New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[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!".