Low level gameplay: A growing problem

[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.

[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.

[Barraind]

Has anyone played a MMO where you get a full kit of skills right off the bat?

Yes. There are a number of them that give you a slew of abilities upfront and do not treat the first 50 levels as a tutorial.

Older games have even gone back to ensure you get spells and abilities faster now, because nobody likes having 4 relevant buttons in an MMO.

You know why we need to trickle feed skills in? Because you master the class as you go. You get comfortable with one set, then we add another button, then another.

This is generally nonsense, given how classes in 14 work.

A healer at 70 isnt a level 35 healer with more buttons, its a completely different thing.

Look at how lancer worked. Heres an ability you get at low levels that you spam over your damage combo. Now its useless for 30 levels. Now its an integral portion of your standard rotation. You totally learned how that worked by leveling! Only not.

[Clicked]

I thought the game was fun from level 1. That said...we could stand to push some skills earlier.

Like for MNK, Twin Snakes (lv18) and Arm of the Destroyer (lv26) both come way later than they should. You could easily drop those levels by 10 without removing the feeling of progression or confusing new players.

WAR is even worse. You don't get your combo finishers until 26 (Storm's Path) and 50 (Storm's Eye)!

Then there are healers. By far the most boring experience for new players. 2 button rotation for almost 80 levels. I wouldn't blame new players who choose healers if they quit very early on since you spend most of your time soloing with two skills.

[BatLW]

The biggest problem with the skills is, that SE removes "old" skills they feel are not useful anymore and implement most of the skills for higher levels. that shifts the game in a way, that you dont have a proper skillset before 50 AT ALL , and since you do dungeons in sync, most of your roulette experience will limit your skillset down to 40% or less.

[NefarioCall]

FFXI managed this perfectly, and as a CONTROLLER BASED GAME...

Mage jobs had literally dozens ... upon dozens... of abilities that jammed up every key on the keyboard and then some,
and all of them had a real purpose.

If you didn't like that, you could choose Monk for example, instead, and have just a few abilities in simpler rotation.

Or choose a job that sat somewhere in between, like Dancer.

IMO the two biggest killers to this games ability to be truly great are its vertical design
And the holy trinity.
Neither will ever be fixed.

[FoxyAreku]

I legit feel like over half the quests pre-heavensward could be pruned and nothing meaningful would be lost. Way too much busy work.

[Berret_Snow]

They would have to do an entire overhaul on more than just the combat; gameplay. The story itself would have to be pruned. Just as many new players leave due to story fatigue.

I left for a year after I finished the 2.X patches and reached HW. It was just so horrible. I did go through ARR's MSQ two weeks ago(and then bought a skip as soon as I reached the 2.x patches) and yeah it could also use some prunning as well as giving the MSQ quest more XP. I found it more fun when I could just jump from MSQ to MSQ without having to worry about my level and just enjoy the story without interruptions.

The low level experience does feel pretty slow, I sometimes enjoy it, I sometimes don't it really depends on my mood.