Game difficulty, syncing, minimum ilvl and new players

[Vickii]

The playerbase as a whole is (understandably) afraid of wiping and having to press that return to start button, so SE has to cater content with a participation trophy mentality where barring the most serious of mistakes it's very hard to actually wipe to things and simply showing up and pressing buttons gets you a clear.

Even with situations where there are 6 people dead except the tank and the healer, it's there isn't much danger of wiping, the only danger is having to collect dust on the floor while the healer raises people 1 by 1, and by that point you're probably tabbed out wondering if you'll be dead last on the rezzing queue, plus the aforementioned situation rarely happens since there's so few normal mode mechanics that actually carry any risk of killing a single person, let alone 6.

No one is afraid of wiping. People are just precious of their time because they do this same stuff every day and have other things they’d rather be doing than dying over and over in levelling roulette because other players aren’t very good.

Nothing is stopping you from finding a group and doing things at your own pace and wiping as much as you want.

[dsgawwewerfw]

Yeah please let us oneshot everything so I can go back to idling faster ugh I hate playing the game

[Takamorisan]

So regarding new player experience, 5 friends of mine out of the moon decided to play FFXIV they are leaving WoW (Wow who heard this story before huh). I was surprised and happy at the same time, since ARR had to play alone basically but its not the subject of the thread.

Their experience:
They like the pacing of PvE and visual presentation since they used to play old FF games so they have something familiar to be attached with, but they have a universal consensus that the story pacing is a damn slog painful sometimes, wish they condensed everything in a cutscene instead of going to X to Y place and triggering a cutscene.

Wish they offered an option to the player just enjoy combat and if they desire to engage with MSQ they could just pick a Chapter and start from there, that would retain a lot of players that are not much interested in the story side of FFXIV. (Personal note: I loved the story since HW)

Some people get in this game interested in the end game, FFXIV have a reputation with their encounters but the slow pacing of 1 to 80 scare away the new blood.

[Vickii]

So regarding new player experience, 5 friends of mine out of the moon decided to play FFXIV they are leaving WoW (Wow who heard this story before huh). I was surprised and happy at the same time, since ARR had to play alone basically but its not the subject of the thread.

Their experience:
They like the pacing of PvE and visual presentation since they used to play old FF games so they have something familiar to be attached with, but they have a universal consensus that the story pacing is a damn slog painful sometimes, wish they condensed everything in a cutscene instead of going to X to Y place and triggering a cutscene.

Wish they offered an option to the player just enjoy combat and if they desire to engage with MSQ they could just pick a Chapter and start from there, that would retain a lot of players that are not much interested in the story side of FFXIV. (Personal note: I loved the story since HW)

Some people get in this game interested in the end game, FFXIV have a reputation with their encounters but the slow pacing of 1 to 80 scare away the new blood.

That’s a fair comment. I think again it comes down to FF is a story based JRPG as opposed to something like wow where you can literally get to the end of the games story without ever fighting the boss of any expansion. Skipping the story on WoW makes sense as it’s mostly just there to give you something to do between raids, where as FF14 is the reverse.

I see why people from WoW are attracted to FF due to similar mechanics but end game raiding, despite being good, has always been secondary. Although they do seem to be focusing on it more now than they used to.

[Dogempire]

No one is afraid of wiping. People are just precious of their time because they do this same stuff every day and have other things they’d rather be doing than dying over and over in levelling roulette because other players aren’t very good.

Nothing is stopping you from finding a group and doing things at your own pace and wiping as much as you want.

If people weren't afraid of wiping then the sole surviving healer wouldn't hesitate to jump off instead of slow raising 6 people. I've seen much more examples of the latter than I have of the former. Rando groups tend to keep going with pulls and end up slow rezzing people one at a time until the boss basically kills both healers and anyone who can rez, then people might have the sense to jump off and reset.

Besides, even though you have a point that people don't want their time wasted, at least wiping once or twice before clearing would be vastly more interesting, albeit possibly more irritating, than one shotting something with no issues whatsoever.

[TaleraRistain]

Wish they offered an option to the player just enjoy combat and if they desire to engage with MSQ they could just pick a Chapter and start from there, that would retain a lot of players that are not much interested in the story side of FFXIV. (Personal note: I loved the story since HW)

Problem there is, you start legitimizing the idea in a story-based game that someone can ignore the story without facing a consequence in some manner (like they have to do MSQ now and can skip cutscenes but not steps) then you open up the door for their complaining when the story gets attention. And if they whine loud enough, SE will start catering to their perspective. You kill the entire structure that is core of Final Fantasy XIV. It's fine if people want to skip the cutscenes or hurry through dialogue, but we don't want the game to support that mentality.

[van_arn]

The game is an FF MMO, so it's possible for it to fail as a FF or as an MMO.

The game has the FF bit in spades right now, but the MMO gameplay is lacking until you sink hundred(s) of hours into unlocking content. Not everyone is willing to suffer through bad gameplay to get to good gameplay. In fact, the hundred hour ask is an unreasonable ask. This is a difficult game to recommend to someone wanting to just jump in due to the amount of time it takes to just unlock the game.

This really is an issue that needs to be addressed, and simply skipping to the current expansion isn't enough to fix things. Combat needs to be engaging no matter what level a player is at, and the low-level experience of FFXIV is abysmal. Worse, due to sync and roulettes that abysmal low-level experience never truly leaves a player for good -- you're one unlucky roulette from sastasha or copperbell or praetorium no matter what.

Skip potions are only a partial solution; I'd rather have someone that enjoys the current expansion playing the current expansion than quitting halfway through Stormblood because they got sick of fedexing. They're still going to suffer through the awful that is Sastasha, though.

The story is nice, but it's only half of the game. Don't overstate its importance.

[TaleraRistain]

The game is an FF MMO, so it's possible for it to fail as a FF or as an MMO.

The game has the FF bit in spades right now, but the MMO gameplay is lacking until you sink hundred(s) of hours into unlocking content. Not everyone is willing to suffer through bad gameplay to get to good gameplay. In fact, the hundred hour ask is an unreasonable ask. This is a difficult game to recommend to someone wanting to just jump in due to the amount of time it takes to just unlock the game.

This really is an issue that needs to be addressed, and simply skipping to the current expansion isn't enough to fix things. Combat needs to be engaging no matter what level a player is at, and the low-level experience of FFXIV is abysmal. Worse, due to sync and roulettes that abysmal low-level experience never truly leaves a player for good -- you're one unlucky roulette from sastasha or copperbell or praetorium no matter what.

Skip potions are only a partial solution; I'd rather have someone that enjoys the current expansion playing the current expansion than quitting halfway through Stormblood because they got sick of fedexing. They're still going to suffer through the awful that is Sastasha, though.

The story is nice, but it's only half of the game. Don't overstate its importance.

Tightening up the quest lines is a valid point, but that newbie is probably going to suffer through Sastasha because of other people pulling them along like a kite.

However, if you do what OP suggested, now we'll see people kicking the newbies because they want to go fast. If they can't kick the newbie, they'll abandon. Now the newbie can never get through this required group content.

SE has kind of shot themselves in the foot here with forced group content. They can't make it such a chore that no one ever does roulettes. That's there to keep things going so new people *can* get through their MSQ. But that means the challenge may not be able to be there for the newbie. There's really not a good solution.

[KageTokage]

I feel like they should always have a ilvl sync in place for all normal difficulty content (Just to whatever the ilvl cap at the time of the content's release was) but make the roulette rewards and first clear rewards higher to compensate.

It doesn't make sense that they only have it in place for dungeons presently, as it means those and the pre-level cap trials tend to be harder then the actual endboss of the expansion.

[van_arn]

Tightening up the quest lines is a valid point, but that newbie is probably going to suffer through Sastasha because of other people pulling them along like a kite.

However, if you do what OP suggested, now we'll see people kicking the newbies because they want to go fast. If they can't kick the newbie, they'll abandon. Now the newbie can never get through this required group content.

SE has kind of shot themselves in the foot here with forced group content. They can't make it such a chore that no one ever does roulettes. That's there to keep things going so new people *can* get through their MSQ. But that means the challenge may not be able to be there for the newbie. There's really not a good solution.

I don't agree with raising difficulty because a sprout is there. You're right in that would only add drama. There's a glimmer of truth to what they're posting, though, in that the content is too weak to match the story.

If Square can't make a run through Sastasha engaging, then retire Sastasha. Remove it from roulette and skip the requirement in the MSQ. Requiring content to be engaging really shouldn't be negotiable; content that isn't engaging has lost its raison d'etre.

I'd rather them simply rebalance ilvl for the dungeon for all synced parties so it requires some attention, but not so much attention as min ilvl. Redoing the skill sync system (so a player can bring their entire rotation scaled down) is also an option, but a much more difficult one to implement successfully.

It's easy to misunderstand this as a request to make sastasha "hardcore" or "difficult" but what we have just doesn't qualify as a dungeon. If people leave roulettes because they can no longer just Netflix their way through free levels, I can't say I'd miss them. They'd already decided they'd rather watch Netflix than play XIV.