Why is the game Accessable but not Accessable?

[Deveryn]

Among the most common advice given to new players is to do blue quests and that should make them unlock them. I agree that in some cases they may be lost amongst all of the blue quests or not certain where to find the minstrel though. A lot of people seem to miss the sidequest trials such as Warring Triad, the Four Lord or the Sorrow of Werlyt, which is something I've run into a lot lately where people think they unlocked everything and didn't know these trials existed. The only idea I can think of is to put all duties in Duty Finder, but replace it with "not unlocked" and show the unlock location in the details.

Doesn't Duty > Recommendations already cover these quests?

[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 ...).

[Atelier-Bagur]

I think OP kind of has a point. Unless you know where to go, finding and unlocking Extremes/ Savage can be a bit confusing, especially now we're several expansions in and adding in the proclivity of sprouts to rush through the game to reach the latest content and likely not noticing the locations where they're to be unlocked. Perhaps a little message after completing a trial or raid saying "the extreme version of this fight can be found in ___" would be useful, or giving players a bit of information about accessing harder fights in ARR.

I've been casual PUG-ing various Savage tiers on and off since HW and never had a problem with being "vetted" though, and I'm far from a decent orange parser - that sounds more like someone trying to join a static they're not ready for. Meet the basic ilvl requirement, know your rotation (and a guide, if it's not blind) and jump in, and more often than not you'll be fine. If not, you'll soon learn.

You just follow the big obvious blue quest markers for content unlock. Dont know how more complex and inviting it can be than that.

[Lunaxia]

You just follow the big obvious blue quest markers for content unlock. Dont know how more complex and inviting it can be than that.

Are you aware of just how much content there is for a sprout to sift through? Between all the many, many, many dungeons to unlock, hunt quests, deep dungeon quests, beast tribe quests and those required to unlock them, glamour quests, crafting/ gathering quests, normal raid quests and finally those needed for Savage/ EX, there is a lot to go through, and it's very easy to miss side content as it's not always in the most expected or intuitive location. If Yoshi wants to bring in more players to harder content as he seems to, a little direction would go a long way.

I'm not really sure why the forums have such a bizarre bias against newer players receiving some help or guidance, really.

[Midareyukki]

Are you aware of just how much content there is for a sprout to sift through? Between all the many, many, many dungeons to unlock, hunt quests, deep dungeon quests, beast tribe quests and those required to unlock them, glamour quests, crafting/ gathering quests, normal raid quests and finally those needed for Savage/ EX, there is a lot to go through, and it's very easy to miss side content as it's not always in the most expected or intuitive location. If Yoshi wants to bring in more players to harder content as he seems to, a little direction would go a long way.

I'm not really sure why the forums have such a bizarre bias against newer players receiving some help or guidance, really.

We don't. You misinterpret that, greatly.

I'll say one thing though, before anything else. The game should be more intuitive on where you unlock some stuff. Not everything in the game is unlocked through one obvious blue quest, though it's rare. And those instances are indeed scattered. I'd rather that information be made far more plain and easy to access in-game to cut down on the need to google things.

That said. Information isn't exactly hidden from you, and for the most part of the content, things are brightly visible to you. It's all a matter of time. Sprouts have a lot of content to go through, that much is true. But they're playing an MMO, there's so much more to do outside the MSQ. And while it can feel overwhelming, it's a necessary evil. They'd be overwhelmed with an in-game list of what to do and where to find it anyway. You can also make the argument that "oh, well, not everything needs to be unlocked anyway", which I only very partly subscribe to, and it doesn't exactly improve on the matter when it comes to accessibility when people actually want to do it. But it's a thought. Because some stuff can very well be skipped.

I doubt new players are that helpless. And it's eventually a matter of time, patience and research, as there's quite a lot of information outside the game that is readily-availble thanks to fan effort. Google, again, exists. For better and for worse.

So it's less so "lmao new players fend for yourselves". It's just that there's no real other way to approach the subject without going overboard on the way the game's designed. And I'd rather not open that particular can of worms... So what we have will have to suffice, and thankfully, there are players out there who were gracious enough to make that information organized and available to look up. Past that, it's up to the sprout's discernment. Some people in-game can help, and at least the necessary stuff is marked rather visibly in not too inconspicuous locations.

[Lunaxia]

We don't. You misinterpret that, greatly.

I really don't. There's frequently a very strange amount of what I can only describe as bitterness and reluctance to offer any kind of direction or instruction to newer players, or giving them some kind of reprieve from what can be long-winded or confusing parts of the game. I play around with alts frequently and I think long-term players are out of touch with just how overwhelming it can be. Not everything has to be a trial by fire.

I'll say one thing though, before anything else. The game should be more intuitive on where you unlock some stuff. Not everything in the game is unlocked through one obvious blue quest, though it's rare. And those instances are indeed scattered. I'd rather that information be made far more plain and easy to access in-game to cut down on the need to google things.

That's more or less what I'm saying. And if everyone is as tired of the same duties appearing in roulettes as they claim - and the devs want to see more interaction with the content they put in hard work for - I don't see the harm in giving players a gentle nudge in the right direction. Is a text box you'll never even see so offensive?

That said.

I feel like you're offering up arguments and then just answering yourself, when we basically seem to agree on the main point. I never said a catalogue or a list was required, but I think a tag-along notice during parts of the story to guide players to similar side content could help at times, that they can take or leave. Some players actually want to challenge harder content, for instance, but it's a bit of a hike to get to when you don't immediately know it's there in the first place - doubly so if you're new to MMOs overall and not familiar with how they work or what they tend to offer.

[MonsutaMan]

Why is the game Accessable but not Accessable?

Sounds like Blue Mage

[Atelier-Bagur]

Are you aware of just how much content there is for a sprout to sift through? Between all the many, many, many dungeons to unlock, hunt quests, deep dungeon quests, beast tribe quests and those required to unlock them, glamour quests, crafting/ gathering quests, normal raid quests and finally those needed for Savage/ EX, there is a lot to go through, and it's very easy to miss side content as it's not always in the most expected or intuitive location. If Yoshi wants to bring in more players to harder content as he seems to, a little direction would go a long way.

I'm not really sure why the forums have such a bizarre bias against newer players receiving some help or guidance, really.

Because, this game already holds your hand so often with guiding you through it? The progression in this game is much linear compared to most MMOs that those optional blue quests are very easy to follow and doesnt usually take that much time to unlock the content. I'm saying this as somebody whom was a sprout once upon a time, I never had trouble or felt overwhelmed with stuff because the game and community actively encourages you to take your time and I took it to heart. I was able to sift through 10 years of content within a span of half a year playing casually.

[Midareyukki]

I feel like you're offering up arguments and then just answering yourself, when we basically seem to agree on the main point. I never said a catalogue or a list was required, but I think a tag-along notice during parts of the story to guide players to similar side content could help at times, that they can take or leave. Some players actually want to challenge harder content, for instance, but it's a bit of a hike to get to when you don't immediately know it's there in the first place - doubly so if you're new to MMOs overall and not familiar with how they work or what they tend to offer.

Because we do agree, to an extent. Your issue is that you're fearmongering and going overboard with that panic. "Think of the sprouts!". Yes... we do. The community does. SE should do something about it, but there are ways around it.

No sprouts are harmed in the unlocking of this content.

Plus I answer myself, because unlike you, I actually provide fixes to the issue and acknowledge where it lies? Rather than blame the forums for being anti-sprouts?

[VelKallor]

if you start with dungeons, it should lead you to more content that will eventually lead you to doing savage.

"You should want to raid"

No thanks. Ill choose what I want and I dont need the game to tell me what I "should" be doing. Ill decide that.

it forces you

Pass.