The new player experience and how FFXIV fails as an MMO.

[Mawlzy]

Endgame isn't artificial. You can think of it as the point where you've stopped progressing and it makes more sense to focus on honing your gameplay with your complete skill list instead of having to incorporate new skills all the time. The consistency of endgame makes it more likely that challenging and deeper content exists because it doesn't need to account for a huge range of participants that might have different levels or quality of gear.

I mostly play(ed) PvP. That would suggest my endgame is level 30. The "challenging content" of level 100 PvE is of no interest to me.

[Nadda]

No. Disagree.

MSQ length isn't a problem.

Expansions are supposed to expand a game.
If you're endgame oriented that's one thing but I know of other MMOs where everything in the past becomes irrelevant. I don't want that for FF14.

People think of these like dream scenarios where you're perfectly in sync with playing with others in MMOs.

People have mismatched schedules

Someone is always ahead or behind

And eventually, everyone ends up soloing stuff anyway the quests are designed to be solo'd

Are you thinking of like - Everquest or FF11 where singular mobs could beat the shit out of you so you were forced to group up? It's not that I think that's bad it's just not really the design of modern MMOs.
Even if you duo level in something like Classic WoW you're mostly doing solo tasks but next to someone else and that gets pretty dull quickly.

Most MMOs are the multiplayer content is the Dungeon, is the boss fight, that's what you do.

So if not for anything, that's more of an indictment on modern MMO design which older MMO's have their own flaw of it then relying too much on playing with other people in order to get things done in the open world.
There's not really a happy medium where you're both able to be self sufficient and also play with players in meaningful interactable ways... that's why devs spend so much time making catered content for battle content for people to do together the rest of it is all social hangout sort of affair.

[KageTokage]

Having experienced several prior MMOs, the lack of meaningful gameplay in XIV's MSQ outside of solo duties and instances was always a sour point to me.

There isn't anything to actually distract from the railroad aside from aether currents either so exploration generally feels rather unrewarding.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I have an IRL friend group that I tried to pull into FFXIV at some point - we corroborate our point of views quite often to this day. The most prominent issue they thought are always the combat gameplay itself. They love the stories. In fact one of them think the length is a contributing factor to how satisfying some part of the stories felt. They want to give the story time to cook up something awesome. In the meantime, they need something else to occupy their mind. In ideal setting, gameplay would then come in to make the leveling, grinding, learning the job, and eventually doing the 'endgame contents' fun. But as I've mentioned elsewhere before, they're mostly dumped at lv90-lv100 while leaving the rest of the game hollow. The earlier parts are as important as the later parts. If you can't hook people up earlier, how are you going to ensure they will experience these supposed 'awesome stuffs' you put at the end of the road?

Quoting my friend's sentiment from post-EW period: "I feel it's insulting to players' intelligence to leave such barebone kits for over half of leveling progression."

[Altina_Orion]

No. Disagree.

MSQ length isn't a problem.

Expansions are supposed to expand a game.
If you're endgame oriented that's one thing but I know of other MMOs where everything in the past becomes irrelevant. I don't want that for FF14.

People think of these like dream scenarios where you're perfectly in sync with playing with others in MMOs.

People have mismatched schedules

Someone is always ahead or behind

And eventually, everyone ends up soloing stuff anyway the quests are designed to be solo'd

Are you thinking of like - Everquest or FF11 where singular mobs could beat the shit out of you so you were forced to group up? It's not that I think that's bad it's just not really the design of modern MMOs.
Even if you duo level in something like Classic WoW you're mostly doing solo tasks but next to someone else and that gets pretty dull quickly.

Most MMOs are the multiplayer content is the Dungeon, is the boss fight, that's what you do.

So if not for anything, that's more of an indictment on modern MMO design which older MMO's have their own flaw of it then relying too much on playing with other people in order to get things done in the open world.
There's not really a happy medium where you're both able to be self sufficient and also play with players in meaningful interactable ways... that's why devs spend so much time making catered content for battle content for people to do together the rest of it is all social hangout sort of affair.

Thinking the MSQ length is fine is delusional. MANY people quit (and I know several personally) because they want to get to a lot of the content that comes later in the game but its gated behind 400 hours of msq. Play the game full time for 10 weeks (and increasing) before you can get to the content you want to try doesn't fly with many people.

Is the story good? It's ok. The storytelling is awful but the story is quite good and many people enjoy it.
Should we force everyone to do the entire story before being able to play current content? Absolutely not.

I don't think they should necessarily shorten the MSQ, but a more WoW approach where you can work on the newest expansion early would make a lot of people happy and willing to play the game.

[Carin-Eri]

I'll admit, I'm confused.

I mean, what exactly drew some people to the game? It blatantly advertises itself as a story-driven experience - hell, this is what anyone curious about the game sees if/when they visit the FFXIV promotional website:


"Live your story". And that story is supposed to be a marathon, not a 100m sprint to endgame!

[Volgia]

I know people who started this game last year and they're not even into Shadowbringers. One of the strongest parts of this game is that it's kept most of it's old content relevant, so I don't know if I can agree with this take, the game kind of fails you once you're caught up with everything.

EDIT: My top five

Once you're caught up with the MSQ, the leveling experience is pretty terrible.
Gearing your characters for end-game content doesn't feel very good.
The game won't teach you how to play properly, making getting into extreme and savages feel hostile.
If you were looking to get into end-game hard content be prepared to ask yourself why you're starting on M9S and not on M1S, their hardcore content goes to the bucket too fast.
You end up wondering why is there nothing 'new' to do for months at a time.

There are tons of things new players can do because they're also kind of hidden from view. None of my friends who are currently progressing through the MSQ know what Eureka or Bozja even is.

[Kohashi]

Today i was talking to my sister again, and asked her when she might continue to play the game.

fazit: The game fails new players as an MMO, but also kinda fails as a good single player experience because of its excessive lenght and boring gameplay elements during the MSQ part.

While the story itself has some merits, the way MSQ is structured is absolutely stupidly boring and mind-numbing. I do agree that you should be able to play with your friends a greater portion of the MSQ, but it also makes sense why those instances are solo, since it's your story.

I remember when I started playing this game, I was so sick and tired of running around and talking to X NPC, at the edge of the map to come back to Y at the other side of the map, to then talk to Z at the completely opposite side to return then where you started. So damn boring and so annoying, made to waste as much time as possible for almost 0 value.

Every single expansion was the same :
1. Chores for NPCs you didn't care about 70%
2. More chores, but the plot was picking up a bit, 20%
3. Things got serious, and the actual plot was relevant 10%

15-20% actual story and 80-85% filler BS. Also, everything was so damn predictable. Probably the only plot twists I saw were the Crystal Braves and the lolorrito thing in ARR, the rest was boring, predictable, and linear stuff.

[Valence]

While the story itself has some merits, the way MSQ is structured is absolutely stupidly boring and mind-numbing. I do agree that you should be able to play with your friends a greater portion of the MSQ, but it also makes sense why those instances are solo, since it's your story.

I remember when I started playing this game, I was so sick and tired of running around and talking to X NPC, at the edge of the map to come back to Y at the other side of the map, to then talk to Z at the completely opposite side to return then where you started. So damn boring and so annoying, made to waste as much time as possible for almost 0 value.

Every single expansion was the same :
1. Chores for NPCs you didn't care about 70%
2. More chores, but the plot was picking up a bit, 20%
3. Things got serious, and the actual plot was relevant 10%

15-20% actual story and 80-85% filler BS. Also, everything was so damn predictable. Probably the only plot twists I saw were the Crystal Braves and the lolorrito thing in ARR, the rest was boring, predictable, and linear stuff.

As someone that has got into the game initially for its world building and who now enjoys the story quite a bit (with all its faults), I do agree with this. The story is insanely verbose and beats around the bush for half the time either through chores or just endless talks with the scions to finally get the point in the last stretch of each section.
Comparing it to any of the games of the same franchise in its classic era, you'll quickly see what's the difference in terms of pacing, and actual substantive and colourful dialogue. The writing in XIV is very good grammatically, but is also extremely dry, speaks like an old book, and cannot actually focus on substance except during story climaxes or the rare good scene exposing strong themes.

[Altina_Orion]

I'll admit, I'm confused.

I mean, what exactly drew some people to the game? It blatantly advertises itself as a story-driven experience - hell, this is what anyone curious about the game sees if/when they visit the FFXIV promotional website:


"Live your story". And that story is supposed to be a marathon, not a 100m sprint to endgame!

Its not what drove me or many other ShB players to the game. For me, it was looking for an MMO experience and for many others it was looking for a WoW replacement. The game found success in ShB in part to the story but also in part looking for brighter shores.

You have to realize, the story may bring people into the game, but its very unlikely to keep people subscribed. Once you catch up, its a few hours of content every few months and sometimes its a major miss. What they expect you to do in-between the MSQ matters.