After the big graphic update is done, the next big side project shoud be...

[Kyrj]

Wasn't the idea that Dawntrail was a new start? Thought I heard something like they wanted new players to start there or w/e.

[Jeeqbit]

Compounding this is the ARR gameplay, which -- like someone else already mentioned accurately -- is slow, repetitive, and boring. There are some people who love a slow burn, and they're going to pull up to this thread like they're in the majority, but for most people this game sucks until you sink like 200 hours into it.

I don't know about that because a lot of YouTube videos and streams I've watched of new players, doing a simple 1-2 combo and running out of red circles is difficult for them, making ARR a decent challenge for them.

Post-ARR actually damaged their trust in the writers so badly that they began skipping about 30 quests in and simply never stopped.

I don't know why people hate post-ARR when the story there is amazing. I loved the Crystal Brave stuff, the Moenbryda stuff, the Midgardsormr and Steps of Faith stuff and the uneventful meeting at Ul'dah so much. I loved getting closer with the Ishgardians in Coerthas and chasing Lady Iceheart too. The only bit that is kind of strange is the moogles and even stranger is it now being the first trial.

People will say "they've already cut down on ARR's story," but when you look at the scale of what they did and the amount still left, it's basically nothing.

That's because it would prevent them telling the story of ARR, which is a good story that they want to still be telling somewhere.

ARR dungeons are a blight, everyone who gets them in leveling roulette wants it over as quickly as possible because the kit's trash.

I don't think the kit is a problem, but rather leveling dungeons in general are a problem because, regardless of the expansion, the rotation is broken when not at 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 ie. to apply my damage buff on Warrior in some dungeons, I have to do my aoe rotation, because I don't have the Single Target version yet...

You can't even really play the MSQ with them because 90% of it is just solo fetch quests.

Apparently they had to decide whether other players would be part of the story's lore and they decided against it. This wasn't a great decision in my opinion because it means SWTOR has them beat in cooperative play.

And you know why they do it, right? To sell story skips.

They do it because they want people to experience the story, because it's a story game. They don't advertise skips in the game and they make them cost precisely because they don't want people to buy them, but they want to give them the option because there was demand for it. Yoshi-P made a post about his logic saying that in the Chinese region, it was mainly used for alts and hardly bought by new players at all here.

Considering that on my first attempt at playing I quit around the wine quest

That part is a bit tedious, but to my surprise they kept it, because it's telling the story of the Company of Heroes and also taking advantage of a young adventurer's naivity. I think that it being tedious didn't matter to me because I was new and having a "take it slow" part of the game gave me time to focus on learning and understanding how to play.

Particularly I think Voice acting more of ARR would improve the experience a lot

That would clash with the new actors, so the acting would have to be redone entirely for ARR. I really don't want this, personally.

That or as others have mentioned, giving a new starting point for new players.

I think they could get away with starting the story at 7.0 in two ways.

1. Have the MSQ diverge into branching paths after leaving the first City State, where instead of doing Sastasha you go to Limsa Lominsa and sail to 7.0.
2. Start in a new expansion area to begin with, but don't reference the history of the characters you're with unless you've actually completed the relevant MSQ quests that come before it or put interactions with scions into sidequests like Tataru's Grand Endeavor.

[Striker44]

Oh here we go again. Blaming Endwalker rather than blaming the core game for its mediocrity.

Buddy, Endwalker is just a repackaged version of the same previous expansions that have been slowly stripping away its design cracks for a lot of players opening their eyes that FFXIV as a whole is not a good MMO game. Its time to face the truth

I would argue the actual truth is what a few other people have brought up around here - simply our experience. Play the same game long enough, and eventually you'll likely get bored no matter how good the game is. For example, in my opinion FFXIV as a whole is a top-tier MMO. I've played quite a few over the years (GW, GW2, WoW, SWTOR, ESO, Wildstar, and possibly a few others I don't remember off the top of my head), and to me, FFXIV is a clear step above all of the rest when it comes to the story and music in particular. I also really like being able to have as many classes as I want on one character, as something that tends to bore me is needing to re-do the same story over and over and over each time I want to try a new class.

I'd say the real truth is we just get bored with anything over time. For example, work data shows the typical person will have ~12 different jobs during their life, changing jobs about every 4 years. Even when we're in careers we really enjoy, we as humans still tend to desire relatively frequent change in our environments. The same ends up being true for virtually anything we do, including playing video games. If you've been playing FFXIV for several years, you're probably just getting bored of playing the same game. It can be the greatest game ever made in the history of humankind, and you'll still get bored because it's human nature. There's the real truth. It's why we're also seeing people point out that it's healthy to rotate games.

[NekoMataMata]

Wasn't the idea that Dawntrail was a new start? Thought I heard something like they wanted new players to start there or w/e.

That was a mistranslation from the Yoshi-P Famitsu Interview back in July earlier this year.

They are planning for 6.1 to be a new starting point eventually. They aren't sure whether or not they're putting that in with 7.0 or not yet. He says it would be like starting a TV series from season 6, but either way they are preparing for 6.1 as a new starting point eventually.

Looking back it made no sense, but that's just what happens when you have no community support dedicated to translations for the rest of your community. Multiple groups out there rush to translate every interview he goes through and inevitably they always seem to get something wrong.

[Kuroka]

I don't know about that because a lot of YouTube videos and streams I've watched of new players, doing a simple 1-2 combo and running out of red circles is difficult for them, making ARR a decent challenge for them.

I don't know why people hate post-ARR when the story there is amazing. I loved the Crystal Brave stuff, the Moenbryda stuff, the Midgardsormr and Steps of Faith stuff and the uneventful meeting at Ul'dah so much. I loved getting closer with the Ishgardians in Coerthas and chasing Lady Iceheart too. The only bit that is kind of strange is the moogles and even stranger is it now being the first trial.

That's because it would prevent them telling the story of ARR, which is a good story that they want to still be telling somewhere.

That pretty much... some still struggle with the basic stuff at 80 or even 90...

Im still sad they cut so many quests, cant help but think if one dislikes it really that much, maybe its just the wrong game for them?

[Mosha]

Exactly the same response a lot of us had in the last two expansions over Eureka and Bozja.

Who's us? because the only other long-term content back in HW and ARR was Diadem and Relics?

[sindriiisgaming]

Oh here we go again. Blaming Endwalker rather than blaming the core game for its mediocrity.

Buddy, Endwalker is just a repackaged version of the same previous expansions that have been slowly stripping away its design cracks for a lot of players opening their eyes that FFXIV as a whole is not a good MMO game. Its time to face the truth

Oh I don't disagree with you. But the issue is endwalker removed even more making it utterly barebones instead of building on, it took away from

[Kyrj]

That was a mistranslation from the Yoshi-P Famitsu Interview back in July earlier this year.



Looking back it made no sense, but that's just what happens when you have no community support dedicated to translations for the rest of your community. Multiple groups out there rush to translate every interview he goes through and inevitably they always seem to get something wrong.

Oof, so the MSQ bloat continues. Getting new players into content locked behind DT is going to be a tough pill to swallow for them.