Watch this next: https://youtu.be/gNn-A0ZP9Hc
It shouldn’t be this hard to get access to the resources you need to earn to play the game at a high enough level to properly clear high-end content. People should have a safe entry to learning core concepts. This won’t help everybody, but it will definitely increase the odds! Please, add additional learning tools to the game!
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Not everyone learns at the same pace, and since there's only, one real place that "Teaches" things for players, there isn't much to help those that need those extra pointers. Never assume people will learn things on their own without extra help sometimes. (And A large chunk of mentors aren't incentivized to give those helpful tips, which would be a huge boon to figuring things out for most people, since it's an option to learn from another person, since I know some people zone out when learning from NPCs)
don't worry, ff14 is doing the same thing as wow in the vein of making everything play the same as everything else. soon everything will be effortless and too easy and the game will stop being any fun.
add more Guildhests and update the ones that are here. they already teach mechanics and skills needed to play, why not expand it and get it up to date.
which song is playing in the second half of the video? (~minute 7 onwards)
Good idea but the why they do it can be in a dungeon run or in the lower side of dungens by making them harder be a good help and a better for a lower class not have the good things that are at 50 or higher
I like the idea of tutorials for the mechanics that you'll face in raids being a thing, before you hit those raids. But we do have that, its just not designed well. They're called dungeons. Unless you buy a story skip, its impossible to get to endgame without having seen, for example, a knockback. You'll see one the first time you queue into Sirensong Sea, and that is not an optional dungeon. The problem is that, assuming your team is good, there's basically no consequence to not learning those mechanics. Between the stat inflation and balance changes making older content easier, and the casual nature of dungeons, its entirely possible for new players to clear every dungeon in the game having learned maybe two mechanics. That's not great design. Rather than building an entire set of tutorials people need to clear as a hurdle, we should just make the first instance of every new mechanic impossible to clear unless the entire party does it right, at least in unsynched content. Don't wipe everyone, but maybe the boss gets healed if you don't position yourself well for the first boss in Sirensong sea, or use a kb immunity. Sneak the lessons into the content you already have to do, and no one's going to resent doing it. Then, retool the last boss of every expansion to test you on the mechanics you learned *in that expansion*. People already expect those fights to be hard(er than the content up until that point, at least), so I don't think they'll bat an eye if there's a mechanic that requires all 8 players alive, and you die if you don't prep for a KB just before it.
As for teaching players rotations – I get where you're coming from, and to an extent I agree. All jobs should have aoe by 15 – at least all dps, and I'd love to see healers get a weak version of their aoe spell early – and there needs to be an additional hall of the novice teaching people how to aoe, but I disagree that there should be instances expressly teaching you your rotation. Your rotation is the way you interface with the content, and interfaces – whether they're mechanical or graphical – are like jokes – If you have to explain them, they're bad. Maybe there should be an additional Hall of the Novice about the difference between GCDs and OGCDs, and how to use OGCDs effectively. That would require giving everyone an OGCD by 15, and I can see a good argument against that, but its astonishing how often people get to max level without knowing how or why to weave things. But once they know that, you ought to design the jobs – both the final rotation and the order you unlock them in – in such a way as to help people figure out their rotation just by the way you give them the pieces. Giving them the core rotation early, and then adding the extra flourishes and finishers later is a good way to do that. You can reinforce this with DPS checks in solo encounters throughout the story – We have some of those already, they're just not properly tuned, largely because underleveled content isn't balanced – and it really should get a balance pass – both because it would save us having to add in extra tutorials, and also because its just plain more enjoyable when content isn't broken. No one wants to be a level 20 lancer and not be able to make a meaningful contribution in a newbie dungeon because the dancer waved her arms and everything instantly died.
I feel like, in some of the earlier job quests, they attempted to explain the logic of intended skills based on the story content, as well.
But with all the job reworks, the job quests (and, by extension, Hall of Novice) got left behind and now there's a disconnect between what's talked about in the quests (Arcanist job quests is the most jarring example, imo) and what the jobs do at present. And with the expected additional reworks for AST and DRG, job mastery feels virtually unattainable because, at this point, we're gonna expect another rework in another year or two just as people are finally getting used to the jobs.
I have learning disabilities and a system like this would be a GODSEND for accessibility qvq)
One where you are told not to provoke the boss to make it spin around and clap the party and then say you didn't provoke in chat. (Sorry venting on that one)
I agree with all of this , but I will say no longer seeing a Sprout running away from the party with a Stack Marker may sadden me.
I'm all for better class specific tutorials for people who want to make that effort to get better at the game before getting into content where DPS checks exist.
Bad Duty Finder players is almost a different issue from this, I feel. The encounters are too forgiving. Bad DF players come not just from a lack of good tutorials, but also from the game enabling them to continue playing like trash for too long. Even if you made these tutorials really tightly tuned and required to access DF from level 70+ for example, they're just a one time thing. The kind of players we're talking about here don't even read their tooltips , and will not take the lessons to heart. They'll finish the tutorial once, then continue to bumble through instances doing everything wrong because they can. The game needs to tutorialize for endgame better in the story dungeons and trials by not letting you move on until you figure out how to stop doing stuff like putting stack markers on top of eachother like in Syrcus Tower.
Sadly, running this game is a business and in the presented scenario, I would be launched into space with the Amaro for suggesting making the game harder because it might make players quit over the game being too hard.
One of the main problems is that the game no longer starts at level one.
Hear me out for a second because obviously you start at level one with some of the classes but from a gameplay development standpoint everything has been updated and updated to where it feels like you don't get a rounded class until level 30 or 40 and that's only if you're not playing any one of the expansion added classes that don't feel complete until you hit the entry level or even the ending level of the expansion that they come from. Everything after Heavensward feels so janky if you do a lower level piece of content.
Not to mention there's no prerequisites like: to unlock Dark knight you need to level Warrior or Paladin to 30 or a healer to unlock Astrologian etc.
You get a lot of people jumping from DPS to tank/heal and they don't really do the "Welcome to playing as X" quest line where you unlock your rotation and abilitys while learning after Heavensward.
I wish every was designed as if it started at level one.
I dont think this is a terrible idea, the issue is that unless they FORCED you in there, nobody would do it. I think the idea of a marker tutorial would be good, you can put that just at the end of base ARR (in game reasoning being like "extra training for ultima weapon" or something, to make it mandatory). If people pop a story skip, they should be u-turned to do that content before queueing for anything. For rotations n stuff like that, I think that should fall under the mentor system, which just needs an entire overhaul. I have ideas for that, but thats a whole can of worms
I had a similar idea using job quests – After every 10 levels, a quest is required to get the ability you'd get at that level (i.e. for SGE currently, to get Panhaima at level 80), like it is for the older expansions. Rather than being associated with your job/role story, you would get teleported to a training ground like the HotN (maybe to show off your sweet new skills to admiring onlookers from your GC, idk the lore don't matter). The quest would be a series of VERY short battle situations where you have to use each of the new skills you acquired appropriately, (e.g. for SGE, it would teach you how to use Rhizomata, Holos, and Panhaima at level 80). If you'd like, it could be complete with text boxes that actually freeze the game, highlight the button you have to use, and do not unfreeze until you press it (I think the current UI with silent text boxes is part of why attempts to do this sort of thing with current job quests aren't super effective). Something as simple as "[Enemy name here] is about to release a series of repeated attacks, press Panhaima to repeatedly shield your party!". Simple 10 second repeated raidwide, a green checkmark, and you're on your way, in total hopefully shorter than most of the solo duties you currently have to do at those levels. Stolen straight out of your everyday modern single-player RPG, and essentially a gate to make sure if you're doing content at the level cap for that expansion, you know what all the relevant buttons are.
A similar role-based system could teach how to use all of the role abilities at level 50 for each role to unlock the final one (e.g. Rescue).
Is this a metric ton of work that would have to get partially redone each expansion, and could people just skip through it and not learn anything? Absolutely! But I think maintaining up-to-date and relevant tutorials is a worthwhile expense, and overall I don't think it'd be IMPOSSIBLY burdensome to essentially bring the player to the HotN and have a generic enemy do a single action, with the appropriate counter from the player allowing them to pass (for DPS skills, the enemy doesn't have to do anything at all!). It'll also give SE a good chance to teach use cases for things that aren't super intuitive for new players (e.g. Pepsis and Emergency Tactics, using Holos before damage, etc), and take a second look at things that are more or less useless like Repose.
It'd be nice as well to allow them to keep the ease of normal content where it is, where players aren't punished for being bad, but force them into a single situation where they do have to show a little bit of job competence once per expansion, with no stakes, at the very end. Can even give em a handsome sack of gil as a congratulations.
Can YoshiP teach me what a protean, dynamo and chariot are….
A 'strict' rotation, 'aligned rotations' should not be necessary at'any' level of the game. Yes convos and some judicious use of your big actions yes, but not 'strict' rotations and surgery not 'aligned' burst windows. This is something that Min maxers, and does like dashed have artificially created, and the SQX being caught in a feedback loop have been forced to pervert all the jobs into by people refusing to play anything other than meta.
SE needs to standardize the 1-50 skills. If you get AOE at 15 and 30, well all jobs do. Its fine to have some off timed skills but there needs to be something done with that as well when making this.
The problem with job specific halls is se would need to redo them any time there was a reasonable change for a job, to say nothing about discovered metas. I think a better option would be to offer something akin to a stone sky sea at the end of any given expansion. You can also add healer or tech mechanics to their specific ones, or make it two phases, one for single target, the other for group. Clearing it on your job would reward you with your artifact weapon(what we've been getting with our af sets) with an i-level 5 points below the first tome weapon. Tune it pretty tight, and maybe have an npc have a quick blurb about ways to optimize on a per job basis, but as a simple text rather than as a full hall of the novice. This way it is opt in, it rewards glam for casuals, offers an in to savage, since you'll want all the i-level you can get, it takes very little extra dev time, and it is unobtrusive, and not demeaning like a direct tutorial would be.
Weskalber has been a nice channel for learning basic rotation stuff. That said I remember when I learned and practiced my sam rotation and it was night and day and my static which had just formed had noticed as well.
ive seen tanks with maxed out jobs and still only single pull in LOW LEVEL dungeons and then proceed to never AOE or listen to what the group has to say….
i usually just end up leaving, too much hassle
I don't think additional learning tools will do anything.
There are just people resistant to learning. Even with fairly active people on fairly active discords, people still get things wrong and get defensive about it. I've had people apply to my static and when I point out that their rotation is incorrect in logs they've gotten mad at me. There are many people who have posted in discord about why their dps is low and when xiva says different they refuse to believe it. People argue about whether DPS should LB trash on a dungeon pull instead of the boss on a daily basis, even though all the information is available on the internet. There's also just an absurd amount of skill being offloaded to third-party tools like Cactbot, automarker, and autocombo, which is why it's a meme to do reclears after a patch release when all the tools don't work. I remember some spicy TOP drama earlier in the year when a healer publicly outed his group (something about the other healer running out of mana by spamming heals when it wasn't needed and then complaining that they weren't healing enough?) and this is the highest level with some famous streamers and yet no one in the group really understood how healing worked.
The amount of content created by the community to improve everyone is honestly amazing, from YT videos to guides to savage raids to even something as crazy as xiva. Yet even with this content, people are bad and yet assertive about it even at the savage/ultimate level. Inevitably, the only way to get truly skilled players is to look for them.
When I think about it, I don't think there's been any game where the skill level of the entire community improved with some additional tutorials.
I feel like something that'd go a long way (without requiring a tutorial) would be for each skill to have an explanation button that goes with it in your ability list. The dialog that accompanies it would explain it (and any related skills), when to use it, and some tips on how to make the most of it. It wouldn't be a direct explanation of rotations (cause those can vary a little periodically, based on updates (even for memes, e.g. Dragon Kick monk), but it'd allow players to figure out how to make rotations themselves.
By default the game will give you a ping for each new skill when you unlock it that will only go away once you read the explanation, but you could also access those at any time from the ability list. And it could cover a couple of skills at a time. E.g. get an explanation for all of the tank mits you have, but then explain the differences between them, how to rotate them, and how to combine them. The dialog would just be appended whenever you got a new skill that fit into that category.
Also, a lot of moves are actually explained in the job quests themselves (e.g. Ninjutsu) but doubling down on that would help a lot. Ninja for instnace covers the ninjutsu to a small degree as you unlock your mudra, but just a scenario when you have all 3 where the game calls on you to use different ones for different situations would help a lot.
the real reason why max lv players are bad is because they spam Frontline for xp
Sweet Temptation and it is a lala. I wonder what you would call an Adult who calls a child a SWEET TEMPTATION.
As a new player, I would welcome a tutorial for all major ability "types" relevant in content specifically, not just text, but how stuff works in practice.
So, basically the "detailed" stuff mentioned in the video, I think?
Buffs, debuffs, mitigation, gauge stuff etc. Something like that, maybe?
I've struggled the most with properly spacing out my mitigation as a tank because of figuring out what's best for making life easier for healers and dps, the actual pacing of it – obviously I found some help online once people yelled at me in df, but I feel the game should at least tell you, "oh this is how it would be cool to space them out".
(And I feel Hall of the Novice didn't really convey that part that clearly, unless I forgot?)
There have only been two-three times I've been yelled at in df out of numerous runs, so I think I'm doing alright now?
But I also still don't know how to tell whether it's me screwing up or the healer, for one example. When did I use not enough mit and when did the healer do poorly? You die either way.
I'm also terrible at keeping track of debuffs and status effects because they always seem to just pile on you in massive amounts and still haven't developed the muscle memory for keeping track of them.
I have no plans to step into harder content, happy stuck in normal roulette because I'm mostly here for the story, but I at least don't want to be a bother in normal because not only am I having a blast just doing the roulette and trying to do it the best I can, I also like helping people through it. It feels satisfying.
(And then there are the times I just tunnel vision with no brain input on two abilities and feel terrible afterwards because that's where I genuinely know I screwed up.)
This is also my first game like this, with this many keybinds and abilities to keep in mind along with a 3D space, so I'm actually kind of grateful for the "slow" start.
Maybe some of this is also very obvious and I'm just slow at picking it up.
It would have to be at max level and kept up to date. We're getting so many changes every expansion. Just for dawntrail we know already AST and DRG are getting gutted (possibly CDs will be missing), and then maybe NIN getting some parts removed to allow more room for viper, and certainly the casters are getting nerfs for the new addition. Add to that the mid-expansion reworks, and you would get an extra 5-10 instances to be updated per expansion. It might be too much work for the dev team, and then you may as well have players that seem to forget everything they know when zoning in a DF/PF instance (very common in PF
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What I want them to do is to disallow new players from purchasing boosts (both job and story skips) until they've hit at least level 50 on a main character. Too many times have I encountered brand new players with level skips that had no idea what an aoe even is.
Tutorials shouldn't exist in a hall of the X. They should be integrated into the MSQ. I want community memes about how Y'shtola chastises you to use mitigation and Thancred is a disappointed dad because being an ice mage at a DPS check killed Ryne.
Hall of novice is not good. The text is slow, the exercise repetitive, you have to load into every single damn instance separately and there's zero interesting story context. Oh and if are going through the MSQ on a single job, there's a good chance you're level 25+ by the time you come across it. Godforbid you're on a "recommended" server. Is it an effective tutorial? Debatable (brb wall2walling satasha) but what isn't is that it just is not an engaging experience.
I kinda hope something like this DOES get into the game. And it'd be hilarious if it was labeled "Hall of the Novice (Extreme)" and maybe even a much harsher version of that even, "Hall of the Novice (Savage)" with two for like "I wanna do high-end content" difficulties. And maybe just "Hall of the Novice (hard)" to help players get 'good enough' rather than 'raid ready'
Only issue with those labels is that hard/extreme/savage is pretty much always used in cases where it's an 8-man instance.
I recently started kearning healer when i made an alt to play with a friend that wanted to tank, and i gotta say, the major thing i would put in Hall if the Novice is teaching the player how/why/when to use two specific tools: their DoT abd their AoE heal. Most healers going into HotN are probably new players on conjurer, yet medica doesn't even FUNCTION in the lesson thats supposed tk be about healing multiple allies because they dont put the npcs in your party with you. Combining that with making them aware of the DoT so they become more accustomed to the idea of dealing damage even as a non dps
All fine and well actually. Tutorials are a good way to teach, but they need to be applied in an effective way as well. Just putting it out there, I think FFXIV's tutorials need to be mandatory. Maybe there could be a system where you have independent tutorials per job and type of content you plan to play so that noivce players aren't getting confronted with savage mechanics before their first dungeon, but it is clear that the Hall of the Novice being entirely optional isn't working out. Force people through it but also make it more accessible. There is no reason why it shouldn't be in the duty finder. There is no reason why you shouldn't be required to complete the beginner and intermediate DPS tutorials before being allowed into level 30+ dungeons as DPS, as an example. There is no reason why there souldn't be mandatory tutorials sprinkled in every 5 or 10 levels just to keep players refreshed and up-to-date with the expansion of the game's mechanic language. To me the core problem is really that learning, and with that becoming better at the game, is entirely optional at this point.
If I could design any tutorial, it'd be specific to ninja.
Teach them that doton isn't a gain until theres three or more enemies, even before factoring in TA windows and Hollow.
I'm so tired of doing crystal tower (alliance raid) roulette and seeing three different dotons on the field.
As a "new player" when I hit end game, I looked at how to play the game in more difficult content. The "opener" for some jobs is insanely complex and in party play it requires you to repeat it on time with party buffs. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but some jobs have an insane amount of buttons and cooldowns. I can't wrap my head around it without looking at the bars constantly which causes other problems. I get that it gets easier with time, but it's very daunting and turns me off to the prospect of progressing endgame.
I mean everyone crafts, only the 10 percent really do dungeons .
they should had implement this in the class quests. u should get the skills or a trial version of it during the quest and try n use it in battle throwing in new mech and markers. i think that would be the easiest and safest way to make everyone understand and uptodate on your kit since the class quest are mandatory to learn new skills!!
I like teaching the different encounter markers and how to handle them.
Tooltips could be streamlined a great deal for a start. There's a bunch of inconsistency in how it phrases things around positionals for instance.
Somewhere in some piece of mandatory content they need to force you to use a limit break so that you know it exists and you have it on your bars.
I think the "showing the rotation" piece could be an optional view at the ability list similar to the updates they made a bit ago where you can see the combos attached to each other. Have a "damage line" view that shows the abilities in the optimal order of use.
I think that a hall of the expert could work, have a new one each expansion that's optimised for whatever the level cap is at the time and gate the day 1 extremes behind it. new expansion, new hall, sort of like a license renewal. Alternatively rather than it being a side content thing that gets refreshed, have it take the place of the role quests and then gate an MSQ behind it like ShB did. Call them the trials of light or some such and bring back some familiar job NPCs. Maybe you have trust system style things based on starting cities where you get the ninja, warrior, scholar and summoner npc and run a dungeon, and your NPCs are whichever role you aren't and then you essentially do what you're describing.
I think something the game is pretty good at is exposing you to group content through the leveling experience. Yes you might suck as a player, but you've gotten raid experience through trials, done enough dungeons to have seen a bunch of mechanics and to not have a load of anxiety about doing new stuff. I would argue that your average FF player is more ready for its end game content than players of other MMOs are for theirs because of the forced group content.
Adding Easy and Very Easy difficulties to MSQ solo duties was Square's non-verbal admission that they don't want to deal with the inherent problem of teaching people at this point.
We all know what the problem is, which is people having no idea what they're doing, especially if they only do MSQ content. And they don't care either because they're having fun. That would be fine… if the game was fully single player and never required you to interact with other players beyond the social level. But this is an MMO at heart and requires you to group with other people, which means those two experience levels will inevitably collide.
The truth of the matter is, SE doesn't want to shoot themselves on the foot by telling people how to properly play, because the REALLY bad players would just call it toxic and gatekeeping (remember what happened with Sadu's solo duty back in SB because it dared have a small DPS check?). So instead they just "trusted in the good will of the players" to teach each other… which doesn't work at all as we can all see, because those players do NOT want to be taught or have any modicum of responsibility thrown at them. We can expect this situation to be perpetuated until the game finally shuts down or they player numbers drop to dangerous enough levels to elicit a proper response.
All I want is a dps meter for your own performance. Gamers are motivated by seeing big number go up. Sinple really.
Love the concept – but its going too far. What you describe here is optimised gameplay for higher content – and as you already said, that kind of content isnt for everybody. Its perfectly enough to simply teach the rotation for each jobs (the bard songs are a good example) and basic mechanics. Teach the ABC-rule and remind them to throw out their buffs at once (except bard). The rest you'll learn later if you want to.