New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[van_arn]

ARR is NOT the same MMO as 1.0. Different story line, different combat systems, different play style.

Your suggestion is akin to "You must play Warcraft 3" to be able to have a full understanding of WoW. Absurd.

1.0 and 2.0 are very much continuations of the same story, and the reason I mentioned Louisoix specifically. We're a story-based game, after all, and it is essential we require every single person to play every single main scenario quest to fully appreciate that story, from Tanaka to Yoshida.
If story is as important as everyone seems to claim it is, then you must play warcraft 3 to appreciate wow. Heck, best to start with Warcraft 1. You also need to read the novels before stepping into any raids.

That'll weed out the people that don't want waste their time experiencing irrelevant content; gatekeeping is fun.

[Melichoir]

1.0 and 2.0 are very much continuations of the same story, and the reason I mentioned Louisoix specifically. We're a story-based game, after all, and it is essential we require every single person to play every single main scenario quest to fully appreciate that story, from Tanaka to Yoshida.
If story is as important as everyone seems to claim it is, then you must play warcraft 3 to appreciate wow. Heck, best to start with Warcraft 1. You also need to read the novels before stepping into any raids.

That'll weed out the people that don't want waste their time experiencing irrelevant content; gatekeeping is fun.

By that logic, everyone should start with 1.0 (be it through youtube, etc) so they have a full understanding of how the story and game developed into 2.0. Perhaps open the game with a three hour cutscene gallery detailing essential things, like escorting Sisipu across a featureless copy-pasted terrain to a random point on the map. It would make players *appreciate* ARR more. The story of Louisoix Leveilleur can only be understood with proper context from 1.0, after all -- and as FFXIV is a story-based game it is essential to enjoy 2.0 fully.

After all, we can't expect players to get everything they need to know from 1.0 from the opening trailer and by actually playing the game. Playing 1.0 should be a required rite of passage, and obviously anyone that wants to skip it and its magnificent not-story is a filthy wow refugee.

This is almost reductio ad absurdum. Youre going to an extreme to try and disprove a general point.

2.0 actually addresses most of the events in 1.0 through the 2.0 storyline, and most of 1.0 is downplayed because of it being a flop and being a semi-separate game. For all intensive purposes, 2.0 and up and pretty much a new game. The problem with your criticism is youre trying to discredit the idea of playing 2.x and gating by seeing everything as a zero sum game. You either have to do every single lore thing and part of the game, or nothing at all and everyone should skip it. This purposefully looks past nuance of the issue. Youll notice that a lot of people here do recognize 2.1-2.55 is kinda long and maybe could use some careful and considered streamlining. Because that seems like a reasonable solution to the problems people have. What some of us dont approve of is the notion that gating content that relates directly to the core of the game is a problem, and that the devs shouldnt just have people skip 2.0 all together for free if they want to. Particularly since, you know, the entirety of the game is established in 2.x content.

This isnt like WoW, where Vanilla doesnt have that much connecting it to BC. Its like youre doing some stuff in Vanilla, then a semi unrelated event occurs and now you go address that. And once you address that, a new villain lines up for you to address. The overarching storyline thats going on? Thats being resolved by the real heroes, you know Thrall, or varian, or Jaina, or Sylvanus, etc. Youre there to help, as the soldier you are, but you dont directly resolve a lot of it. As I said earlier, in WoW, youre a hero, not The Hero. In FFXIV, youre THE Hero. You change the course of events, have a direct impact. Ala Mhigo doesnt happen if you dont resolve the events of HW, and that doesnt resolve unless you take care of events in ARR. Meaning, the world doesnt progress unless you progress it, unlike WoW.

You dont want to do the MSQ, then buy that jump potion. It's there for that purpose. Otherwise, you should understand the game isnt set up like WoW or other MMOs. There's an order to the game thats dictated by a story. If you dont honestly like that, and the only content that matters to you is the max level content and nothing else, then maybe you should choose another MMO. This one maybe isnt for you.

[van_arn]

This is almost reductio ad absurdum. Youre going to an extreme to try and disprove a general point.

2.0 actually addresses most of the events in 1.0 through the 2.0 storyline, and most of 1.0 is downplayed because of it being a flop and being a semi-separate game. For all intensive purposes, 2.0 and up and pretty much a new game. The problem with your criticism is youre trying to discredit the idea of playing 2.x and gating by seeing everything as a zero sum game. You either have to do every single lore thing and part of the game, or nothing at all and everyone should skip it. This purposefully looks past nuance of the issue. Youll notice that a lot of people here do recognize 2.1-2.55 is kinda long and maybe could use some careful and considered streamlining. Because that seems like a reasonable solution to the problems people have. What some of us dont approve of is the notion that gating content that relates directly to the core of the game is a problem, and that the devs shouldnt just have people skip 2.0 all together for free if they want to. Particularly since, you know, the entirety of the game is established in 2.x content.

You dont want to do the MSQ, then buy that jump potion. It's there for that purpose. Otherwise, you should understand the game isnt set up like WoW or other MMOs. There's an order to the game thats dictated by a story. If you dont honestly like that, and the only content that matters to you is the max level content and nothing else, then maybe you should choose another MMO. This one maybe isnt for you.

That is reductio ad absurdum, intentionally so. Because requiring a new player to go through this content for the misguided "importance" of the story is equally absurd, especially when every new player is already skipping content.

There is no need to require a player to go through ARR when the trailers and the context in the game tells players all they need to know to start heavensward IN Heavensward. Offering something for sale does not get Square off the hook for supplying an experience that is inferior to the last 100+ hours of the game, after they learned from some of their launch mistakes.

Not only that, but New Game + erases any other justification to keep this content in the required block.

Heck, if story were the driving force behind requiring so much MSQ then Coils would be required of every new player, and that's a whole new tier of asinine. That answers bigger questions than gobbie cheese or sniffing chocobos ever will.

[Shougun]

That is reductio ad absurdum, intentionally so.

There is no need to require a player to go through ARR when the trailer and the game itself tells players all they need to know. Offering something for sale does not get Square off the hook for supplying an experience that is inferior for the first 50+ hours of the game.

I suppose to carry on this reductio ad absurdum is that we have dialog skipping. If the story was important to everyone's experience, to the Final Fantasy experience as it must demand of you, then SE needs to force people through it without the option to dialog or cutscene skip unless they've done the content once previously. Yet we can skip everything except the MSQ dungeons in roulette because people were not letting players choose if they wanted to watch it or not and ruining it for them (couldn't play the combat element of the dungeon because it was cutscene after cutscene), which is the same reason why I want to make sure any solution to the mountain gate that is ever growing (MSQ over the ages) is optional and doesn't ruin it for people who want the lore.

Although just to reiterate in case its missed on what solution I was "hoping for", since I may diverge a bit from some people on that, rather than separating story from combat content or make it mostly optional story I'd like to "movie pack"* old content into new optional starts of the game so someone may skip say ARR and begin at another expansion that they may have been more interested in. Just to add I'm not using movie as in it's just one long cutscene I'm using it as the concept of getting particularly core info across in a much faster delivery. This new optional intro choice a baseline given when you purchase an expansion, although I don't think SE has to make an intro for every expansion but at least we should have one "new" start now. Some stipulations can be made to prevent abuse of bots and stuff, like any player can "replay" with new game+ this new story as a quest chain for fun (get the rewards from the quests), but you may only once use it to get the free starting level boost, starting gear, and starting gil bonus unless of course you buy another one (the boost may be used on an existing character, which will help a lot on returning players who want to get into the exciting stuff after they left because they found the stuff previous not that interesting or whatever many other reasons).

For multiple reasons- just a few being they may have saw trailer of new stuff and only care about that, they can't stand the old combat and want better combat, want to be closer to their friend who is the only reason why they're playing and quite a few other reasons (which I've tried to list a bit before- I'd repeat it but I'm trying to avoid being the biggest broken record by developing different thoughts lol :3). That new start coming with a basic guide I believe that is important (some combat and direction to go), reason for being (who / generally why you're fighting), a bit of a snappier / ADD start for people who liked other MMORPG intros (imo FFXIV's first hour or two is a bit lower on my scale of intros I've enjoyed), and grounding introduction to the world although a bit of nuance will be lost of course due to shortening.

Many of these points, imo, are also to combat the shortcomings of the skip potions (I don't think they do enough to bring someone in and hook them, but I don't think that hook needs to be 100+ hours deep). For players who are current, like pretty much everyone here, it might be desired to skip story sometimes but I don't think there is too much which is why imo the fix would be best to focus on people who've been gone a long while or are joining really late and have the "aint nobody got time for that" feelings. The reason why I think "new start" options is important because if you're not current it's like ARR + HW + and soon SB = 200 hours, I'll see you in half a year of much of it playing solo Jimmy (I know some people being like "oh its fast" but they've done it before already, so of course it's faster).

*On the movie pack concept. For example in LotR you miss Tom Bombadil or all of the details on Maia/Valar (which is a pretty big deal) when you haven't read the book(sssssssss) but it's still a great ride without all the nuance. The Silmarillion adds a lot to LotR/Hobbits but you don't need it, Hobbit predates LotR but isn't required info, 1.0 added value to 2.0 but you didn't need it either, Witcher 3 doesn't need 2, WoW doesn't need warcraft 3, HW relies more on ARR than say Warcraft 3 does 2 but with a bit of help and someone who wants to get the ball rolling fast they don't need ARR either (it'll definitely add context but lots of things could add context to games, read WoW books to better understand your game).

I think many people are honestly and legitimately feeling much of the story is important (as it is to them) but miss that there is too much of "irrelevant" and boring "nuance" to the minds of others (who also happen to be pounding that skip button, all they know or care about is Ascian bad and they're using primals and Garleans to bring back Zodiark who is also probably bad). Not to suggest those two types of people are the only two that exist lol (just painting the wings out). Of course that's where the magic of movies would meet lol, everything from the perspective of a person who loved the content finds the info important but yet 90% of it has to be cut :P. Where in that then you might get some who like nuance city, reading all the books, and others who prefer the bite sized shorter intro of the world, and some that do both (so in this case they do an accelerated start and love it so they go back and try out old stuff, like a witcher 3 fan trying 1). Just an example of something that is important in ARR but you could get away with cutting when doing an advanced start is trapping Ascians in white auracite, this is a big deal but if it's important then it'll come up again and the player will be like "oh you can do that? cool - next boss please!".