My biggest problem/complain so far...

[Truewarlord]

Is how much I have to use Google to know what I have not unlocked yet, and how the game do not present itself properly in my opinion.

It does not sound like a good idea to completely hide off everything the player have not yet unlocked of the Duty Finder. Instead, it would be 1000x better to show the entry as "not unlocked yet" (with red frames perhaps) and also point out directions (simple saying "to unlock this you need to finish MSQ and talk to NPC xyz on location abc" or something like that).

The recommendation window on the game also don't serve its purpose if it will not point out important things that need to be done to unlock raids, trials, the cool stuff. So as a new player I go to recommendations => Raid, instead of instructing me on what is needed to unlock things, the window will show nothing.

If it was not a friend of mine asking if I had already unlocked the Asphodelos stuff, I would not even KNOW it exists, and I have already finished the Endwalker MSQ... I'm actually SHOCKED at how this community accept this as normal, because it is not.

Perhaps Square Enix should pay half of our sub prices to Google, since it seems like Google is a requirement to play FFXIV

EDIT 1 - "The problem is that you want the game to hold your hands, but some people like to figure things out"

When a game is design for people to "figure it out" something like a quest, the game will HINT things so players have some ground to go. Like the old WoW quests where it reads like "go north of the city, look where the tree has no leaves" and stuff like that. FFXIV totally HIDES the unlocked content, meaning players needs to either BREAK IMMERSION and alt tab to look at google or do every blue quest just to know something exist. And also FFXIV quests literally point out the precise location you need to go, there is no “figuring out” at all in FFXIV.

EDIT 2 - "I don't have this issue. When new quests become available they are almost always on the same map as you are when you unlocked it, and thus easily found"

You're not a new player. Try to have some empathy. There is no "new quests becoming available" for a new player joining the game. Everything is there, a multitude of blue quests and you either look online for what is important that you're missing or do every single thing at once.

[Jeeqbit]

Alright, so it would help if you understood that every expansion uses the same format.

At each 10 levels starting from level 50, expect this.

3 (24-person) alliance raids.
12 (8-person) raids.
3 (usually sidequest) trials.
Extreme trial for every single normal trial.
Savage raid for every single normal raid except level 50, which is like savage.
Lots and lots of blue quests that unlock optional dungeons and features, usually starting in the main city states of that expansion.
New job quests or role quests, which are either where the last one finished or where the MSQ introduced them.

In other words, Asphodelos is the first 4 (8-person) raids for this expansion. You would have been expecting this if you had unlocked the ones in all the previous expansions.

[Truewarlord]

In other words, the game is not friendly to new players, and players are "expect" to know things that are not explained in the game, and that is it.

Well, maybe as a new player I should just leave, thanks for the info.

[Mcg55ss]

In other words, the game is not friendly to new players, and players are "expect" to know things that are not explained in the game, and that is it.

Well, maybe as a new player I should just leave, thanks for the info.

Well I mean you can leave or you can do what everybody tells you focus on the msq first once your max level and caught up start knocking out all the blue quest you see and they lead you to different features and things in the game that are optional or you can get mad about it idk. I started in November and learn new stuff everyday and discover stuff I had no idea existed. Glad the game doesn't hold your hand and show you everything I prefer a bit of exploration and enjoyment from it

[MintnHoney]

Well I mean you can leave

...Or Square Enix can pony up a little extra effort from their UI team (however much it would actually end up being from the programming team after that, etc.) and make an in-game supported system that can tell people what they're missing in order to engage in certain content, as well mark where to go and who to talk to in a more clearly defined and easier to read way.
You can still explore, and then people who don't want to crawl and inspect every nook and cranny of the pre 7.0 grass landscape can find what they're looking for with a more straight-forward, streamlined experience.

It's not a bad suggestion.

[Mcg55ss]

...Or Square Enix can pony up a little extra effort from their UI team (however much it would actually end up being from the programming team after that, etc.) and make an in-game supported system that can tell people what they're missing in order to engage in certain content, as well mark where to go and who to talk to in a more clearly defined and easier to read way.
You can still explore, and then people who don't want to crawl and inspect every nook and cranny of the pre 7.0 grass landscape can find what they're looking for with a more straight-forward, streamlined experience.

It's not a bad suggestion.

I mean you can see it on the maps you're not really looking on every looking nook and cranny they could do is probably change the color depending on the content like make the bubble red for pvp, purple for raiding unlocks, so on this will be a pretty inexpensive fix and people would have less room to complain about not knowing what stuff to start before hand meanwhile not directing the player every step of the way like oh hey you forgot this you need to go back and do this stuff.

[MintnHoney]

I mean you can see it on the maps you're not really looking on every looking nook and cranny they could do is probably change the color depending on the content like make the bubble red for pvp, purple for raiding unlocks, so on this will be a pretty inexpensive fix and people would have less room to complain about not knowing what stuff to start before hand meanwhile not directing the player every step of the way like oh hey you forgot this you need to go back and do this stuff.

Well, so, for example: if someone is trying to unlock certain content, they may find themselves trying to use an online guide to figure out what sidequest they currently need to go through in order to get to that content. The online guides are not infallible, so there are times when said person therefore finds themselves unable to progress because they aren't given the correct NPC and quest to complete before they can complete the next step of what they're trying to do. A lot of content unlocking quests in XIV don't necessarily provide a clear path, so said person also ends up having to cross-reference other online guides or look at quest lists on websites, in order to find out exactly what is necessary, leading to a lot of effort required for something that should seemingly be low-effort.

It's not an unheard of scenario for any game, FFXIV included. We recently had a thread on this about a month or so ago (maybe less, maybe more?), as well, so I would say this is clearly something that could be worked on.

[Xirean]

I'm all for making the game less google reliant. Though it's rather unlikely to happen now sadly. I'm a bit confused on the scale of the issue though. It doesn't seem like a super huge deal.

[Avoidy]

Black Desert Online had a lot of issues, but one thing it got right was in directing players to specific NPCs. For example, let's say you get an obscure item that can be traded to an NPC in idyllshire for something nice. In XIV you'd read the tooltip and gain nothing from that info. You'd likely google the item's name and then read from comments on the wiki page or on the wiki page itself that it can be handed to an npc. In BDO, all you had to do was right click the item and select the npc button. Then it'd show you exactly where the related NPC was. It was so easy to just figure things out purely in the game. We already kind of have this in crafting; they'd just need to take it one step further.

Anyway, I agree with you OP. I kinda wanted to unlock mentor roulette, but when I saw the list of dungeons I still needed to unlock and that it was literally a series of dungeons just called "????" I decided against it. Googling it a while later, I learned they were guildhests. I had... completely forgotten those were even a thing. I remembered doing one or two at the start of the game and then just ditching that content entirely. Now, the way I found out what I was missing? I googled it. Even the blue quest npc icons signifying an unlockable... that blue icon is so broad now. It could literally be something inconsequential like an orchestrion roll you never wanted, or as huge as a whole raid series. So most of the time I google those too, just so I'm not wasting time. Some unlockable quests need to actually be unlocked themselves; they'll be gated behind what look like standard sidequests. When I wanted to start doing the moogle beast tribes, I flew around that zone looking for the quest to unlock them and found out (again, after googling) that it was locked behind a regular looking series of yellow quests. There are ways to tweak this so it's more intuitive, but no let's dogpile OP for just wanting basic shit.

[Mcg55ss]

Black Desert Online had a lot of issues, but one thing it got right was in directing players to specific NPCs. For example, let's say you get an obscure item that can be traded to an NPC in idyllshire for something nice. In XIV you'd read the tooltip and gain nothing from that info. You'd likely google the item's name and then read from comments on the wiki page or on the wiki page itself that it can be handed to an npc. In BDO, all you had to do was right click the item and select the npc button. Then it'd show you exactly where the related NPC was. It was so easy to just figure things out purely in the game. We already kind of have this in crafting; they'd just need to take it one step further.

Anyway, I agree with you OP. I kinda wanted to unlock mentor roulette, but when I saw the list of dungeons I still needed to unlock and that it was literally a series of dungeons just called "????" I decided against it. Googling it a while later, I learned they were guildhests. I had... completely forgotten those were even a thing. I remembered doing one or two at the start of the game and then just ditching that content entirely. Now, the way I found out what I was missing? I googled it. Even the blue quest npc icons signifying an unlockable... that blue icon is so broad now. It could literally be something inconsequential like an orchestrion roll you never wanted, or as huge as a whole raid series. So most of the time I google those too, just so I'm not wasting time. Some unlockable quests need to actually be unlocked themselves; they'll be gated behind what look like standard sidequests. When I wanted to start doing the moogle beast tribes, I flew around that zone looking for the quest to unlock them and found out (again, after googling) that it was locked behind a regular looking series of yellow quests. There are ways to tweak this so it's more intuitive, but no let's dogpile OP for just wanting basic shit.

The only dog pound on him is this attitude. When somebody responds to him and he said "oh so it's getting expects you to know things and as a new player I should just leave" your attitude is that negative already maybe this isn't the game for you. But every MMO I have played from WoW, BDO, Rift, Tera and this one had part it didn't explain well at all and you had to figure out /google. Could they have done better yes but to get an attitude about it rubs me the wrong way.