Game difficulty, syncing, minimum ilvl and new players

[Jonnycbad]

I am trying to get a friend to play but the issue is they get all excited about a trial as a first time player, like they have it in their head it's going to be an epic boss battle and the boss is dead in 20 seconds. I'm talking about ARR story mode trials. I wish it was the case that if there was a first timer in the fight, item level would be sync'd to the minimum to encourage the new player to learn their role properly and enjoy the fight as it was intended. I understand this would be inconvenient for people doing daily roulettes, but it's hard to get new players to feel motivated to keep playing when they get excited for this epic Titan battle and it just melts. Obviously higher level trials aren't like this, but new players forced to slog through ARR, it can be confusing.

[Payadopa]

Don't worry. It'll be the same up till Shadowbringers. It's sad that SE invalidates their content like this one patch at a time.

[MsMisato]

Dungeons, I would dispel the fact they are epic because honestly they are not

However, trails and such needn't be that way. I mean, you could always get people together to run synced content for trails and such. Its actually fun. That's what this FC I am a part of will do if you ask that I am in as alt character (my alt is on Crystal). Of course they pretty much into that kind of stuff it feels like and its fun as hell to go in an ARR trail with 110 gear and beat down like Titan EX at sync once everyone gets the mechanics down. Which wouldn't hurt people nowadays especially since Unreals trails are formed around the ARR EXs.

[Genz]

Yeah, the new player experience and progression curve are horrible. It was already bad at release because of the shallow game system and dumb quests, but at least the dungeons were a ... decent challenge ; now it's just a boring timesink.
But thanks to Castrum Meridianum/Praetorium, everything else look exceptional.

Updating it would require work, and SE don't like that. Plus it's a good excuse to sell the jump potion so more money. Everyone win ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[van_arn]

Praetorium is trash compared to what it used to be for this very reason.

[Packetdancer]

I wish it was the case that if there was a first timer in the fight, item level would be sync'd to the minimum to encourage the new player to learn their role properly and enjoy the fight as it was intended. I understand this would be inconvenient for people doing daily roulettes, but it's hard to get new players to feel motivated to keep playing when they get excited for this epic Titan battle and it just melts. Obviously higher level trials aren't like this, but new players forced to slog through ARR, it can be confusing.

I think if you want to do this, you need to sync item level to a certain minimum for everything. Otherwise, it would make for an even worse experience.

Imagine the person who wants a fast run of trial roulette. They zone in and discover themselves in, say, Titan (Hard)... but there's a first-timer bonus, so they're forced down to minimum ilevel. They look at this, look at trying to teach someone new the fight, and go "Nope." and just exit the instance immediately. Sure, they take a 30 minute penalty, but they go and use that 30 minutes to craft or farm FATEs for their relic or whatever, then queue up for Trial Roulette again. Repeat until they get one with no first-timers, so they don't get the min-ilevel sync and so can just steamroller it.

I do agree that it's sad when things that are supposed to be a major epic fight are an anticlimactic joke. I wish the Crystal Tower raids weren't just a giant zerg rush where you never even see some of the interesting mechanics. I wish Praetorium was an actual exciting, challenging experience worth of capping off the base story. I wish the Alexander raids weren't a joke. I wish the various trials were more challenging even when you have endgame folks synched down in roulettes.

(I think mostly I just wish ilevel sync in this game wasn't broken as heck.)

But I think any solution that is conditional, based on whether or not a first-timer is present, is going to backfire badly. Because there will be people who are more willing to eat the 30 minute penalty than to deal with whatever the perceived inconvenience is.

[SavishSalacious]

Play the story. Thats what MSQ and class/job quests are for, to teach you as you go.

[Hycinthus]

Hmm not an easy solution here. Totally get the new joiner experience argument. Like in every forum, every reddit, we always promote them to play FF14 and to please keep up their efforts to HW and you will see amazing gameplay. Then after slogging through ARR and arriving at HW, and every trial is still a zergfest with every mechanics being skipped.

How soon until they start spreading feedback that FF14 is not an enjoyable experience, until the endgame? Currently the game is still riding high on good word of mouth reviews though.

Having said that, syncing everyone to minimum ilvl does not seem to be the right solution. All tenured players will not join anymore.

Maybe a separate temporary server like BDO where they are “season” character for 2 months in that server, have special perks and erc, then after 2 months, they will graduate and join the regular servers.

[ItMe]

Maybe a separate temporary server like BDO where they are “season” character for 2 months in that server, have special perks and erc, then after 2 months, they will graduate and join the regular servers.

Is that... optional?
Cuz if my friends wanna join but we can't play together for awhile that's no fun for anyone.

[Gemina]

I couldn't agree more. I can't for the life of me figure out why the devs allow stats into content that is more than twice those that are required to complete it. However, I don't ever see this team actually making old content harder to complete.