New player(s) thoughts

[TMW001]

Restrictions should be the least of your worries when you get the base game and its first expansion beginning to end free.

[UnrealTai]

Restrictions should be the least of your worries when you get the base game and its first expansion beginning to end free.

To be fair Ive tried the trial before when I was waiting on my account recovery and its definitely heavy enough to turn away new players.
The idea is to play with friends and you cant even send tells or pt invites.
Kills RMT sure, but also bad experience with the trial

[R041]

This is very good feedback, and if anyone's bothered to play any other MMO in the past year they'd realize the new player experience here is STILL really bad and is the largest firewall for new players getting into an MMO to this day. I'm embarrassed at how very little Yoshi/SE has done to crunch this experience, and at how out of control things have gotten. Yoshi has done a tremendous job of rowing existing players out into an ocean with very little visibility to the shore.


What you're typically going to find on these forums are players that have played through the expansions over a long period of time and don't understand that the barrier to entry is a 400 hour minimum visual novel. When a new expansion releases most people binge it for 3-6 days and then the post-MSQ story over a much longer period of time in small chunks. The players that somehow manage to actually play through the FULL MSQ within a month are either lying about skipping massive amounts of dialog, or are just completely deranged. They forget that actual casual play is 1-2 hours a day if you have any form of life, which means anyone trying to get to the MMO side through the MSQ with this amount of time can't play with their friends for nearly a year unless they do a full story skip.


I've been playing since 1.0, and have seen our MMO side of FFXIV slowly taken over by rabid Visual Novel MSQ worshippers that call the game an 'RPGMMO', when the MSQ is neither an RPG or an MMO, but a visual novel with a few linear dungeons sprinkled in and no coop interaction otherwise. I was able to make the excuse at the beginning of Stormblood that the visual novel side wasn't too bad and you'd be busy for a casual month, but it's gotten to an extreme point where it's actually impossible to invite friends to join the MMO side. We've been held hostage by our own MMO slowly boiling us.


A lot of people skip dialog, and the rule of thumb is to skip until there's voice acting. But if you're a new player and you want to play the MMO, my honest advice is to watch a youtube series on the MSQ and then just story-skip. It's a great story 10% of the time, but so are the other FF games and they're not 400 hours.


Whatever Yoshi is planning for 7.0 - If it's an actual new story with a new entry (I have some serious doubts), then this should have been done in 4.0. Our recent boom of a playerbase is not exemplary of our MSQ - WoW players didn't join because they heard of a new Visual Novel called FFXIV, they joined because they were upset at WoW and thought we'd have better MMO systems, well we don't. We have a ton of problems that need to be addressed with a significant amount of people pushing them under the rug with a wide grin and a welcome sign.


Do the MSQ if you want the Single Player experience.
Skip the MSQ if you want the MMO experience. (You can always go back through NG+)

[hagare]

This is very good feedback, and if anyone's bothered to play any other MMO in the past year they'd realize the new player experience here is STILL really bad and is the largest firewall for new players getting into an MMO to this day. I'm embarrassed at how very little Yoshi/SE has done to crunch this experience, and at how out of control things have gotten. Yoshi has done a tremendous job of rowing existing players out into an ocean with very little visibility to the shore.

hey, I'm pretty sure the devs have said they're considering a new entry point sometime in the future.
As proud as they are of their creation, they do admit the length is not a good thing for new players
And I do agree we need a new entry point if don't want to put off new players

[R041]

hey, I'm pretty sure the devs have said they're considering a new entry point sometime in the future.
As proud as they are of their creation, they do admit the length is not a good thing for new players
And I do agree we need a new entry point if don't want to put off new players

I know, but I have serious copium because every single friend I've invited to play FF has quit even trying to get to Heavensward. I'm going to start just handing out Story-Skips and watching an MSQ series because it's out of control. Then all of these content creators keep praising this insanely long MSQ and promoting the MMO I've loved for so long as a single-player game. I'm beyond salty, sorry.

Even trying to build an FC is difficult unless you're inviting everyone and you're absolutely massive to catch the 5% of players that stay. If anyone's ever tried to create an FC and you get a ton of sprouts in your FC, you start to see them all log off after a few weeks and never come back. It's heart breaking, and I try my best to make it a good experience, but I can only do so much - It's going to evolve into me just handing out story skips to people that stay in the FC longer than a few weeks.

[hagare]

I know, but I have serious copium because every single friend I've invited to play FF has quit even trying to get to Heavensward. I'm going to start just handing out Story-Skips and watching an MSQ series because it's out of control. Then all of these content creators keep praising this insanely long MSQ and promoting the MMO I've loved for so long as a single-player game. I'm beyond salty, sorry.

Even trying to build an FC is difficult unless you're inviting everyone and you're absolutely massive to catch the 5% of players that stay. If anyone's ever tried to create an FC and you get a ton of sprouts in your FC, you start to see them all log off after a few weeks and never come back. It's heart breaking, and I try my best to make it a good experience, but I can only do so much - It's going to evolve into me just handing out story skips to people that stay in the FC longer than a few weeks.

understandable, very much so.
I'd even understand if they buy a skip and just watch the cutscenes in the inn.

[Iscah]

A lot of people skip dialog, and the rule of thumb is to skip until there's voice acting.

I'm not going to object to your disliking of the story, but for people who are following it, there is definitely important information in non-voiced cutscenes and even the stand-and-talk dialogue. Limiting yourself to the voiced cutscenes will get you an "action highlights reel" but you're not guaranteed to have the context for it.

[Jeeqbit]

What you're typically going to find on these forums are players that have played through the expansions over a long period of time

This is true.

and don't understand that the barrier to entry is a 400 hour minimum visual novel.

This is false. We do understand that it is a 400 hour minimum visual novel. This is a problem we all acknowledge, but it's not easy to solve because the expansion stories are intertwined and you can't just split them up suddenly.

Until that problem is solved somehow, all we can tell new players is that it's a story-driven game and that if they don't like that then the game might not be for them.

They forget that actual casual play is 1-2 hours a day if you have any form of life, which means anyone trying to get to the MMO side through the MSQ with this amount of time can't play with their friends for nearly a year

This is true but again there isn't anything we can do about it, so we just tell the truth which is that it is a story game with a long story and if that isn't their thing, then either the game isn't for them or they could consider a skip at risk of not understanding the context of all the content and why other people are so excited for it.

There is the endgame content of each prior expansion which you can stop and try out, but obviously you can't do the latest endgame content that just released until you get through all of it.

A lot of people skip dialog, and the rule of thumb is to skip until there's voice acting.

The problem is that this rushing can cause you not to really connect with the characters much, because this is where they mention you by name and flesh out the personal connection some more and without that connection to the characters and the story you can just get disconnected from it and quit.

[caffe_macchiato]

99% of FFXIV is single player. Each expac has at least fifteen hours of cutscenes. Endwalker alone has 23 hours (I wish I was joking).

I apologize on behalf of Square Enix and the FFXIV playerbase for the false advertising. This game should not charge a subscription, nor should it be advertised as an “online” game/MMO knowing full well that the vast majority of your time is spent in solo cutscenes. Fortunately, we have hope. World of Warcraft: Dragonflight comes out on November 28 and has a ton of new multiplayer content including raids, which are more than the amount of cutscenes. In fact, pre-patch is currently live, so you can play endgame content from the current expansion and level up quickly.

FFXIV is seen as one of the greatest and most beloved games of all time because of its story and amount of cutscenes, but not because of its gameplay. If you wanted to play a video game, you best look elsewhere. I mainly just keep subbed so I can take screenshots, since I already beat all the story quests.

[R041]

I apologize on behalf of Square Enix and the FFXIV playerbase for the false advertising. This game should not charge a subscription, nor should it be advertised as an “online” game/MMO knowing full well that the vast majority of your time is spent in solo cutscenes. Fortunately, we have hope.

That's the problem, it wasn't always like this. It used to be MMO first, but the focus these past 4 years has been to slowly turn the MMO into a Single Player experience with single-player systems and the widening gap of the MSQ into Post-MSQ (MMO) content.

I'm tired of it, and this is no longer something to praise Yoshi for. He fixed 1.0 and made a better MMO in 2.0-4.0, he didn't fix 1.0 to turn it into a single-player game.