ARR: new player perspective

[molleafauss]

Just my 2 cents after finishing the ARR main quest for the first time.
I started playing recently and I find the game enjoyable, but ...
Sorry if I repeat things that have been said in the past.

The first 20ish levels are fine: the main story, the first 3 dungeons, they're good. What the game is great at - at that time - is holding your hand and showing the various things of the game. An experienced player like me will go fast on some things, but some other new to the game and to MMO in general will be able to understand things bit by bit.
The side quests of the classes are brilliant, there's a little story and it's really enjoyable (played archer/bard and marauder/warrior).

Level 20-35: what a drag. Getting to Toto-Rak is a pain. The Haukke Manor story feels pasted on (dungeon is ok) and the plethora of fetch quests are really boring. Brayflox is a good dungeon again in a really really un-heroic piece of storyline. And then Titan is a freaking hard fight (hardest I found until now), great indeed, but really painful passing it.
And then ... plot twist! Nice plot twist (predictable? maybe), juicy but...
It all resolves at level 47 onward, the whole 35-47 is another painful slog, especially Coerthas, it diverts your attention to something else, you're hoping to get to the bottom of the plot and the story keeps only going sideways. Damn. Stone Vigil and Garuda are the only enjoyable parts in that long fight with boredom.
And then it all resolves abruptly in 3 instances one after the other: Westwind (shortest I've seen), Castrum Meridianum and The Pretorium. With all lieutenants packed in, with the whole response to the Empire threat packed in a lot of cutscenes in the same couple of dungeons.
That could have been better spread, the "Eorzea rising" could have arranged to take levels 40-50, get into each castrum with each grand company and mabye battling each lieutenant independently (Rythan, Nero, Livia), leaving Gaius, Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea together like they are now.

Honestly, the last two dungeons being 8-man with forced cutscenes are a bit of a letdown, lots of high level people darting through, and me and my friends were not understanding what was happening... we got lost a few times and just skipped ahead when the major fight started ... meh! (Nothing against high level people, I know I acted like this in other games so guilty as charged, just perfectly clear that is bad when it happens to you).
I understand why 8-manning them, as most of the coming trials for the follow up quest will be 8 man, and these were meant as a "teching" experience, but together with all the cutscenes (stop yapping, Gaius, will ya?), and all the bosses packed together, the overall "story" ending was pretty ... underwhelming.

I know this won't change and the quest reduction coming with the new patch will not address this (creating few dungeons from scratch isn't an easy task), but damn what a great potential spoiled!

[AduroT]

The Coerthas stuff is an important setup for later.

[molleafauss]

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

Not high hopes safe that they might cut some of the most boring part. That would help a friend who just finished the level 20ish stuff not being so bored there.

The Coerthas stuff is an important setup for later.

I had a hunch, but to be honest, it's the ballet of going all over the place and not getting to the final confrontation with the Inquisitor sooner which is YAWN

I'm recently in the same boat, and completely agree.

But you're not done with ARR yet (the worst is still to come, apparently!) - there's another 100 Seventh Astral Era Quests (post-Ultima content) to go through until the first expansion.

I was fully prepared for this and am now committed to the game (having bought the full release) buy yeah, I won't be rolling any alts in a hurry.

I know about the next batch of quests (and it pains me as I'm looking to get into the machinist), just hoping it's not all gathering flowers and visiting all Eorzea with no fights.
Fun fact also: I managed to unlock the Gunbreaker before the Machinist... (and that looks like a slap in your face)

[TeraRamis]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

[LaylaTsarra]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

[TeraRamis]

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

There's definitely a lot of fat that could be cut. You could probably streamline the story down to about 8-10 hours without losing anything profound.

[Klaleara]

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

[Klaleara]

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

Too add to what I said. As I jsut got the best example, why the hell does AST lose their card draw ability at lower levels!? It makes no sense to me at all why they do this. Not saying classes need their super nukes at level 10, but give em SOMETHING to enjoy.

[MsMisato]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

I mean I haven't played a FF game that wasn't heavily story-driven and content that was gated behind the story itself. Its what the series is known for and honestly it shouldn't be a surprise by the amount of story involved. As for the narrative being garbage, ARR story was being driven by 1.0 and the aftermath of the calamity essentially, so it sort of won't make sense if the person wasn't there so that part I get. I do believe intro video for brand new people upon starting up FFXIV but it only plays once. I also like to point out, it's easy for people to also not realize that ARR is about 2 years' worth of content with just the base game alone.

I do agree that some of the quests in 2.0 to 2.4 needs to be streamlined and hopefully, 13% of quests they are streamlining (honestly that's not a whole lot) are the silly fetch quests.

If one doesn't want to wait for the patch to drop and truly are not here for the story they can simply buy the MSQ skip pot and be done with it that is always an option and go to HW or Storm Blood and not worry about it.

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

It's funny, the skills from the base class like lancer use to have debuffs attached to them (leg sweep was a good example as it placed a slow buff) for example and we had some cross-class skills we could use to add small variety.

I also think its harder to strike a balance without having to redo all the dungeons in ARR to compensate for adding an additional weapon skill. I mean honestly its all burned through in DF I think thousand maws is the only place that is freaking slow due to the slime you have to walk through.

[basketofseals]

It's funny, the skills from the base class like lancer use to have debuffs attached to them (leg sweep was a good example as it placed a slow buff) for example and we had some cross-class skills we could use to add small variety.

I thing feint was the slow. Leg sweep was always the stun, although it had damage attached to it.

Funny enough that you mention LNC though, since that was one low level experience that actually improved after pruning. Previously you spammed impulse drive from level 12(I think?) to level 34.

Well, that is your opinion, and I disagree with it. The storytelling in ARR is not bad, and the number of fetch quests is no worse than in most other MMOs.
The story is a bit unfocused because it is "our" story - the story of how we go from unknown adventurer to famous Warrior of Light. It also has to do a lot of worldbuilding and introducing characters and events that will become important later on. A few too many "pray return to the Waking Sands", but even that does not actually happen all that often.

There's definitely a couple times that the story takes a giant stomp to the face in terms of pacing for not very good reasons.

The company of heroes fetch quests made little sense in universe(although I'll give them credit for pointing that out), and it was all for some shallow vapid reason that I can hardly remember, but I do remember my reaction to wanting to grab my face and go "OH MY GOD GUYS THAT WAS SOOOOOO DEEP" melodramatically.

The getting the wrong aspected stone to pierce Garuda's wind barrier made zero sense in game and out of game. It serves literally zero purpose but padding.

Both of these moments happen right in the middle of an arc climax and just totally ruin things. Especially since you're likely to get 3 overgeared allies with you that will just trounce the boss for you without you even understanding what happened. Then you'll wonder why everyone was even worried the Primals in the first place when you could have just ordered a pizza and had some randoms take it out for you.