Why is the game Accessable but not Accessable?

[Shibi]

I have always found the blue quests are quite clear. Like the meteor quests, do them when you can.

...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.

And just a little niggle; Did you mean accessible? As accessable isn't a real English word.

It's a bit of a trap as one does think that -able makes logical sense, being "able" and all. But Latin, in all it's glory, strikes again with accessibilis to trick and taunt millennia of civilisation to follow.

[Lunaxia]

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.

I disagree. Other elements of the game might have been simplified as of late, but I think in a lot of cases you're left to your own devices to figure things out and a signpost or two wouldn't hurt. The new players I come across rarely have even close to the full rota of raids and dungeons unlocked - Omega and the older Alliance raids especially - and typically need directing or explaining about getting to higher end content. Others I've met aren't new, but are hesitant to try because they're under the misconception that joining it requires more than it does, as the process isn't particularly transparent.

While I also encourage sprouts taking their time, there's also the fact that a lot of people don't always want to take six months sifting through the game to access content they might enjoy.

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.

You're reading a little too much into my post, and I'm not a huge fan of having words put in my mouth. I don't see what's "fearmongering" about saying there's a prejudice against more tutorial-type information for new players, when there's already talk of the dreaded "hand-holding" everyone seems so dead against in this thread.

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?

...except I am offering fixes to the issue? I was suggesting some text guidance, because I perceive there is a lack of information regarding certain content. I don't understand the need for the borderline hostile tone, either.

[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.

[LianaThorne]

The game hand holds people enough as it is, asking people to do a little bit of outside research and engage in the community for raiding isn't a big ask.

I honestly wish sometimes that the game took a step back in the way FF11 does and forces you to actually put in effort and look stuff up to accomplish anything.

[Zaniel]

I mean are we talking about unlocking/finding content or are we talking about the whole process of training up a player to be able to do that content? They are pretty different things.

The game completely hand-holds you through all the unlocking stuff, 99% of the blue unlocks are sitting in the same town square as the MSQ or offered directly by the same quest giver after you've finished the normal version of X. Plus there is always "open map". If players are still at the "overwhelmed by blue" then they are still exploring the game as a whole and are a long distance from having the experience and gear to do Savage.

Does the game hand hold you through the whole skill development cycle? Hmmm, OK, somewhat, probably not as much as it could, there's no in-game teaching for proper rotations or crafting macros etc. It's a bit of a YMMV area when it comes to how much guidance a game should give in preparing you for higher knowledge levels. Some people will feel it should be rigorously taught the whole way through, some feel it should be a chance to exercise personal development and intelligence, I don't think you'll get agreement from the community on one side vs the other.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I disagree. Other elements of the game might have been simplified as of late, but I think in a lot of cases you're left to your own devices to figure things out and a signpost or two wouldn't hurt. The new players I come across rarely have even close to the full rota of raids and dungeons unlocked - Omega and the older Alliance raids especially - and typically need directing or explaining about getting to higher end content. Others I've met aren't new, but are hesitant to try because they're under the misconception that joining it requires more than it does, as the process isn't particularly transparent.

While I also encourage sprouts taking their time, there's also the fact that a lot of people don't always want to take six months sifting through the game to access content they might enjoy.



You're reading a little too much into my post, and I'm not a huge fan of having words put in my mouth. I don't see what's "fearmongering" about saying there's a prejudice against more tutorial-type information for new players, when there's already talk of the dreaded "hand-holding" everyone seems so dead against in this thread.



...except I am offering fixes to the issue? I was suggesting some text guidance, because I perceive there is a lack of information regarding certain content. I don't understand the need for the borderline hostile tone, either.

You forget the pacing of the msq where it dictates what blue quests are available. Again FFXIV is very linear and easy to progress already that you rarely need outside help to unlock things.

You also dont want to insult players intelligence or force them into shoving every single content into them and get overwhelmed. I honestly think THAT in of itself is more detrimental to the player experience than what you infer. Like I said due to how msq dictates what content is available, its very easy and spaced out what blue quests are available.

[Bsrking5]

If you want to get into raiding, it's pretty simple.[LIST=1][*]Open Party Finder.[*]Go to the High-End tab.[*]Join a [Practice] party.

Is this before or after Japanese?

[Midareyukki]

You're reading a little too much into my post, and I'm not a huge fan of having words put in my mouth. I don't see what's "fearmongering" about saying there's a prejudice against more tutorial-type information for new players, when there's already talk of the dreaded "hand-holding" everyone seems so dead against in this thread.

...except I am offering fixes to the issue? I was suggesting some text guidance, because I perceive there is a lack of information regarding certain content. I don't understand the need for the borderline hostile tone, either.

I mean, considering how you decided to focus on that, I assumed that's what you meant. If you don't like having words put in your mouth, be attentive to what you're saying.
You didn't offer a fix to the issue in the quote I provided. You just went straight for "welp, here we have the Forums being anti-sprout". You're passing on this idea that the forums are against sprouts. We are not. It's just not nuanced. If me answering my own proposals bothers you so much, then don't fixate on that and actually deal with the topic. Because I'm perfectly capable of admitting what's flawed with my ideas, which again goes to show how nuanced this topic is and why it's not a case of acting out against sprouts whatsoever.

You're the one who fixated on it.
You're the one who accused the forums of it.

So if you don't want a hostile tone, please, be responsible for what you write and how it comes across. And then I'll do the same. Deal?

You forget the pacing of the msq where it dictates what blue quests are available. Again FFXIV is very linear and easy to progress already that you rarely need outside help to unlock things.

I'd say the only thing that isn't linear tends to be crafter\gatherer stuff... But if you're doing everything and taking breaks on the correct parts of the MSQ (usually after every major X.00 story), if you focus on the experience the game had until then you'll generally be fine.

The real issue is making the information more straightforward, as some quests do only unlock in random places :x

[Atelier-Bagur]

I suppose the MOST acceptable change would be to create different icons for blue quests such as a blue quest icon for alliance raid series,normal raid series,job quest, side story and trial series. Doesnt need much just instead of an exclamation point in the center have it be something else that represents that content.

But even then, most of the side content is given context to what it leads to imo. Heck when you finish a story expansion they always pull an MCU after credits that leads you to the next raid series.

[Midareyukki]

I suppose the MOST acceptable change would be to create different icons for blue quests such as a blue quest icon for alliance raid series,normal raid series,job quest, side story and trial series. Doesnt need much just instead of an exclamation point in the center have it be something else that represents that content.

But even then, most of the side content is given context to what it leads to imo. Heck when you finish a story expansion they always pull an MCU after credits that leads you to the next raid series.

Yeah, they do. I'm mostly talking about where they are location-wise. For example, in 5.X you don't have much incentive to return to Kugane. And if you didn't know, you'd miss Hail to the Queen to unlock Bozja. And it's given to you by a different NPC in Kugane, unrelated to Return to Ivalice, so that can easily be overlooked even if the quest is reddened out to say "You need to finish SHB to unlock this".