New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[van_arn]

Do you gatekeep a singleplayer game through the story? I think most games are kept in check through story. Heck, even dark souls is.

The entire point is this is not a single player game. It is a social game, Final Fantasy or no, and the MSQ causes friction between players at different points of that gigantic MSQ. Don't even try to tell me you haven't seen players burn out in 2.x.

Furthermore, it's not uncommon for a single-player game that offers expansions to permit a player to start at the beginning of the expansion with an appropriately-geared character, though not optimal.

So yes, demanding a player sink 150+ hours into banal fedexing fetch quests to get to the current expansion is gatekeeping. Keeping the "us" of players that have played the game away from the filthy "them" that might want to just start.

[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!".

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The entire point is this is not a single player game. It is a social game, Final Fantasy or no, and the MSQ causes friction between players at different points of that gigantic MSQ.

Furthermore, it's not uncommon for a single-player game that offers expansions to permit a player to start at the beginning of the expansion with an appropriately-geared character, though not optimal.

So yes, demanding a player sink 150+ hours into banal fedexing fetch quests to get to the current expansion is gatekeeping. Keeping the "us" of players that have played the game away from the filthy "them" that might want to just start.

See, you are just bitter at the game. Your very calling the entirety of the base game and 2 expansions "banal fedexing fetch quests" is ridiculous. Thats like saying getting to the final episode of Game of Thrones is sitting through "hours of meaningless, utter crap to get to the finale" They may as well just start releasing everything as one quest, one episode, one hour of content, so we can bypass all the "getting through the crap" to get to the end and see the resolution.


Its not keeping people who have played the game away from people who want to start, its allowing players to enjoy their time through the game and expansions. If not every player wants to go through the story, they can either skip all the cutscenes or get a skip potion. Cutting the game up into an incoherent mess by destroying the story is not the way to go.

[van_arn]

See, you are just bitter at the game. Your very calling the entirety of the base game and 2 expansions "banal fedexing fetch quests" is ridiculous. Thats like saying getting to the final episode of Game of Thrones is sitting through "hours of meaningless, utter crap to get to the finale" They may as well just start releasing everything as one quest, one episode, one hour of content, so we can bypass all the "getting through the crap" to get to the end and see the resolution.


Its not keeping people who have played the game away from people who want to start, its allowing players to enjoy their time through the game and expansions. If not every player wants to go through the story, they can either skip all the cutscenes or get a skip potion. Cutting the game up into an incoherent mess by destroying the story is not the way to go.

Now you're going too far, unlocking everything is too much.

I merely want to get people to the gate, be that anywhere beyond ARR and before Stormblood. I listed Heavensward as an example, because the common adage is "just get past 2.x, Heavensward is better." Why not just start players at the good part?

That's plenty of time, no matter where the new starting point is placed, for a new player to enjoy their first time through. With NG+, those wanting to get greater context have a powerful tool at their disposal-- more than anyone that skipped 1.x ever had.

There's no incoherency introduced, since this is exactly what happened when everyone started skipping 1.0. The plot remains exactly the same, just the starting point on the timeline is later. People simply joined mid-season, and cliffs notes were easy to obtain to give them the essentials. In the case of 2.0, those cliffs notes were the ARR trailer. "You were a cool dude but look at this sick Heavensward trailer" is enough to provide context for anyone starting in heavensward.

I don't want people to stop paying attention to the story, I want the active portion to be shortened to a reasonable length so the temptation to just start skipping every cutscene to get to the part "where it gets better" is lessened.

[Miles064]

I don't think it's a bad concept by any means. With the way the story currently flows it's just not feasible short of shelling out money for jump potions. Everything is connected from start to finish. In WoW the stories were largely segmented.

Even still. The bronze dragonflight showed up way before Mists. The events of WoD were throwbacks to stuff that happened before WoD, even in Legion you dealt with enemies and concepts from way before the expac came out. You skip things in the story you are going to be confused. I can agree that WoW is split more in to chapters than one big story but it isn't like FF doesn't have obvious story splits as well. To me that still boils down to "do you even care about the story?". If I wanted to see something I could just go back and do the quests after I catch up to friends/rush endgame or whatever reason I wanted to skip the story in the first place.

[Vahlnir]

Even still. The bronze dragonflight showed up way before Mists. The events of WoD were throwbacks to stuff that happened before WoD, even in Legion you dealt with enemies and concepts from way before the expac came out. You skip things in the story you are going to be confused. I can agree that WoW is split more in to chapters than one big story but it isn't like FF doesn't have obvious story splits as well. To me that still boils down to "do you even care about the story?". If I wanted to see something I could just go back and do the quests after I catch up to friends/rush endgame or whatever reason I wanted to skip the story in the first place.

Ultimately I think it's a design choice and would require time and money to revamp it to reflect something like WoW's quest/expansion design. SE doesn't seem keen on injecting funds into this game any more than they have to, nor have they shown many signs of revamping the MSQ other than to trim unnecessary travel/fetch quests.

[Miles064]

Most people around here seem to be able to view things objectively, but there are definitely some who turn rabid at any perceived insult to XIV. Quite often when WoW, or even XI, is mentioned in a positive way, you can expect some crazy backlash. It tends to get old rather fast.

The WoW forums were no different tbh. Mention liking anything about FF14 and wanting something like it WoW often lead to backlash and insults. Hell, saying anything about controller support like ff gets people all mad about pruning, like the average ff class doesn't have more skills than the WoW ones lol. Still you had many that would have liked some FF things as well.

[Miles064]

Ultimately I think it's a design choice and would require time and money to revamp it to reflect something like WoW's quest/expansion design. SE doesn't seem keen on injecting funds into this game any more than they have to, nor have they shown many signs of revamping the MSQ other than to trim unnecessary travel/fetch quests.

I can understand that. They have a lot on the plate atm and I can definitely tell they are trimming down on the useless filler as the story goes on. I want them to keep adding more. The longer the story gets, the harder it is for people to catch up without spending money though. It's just something I hope they keep an eye out on.

[Halivel]

Looking at all pages I see kind of irony in the whole situation. Players right now complain, that 2.x-3.0 quests period is too long (100 MSQ). And that's pretty much true (and even so I personally still think that people should go through it, but with some adjustments - we have linkpearl, for example, why don't we use it, when it's possible, instead of running between two areas without fights again and again?). Well, they work on ARR MSQ now, as they said, so we will see soon, how it will be modified.

Because of this 3.x and 4.x story lines are significantly shorter, SE learned it from community. And quess what? Now players complain that story patches are too short. 3.x contains 44 MSQ, 4.x contains 40. But I bet, that if somehow 5.x will be, let's say, ~70 MSQ (so just middle between 100 and 40), there will be blacklash about "too much text" later again, when it will not be fresh content anymore.

[AxlStream]

Do you gatekeep a singleplayer game through the story? I think most games are kept in check through story. Heck, even dark souls is.


Saying because it's an mmo with 3 expansions worth of content means you shouldn't have to play the game is rather silly. You say they have to do a bunch of meaningless stuff to get to the game, however they are playing what basically amounts to 3 games. Thats not worthless, its content they haven't done yet.

Sure, the post ARR story could be shortened, that's about it. ARR sets you up as a hero. You are a nobody before the end of it.

Except !$ is not a story game. It's an MMO. Story is a prominent feature yes, but it's not what keeps the appeal of the game going months on end through content draughts.