This game is inexcusably bad for new or returning players

[PartyBarn]

Came back to the game after taking most of endwalker off (because, you know, after 6.0 it was awful) and holy crap I can't believe how bad it is to level one of the new jobs.

It's taken them a decade to utterly perfect the art of driving away new and returning players who would otherwise be excited to hop in and try the new jobs. Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

I've spent about 10 hours of gametime struggling to level my viper to 84 and I just can't do it anymore and I don't know how anyone puts up with this literal abuse from the devs at this point. I actually kept my sub going to keep my FC and player house and I guess I should thank the devs for giving me the nudge I needed to take their fangs off and get mad enough to give up my houses after years of paying to not even play the game to keep them.

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

I hope a Square employee reads this and feels literal shame, because this experience is shameful when there are so many other great games out there doing this so much better.

[Mcg55ss]

LOL what??

- Only failed a couple critical engagements (mostly Hunt for Red Choctober) and only failed 2 Castrum
- Join a group easy to get gold...hell with just 2 people me and my friend as picto i got gold in vast majority
- didn't do this so idk that
- ?? even on Dynamis my ques High lvl, MSQ, and leveling have been near instant since the expansion release
-ok?

WoW isn't a bad game its just different, where FFXIV is a slow burn and take a bit to get into the story and develops meaningfully WoW just speeds you through, its all about Mythic + now....even pvp has started to suffer because the game is fully designed around it.

[Kukajoo]

Early access launch it took me a solid six-seven hours to level Viper to 90 just doing EW fates while I waited on the very long dungeon queues, far from the most optimal method but it wasn't that bad either. I just don't have Zadnor unlocked so I didn't bother with Bozja. Do your beast tribes, eat your food, keep fc buffs up, and you'll get through it, then when you reach Dawntrail you can quit the game in peace because its terrible.

[PartyBarn]

Slow burn? Are you kidding? Why is there no on-boarding to new jobs other than "good luck with hour queues kid, go grind your balls out on fates" after all these years? It's ridiculous to the extreme. WoW Has like 5 different equally viable leveling paths to take. The fact that its STILL just "grind fates" to get characters leveled is utterly unreal to me. I'm just so proufoundly dissapointed because I really like Viper but god damn the leveling is just too repetitive and braindead for me to get on board with it. I'd be fine if it was at least fast, but god damn its slow as molasses.

Yeah man this isn't a "slow burn" its a painful, unfun grind.

[Mcg55ss]

Slow burn? Are you kidding? Why is there no on-boarding to new jobs other than "good luck with hour queues kid, go grind your balls out on fates" after all these years? It's ridiculous to the extreme. WoW Has like 5 different equally viable leveling paths to take. The fact that its STILL just "grind fates" to get characters leveled is utterly unreal to me. I'm just so proufoundly dissapointed because I really like Viper but god damn the leveling is just too repetitive and braindead for me to get on board with it. I'd be fine if it was at least fast, but god damn its slow as molasses.

Yeah man this isn't a "slow burn" its a painful, unfun grind.

my viper is 100 so i'll say i didn;t have ANY of your problems, like i said Bozja from 80-90 took me a few hours, gold probably 90% of my fates did Castrum 6 times and only had 2 failures...so 4 success at 4.5mil xp and hour long ques??...think my longest que for daily roulettes has been 8 mins since early access started and im on the dead DC. Also 5 vaible lvling in WoW LOL ...lol when starting new classes generally is just dungeons and quest PvP has never been viable for lvling because you have to win and its too inconsistent and the world quest are maybe as effective as fates.

[Dogempire]

Honestly, I'd say to just take it slow and level your jobs off of just Leveling/MSQ/Alliance rouls and maybe pick either a dps that's already 90 or a tank/healer.

Queues are brutal for DPS because of having 2 new DPS jobs

[Toutatis]

10 hours to get to lvl 84, you are doing something wrong.

I did fates in EW (Thavnair till 86, then Elpis, it takes less than 3 fates to get 1M points) + the daily beast tribes in EW (about 3 mil points in 5-10 mins) and SHB (1 mil points) + daily frontlines (you can switch jobs inside and get xp on job you entered with, no wait time for dps as role don’t matter) + WT. You can also pick up EW’s daily and weekly hunt targets. With food and the GC item that grants a 15% xp bonus, I got to level 90 in about 5 hours with breaks included. Would have been faster with Zadnor but I still needed to finish my Shared fates and that was the occasion.


For Bozja, You need to go to Zadnor for the best xp and buy the riding map to keep up with moving to the next fate. Also join a party for guaranteed max XP if you are unable to build enough threat to get gold (valid for fates in EW zones too, just join a party in a level appropriate zone for max xp).

[Jojoya]

FFXIV players love to talk about how awful WoW and other MMOs are but holy shit the returning and onboarding experience in WoW looks like pure joy in comparison to this. Absolute dogwater.

Going straight to Viper or Pictomancer isn't the intended onboarding experience for new players. They're intended to start with one of the original classes then play through the MSQ starting with ARR then picking up the new jobs when they reach the required level. The option is there for them to boost and skip if they want but SE isn't going to create a special leveling experience just for them.

If you're having problems with queue times, make friends with tanks and healers. It's only to be expected that at the start of a new expansion, especially with 2 new DPS jobs. Queue times are going to be going through the roof as all the veteran players are playing through the MSQ instead of queueing for roulettes. As more players complete the new MSQ, queue times will start to fall.

If the game design isn't right for you, then it's not right for you. It's working just fine for other players.

Also, may want to watch some videos from content creators going through the WoW onboarding experiencing fresh without relying on friends. I have yet to come across one that considers it an okay experience let alone a good one between the story chaos and the attitude of veteran WoW players towards new players.

[Kashou]

I don't have a problem at all but fate XP could easily be doubled and it would still be kinda meh.

[Jokerz_93]

Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are:

- Fail every single critical engagement in bozja because everyone is new or forgot how to do them
- Get silver or bronze in most fates in bozja because the zerg moves impossibly fast
- Do endless fates in EW zones or side quests (if you have any left) that don't move your xp bar at all
- Wait 45m to 1h in queue for DPS
- Find an FC you can use and abuse to mooch green or blue queues
- Quit the game (this is me btw)

This is false.

As other said, your option besides the aforementioned ones are:
-EW Daily Tribes, 5 minutes for 3 mil exp.
-Trust Leveling. 3 runs per level. If you have not leveled your Trust you can use the Duty Support.
-Challenge log. Doing 5 fates rewards of 1.5 mil. Doing 10 rewards you with other 1.5. Each fates in EW zones gives you around 350/400k. So it’s 3.5/4 mil for 10 fates.
-Cloe’s book. It gives half of the level exp no matter which is your level.
-Alliance and Frontlines qs are fast even for a dps and you gain more than one level.

It took me 3/4 hour day 1 to bring VPR from 80 to 90 and I am usually slow in this stuffs.
Guess it’s a matter of will.