Why is the game Accessable but not Accessable?

[strawberrycake]

So, for a long time I've been wondering why, this game that loves to say it is more accessable, or wants to be more accessable for players(which it can be) is also simultaneously not accessable.

For example, I think there should be a more clear path of character progression for raiding, if you start with dungeons, it should lead you to more content that will eventually lead you to doing savage. It makes the game more accessable for new raiders and less daunting, it allows for people to not have to turn to third party tools to vet players as often for their groups, we can confirm that if you're here, you're somewhat competent.

I feel this should also be the same for Crafting and PvP, there should be quests, and other tutorials that lead you to them. I think the game can do, a good job of trying to keep content feeling like anyone can do it, but I also feel it doesn't do a good job of leading people to content they may like as well. It can make players feel inadequate, which kinda makes the initial idea of players being able to do anything, moot.

And if anything I said doesn't make sense, Idm clarifying.

Edit: I'm also talking about players who are not privy to existing systems and have no clue how to get involved

[Jeeqbit]

If you want to get into raiding, it's pretty simple.

1. Open Party Finder.
2. Go to the High-End tab.
3. Join a [Practice] party.
4. Congrats, you are a raider now.

Extremes are a pretty good start.

Although we could use more tools to vet people joining parties, such as beating (Stone, Sky, Sea) or having seen up to a certain % with everyone alive, we do have some good ones.

• Set a minimum item level. There is no excuse to be below 610 (the crafted gear item level). Being 621 or higher means you have raid gear.
• Set [Duty Complete] so they must have cleared before joining.
• Check their gear, melds and buffs for food.

[strawberrycake]

If you want to get into raiding, it's pretty simple.

1. Open Party Finder.
2. Go to the High-End tab.
3. Join a [Practice] party.
4. Congrats, you are a raider now.

Extremes are a pretty good start.

Although we could use more tools to vet people joining parties, such as beating (Stone, Sky, Sea) or having seen up to a certain % with everyone alive, we do have some good ones.

• Set a minimum item level. There is no excuse to be below 610 (the crafted gear item level). Being 621 or higher means you have raid gear.
• Set [Duty Complete] so they must have cleared before joining.
• Check their gear, melds and buffs for food.

As a raider myself I think these things work for people who have raided before. I more mean newer raiders who may not be privy to all of that and people who don't have people to lead them in those right directions. Why rely on people telling you things, when the game can lead you properly. While you're right, I don't think we should leave it up to chance. I've encountered many people who have no clue where to start and feel lost.

I can also say I feel the current set of content for PvE battle content doesn't really feel like it does a good job leading players from doing dungeons to Savage.
For Example: I feel we should have gearing and content more normalized to lead players into, higher forms of said content type. So currently in terms of difficulty progression, you'd do Dungeons, Normal raids, Alliance Raids, EX then Savage. Why not make it more apparent without people having to ask other players who already know?

[Jeeqbit]

I more mean newer raiders who may not be privy to all of that and people who don't have people to lead them in those right directions. Why rely on people telling you things, when the game can lead you properly. While you're right, I don't think we should leave it up to chance. I've encountered many people who have no clue where to start and feel lost.

The people who have no clue where to start are being wilfully ignorant though.

• The game spams in the chat box "of the parties recruiting, 100 match you search conditions", yet there are a lot of people who don't click it even once to discover that party finder exists and that people advertise raids in it.
• If you wanted to raid, you would probably seek out some sort of raid FC.
• Google it and find videos about the game and raiding it it.
• This all assumes that in 90 levels and hundreds of hours of MSQ, you avoided all invites to free companies and didn't get into the novice network where you could ask about it.

I can also say I feel the current set of content for PvE battle content doesn't really feel like it does a good job leading players from doing dungeons to Savage.

Right, because they can do extreme first. There are also normal trials and normal raids, which are not dungeons. They are usually one-shots but they still ramp up the difficulty, especially on release day when everyone is undergeared and doesn't know the mechanics. Even now, people still get hit by devour in the normal version of P5 or get beaten up by P7. If people took the time to learn the mechanics of the normal versions before jumping straight into savage, maybe they would be better at savage. Whatever learning material you put in front of savage, a lot of people will just skip it and jump straight into savage because that's how they are.

Why not make it more apparent without people having to ask other players who already know?

Part of the game is being social. When you do relics for example, they say "ask other players and share information to figure out how to proceed". Of course, the answer is that the relic materials are on a tomestone vendor or sold at certain beast tribes and grand companies, not very hard to find if you understand the game, but SE does try a bit to make us interact with eachother.

[Axious]

I think what the op is trying to say. Once a certain quest line is completed it forces you into a quest line for example extreme and savage?

Welcome to life where no one knows nothing about anything. If you want to try it. Go for it.

[Amarande]

The people who have no clue where to start are being wilfully ignorant though.

• The game spams in the chat box "of the parties recruiting, 100 match you search conditions", yet there are a lot of people who don't click it even once to discover that party finder exists and that people advertise raids in it.
• If you wanted to raid, you would probably seek out some sort of raid FC.
• Google it and find videos about the game and raiding it it.
• This all assumes that in 90 levels and hundreds of hours of MSQ, you avoided all invites to free companies and didn't get into the novice network where you could ask about it.

• On the contrary, I expect a lot of people forget about Party Finder. When you first unlock it you've just completed Sastasha, and at that point there's basically nothing of note to do with it. There's an Active Help that comes up but that's always been an issue as well (quite a lot of critical features come up in active help long, long before they actually become important in a practical sense, so get forgotten).
• XIV is an anomaly among MMOs. "Raiding FCs" are comparatively rare here vs. virtually every other game that has raids. This has actually been a chronic issue since Coil, apparently to be chalked up to relatively small raid groups with such heavy inflexibility when it comes to progression and member swaps.
• A lot of people try to avoid spoilers, which are hard to avoid when Googling; not to mention search engines becoming steadily less valuable in these days of SEO one-upmanship so you get crap like Game Rant while useful sites are often even actively downgraded by the Googlerithm.
• Most people tend to regard random out of the blue guild invites as an annoyance in MMOs, and on a lot of servers, Mentors tend to be fairly neglectful of inviting sprouts to the NN and sometimes even actively skittish about doing so - largely because of bots, some of which actually are smart enough to spot mentors and send them an articulate looking tell asking if they can join the NN; due to the fact that it's nearly impossible to remove a sprout permanently from NN, on many worlds there are several tens of bots eternally clogging up NN space. Twelve help you if you started as a Thaumaturge, especially.

Part of the game is being social. When you do relics for example, they say "ask other players and share information to figure out how to proceed". Of course, the answer is that the relic materials are on a tomestone vendor or sold at certain beast tribes and grand companies, not very hard to find if you understand the game, but SE does try a bit to make us interact with eachother.

This mostly fails, because most people don't talk to strangers in game, and most questions get brushed off by "just google it" which doesn't build friendships or ties, assuming that people just don't ignore you altogether if you try to converse with them without already knowing them.

Ingame, Eureka was probably the pinnacle of positive socialization in XIV, and it seems like it was a one time flash in the pan, unfortunately. Bozja didn't really seem to capture the same spirit, and this time around, there's no large scale exploratory mission at all.

Unless you count social media activity as "being social" but that has its own problems (having to maintain an account on a major SM platform in a day and age where there's an increasing backlash against the control and data harvesting inherent there, plus the fact that unlike forums that you could mostly browse without an account to get a feel for the culture - and maybe even get the info you need without registration - you usually have to get your hands on a community invite to even get to know if you vibe with. Then the fact that most people will just silently put up with mega communities they don't vibe with for the sake of information rather than even have a choice of atmospheres like in the past ...).

[Jeeqbit]

On the contrary, I expect a lot of people forget about Party Finder. When you first unlock it you've just completed Sastasha, and at that point there's basically nothing of note to do with it.

Once again, it spams the chat with "of the parties recruiting, 78 match your search conditions". This appears every 10 minutes and links to party finder, up until you disable it, which I doubt most people do because the setting to disable it is hidden in party finder itself somewhere.

What is different now than when I was new is that the duties are hidden. Back in ARR, while going through the MSQ, I would literally see parties for coil up. I was aware that it was the thing you use for raiding because of that. Now those duty names are hidden to avoid spoilers. But you can still see that they are parties listed under the raid category.

XIV is an anomaly among MMOs. "Raiding FCs" are comparatively rare here vs. virtually every other game that has raids.

I'm aware that raiding guilds are not much of a thing in this game compared to some MMOs, but it's still logical to look for one if you want to get into raiding. Your search for one will probably lead you to a normal FC that does a variety of things and they will probably explain how it all works and that was my point.

A lot of people try to avoid spoilers, which are hard to avoid when Googling

The spoilers are unlikely to be that significant if you've beat the MSQ though. The worst that would happen is a spoiler of what happens in the raid stories by spoiling the boss names.

Most people tend to regard random out of the blue guild invites as an annoyance in MMOs, and on a lot of servers, Mentors tend to be fairly neglectful of inviting sprouts to the NN and sometimes even actively skittish about doing so - largely because of bots

It's true that mentors can be quite neglectful of inviting sprouts to the NN, but this is because if you go through the list of sprouts and invite them it's like inviting a drop in the ocean. An hour later many of them will have logged off, replaced with a new set of sprouts that you didn't invite yet. It would get exhausting to keep doing it. A large amount of them decline the invitations, either because they are alts or some other reason. Nevertheless, many of them get into the novice network after taking a break from the game and getting returner status, which automatically invites them. Bots get banned long before becoming eligible for returner status.

Bots used to be automatically invited to the novice network and that is why they changed it so that mentors invite them. I don't see them in there anymore so if it's happening on any server, then a mentor is probably trolling and inviting them. From what I can tell, bots decline now anyway because it would make it easier to notice and report them.

Ingame, Eureka was probably the pinnacle of positive socialization in XIV, and it seems like it was a one time flash in the pan, unfortunately. Bozja didn't really seem to capture the same spirit, and this time around, there's no large scale exploratory mission at all.

Bozja didn't have the same spirit because it was quicker. It did have the same spirit but people were done with it in a day. Whereas in Eureka you would be committing a lot more sessions to each area and waiting ages together to spawn each NM together and there was a lot more time to talk and party for different grinds. In Bozja, those grinds are just for things you can buy on the market board for cheap and you don't have all these rare drops to grind for that sell for millions on the market board. Those all come from the raids.

[UkcsAlias]

Why rely on people telling you things, when the game can lead you properly. While you're right, I don't think we should leave it up to chance. I've encountered many people who have no clue where to start and feel lost.

For raiding communication is important, if you cannot do this first step, what makes you think you are a good one for raids later on? Its a very important basic step that people need to take.

[Lunalepsy]

So, for a long time I've been wondering why, this game that loves to say it is more accessable, or wants to be more accessable for players(which it can be) is also simultaneously not accessable.

For example, I think there should be a more clear path of character progression for raiding, if you start with dungeons, it should lead you to more content that will eventually lead you to doing savage. It makes the game more accessable for new raiders and less daunting, it allows for people to not have to turn to third party tools to vet players as often for their groups, we can confirm that if you're here, you're somewhat competent.

I feel this should also be the same for Crafting and PvP, there should be quests, and other tutorials that lead you to them. I think the game can do, a good job of trying to keep content feeling like anyone can do it, but I also feel it doesn't do a good job of leading people to content they may like as well. It can make players feel inadequate, which kinda makes the initial idea of players being able to do anything, moot.

And if anything I said doesn't make sense, Idm clarifying.

Edit: I'm also talking about players who are not privy to existing systems and have no clue how to get involved

It kinda is. There's not much to do anyway.

[Jeeqbit]

They wouldn't force people doing the MSQ into extreme and savage, because not everyone wants to raid or do difficult content.