New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Shougun]

I see your point but I dunno man, I just don't really trust SE even with Yoshi P at the helm pulling off a movie summary due to their track records. Like LotR is a great adaptation but not all adaptations are equal. Hell, LotR is one of the few exceptions of being amazing and an adaptation. Even when they are mostly faithful to the material it can fall short and feel stale. Like, if I didn't love kh I would not be able to sit through 358 days and love it like I do and if I didn't love kh I would not have made it through their other adaptations of the story. If its done poorly then these recaps could be so boring it pushes the new player away from the story all together.

I just think it would be safer to cut the bloat on ARR msq, give the player a chocobo as soon as they get on the world map with a speed boost (they can lose it after done with msq in ARR for all I care), and give them a massive amount of exp. Then maybe, just maybe make the classes gain more skills before 50 so the players don't die of boredom bc the skill bloat has been trimmed so much that they only have 3 buttons until lvl 50. It would probably cost less money this way as well.

EDIT: Another issue with revamping the msq into a recap movie is that ARR eng dub does not have the same va. So that will lead to either a. rehiring the old va cast to voice the important cutscenes that are not voiced or b. making the current cast voice all of it from start to finish. I just don't see this viable unless you're making players read a mini novel instead.

In the context of if we just had HW I would 100% agree with you that cutting bloat is good enough and we don't need anything else (and that the potions shouldn't be baseline), since I don't want to kill the story in a whole but encourage different types of people to get in and HOPEFULLY also get into the story. Of course there were other things I had wanted to do with the fast start (like making the intro cater to a different interest other than the ARR at the door of the major city inn style).

I get that you're worried about missing some detail or it's not good enough, things like that. Fair enough there. I would honestly not try to sell the accelerated start as a perfect recap but as a tool to get you in fast and hard while giving you the "decoder ring" in order to not fail to realize what your combat job does or wonder "Where am I? Who is the Warrior of light, are they Ascians? and where was I supposed to be going?!?!". Like the difference of putting someone in the caves without equipment vs getting them equipment, quick run down of the cave structure, how their tools work, and slapping them on the bottom .

To me when I think of them adding more and more and thinking of SE's improvements as they go (as you see say witcher 2 improve 1 and 3 improve 2) that there is just this point, of some people, where they could say "I'm not interested in ARR or HW yet omg the trailer for the Dalamud Strikes Back, To the Moon Expansion 8 is all I've ever wanted". Then telling the person excited for 8.0 that there is 300 hours before they get to it just kills them lol (50 estimate hours each from 2.0 to end of 7.0). Edit: whoops counted 1.0 and forgot that's not an option anymore lol (start from 2.0 XD). Currently without streamline ARR is ~100 give or take how much you skip dialog/know where to go already (I estimated 50 just for the sake of averages).

So mostly I want to see the game be able to, WITHOUT damaging the game for others, sell and be accessible particularly to those who may start with a different perspective or play differently (like if you're used to an action combat MMO se's first 1-40 is SUPER SLOW, but our combat is pretty good later even if you're used to hitting lots of buttons and responding to things). I understand the concern that it may affect someone's experience but I think if you present it right it will just be the lube to get them into the door easier and hopefully turn into the glue that keeps them there long enough to fall in love with what they weren't expecting they would (like some people look at old games and think "LOL that looks awful!!! What could it possible provide me?" and then they perhaps try a game later in the series or a friend begs them to do it and then they're like "wow... I loved Planescape Torment, I can't wait to try Baldur's Gate!").

I get most of the concerns (but I think can be worked around or are still 'worth it'), especially I understand and am very cautious of the concerns about the game style being turned around on them (like removing stuff in the future to be different non-msq emphasized game).

To comment onto your suggestions though I think these things could help, absolutely , and perhaps I haven't made clear but part of the reason why I was thinking these is because there is only so much you can do. When its just an expansion or maybe two plus ARR a lot of these changes could go miles in terms of quality, the lube and glue we want lol. But as you keep going it just starts to be a mountain no matter what you do to smooth it out (unless you go full sweeney todd on it, which I don't think would be good either because some people want to climb Everest- just not everyone). +1 for accepting what I meant to say lol .