New (ish) player feedback

[Penthea]

I have all crafters/gatherers to 70+ apart from fishing and have unlocked the shadowbringers beast tribes and recently got my adorable Porxie mount <3

Yay! Grats! It's a wonderful mount, glad you're enjoying it!

On a preferred server the xp is way too much, I do have the aetheryte earring and the 30% hall of the novice ring, also the friendship circlet.

Completely agree. I have alts on some of those servers and even without additional xp boosts like from gear the xp gain is very high. I agree there should be a boost for preferred servers, but it should not be as strong as it currently is.

I was level 35 when I got my chocobo - I think for new players there is far too much running around, and most new players cannot afford the teleportation costs. This I can tell you will turn new players away - especially those from WoW. Chocobo porters are nice and all, but they are not connected enough - maybe it's time to make those porters fly?

I think you should get your chocobo at level 10 - taking some strain off all the busy work.

The chocobo porters are quite cheap, especially in lower lvl zones. To me this says that this is intended for use by players who do not yet have a mount. I disagree with reducing the lvl requirement for a mount to be as low as lvl 10, however I completely agree that chocobo porters should be better connected. Chocobo porters do fly in HW and beyond zones. I suspect that this is not yet the case in ARR because player mounts flying has been introduced there in just the last major patch, which is only about two weeks ago. I think it's only a matter of time before they can fly there too.

By the way I came from WoW to this game and the current mount system or porter system did not annoy me at all. But every player is different. I just happen to feel this way. It's fine if someone else doesn't. I can understand where the criticisms come from.

With crafting & gathering I enjoyed it, but did resort to macros in the end to make the process faster. One thing I would love to see is the addition of a crafting bag so all mats go there not taking any space in our regular or retainer inventory.

The dream. THE DREAM. I would adore a crafting bag. Even if it only held raw materials that can be gathered. Even just that would vastly improve things for me.

The sprout icon is amazing, I was anxious at first that this would draw negative attention to me being new, but I had nothing but positivity from it. My only complaint is that it drops off too early and I couldn't turn it back on - when I changed from dps to tank I felt I really needed the sprout back.. so if we change to a brand new role maybe allow us to put it back on so others can understand I am new to that particular role.

The sprout icon does need to persist for longer. I suspect its drop off point has not been updated in quite a while.

You bring up an excellent point about changing roles. Just because you are no longer a sprout does not mean you have experience in every role. I think it would be a good idea to have the icon reappear when you play a role that you have recently unlocked. Maybe a slightly different icon to signify you are new to the role but not new to the game.

I know I may get some negative feeback from this, but I'd love game+ to actually award xp so that is another option to level my alt jobs.. waiting 1 hour for one run of Heaven on High isn't my idea of fun.

I also would like if New Game + gave xp, even if it's less than the first time you do the quests. I understand SE don't want the quests to be farmed for crazy xp or gil, but even just a little would be nice.

That's all I can think of for now, I love this game so much it's my new home after 13 years in another mmo, but in my humble opinion a few quality of life improvements would help in a big way.

Your post was a nice read and you did bring up some truly valid points. I'm delighted that you're enjoying the game. Hopefully some of the things you want to be improved will come soon.

[Mhaeric]

The sprout icon does need to persist for longer. I suspect its drop off point has not been updated in quite a while.

They've updated when the sprout icon gets turned off a couple of times now, most recently at the start of Shadowbringers. At the moment, the sprout icon turns off when you complete all of Stormblood's MSQ content and also have 168 total hours of /playtime. (It might be starting Shadowbringer's MSQ that triggers it, but I don't actually know. They're so close to being the same thing that they're effectively the same.)

This means that if someone never progresses past Stormblood on a character then they will never lose their sprout status on that character without manually turning it off. If a new player buys a level and story skip to get to Shadowbringer's content right away then they will still have 168 hours of logged-in time before losing the status. With how short ARR is now, it's also more conceivable that a new player or alt could have less than 168 hours playtime and reach Shadowbringer's and so still keep the icon until they reach that amount of time.