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.

[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.

[Silverquick]

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.

There might be an element of truth to this,

I decided to go play an alt character from scratch on another server for a bit, and it really just is way too easy now. There's no challenge in anything anymore coming up the levels. I started leveling one class in the MSQ and you literally cannot enjoy any of the side aspects of the game anymore without your character leveling soo fast you easily outpace the MSQ. By the time I hit the 23rd level quest lines my character was at 34th. I couldn't do anything without accidentally leveling. So I went and started a new class and leveled it completely up to 24th to take over the storyline and run two jobs up at once and it STILL overleveled the questline.

I'm on the 24th level of the MSQ quests, one job is at 35th and the other is at 28th and that's with splitting it between 2 classes. none of the content at around the level I'm supposed to be at with at least one of those classes is any challenge or even fun whatsoever.

I can't do fates, I can't do dungeons, I can't do Grand Company Seals to rank up, I can't do jack squat without slingshotting so far past the intended level that the content is no longer fun. Literally I can't do any of the fun side things or I make the MSQ completely unfun and then can no longer do any of the other side stuff either.

There is no point at which you can absorb yourself into the game anymore and just enjoy it for what it is. No wonder no one sticks around, that gets boring as hell.

[Oizen]

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for roughly 60 levels.

[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.