In your opinion, what causes most “bounce offs”?

[SargeTheSeagull]

All of us have heard stories about people who tried 14 and just couldn’t get into it. Or even some people who’ve tried multiple times and just “bounced off” the game. In your opinion, what’s the main culprit of this? And what could be done to address it?

[Mostly_Raxus]

in the case of a lot of my MMORPG fan friends, its the month of single player MSQ to be able to play current content with friends, they want to get to the multi massive part before 400 hours or RPG..

if they have fun playing with friends they might go back and care about the story, but they are not going to care about the story, especially ARR, when they just wanted to run raids with their friends

[DrWho2010]

they don't have the patience to slog through 10 years of MSQ. That's the biggest one I hear of all the time.

I know the devs keep hinting at some kind of feature for new players to start at post-Endwalker patches or Dawntrail immediately but who knows if it will happen or not.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Imo there’s two main things:

1. Jobs are horrifically, indefensibly boring at lower levels.

2. The game has become effectively a single player visual novel that is hundreds of hours long.

And these two tie together. Most people play games like this, at least initially, for combat. The first few hours of any game with a deep combat system are always not the most compelling. The issue is that 14’s actual gameplay doesn’t get fun for several dozen hours. And, dungeons/trials aside, there’s hardly any combat at all. So basically people want to play the game to fight stuff, hardly get any chances to early on, notice that it isn’t particularly engaging or dynamic when they do get to fight stuff and get bored to the point that they just give up.

The solution is simple: make jobs more fun at early levels. Jobs get more fun, people will actively seek out more combat (like FATEs which are always up despite the fact nobody does them) and the problem basically solved itself. I promise, you won’t overwhelm players by giving them 10 buttons by level 50.

[Oizen]

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for roughly 60 levels.

[Mostly_Raxus]

Imo there’s two main things:

1. Jobs are horrifically, indefensibly boring at lower levels.

2. The game has become effectively a single player visual novel that is hundreds of hours long.

i think its less that jobs are boring at low levels, and more so that the game has been nerfed to oblivion, nothing at all matters at low level, all the fights have no stakes, no real challenge, i think the first fight in the MSQ that actually has punishing mechanics is the last boss of "Aether Chemical Research Facility" and then late SHB or even current xpac before that comes back.

as a new player you are taught that nothing has stakes and nothing matters for 10 years worth of MSQ slog just to get to endgame and suddenly be told to "get gud" but by that point they are so far from caring and trained to just let some try hard do it instead..

some maybe most people want that challenge to the story to make the narrative pay off, or its just boring.

the games new hand holding "games journalist mode" difficulty is just not fun, go back to tight ilvl syncs, and fights that forced people to try if they wanted to progress.

[ty_taurus]

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for roughly 60 levels.

11121111111111112.... For 90 levels...

[Aravell]

Speaking from my personal experience, I couldn't get into the game back in ARR and came back for HW launch.

I bounced off the game because I didn't really enjoy the combat experience. I only stuck with the game after trying out every job in HW and falling in love with SCH gameplay.

[Jeeqbit]

And what could be done to address it?

It can be reduced but not prevented. Not even close. The game just won't be for a lot of people who try it, no matter what they do.

[SailorCeti]

All of us have heard stories about people who tried 14 and just couldn’t get into it. Or even some people who’ve tried multiple times and just “bounced off” the game. In your opinion, what’s the main culprit of this? And what could be done to address it?

Interestingly, I'm one of these so-called bouncers. I first tried FFXIV three years ago. I played for maybe a day. A year later, I tried again and loved it. Now, if I had to guess at why that happened, I'd have to say the initial perception of the graphics must have been too different from what I was used to (WoW, Diablo 3, etc). Letting the overall aesthetic settle in my brain did the trick and I actually prefer it now. I suppose some people don't believe in second chances?