Quote Originally Posted by Ath192 View Post
Quite honestly as we played the amount of excuses I kept having to make for the game even made me realize wow.... this sucks for new players.
I've frequently asked myself if I would have stuck around if I started today instead of nearly seven years ago. Sad to say, I can't with any certainty I would have. On the one hand, I typically love story driven games and JRPGs as a whole was my go to genre for years. I've beaten games like Lunar:SSSC, Suikoden, Xenogears, Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy 7 onward more times than I care to count. The problem is all of them have a sense of progression and challenge, albeit that can vary depending how you approach them. None of them demand 50 hours of my time before they pick up.

Early game FFXIV simply lacks that in almost every facet. ARR is decent in terms of storytelling but it bogged down hard with incredibly dull quests and gameplay that only begins improving once you're approaching 60-70. Even then, stuff dies so comically fast in ARR and HW nowadays that it's hard to call it engaging.