQs for ARR however changing our game solely for new players or people jumping ship from one MMO to another is a bad idea. I can point to a prime example of that happening, it's called WoW.

[linay]

Playing with a friend of mine, returner from ARR content, I can already feel how demoralized he is trying to catch up in time. To actually reach relevant content he has to go through a backlog of slog, and I have a feeling he never will actually reach the content that he has paid for, and 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. 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).

They feel like they are just wasting time. 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. Granted, FF is very story based, and centered around your character (WoL). 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.

The more expansions and story content, added just make this worse, and worse.

With Shadowbringers, you will have the option to skip and then use New Game+ to experience old quests.

Unlike in WoW, you don't get a free boost, but unlike WoW, you can choose whether you want to skip story, character, or both, so the cost is cheaper individually. Also, unlike WoW, a single character can play as all jobs, so boosting the story and two or more jobs will still be cheaper than boosting 2 or more characters in WoW where each character can only play as one class.

[Anselmet]

I have a brilliant idea, let's just tell everyone who would like to play a game but can't bare with ARR quest chain go play TESO or any another MMO. Like that our community will surely help game that we love!
That's how business works, right? Just tell that product that someone wanted to buy from you is not "that person" thing!

But drastically changing a game to cater to a group of people is just as stupid. Yea, ARR is trapped in the era of 2013, but each expansion will age as years go on. I love hw, but its questing can be just as painful as arr. Se has been making steps to alleviate these pains. Just bc you do not agree with their solution does not mean the solution is bad. I think its smart to make leveling faster and introducing new game plus. It allows ffxiv to keep its identity as a final fantasy game. A good chunk of people play this game alone and treat ffxiv as a solo game. The devs know this and quite frankly are making good strides in keeping identity in tact while addressing aging parts of its game.

That is a good business decision.