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

[Ardeth]

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?

The lack of voice acting/how inconsistent it is. That still is a big one for me. If you're gonna do sweeping cinematic shots and take me out of the game world and put me into a cutscene, that thing better be voice acted. Even now, in EW, we still have them, and it makes me want to scream at those cheap skates.

I remember prime World of Warcraft had a metric of like 60% of people don't make it to level 10.

I think it’s easy to overwhelm people.

But presentation wise, for that beginning to be that quiet and boring doesn't help it. It's a story driven game, and I don't need explosions and rock flag and eagle, but I need something. It's definitely the bland food of mmo openings.

When I started back in 2013, it was so boring that I started skipping cutscenes. Hell, a lot, and I mean a lot of us did back then. I don't know, but it was really bad in ARR. I had to remake a character later and force myself to play through it, and even then, it was rough.

[Mithron]

The lack of support for old hard mode content like extreme trials or savage raids, because most new players want to experience that but all they have access to is unsynced so they think this game is a baby game for babies and don't feel like doing the MSQ to get to end game before they can have fun, but also skipping MSQ is antifun so they lose either way.

[Merrigan]

The main quest seems to be a recurring problem. But even if it means making a few enemies, I see it as a good thing: having played a lot of MMORPGs, I've come to appreciate these barriers, which certainly discourage some nice people; but which also keep a certain type of player (nervous, ultra-competitive without being a good player) out of the game.

The fact that multiplayer is almost impossible during leveling. Constantly having to group/ungroup is tedious and, frankly, poorly designed.

And the overly Japanese feel, which almost made me leave at my first try. The overly cute side of certain characters (Krile), the presence of certain mascots (Alpha... let me kill it. Please. I like fried chicken) and in general the "super power of friendship" aspect that seems to be able to solve the worst difficulties.

[Ritsuka-55]

There are plenty of factors for this bounce off epidemic.

Mainly ARR and post ARR MSQ. Even with the prune, it's still awful, specially post ARR, it will never happen, but ARR at this point needs a kind of remake and complete restructuration.

Class/Jobs. First, from level 1 to 60 are complete boredom, they only start going from 60+ onwards, also, regardless of how much some people want to spin it, leveling them is a mix of pain and maximum boredom and it's not really rewarding. Heck even people that started from the beginning back in the day, that are most up to date, are getting tired of leveling 10 more levels every new expansion. Overall, everything is quite outdated.

Content. Not a single content, regardless of old or new is future proof in this game, or has anything going on to "keep" doing them or whatever, so it dies and stays dead, and trying to do them/finding people to do them it's very painful and problematic, because barely anyone wants to, which bridges with the category below.

Community. It has shifted and changed so much in mentality and many other things that I can't describe it, And it doesn't help much with the above for example. It's ironic I say this, cause ironically, even in peak WoW, or this very game in 1.0 I have always been a solo player, but the difference is that when I had need of people, I could engage and go on; "hey you need help with this/ or with that" "Wanna group? let's go, don't worry, we got this" "thanks a lot, let's beat this monsters, we will figure out something" and bla bla bla, you know, and then you said your farewell until next time. Now, I rather simply engage with as few people as possible, because the levels of entitlement, selfishness, passive aggressiveness/hostility and many other things I find in people today are a huge turn off, so I simply choose to not engage with people if I can. And sorry, this is not a matter of not having a thick skin, I've been a tank in this game since forever, it simply isn't worth to engage with todays community.

So, yeah, I assume everything I have said, it has already been said, so I suppose this is from my point of view.

[Kaurhz]

The amount of questing to get through before you are at a relevant level where you can play with friends that are already at that level, and the lack of incentive to actually go back and experience older, more accessible content. It wouldn't be so bad if people had a reason to go back and do Coils, for example -- Beyond just undersize and spend 13 seconds burning the boss down.

I want to say how slow and sluggish the core combat gameplay is at low level - But this always has mixed reception depending on peoples experience from other games -- At least from my own experience with others.

[Eastwall]

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?

Content locked behind lengthy story is definitely one of the factors. I can tell you now l would have quit the game because of the story if there aren't some other factors that make me decided to deal with it.
Se really should handle the story like how anet handle gw2's story. As Long As your party leader finished the story, the party leader can bring the whole squad into the content. Not the other way around where 1 person didn't finish the story can prevent the whole party from entering....

[4clubbedace]

its because its a tab taget hotbar mmo which is kind of a relic of the early 00's.

Also it doesnt neeeeeed to appeal to eeeeeeveryone

[ForsakenRoe]

Restructure the cadence of when jobs unlock core abilities - too many jobs have had their low-level gameplay brutalized when the job is made to revolve around abilities that don't unlock until HW/SB levels - and drop the ilvl syncs across the board, particularly at MSQ capstones, and you'd solve something like half the problem immediately.

People who bounce off the MSQ itself were likely always going to bounce off. It's the shambling corpse that is modern-day pre-50 gameplay that really does it in.

At the absolute least, I've long thought that we could do with the 'Class' abilities that we learn from 1-50, being condensed to be the Class section of levelling (1-30) would at least help with the slow start to the game. Where we currently have Lancers getting their 123 combo finished at 26, and a second 1-2 combo that applies a damage up effect to themselves that later gets finished to a 3 step combo at 50, this change would mean that, at 30, you'd have two full 1-2-3 combos to cycle between, teaching very early on that the core of DRG is 'it has two combos, and you do one to apply the damage up effect and DOT, then the other for big damage while waiting for the effects to fall off'.

Another example is MRD/WAR. As it stands, you get your damage up buff applicator (Storm's Eye) at 50, but the AOE version (Mythril Tempest) at 40 via job quest. This means that, for a select few dungeons while levelling (Stone Vigil, Darkhold and AV), you'd actually want to AOE combo even in ST situations to get that buff. How ass-backwards is that? Condensing those 'Class' skills down to 1-30 means that you'd have Eye and Path at 30, teaching the player 'use Eye for the buff, use Path when you don't need to refresh' early on, giving access to Vengeance as a cooldown much earlier, and even giving Holmgang earlier (yes that's a Class skill if you can believe it).

And another great example: MNK. It gets it's second ST Opo-Opo (or, '1' in the 123 combo) move, Dragon Kick, at level 50. This 'squish' idea would move it down to, at the latest, level 30, allowing the player to see the 'Use DK/Twin every 2nd combo, and Demolish every 3rd' flow of MNK gameplay much sooner, allowing them to build the muscle memory of doing that much sooner.

This could also be combined with a rework to which skills are considered Class vs Job, and allowing some classes to get AOE earlier than they currently do. Death Blossom for NIN is a Class skill, Doom Spike is a Job skill. So by moving Doom Spike over to be a Class skill, that allows the 'squish' to move it's learn level down into the 1-30 area, so LNCs can start AOEing sooner.

[Asari5]

new player: 'lets play together, friends'
his friends: 'yeah lets play together, friend, but first fo the entirety of the msq'
new player: 'but what is about the lvl 50 primals?'
his 'friends' : 'oh we dont need that one anymore... all we can do is pulling you through unsynch'


there are a LOT of cases like this and i really dont understand.
(its also weird how people are dying to do this for streamers, basecally strangers, but not for their friends)

but yeah i donthink 90 lvl of msq is the problem, the problem is you have like 89 lvl of content thats way too easy and therefor boring. visuals and music is great, but you cant just cross out gameplay, turn it into a 100h long movie and think its fine for a GAME

[Vyrerus]

I'd say it's a perceived lack of freedom due to the game's structures.

The MSQ structure restricts a lot of gameplay and even sidequests for a long little while.

More than that, there isn't a lot of content that's recursive to make veteran players go into early duties as well as the Trust system being implemented into older duties, meaning people are making friends even less than they did before, and XIV's systems were already less conducive to social interaction before this.

The gameplay structure is indeed boring for many jobs in the early game. Leveling used to alleviate this somewhat quickly for most jobs by about level 20. Original Lancer for instance by level 20 had access to:
True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust combo
Feint (GCD version that inflicted 20% slow while also dealing 120 potency damage)
Leg Sweep (oGCD 140 pot hit with stun)
Impulse Drive (180 potency when done from behind)
Heavy Thrust (170 potency from flank, boost atk +12% (later adjusted to varying % boosts before its inevitable elimination))
Piercing Talon (Ranged quested WS 150 potency)
Keen Flurry (Parry rate +40% (+80% with trait)

In addition to 4 cross class skill slots, allowing any cross class skill from any other of the OG 8 classes. Easily acquired ones for Lancers from leveling just a few other classes from Gridania to level 10.

Raging Strikes (+20% dmg)
Straight Shot (small potency atk with 20 second +10% crit rate buff)
Cure (based on MND so it was weak, but another healing option for the Lancer)

With the real possibilities for these 4 slots being usually sought from the classes required to be 15 so Dragoon could be unlocked at 30.

Internal Release from Pugilist (Originally Crit rate +20% for 15 seconds every 60 seconds)
Second Wind from Pugilist (400 potency heal based on ATP)
Foresight from Marauder (Defense buff)
Mercy Stroke from Marauder (200 or so potency execution oGCD available when mob HP 20% or lower, heals player by 20% if it's the killshot)
Fracture (100 potency hit, 18 second 20 potency dot, 220 potency total GCD from Marauder
Featherfoot from Pugilist (+15% evade rate)
Haymaker (170 potency counter with low TP cost of 40 available after dodging inflicts a 20% slow)


There's more, but I think you get the point. Ever since role actions were added, the early game was severely impacted, and the lead up to unlocking jobs was turned stale.


Other than that, it's the fact that even when you do reach the endgame, the gameplay structures are still duty finder bound, so there isn't a real sense of community or MMO being had. The largest groups you can get into are 24 man groups that are still partitioned into their 8 man teams for mechanics. With no real overworld activity beyond grinding fates or gathering, you don't really meet people much. Gathering activites are also generally not enjoyed by newcomers, so they have no strong pull on them. Keep in mind that the gathering activities have special gathering materials at every plateau (50, 60, 70, etc) Which just get circumvented with market board gear from the next expansion that trivializes the scrips gear/gear that seems important due to gathering and crafting sidequests that points you towards it.

All in all there's a whole lotta game, but it's a gargantuan mess where most of its fat is irrelevant or non-existent now. A lotta of XIV's content is useless to "real" progress, and its social aspect is diegetically weak.