This game is inexcusably bad for new or returning players

[Amenara]

I was expecting a post about how boring jobs are from 1-50/60/70 and how little the game teaches you about playing it, not that Bozja is boring to spam and leveling Viper is 'hard'. I honestly really enjoyed leveling viper from 80-90 as it was just constant combat and gameplay vs what I knew was coming in the MSQ of little combat outside of instances and lots of cutscenes. It sounds like you want FF14 to be a single player game as you are complaining about having to join fate groups in Bozja and have friends/FC members to spam dungeons with for faster queues. I will point out that duty support is always an option for leveling as well since you can take 10 minutes longer to clear but not have any queues if dungeon spamming is what you want.

[angienessyo]

You don't have to wait 30 minutes to queue for a dungeon as dps, just use duty support. It allows you to run dungeons with NPCs and while it's slower than playing with humans, it's a lot faster than waiting in queue for however long.

[PartyBarn]

Every single shill reply here of "why didn't you do [insert thing I didn't know existed/forgot exists here] 4head" is exactly the problem. This game assumes you have encyclopedic knowledge of the systems in the game and half the shit mentioned here I had no idea about and I've played this game off and on for years. If you are or returning after a long break and doing everything you know to do doesn't work, something is fundamentally broken with the experience.

If you like the game, good. If you are so immersed this all seems trivial to you, good. But it is a bad bad bad experience if you are new or returning. Objectively.

[PartyBarn]

To conclude my rant (now that I've slept and am in fact still mad), why is leveling a non-stop chain of doing repetitive tasks? For example, if i could NG+ old expansions for experience, that would be a FAR better and more immersive experience than just spamming fates/roulettes/bozja-style content/etc. Every single thing the people in this thread have mentioned is brain dead repetitive content. Why can't i just play through MSQ storylines or quests for a more engaging and varied leveling experience? Square's approach of "just do this same shit over and over again" is lazy and it feels bad when you want to hop into the new stuff and feel good.

[Ilenya]

Is...Bozja such common knowledge for new people? Assuming they worked entirely through the MSQ, Bozja is easily missable, considering it requires the Ivalice raids to even unlock.

[Caitlinzulu]

To conclude my rant (now that I've slept and am in fact still mad), why is leveling a non-stop chain of doing repetitive tasks? For example, if i could NG+ old expansions for experience, that would be a FAR better and more immersive experience than just spamming fates/roulettes/bozja-style content/etc. Every single thing the people in this thread have mentioned is brain dead repetitive content. Why can't i just play through MSQ storylines or quests for a more engaging and varied leveling experience? Square's approach of "just do this same shit over and over again" is lazy and it feels bad when you want to hop into the new stuff and feel good.

I do have to ask, is going through msq, repeating quests you already did, again and again for xp less repetitive braindead content then doing fates or dungeons?
Hint msq is riddled with dungeons too dear.
Every system is tied in and explained in quests too. So just do all the varied quests there are on the map and you will encounter all these alternative systems. And it vgets better these quests are specially marked too so you can easily find them.

[Reinha]

Every single shill reply here of "why didn't you do [insert thing I didn't know existed/forgot exists here] 4head" is exactly the problem. This game assumes you have encyclopedic knowledge of the systems in the game and half the shit mentioned here I had no idea about and I've played this game off and on for years. If you are or returning after a long break and doing everything you know to do doesn't work, something is fundamentally broken with the experience.

Did you utilize the pop up returning players get to join Novice Network and ask about the leveling systems available to you?

[PartyBarn]

Is...Bozja such common knowledge for new people? Assuming they worked entirely through the MSQ, Bozja is easily missable, considering it requires the Ivalice raids to even unlock.

No, its not what I'd call common knowledge. I started playing early in the pandemic and the friend that recruited me really wanted to do eureka so I did eureka with him. I came out of that experience loving (the idea of) adventure zone content, so when the bozja stuff popped up in Shadowbringers I jumped on it with him. It sucks in comparison (making it a leveling task completely ruins it because its just a zerg compared with Eureka where there is some sort of decorum about starting fates and such), so I ended up in that content by happenstance. But no, I would not say its well known. New players wouldn't have a clue about it. There were like 5 things listed in this thread I had no clue about either (I had to google what POTD was, for example).

I think that's the crux of my complaint and bad feels. This game has a ton of things like this under the surface but it requires a lot of background knowledge to understand and get into, and almost all of it is grindy and repetetive. I think other MMOs do this better because yeah, you can just start a character and go quest and at least there's a more varied experience to supplement repeatable braindead things like Fates (world quests), queues, etc. It feels like the only real way to level after you finish MSQ is to spam [insert boring activity here].

I skipped years of systems because I started in the pandemic and skipped a bunch of stuff to catch up a friend.

[Vahlnir]

Your options for leveling a Viper/Picto apparently are

They added 2 new dps jobs. Of course they, along with literally every other dps job, are going to have to wait longer in queues. Same thing happened with SAM and RDM when Stormblood launched.

[PartyBarn]

I do have to ask, is going through msq, repeating quests you already did, again and again for xp less repetitive braindead content then doing fates or dungeons?
Hint msq is riddled with dungeons too dear.
Every system is tied in and explained in quests too. So just do all the varied quests there are on the map and you will encounter all these alternative systems. And it vgets better these quests are specially marked too so you can easily find them.

I replied a second ago touching on this but no I didn't do a lot of that content. I started and joined friends that were already on current content in early shadowbringers and boosted/skipped to catch up with them. I'd love to actually replay what I skipped and get some good XP for it. I don't see any harm in allowing that. Even if it was less efficient I'd feel fine about it as I get to live through (or yeah, relive) the ostensibly and oft-lauded "best part" of the game (that the game/shop and your friends encourage you to skip if you try to join late).