New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Shougun]

gw 2 got rid of dungeons, to add raids, but also in gw2 you can do everything with friends, including storymissions, in swtor, you can also do everything with friends. Also in gw2 you can complete story whenever you want, skipping around if you want. Having a primarily solo story is fine, but not having access to virtually anything without story, most of which is group content is problematic, and it gets worse the more story there is.

Personally I think it might be a bit dangerous to argue that everyone wants to skip because of end game (might lose, imo, the bigger picture gain if sticking on that although I agree there are some people who feel that way).

Imo a stronger arguing point (in getting something interesting done*) is that SOME people would get strong value out of a baseline optional story skip because "end game" is the only real game (to those people) but that also some people are coming to play the story content they were interested in rather than the massive mountain locking away what they came in for. Which I'm actually happy Rokke is now a living example for me to reference that second point specifically as I think that's actually a quite likely issue (thanks mate lol).

As I said many people coming into an MMO late are not suddenly seeing that ancient vanilla trailer and going OH WOW I WANT TO PLAY THAT, they're seeing the hype hurricane of whatever is new and fancy. Even some of those may have already been aware of ARR/HW/whatever and are giving it a second chance explicitly because the new info got their interest, which the old content /does not/ interest them. That doesn't mean all of those people who saw the hurricane don't want to learn and play the history first of course but it does mean there is a portion of those that are interested in and X and telling them "how about many many hours of Y first?" is a good way to disinterest them at multiple stages. Stage one being some just don't get into the game, stage two being they start but just get drained because "ugh this wasn't what I signed up for", of course some make it to stage 3 like it seems Rokke did (made it through to get to what they really wanted but didn't like having to go through that old stuff).

Altogether it might not make the majority of players but I doubt it is a small 0.5% of the community either. Although it's a feeling (a strong one) as it'd be hard to properly calculate since some of those who never make it to the later content may be people burned out from above and not just lovers of the story. Like "I wanted Z, it seems I'm never going to make it - I quit" or they didn't buy the game because they were told to get to Z they had to either play days worth of (in game) time first or pay an extra game's worth. Pushing another game's worth cost on top of it being a monthly sub game, or you haven't got them invested because they're doing content they didn't really want to do, that is like premium grade formula to not have them continue their sub after the trailer period lol. Worse I think is some people didn't get to the story they wanted because of so much of the story they didn't want (it wasn't about end game for them, it was just about so much stuff they didn't want to invest in first, like lets say if Rokke quit before getting to the dragons they liked). Just a reminder I'm talking about a subset of people, not all new people interested in the game (don't want people to think i'm saying everyone is this way).

*I say interesting about possible solutions to this problem because imo making a story and level potion baseline is rather "eh" to me as it introduces new problems like tossing someone into SQUIRREL SQUIRREL WHAT DO I DO OMG SO MUCH STUFF territory (beyond that you're not giving them any basic direction, you don't need 100 hours to do that but at least an hour or two could go a long ways in investing and grounding the player in the game).

This is why I've sort of hung in this thread longer than I might otherwise, I think with our new game+ mechanic coming around that we can actually make new "new game" stories that /everyone/ (including us veterans) can enjoy and get value out of and will also double down as an optional introduction to those people who are like "what do you mean 1111 combat and 268 quests before I can kill the dragons? Just toss me into HW please, I swear I want to play the game just not.. that". Of course like I've been hammering with the whole witcher 1 2 3 thing, maybe people actually go back after they're invested (not all in the witcher case but still I'm sure a number did).

That is a big thing I think to the health of the game, if you can get people into the content they wanted to be in (or at least a lot closer than days worth of game time) and invest them in the world then they can take that investment and put it into other things like "oh I guess I do actually want to know about ARR" (or they may never care, but at least they have a higher chance of sticking around). Get the players to invest time into something they want and then you have a higher chance they'll broaden their taste and keep investing (if they like the game, and a higher chance they will if you give them more like the content they were actually originally interested in). I say broaden since as an example you might be like "wow low level combat looks awful, but I really want to learn more about the origins - I'll do it!" like how perhaps a player of witcher 3 goes back to 1 even though the systems are not as nearly as polished (accepting some issues because they've decided they can lower some standards as other points are actually valued to compensate now that they're into the scene).

So maybe confusingly there are like 8+ reasons why I am a bit excited and want to see it happen lol. Not a crazy fan how FFXIV starts (I think the first 1-2 hours are a bit "eh"), the many reasons why a jump can be valuable (some mentioned here), I think jump potions are a dangerous option (just toss people into the deep end of the pool, some people will sink), I think telling people to pay extra is another "iffy" action that may dissuade (when it was just HW I thought it was not really that important but we're now another expansion deep and the mountainous lock will only get bigger), adding a new start means a new quest chain for us all (for veterans it's like adding those scholar Ishgard quests except probably better even since these intros will need more attention), etc.. etc..