Intial Thoughts on FFXIV after 1 week~

[Mischievious]

Hello, I wanted to share my experience as a new player. I started the free trial on 7/21 and played the game for about 6 days. I got about 3 days and 9 hours of /playtime during that time. I found the free-player experience fantastic. I bought the game on 7/27 and then continued to play for a total /playtime of 4 days 18 hours 50 minutes on the end of 7/30.

I found it kinda annoying to have to redownload the 45GB game again when I decided to buy the game on Steam. I have a Steam library of 400+ games with several Square Enix franchises. I found it incredibly annoying not being able to buy the game on sale on Steam. I don't want to have every other numbered Final Fantasy game on Steam and not have FFXIV. I also want to buy the game's complete edition bundle but I can't upgrade my Steam edition. The cost difference between the FFXIV Starter pack and the FFXIV Online Complete Edition is 5 dollars right now. Just an annoying player experience.

I love the game. The RPG progression is fantastic. They are engaging and rewarding I always feel like there is something to do. The story is ok so far. I know people say that ARR is the worst and it gets better. I enjoy the voice-acted cutscenes they bring a depth to the world that wouldn't exist without them. I do wish there was more of them or that the game can get to the point where all cutscenes are voice acted. The lore is deep. I could and have spent a couple of hours reading and watching videos. The density and amount of worldbuilding are stunning. The atmosphere and music of the game are fantastic. I can't count the number of times I have just stood around and admired the scene. Noticing the music changes really sets the mood and tone and the shifting to boss music is quite EPIC. The jobs, in addition, are a fantastic way to allow for the player to explore the game's in smaller chunks while not requiring the need to make another character and play through the story again. DoH/L jobs are so fun to use and have a skill curve that is quite enjoyable to dive into. Or you can look at macros it's pretty awesome. Along with the UI customization being so robust. You can spend hours making everything just right. I spent at least 2 hours making a job UI with macros that would swap back and forth between the different UI's. Thank You Zelpa. The game's combat also feels great. It's a little slow at the beginning but after a couple of levels, you have quite a bit to combo and think about. There is so much content that is almost overwhelming. Dungeons are fun so far and people are so nice. It's quite a different experience having almost everyone be willing to explain something for a sprout. GC is quite fun and filling out the mission board is a blast, lowkey. I am a Second Storm Lieutenant and I just got to have a Squadron. I can't wait to own a house. I know I'm barely scratching the surface of the content that the game provides.

I do have some nitpicks that I would love to see addressed. With how awesome the experience is for being able to change and level different jobs. The amount of inventory space is just too limiting in the game, especially with high and low-quality gear. With the number of items and not knowing what will be useful later. I can't count the number of times I have sold an item to only need it 2 quests later or need it for a craft for my next piece of gear. Along with that note, please make the shops make more sense when you are selling items. Why do high-quality items sell for 2 Gil? It took an hour to farm all of those materials why is suddenly 20 of them worth 40 Gil. It's not rewarding especially when you don't have space. XP and turning in quests should be looked at. I should be able to turn in any quest for mostly any class that gives generic XP. This side quest for a level 42 that gives 10k XP doesn't feel good when I could give that XP to my level 10 job and make progression easier. I already finished the quest and the XP you get from the MSQ is more than enough to level. Why can't I speed up the process of leveling my other jobs? It feels even worse when my alt job is one level below the requirement and the XP reward would put me to the next level. Along with a good chunk of quests being hand in this item. Then hand that same item to a different NPC. Then talk to the first NPC. It feels like there are extra steps for no reason. Separately, I feel like there should be more rewards for completing smaller goals. For example, providing cheaper Aetheryte TP if you have attuned to all the shards in Eorzea or a minion for fishing at all of the locations. The hunting log doesn't feel rewarding as you progress through the ranks, I would love to see increased rewards and for them to go to rank 8 for level 80 content. Making the Lodestone more useable by showing completion progress would be amazing. Showing the amount of sidequest I have completed would just make QoL better. I watched the Zelpa video on mounts and I want there to be more mounts that show the hard and grindy achievements. Like catching every type of fish, or going to every location in the sightseeing log. I think those players should be rewarded as well. Not being able to sell on the market board freely is kinda annoying since the shops don't give you any value for your items. Please remove the single character restriction on the store. This makes it worse for no reason and I feel goes against the core principles of the game. I don't mind paying for content in the game but it feels like this is a slippery slope making it single character only.

I really do love the game and I'm invested in it. I have watched the No Clip Documentary and I have some understanding of how you made the fantastic game you did and the struggles that you had to endure. I wanted to provide some feedback from a new player to make this game grow and thrive. I got the game about 10 days ago and I spent about 5 days of time in the game playing. I really do enjoy the game. These are just some nitpicks or imperfections on an otherwise perfect experience. I am rooting for Yoshi-P and the team and I'm super excited to tackle late-game content. I'm going to try and beat every ultimate raid before Endwalker. I hope that I provided useful feedback. This is my progress so far.

https://imgur.com/a/3VdQbra

Thank you so much for your time reading this. Have a great day.

Thanks to Enkidoh for helping me condense the post.

[Enkidoh]

Welcome to Eorzea!

Firstly, you can get around the 1000-letter-per-post limit by posting a paragraph, then going back and editing in the rest of what you want to say (the characters-per-post limit is only for doing the initial post, not editing).

Secondly, if I can perhaps elaborate on why SE have implemented some of the things you have commented on to give an alternative view on them:

The amount of inventory space is just too limiting in the game, especially with high and low-quality gear.

This is a noted problem by the development team but not one that can easily be remedied due to how items in the game are coded and stored server wise in real time. The next expansion is featuring a partial increase in the Armoury Chest coinciding with the removal of belts which are considered little needed and their gear spaces given over to weapons and rings which will help a little. Retainers are meant to be a means of alternaltive gear storage, but they too quickly fill up. Unfortunately there is no easy fix to this.

Along with that note, please make the shops make more sense when you are selling items. Why do high-quality items sell for 2 Gil? It took an hour to farm all of those materials why is suddenly 20 of them worth 40 Gil. It's not rewarding especially when you don't have space.

The reason for this was back in FFXIV's MMO predecessor FFXI players realized certain trash materials dropped by certain enemies out in the field sold for quite high amounts at NPC shops and so it created a major headache for players as farmers congreated on the one area all competing for the limited amount of enemies to try and stack tons of these items they would then sell for large amounts to NPCs, often using illegal mods and bots or outright MPKing others to do so, or at the very least, using certain legitimate gear to give them the edge to do do (I remember there was one particular player farming those enemies with a machine crossbow, a weapon that had an extremely high attack speed meaning other players simply could not get a look in).

SE responded eventually by greatly reducing the resell price at NPC stores in general in a patch, and thus killed that market, and as a result they implemented the same thing here in FFXIV ARR from the very beginning in order to prevent a repeat of that nonsense. If you want to sell materials it's better to sell them on the Market Board, although that takes longer of course. Selling things to NPC stores is simply to get rid of junk in your inventory, not for financial gain.

(more coming)

[Mischievious]

Firstly, you can get around the 1000-letter-per-post limit by posting a paragraph, then going back and editing in the rest of what you want to say (the characters-per-post limit is only for doing the initial post, not editing).

Thank you for that I didn't know. I'll condense it after I finish the message.

The reason for this was back in FFXIV's MMO predecessor FFXI players realized certain trash materials dropped by certain enemies out in the field sold for quite high amounts at NPC shops and so it created a major headache for players as farmers congregated on the one area all competing for the limited amount of enemies to try and stack tons of these items they would then sell for large amounts to NPCs, often using illegal mods and bots or outright MPKing others to do so, or at the very least, using certain legitimate gear to give them the edge to do (I remember there was one particular player farming those enemies with a machine crossbow, a weapon that had an extremely high attack speed meaning other players simply could not get a look in).

I can definitely understand why they made that decision. I do find it too limiting especially for a trial player, since they don't have access to the retainer, and it's a little overwhelming for a new player. I wish that the items were color-coded by type since they have a rarity indicator. I sold 2 stacks of bait that I needed for the quest to make space for the fish. On two different occasions. It's a little painful having so many materials, not knowing what the uses for them are, and not enough space. For example, maybe making the bait ability an inventory space that can increase as you level it. I don't know how you might fix this technical issue. I don't know how deep the problem goes and if rebuilding from scratch again is an idea. I also don't want to call on the devs to do unnecessary work or to put any pressure on the team. I don't know how I feel about that, honestly. I don't like complaining about a problem without providing some solution.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Alien_Gamer]

Almost every mat you need for crafting lv 20 items and below can be bought at a vendor; so while cheaper to farm it, you by no means need to hold onto it if your inventory space is nearly full. Sell what you don't need and buy/farm it later, trust me its far simpler that way.

For fishing bait, invest in the Freshwater and Saltwater Boilie bait. Its an all purpose bait that can be used instead of the more specific baits. While it doesn't work on all fish, by the time you're fishing for those you should have access to retainer and saddlebag inventories which will ease the storage burden for you.

Regarding inventory space and the developers, they feel it as much as we do. Imagine the database like a completed 10,000 piece puzzle, then remove 1000 pieces at random. Those removed pieces are where they can put things like extra inventory but then they have to figure out how to link it all together in a way that works smoothly and doesn't eat too many server resources or cause extra data to be sent between the client and server unnecessarily. They also have apolicy where all of your character data must be synced with the server every few seconds (10 seconds if I remember correctly). Even a minor increase of data per character will have a massive impact on network and server loads and its something Yoshi has been reluctant to even consider changing.

In short, its a lot of expensive and time consuming work; they know its an issue but it hasn't reached that critical mass where it becomes worth the cost of doing the overhaul.

When it comes to leveling, what I see many do is level one or two jobs with the msq and leave the side quests for a couple other jobs. You're going to get so much xp you'll out level the msq quickly if you only play one job. You also get a bonus to leveling any job lower than the highest level job you have, so they'll all level faster than the first time which helps make up for the lack of msq quests on alt jobs. Jobs in the same role (Melee DPS/Ranged DPS/Caster/Healer/Tank) share gear, so ifyou're leveling 2 tanks at the same time, you don't need to worry about buying extra gear aside from the weapons.

I would also advise not worrying much about HQ gear while leveling under 60. Not only is the HQ gear more expensive, you'll also be replacing it every few days as you level, its just not worth it really. You can buy any NQ LV 60 gear and below from vendors so you don't need to worry about MB price inflation and dungeon drops will server you just as well.

Hope that helps. Welcome to Eorzea.

[Mischievious]

Almost every mat you need for crafting lv 20 items and below can be bought at a vendor; so while cheaper to farm it, you by no means need to hold onto it if your inventory space is nearly full. Sell what you don't need and buy/farm it later, trust me it's far simpler that way.

That's what I'm doing now. It just feels bad as a newer player, not understanding use cases. It's also not something I noticed until a quest or provisional quest. For example, the level 30 miner quest has you farm 15 wyvern obsidian at an HQ level. I ended up farming 30 because I didn't know what they would be used for later. It turns out they don't have another quest use besides a provisional mission. Turning in HQ items doubles your rewards which makes it so much better to do. It felt so nice to be able to turn in the extra material for a double reward that I constantly chase that feeling.

When it comes to leveling, what I see many do is level one or two jobs with the msq and leave the side quests for a couple of other jobs. You're going to get so much xp you'll out level the msq quickly if you only play one job. You also get a bonus to leveling any job lower than the highest level job you have, so they'll all level faster than the first time which helps make up for the lack of msq quests on alt jobs. Jobs in the same role (Melee DPS/Ranged DPS/Caster/Healer/Tank) share gear, so if you're leveling 2 tanks at the same time, you don't need to worry about buying extra gear aside from the weapons.

That was my biggest problem. I tried to level a couple of jobs along with the MSQ because the MSQ gives so much XP. I kept running into the issue, especially around the 20~ level mark, of being 1 level below the quest requirement. Like being 30k off of the next level and not being able to turn in the quest that is finished because I am 30k from the next level. It got too frustrating deviating from my goal to level up that job to then continue. I ground out the hunting log to try and help the XP gap but it kept getting more and more annoying. So quests would change the level requirement to one level higher when you finished the quest. That XP that would have leveled the job to make the next level requirement has to be given to the job that is already leveled. I wish they would remove the level requirement for turning in to make leveling other jobs not feel as tedious.

I don't know how or where to even address the inventory issue. I just hope it gets resolved easily. It would be amazing having a collection you can update. I know the glamour issue and space also is a part of this. I ended up learning that I can't have a lot of different glamours to celebrate milestones in the game for me. I added the Lalafell starting gear to my glamour dresser and wanted to continually update the dresser with quest items that I earned like the meteor survivors ring and the monoa mask. I felt a bit sad hearing how many unique items there were and how you couldn't collect them. Like owned all 3 GC faction gear. It really would tie the knot for a fantastic RPG experience. Progression means everything for an RPG.



Thank you for your time and help. I hope I am providing useful feedback.