Low level gameplay: A growing problem

[Klb600]

I won't even spend the time to read this. If you don't enjoy the leveling go play another mmo. I am sick of this incessant complaining from whiny kids. ARR is a great start to a great story. If you don't like it then skip.

If you had bothered to read his post you would know that he is not even addressing the story, but the actual gameplay of lvling, and I am sick of blind fanboys who refuse to admit any fault with this game. If you cant handle constructive criticism or cant bring anything useful to the conversion, how about not even entering the thread.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Considering it's easier than ever to level up during the 1-50 grind, I'd have to say that the gap between lv1-50 is continuously getting shorter. If you're a new player you don't even have to grind out all of the side missions if you do all of the dungeon content, and that's if you didn't splurge to get an Aetheryte earring. While of course it hurts to get one of the first trio of dungeons on leveling roulette, it's simplicity in the beginning allows for players who are new to MMOs to gently ease into the gameplay.

[Lyris-Lyanther]

Any player that is just starting an MMO that is 5-6 years into its life is going to face this, especially if they aren't playing regularly with friends. The feeling of not fun is because they are pressuring themselves to catch up on 6 years of content to be part of whatever cool thing players are talking about right now.

I will agree that some skills getting removed can change the low level experience, but you can't expect a company to redesign content that old or make drastic changes to it because people did not play and support the game as early as others did.

If lower level stuff make someone shy away from playing, then I hate to tell them that the mechanics have not changed so much that later game is vastly different. You just have more buttons to press. It doesn't mean that there isn't that time investment requirement that they are currently not happy about, isn't still there.

[RayneBoemir]

I also have to agree with TC the beginning of the game is mind numbing boring. Every time I have to tell someone new that it gets better it just feels wrong. It shouldn’t be like this as this acts as a deterrent for new players.

[Fynlar]

People aren't just going to start out with the majority of their kit. That would be intimidating and ruin the sense of progression.

If people are going to complain that they start out not being able to do anything particularly fancy, well... too bad. You're basically a nobody at the start of the game; the whole idea is that you have to earn your power. And doing so in this game isn't even that particularly difficult compared to many others.

[linay]

I had fun the moment I started playing. My problem is I don't like redoing things, so since I've done ARR, HW, and now SB, I tend to use boost potions every time I start a new character. The only partial exception is this character since I wanted an extra fantasia for Viera, so I played through to The Ultimate Weapon quest (and actually had fun with the story since it's been so long since I played ARR) before boosting to the end of SB and boosting to 70 since I've already played through it with previous characters.

[gumas]

different people have different way to have fun, i cant say anything about this because for me i already have my fun from the start of the game since i play this for the story, its my personal enjoyment and in fact i just finished SHB and now iam in the progress of finishing all the sidequest and if that over, i probably login just for daily stuff (i dont do endgame raid/savage stuff like that)

and you cant expect a medium to have all your fun from the get go, even i get annoyed doing the "filler" story of ARR.

[BatLW]

Just remove that god forsaken Main Quest Storylock that keeps you from ANYTHING in the game and forces you into HUNDREDS of hours of tedious cutscenes - Where every 30. is actually a good one, that makes you feel epic and delivers you some excitement and the other 29 are "Hm, we should ask Person A, he is AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP. Walk!"

If the MQS wouldn't be mandatory to unlock access to areas and dungeons (Or, at least, not all of them) and if they would split it up (You can start the MQS in HW, or in SB, or in ShB - With a warning that you won't be able to follow what happened before) people could use the Roulette to level their chars, progress faster and actually play what they wanna do instead of being forced to do what SE wants.

But in my opinion, this is all part of the business model. Either play for months and pay your subscription or buy jump and skip options. Either way, you pay way more than just the game to see the newest Expansion.

[Kaethra]

2.0-2.5 Needs a bit of a revamp. Its nowhere near as good as 3.0 and beyond and doesn't match the quality of the rest of the game, or newer games coming out.

The newbie content is the first thing a new player sees and experiences. That content needs to pop. There's no reason for them to have to experience below par content to catch up to 'when its good'. It doesn't need to be thrown out, but it needs a redesign. Some more voice acting, some elimination of non-challenging non-engaging fetch quests, and a better telling of the beginning story.

They can couple this with a revamp of the class/job system so we don't have this awkward system held over from 1.0. In addition they can adjust abilities so that a more rounded out rotation is available at lower levels (which helps vets too when doing low level dungeons). We want players to learn their roles earlier, this is one way to do it.