Feedback from a new player

[Raven2014]

RMT is everywhere in this game, flying lalas, party finder spam, teleporting lalas, spamming low levels in Limsa, or trading gil to other players in busy mode.

And here is why people experience differ. I've been playing this game for almost 10 years now and I can relate to why the new players would think so. Because I also notice "very little" RMT activities in the game that I can perceive. It's because whenever I log into the game, I would be actively doing something. Either I'm in the field doing hunt/fate, or I'm in some kind of instance (dungeon or raid). The little downtime I have (usually waiting for a queue to pop) I would normally be around my house. I rarely go to the city states, probably at most once a week, and I'm normally wouldn't be there for more than a minute or two (usually just for GC stuffs). I don't think even a 0.1% of my playtime are spent inside city states. So someone with my play style would notice very very few RMT, almost to the point of it being absent altogether. And that probably close to what a new players experience, since the majority of their time would be spent on the field. As oppose to players who spend 30%, 50% or even more of their time socializing in the city state ... then yeah, I bet they'll see huge amount of RMT traffic.

But I do think the impression of the OP is correct. Every MMO has RMT issue, and I had played almost all of them, FF14 is probably that manage to localize the issue the most. In other mmo you can almost never able to escape RMT traffic anywhere with the only exception is in an instance. For example, someone starting WoW probably see a goldseller spam message even before the very first cutsceen of the game is finished. And frankly, Limsa is a bit of a meme for a long time. Anyone who had played the game for a long time know it's kinda an degenerate blackhole for both good and bad. Bad because maybe something should have been done about all the malpractice there*, good precisely because it's a blackhole that sucks a lot of issues into itself so you don't see it in other area of the game.


*note: I don't care and have any opinion about whatever crap people do there. Like I said I'm not hanging around there so no skin off my bad. I just feel a lot of time people bring it up as a meme and maybe imply it's representative experience of the game. For me, Limsa is more of an exception rather than the norm.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

I will pick tiny snippets because most of this is just opinion, but some things need to be mentioned



No it isnt, WoW was never an absolute cakewalk as FFXIV is, and the leveling even less. Are you sure you played vanilla ?



No it isnt lmao, you just havent encountered the toxicity of it yet.



RMT is everywhere in this game, flying lalas, party finder spam, teleporting lalas, spamming low levels in Limsa, or trading gil to other players in busy mode.

Please, you never played WoW during Beta - let alone Vanilla. Vanilla is super easy, it just took forever to do anything. A Frost Mage rotation in Vanilla for PvE content was to just spam Frost Bolt and Fire Blast during dungeons and raids. Then there's the classic realms where Botting and RMT is rampant as Blizzard doesn't moderate them as they don't care about Classic nor care to invest in it. Heck, Wrath just got a new exploit where bots can fly hack through trees and STILL can. Blizzard has yet to ban these bots or patch that as they see no reason to bother as they only care about making money off retail. Classic and classic wrath are just cheap alternatives to placate boomers and get them logging in while dangling Retail news constantly to get them to go back to retail.

Which proves their point. Toxicity is rampant in WoW and is extremely easy to encounter. Such as during Timewalking weeks where the min-maxxers are extremely toxic if you don't play the way they want and will bully new and less experienced players then vote kick them out. Since WoW is so toxic, Vote Kicks almost always succeed as players are conditioned to just hit Yes and not care why or if it's deserved. Then there's the toxicity of M+ - something you clearly have no experience with.

WoW has way worse RMT than FF14. They literally allow selling carries in their Trade Chat for gold amounts that are only possible via RMT or WoW Tokens. GDKPs are also allowed as well. The WoW Token existing also means that nothing matters as players can RMT or WoW Token to any achievements they want in the game. Heck, the top Guilds in WoW actively participate in RMT, sell carries, do GDKP, and buy gold. Blizzard knows this and doesn't do anything about them as they see them as beneficial to have as long as they stay a top Guild.

Then there's addons like weakauras, DBM, and the such that will practically play the game for players. Instead of regulating or banning addons that are as invasive as weakauras, Blizzard literally admitted that they designed Raids around them. Which means that if you weren't using those addons, that the raids were designed around, then you were at a severe disadvantage.

I get it, you love WoW - despite never playing it. Doesn't change that you're still wrong on this - as usual - and haven't played WoW at all since you cannot even get the facts right about Vanilla.

[Carin-Eri]

Great summary, and thank you for sharing! There don't seem to have been too many new players posting about their experience of the game of late, so actually found it refreshing to read this!

[Jeeqbit]

I've only just finished the end credits

The end credits play after every base game and expansion, as well as at the .3 patches sometimes as well as at the .5 patches leading into the next expansion. So the credits play pretty often. It's not over because the game keeps going on.

submarine primal cut-scene of Heavensward.

Often previews the raid tier for the given expansion. That is probably what you saw. Most likely the Binding Coil raids. It's a good story. Easiest to do it unsynced where a level 90 helps you 1-shot all the bosses.

It could use more voiced cut scenes to make me feel progression.

This gets better with each expansion, but generally they have a lot of work to localize to many different languages and they have to bring forward some of the work for the voiced scenes that wouldn't normally be done in that order. They normally make changes right up until release, but once they voice it, it can't change, so they have to consider all these factors if they voice something.

Sidequests don't have the acting and that's unfortunate. I think they managed it in FF16 that recently released because they spent about 7 years on it, rather than 4 months to 2 years like with patches and expansions for this game.

Novice Network:
second invite only. So no RMT spammers and such stuff.

Used to get RMT spammers, which is why it got changed to be invite-only.

I'm not expecting the same on the forums though

Most people posting here are veteran players complaining about changes they didn't like, or burned out from those changes. There is a New Player forum that you can post in which is better.

it's probably worth redoing ARR voice acting and sound effects completely

They rarely revisit old content. They must focus on the new content because that is what makes people resubscribe to the game and makes them money. They did finally redo some ARR dungeons and add NPC support, but they can't focus on old stuff forever.

Everything could be a bit harder

Story content is easy as you say, because not everyone plays for hard content or just wants the story. They don't want people stuck halfway through trying to get to the current expansion, unable to progress.

Maybe a difficulty beyond Extreme

There is Savage, then Ultimate.

I just think Extreme (the little experience that I've had there

You probably did a direct queue and did it synced, which is not an authentic experience. You would have to do it Minimum Item Level and Silence Echo to experience something similar to what the difficulty was once like.

and Hard) are not really that hard.

Hard is not hard. Mistranslation or something.

I've played too many MMOs where flying happens too soon and you miss everything that was worked so hard on by the devs.

I appreciate this too. We get the on-foot experience at least once.

so you're not just always using your fastest mount.

Mounts all got the same speed, unless you got a mogstation mount and didn't get all the speed increases.

devs called for input on which features they can rather add to the base game to eliminate the need for addons.

Don't believe they asked us. They said they will just implement popular ones. They've already gone and investigated them and can see the popular ones.

My take on this has always been that any MMO should support add-ons.

Mods and add-ons will always exist for MMOs, whether allowed or not.

ACT for emnity or aggro management.

Shouldn't need this. The game indicates what you have aggro of with a red icon. Any other color means you lost it. When you target an enemy, the person with aggro has a red bar near their name and the person with second aggro has a yellow bar.

Party Icons

They implemented this.

I'm sure a lot of people here can remember the first iterations of Healbot in Wow.

Many people who play FFXIV have played WoW before. But not everyone.

I hope devs and story writers have a broad layout of the story, the antagonists and a vague idea of where they'll come from, for about the next 25 years....

They have for the last 10 years, so I think we're safe.

[Tankymctankface]

I would also just say.... We tend to remember Vanilla harder than it was....
Who remembers the solo 60 prot warrior soloing ubrs?
watch?v=5oU9gQOiwlI

That's not the exact video I'm thinking of, but there was a lot of calls for prot warriors to be buffed because they were "hard to level", and a prot warrior posted a video similar to that, at the time....

[Leifei]

Glad you're enjoying the game! Welcome!

[Snorky]

OP that was very well thought out feedback thanks for posting it!

[Tankymctankface]

2 more additions that I forgot about:

Narrator:
The voiced Narrator added in Heavenward is a very welcome addition! Really nice exposition from a 3rd person perspective. Really lends to the story.

Voice Acting for myself:
Can I please please please not be a mute that just lip flaps and nods during voiced cut scenes?! Give me a voice too!!!!

[ZephyrMenodora]

So glad to see you enjoying the game!

My advice for the forums is just take what you read here with a grain of salt. Lots of extremely jaded people here who have played for years and years and will probably come by to tell you that you are wrong.

Game is great - hope you enjoy your time to the fullest!

[Tankymctankface]

So glad to see you enjoying the game!

My advice for the forums is just take what you read here with a grain of salt. Lots of extremely jaded people here who have played for years and years and will probably come by to tell you that you are wrong.

Game is great - hope you enjoy your time to the fullest!

It's pretty much what I expected. All MMO forums are the same, FF XIV is no exception. But the ingame community has been nothing but kind to me so far. Even when I watch cutscenes, I've had nothing but "Take your time", "Enjoy it" etc etc.
But the forums is not where I plan to spend my time. Beyond today I'll probably never visit again. In previous MMOs they tend to put a dent in my ingame experience, so I've given them a wide berth for a lot of MMOs in the past. Just wanted to make my main post here, hopefully for staff to see, mostly as a thank you for a great game. I just saw the Mailie Vidofnir cut scene, and man oh man.... I was cheering so damn hard!