[Feedback] A New Player's Perspective (Will update if there's interest)

[kaynide]

Preface:

So, we had summer break. I read the forums of people hating on the game experience, so I thought why not... let's give it (another) try.

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.
I'm 40 (warrior), she's 44 Summoner nearing Stone Vigil.
I've made a point of NOT explaining anything unless she asks, or gets frustrated.

I purposefully played poorly: In dungeons w/ NPCs, I would run in and AOE/get aggro and then just do nothing unless I lost aggro; no other abilities, no dodging mechanics outside of bosses. In boss fights I just did normal 1-2-3 attack only. I would regularly AFK mid dungeon while NPCs slowly chipped away at the mobs.

Observations (Not all are the GAME's fault):

1. Kids are lazy; She will NOT read walls of text. She tried the originals, but it overwhelmed her quickly.
2. Similarly the ability blocks are a lot of text where icons would work better.
3. There really is no set tutorial on how to play a specific job.
4. She has been able to clear everything almost exclusively using Ruin/Ruin II. Everything else is unnecessary; Carbuncle "gets in the way".
5. If she ever makes it to endgame, she will be deep into glamours. She loves the dress up part, and loves creeping on people in Limsa.
6. The 1-50 job quests... I myself am not really learning anything. It's fun story-wise, but I'm not learning anything about what I'm supposed with Warrior/Marauder or how I'm supposed to play. "Hit the rock with ATTACK B!" indeed. Same deal for her on summoner.

Recommendations for the Devs:

1. Make time spent for job quests meaningful/educational, 4th wall be damned.

   NPC: "Do 1! Great! Now do 2! Ok! Now 3! Ok, see how you've built up this gauge? Use it to do 4!"
2. Refine your blocks of text. Say what you need to say in a simple picture or diagram. Use icons for things. Homogenize certain things like range numbers. It's less important that it's 5 meters or whatever than it is to understand "This is an AoE around you" and "This is a ranged attack with splash damage".
3. Similarly, instead of this grants "Blah Blah", which you have to interpret what that means/look up what skills it connects to, just have a graphical icons that shows [Current Skill] --> [Next Skill in chain, with shiny dot outline!] in the description.
4. -Added- Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

TL;DR summary, as a 10ish year vet watching a 9 year old noob:

1. The game does not do any favors making learning to be competent easy, nor does it really even seem to care that you ARE competent.
2. You can beat (at least to level 50) without really even playing the game; Good for non-gamers and first timers who are there to enjoy the sites, but not so much in replay value and long term retention.
3. The core story is fine; kid loves it. She even hates Minfilla just like everyone else.
4. For additional context, she plays in Japanese and has very minimal English reading skills. She can play and better understands HOW to play Guildwars 2 than FFXIV...which is entirely in English.

[Amenara]

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

[kaynide]

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

Yeah- for tutorials, I would love it to somehow gray the screen except characters and like... pause the entire world with arrows pointing stuff out.

Or do like God of War where it has a video showing it in action and explaining it.

[Renalt]

I really wish they would dump the help text boxes and do a more interactive tutorial method and do things like when there would be an active help popup, instead grey out the screen, show you where the thing is they are talking about and have you click through what they use text to explain so you can actively see how to do different things instead of having a series of text boxes to read with no interaction.

I agree that the job quests would be a great place to more actively teach new players how to play the game.

Kinda like a Devil May Cry combo room. Hey here is your ability. This is what it looks like. This is what it does. Got it? Cool. Here is an immortal punching bag enemy. Do things. We will let you know if you did the thing right.

[Amenara]

Kinda like a Devil May Cry combo room. Hey here is your ability. This is what it looks like. This is what it does. Got it? Cool. Here is an immortal punching bag enemy. Do things. We will let you know if you did the thing right.

I am reminded of one of the CNJ quests where you have a bunch of NPCs fighting off the antelope and you have to heal the NPCs. It's janky and annoying but it teaches you how to heal and iirc it even tells you to DPS when you don't need to heal. It is a one off quest and you never have another that teaches you how to remove cure 1 from your bar after you unlock cure 2, so it's obviously not perfect, but it's an example of something they can do to teach you how to play your job inside of job quests.

[Renalt]

I am reminded of one of the CNJ quests where you have a bunch of NPCs fighting off the antelope and you have to heal the NPCs. It's janky and annoying but it teaches you how to heal and iirc it even tells you to DPS when you don't need to heal. It is a one off quest and you never have another that teaches you how to remove cure 1 from your bar after you unlock cure 2, so it's obviously not perfect, but it's an example of something they can do to teach you how to play your job inside of job quests.

That or Archer was one of my first jobs so it's been AGES since I've done that quest. I vaguely remember it and yeah it does tell you to do both.

[kaynide]

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

[Renathras]

Update (That didn't take long):

"Daddy, why is it always raining when we talk to our friends outside?"

Point well noted. I remember being in Shadowbringers, lakeland. At a cafe with Thancred..and..maybe Y'shtola. Enjoying our pancakes or whatever in the absolute POURING RAIN.

Further Suggestions: Turn off weather effects in cutscenes, and force the time to be something sensible.

Some cutscenes actually do force weather and time events, so you know. I think there's an indicator of that when you look through quest cutscenes in the inn journal. I'm not sure why they don't do it with some things but do it with others. For example, the AST quests force nighttime, otherwise you wouldn't see the stars when she's explaining the Heavens to you.

.

As to the tutorials, as long as it's opt-in/opt-out. I've played games for years. I don't need a gray screen tutorial slowing down every single Job quest to a crawl every time I pick up or level a new Job. "I get it, melee skills combo, I've leveled every tank and 4 Melee Jobs AND MCH; I GET IT ALREADY". Likewise, the icon trees vs text boxes should be a toggle. I do feel like the game needs to explain things like oGCD weaving - though that's a surprisingly complex topic - for example, how many weaves can you do between RDM enchanted melee skills...? - and some combat mechanics better. But I don't think forcing people into all the stuff you ask is necessarily good.

I also think part of the draw of this game is how friendly it is to players new to MMOs. It's why I never support "raising the difficulty" of MSQ content. That's not what MSQ is for. It's not really for replay, you're kinda supposed to do it once and then move on to other things. NG+ aside, there's no reason to do it again other than wanting to see more lore or see if you've missed any little details in the story. It's not supposed to be something you grind over and over again day in and day out that casual or non-traditional MMO players (or even non-gamers) are unable to do without banging their head into walls for hours.

EDIT:

Oh, I think they do have icon trees on the official Job pages site. Just for comboing abilities, though, but they could possibly have that sort of thing in-game, too:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/battle/

[DrWho2010]

it is an mmo though, there are things where they offload things like explanations to the community for them to explain to each other.

[NekoMataMata]

...but this time I got my 9 year old daughter involved.

Not to rain on your parade but the game isn't exactly meant for young children. Using someone that isn't the target audience kind of hurts the whole test.

The fact that a lot of the write up here just also happens to apply to a large portion of the adult playerbase is... unfortunate and says things that I'm not sure should be said out loud.