NOTE: I mistakenly refer to WHM’s Lily heal as an OGCD, I got mixed up with Sage’s abilities. My bad, point still stands! o/
Today fellas we’re talking about the early game of Final Fantasy 14, A Realm Reborn. From its content to its gameplay, I want to discuss what changes I think should be made to make the game more accessible to new players.
Soul Lock Episode 1: https://youtu.be/45YwnMnX1Fs
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As someone who had never played an MMO before FFXIV despite being an avid gamer for a long time, the lack of skills in the early game wasn't really an issue for me. Everything else I needed to learn about playing an MMO was quite overwhelming tbh, simply the idea of a GCD and dodging AOEs was new to me so I guess I didn't notice. I agree that most jobs could do with better job identity at lvl 50 (like MNK) but seeing as most sprouts I see in mentor roulette can barely do their 123 combo I'm not sure handing them a load more buttons would help that much. I guess it might be a balance of attracting experienced MMO players and complete noobs like me.
Great video, hard agree with most of what you said. It’s really rough getting friends into the game without saying something along the lines lines of “don’t worry, combat and the story gets so much better at 150 hours in.” Early combat and questing is mind numbing. I especially agree with your point about interaction with the scions. I feel like you don’t really get much real personalization of them until Shadowbringers for some which is a real shame.
Honestly, I feel like any job at level one should at least have their 123 combo.
And from there on out, things getting a bit more explanation with some of the role actions and whatnot, since I have no clue what things do, unless I am looking at a YouTube video that explains things and tells me how the rotations work.
A lot of the time, I have no clue what I'm supposed to do.
Definitely agreed when it comes to quests early-game. There are 160ish quests for just the level 1-50 quests and about 240 main scenario quests in total for ARR (250ish if you include Crystal Tower). Most expansions (patches included) are still behind ARR's level 1-50 quests. Only Stormblood beats it, with a whopping 162 quests for the whole expansion (patches included). There's gotta be some more stuff that can be trimmed out of ARR.
was literally discussing this on my stream. beginning game needs to change. maybe not in dawntrail but in the next expansions
Since FF14 is the only game I really play, and ever have played, I like simple. I play for the story, which I love, not the battles, which I complete only when I must. The change I would ask for is the give all MSQ dungeons and raids a level selector, so those of us who just want to complete the fight to progress in the MSQ can choose a really easy mode, and those who want to feel challenged can choose choose harder modes.
The new player experience is absolute garbage. It's stupid you need to hunt down sidequests to unlock basic functionality like a barber. The game's character customization is already bare bones. The story just drags on and of until you get partway trough HW. The idea of a global cooldown between pressing buttons is also bad, it's bad in WoW, it's bad here, simply unfun.
Agree 100% I would even go as far as keeping all my level 90 skills if I am sync'd down to level 50 content, I don't care how much they nerf the skills by just leave me with the abilities I've already learnt!
hit the nail on the head, people can overlook a bad story with good gameplay, it happens all over the spectrum of games not even limited to mmos. It rarely happens the other way round where people deal with poor gameplay to progress in a story.
Some job progression in terms of abilities just feel utterly awful, machinist for example gets hypercharge at level 30 but it has literally 0 use since heat blast doesn't get unlocked until 35 and your level 50 unlock is……ricochet? Surely it should be wildfire (which is in the 45 spot). 60 honestly should be drill and 70 you get probably the most useless ability in the game, flamethrower.
Another example: dragoon. Between 18 and 26 you literally get NOTHING specific to your job. At 50 you get both chaos thrust AND dragonfire dive. Why not move chaos thrust to 22 and that way you get your two combo chains early on instead of having to figure out what to do with chaos thrust at level 50 when you've literally been burning into your muscle memory that you have a 2 part combo and then 3 part combo for the better part of 24 levels
I feel one pretty easy fix is actually a visual one, one that improves responsiveness to the player with regards to what they see on the screen and what they're pressing: that's segmented damage number popups. Reaper for example is a horrible example of this, they have animations that do many multiple strikes but the damage number pops up at a completely arbitrary moment somewhere in the middle. Segmented damage already exists with bard barrage and dream within a dream for ninja, how hard would it really be to apply it to all job animations with multiple points of contact? Best way to do it would be to split the potency up so the final hit does the most damage for example a 480 potency finisher like heavens' thrust should be like 60-60-360 if it hit 3 times.
Bare minimum I wish we had the baseline of our kit at 50. Raid buffs and extra ogcds or add-ons can hold back, sure, but why don’t I have my third bard song at 50? Why do I need to use a mudra to refresh my speed buff at 50? Etc. etc.
Look at what they managed to do with monk’s kit going into Endwalker
Give everyone else some of that love, since just having your entire kit come down with you would lead to “oh you’re not max level/don’t have x buff unlocked? Get out of my party” situations
Something to note with this: they have cut fat. A LOT of fat. One of the things that finally made me join is that just a bit before, they cut over 100 quests from 2.x, and they’ve still cut more thanks to some Endwalker changes. The big problem I now feel is the HORRIBLE English voice acting, partially caused by a very rushed direction, and partially caused by voice actors who didn’t really… care… it honestly feels like at times? Minfilia is the prime example of what I mean. If this game didn’t have the option to switch to JP unlocked from the start, I wouldn’t of made it through base ARR, it was so bad at times I spent a good 2 or 3 of my 5 days in Base ARR just in JP, but I did find it got a lot better in 2.x in spite of this.
My big issue isn’t CT either, though I certainly agree with what you’ve said. I think a lot of hate for CT does come from the overrunning issue, something that doesn’t bug me as much as an avid FF3 fan thanks to growing up with it as my first FF, and it’s honestly funny whenever I see someone saying they’re tired of CT who also then mentions the Twinning as one of their favorite dungeons. Rather, there’s a bigger, more obvious raid I’d rework: Coils. Coils can’t be queued for naturally unless others are queueing for it as well, and new players can’t always set up party finders because of how confusing it can be… or the fact they’re on the free trial meaning they can’t create parties, meaning there is NO WAY for them to do Coils without help from others they specifically seek out. Likewise, Coils becomes more and more important to the story as time goes on, even having unique dialogue for doing in Endwalker, and flat out stating stuff you should only know from regardless of if you do it or not in Shadowbringers 5.5 right before the dungeon. On top of all this, just like how Pandaemonium is considered the finale to Endwalker’s story, Coils is considered the finale to ARR’s and 1.0’s. And yet, a majority of players have never even done them because of how obtuse they are, most just unsyncing after they catch up if ever anymore. This NEEDS changed. More than CT ever does.
But yeah please give more jobs other than Dancer an AoE at level 20… please…
To be honest .. ya arr needs alot of love but simply changing the whole being kept prisoner for the ultima story crap … let us freakin skip that shyte would be a HUGE improvement
Another issue I want to bring up. There to much story locked content in the game. Have you ever notice that the only content you can unlock for pve content is at the 50-60-70-etc mark. Arr and one dungeon in Hw is the only exception to the rule. I feel this will slowly kill the game as isn’t much mmo content to play with other people until you beat story. The exception is rpers and pvpers as they don’t need to through hundreds of hours of story unlike people who want to do dungeons, trial, and raids with other people. One more issue is that once the game get more and more expansions lots of older optional content becomes harder to into as player base is at arr or endgame.
As someone who started and has caught up(along with having 900+ hours as of now) in August I will say yeah the new player experience is rough especially going through arr. While the story gets really good from heavensward onwards being forced to get through the 'boring' bit so to speak can be a turn off for people. Though given how the game is structured it's hard for it to be fixed aside from like maybe being able to visit other areas in future expansions aside from like the final ones like ultima Thule or azya la for example. That way new players can atleast get a taste of future zones with a friend. I feel like another thing you could do is try to let them experience one of the raid tiers early like alexander or omega so they know what's in store for them down the line. While each one has its own set of problems it's something atleast.