What does FFXIV lack?

[GraceHorizon]

There's just something so absolutely unforgiving about FF14 compared to literally any other MMO (or real-time RPG) I've ever played, and something about the community that's equally unforgiving when failure inevitably happens (outside of their pro-gamer static I suppose). The game constantly demands perfection of some kind that I'm just not capable of and there's no hands reaching out to pick you up and dust you off, they're reaching out to throttle you for causing a wipe or making something take longer than it should have because you wasted their time that you were never "entitled" to.

You have my deepest sympathies for your bad experience. I have had my share of obnoxious partymates, and my time coming up through the MSQ was pretty rough. I would have quit in post-Heavensward if I hadn’t been able to use Warrior’s survivability as a crutch. I’ve gotten better at the game since then but it has been a long process. I do make sure to make allowances for struggling new players, especially when I’m healing and in a position to keep them alive and on their feet as much as possible. If I were still playing actively I would offer to help you through duties, but I’m only logging in for a few minutes a day to manage my retainers as I sell my stuff off and wind down in an orderly fashion before my sub expires.

[Aidorouge]

You have my deepest sympathies for your bad experience. I have had my share of obnoxious partymates, and my time coming up through the MSQ was pretty rough. I would have quit in post-Heavensward if I hadn’t been able to use Warrior’s survivability as a crutch. I’ve gotten better at the game since then but it has been a long process. I do make sure to make allowances for struggling new players, especially when I’m healing and in a position to keep them alive and on their feet as much as possible. If I were still playing actively I would offer to help you through duties, but I’m only logging in for a few minutes a day to manage my retainers as I sell my stuff off and wind down in an orderly fashion before my sub expires.

I originally started on Dynamis myself (Maduin), and ended up having to do some much content unsync and solo because there just wasn't enough people available or willing to get through the game. It's only made more awkward by people trying to insist my experience would have been "so much better" if I could have just had a "new player auto MSQ skip" into Endwalker (which is when I started). But... not only would that have not done anything about the lack of people to play with, but I would have had zero things to do anymore because, well, it was already skipped over and I would have had no attachment or understanding of anything in Final Fantasy 14 to keep me here.

I came in wanting a journey with the supposedly "nicest and most welcoming" MMO, not a WoW-esque "only endgame matters" raid simulator as that was part of why stopped playing WoW in the first place; The world and lore didn't matter anymore and other players only saw you as an expendable asset to farm their endgame content.
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Hey, I started playing a bit before Dawntrail came out and the new player learning curve is still fresh in my mind. Luckily I had far better experiences (mostly) with other players, but I believe you when you talk about the bad experiences you've had. I just want you to know that there are still people in the game that are patient and nice. Making mistakes is normal, even for experienced players. I'm sorry that things were soured for you.

I'm on Excalibur too, and if you ever need someone to do things with, I'm happy to help.

Thank you, I appreciate the offer, and there have been other friendly individuals who have reached out before as well, but I still get hung up on the idea of "wasting" somebody else's time in this game that I've never made good on those offers before.

I've even tried being helpful myself back when I was on Dynamis, but starting around Stormblood, I lost a lot of the confidence I had to explain fights or escort people through them when I was still failing a lot of STB/SHB content myself so I wasn't really in any position to be helpful anymore.
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Frankly, the MSQ variants of most of those (maybe not the Crystal Tower) should be solo duties anyway. This works better with how the story is told, too. Before we fight Nidhogg for the second time, we are explicitly told that we're doing it solo, for example, and before Susano Alisaie also tells you you're on your own. The current ones can be kept as side content.

I wish we had solo MSQ versions for a lot of things, but then that causes people to start screaming about "casuals dumbing down the content" even when you specifically try to explain that it would be a separate version that doesn't touch the original.

Unfortunately, Square-Enix does in fact reduce the difficulty of the dungeons they make Duty Support/Trust capable, which only inflames the before-mentioned screamers to go "SEE!? SEE!? WE TOLD YOU CASUALS RUIN EVERYTHING" and then its like I'm expected to feel guilty when Square-Enix made a decision I had zero input about because I would not have wanted the original versions of the dungeons removed.
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If anything this game is one of the most beginner friendly MMO's for new players to that genre.

You're right, we won't agree on this.