Analysing the design of Final Fantasy XIV’s new player experience and discussing how well the game hooks new players. Talking about what works, what doesn’t, and how Square Enix learnt from previous games they had made when building FFXIV’s new player onboarding process.
Contents:
Intro 0:00
First Impressions 1:02
Improvements Since 1.0 Version 2:27
Pacing 4:47
Design Trade-Offs 9:14
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I think it's important to keep in mind that the starting experience has been slowly but surely changed and arguably compromised as the compounded side effect of an entire decade worth of updates, many of which were intended to alter the endgame experience of the expansion in which the update was published. For example Life Surge used to be unlocked at Level 18 but was changed to Level 6 with the release of Shadowbringers. This change was likely aimed at improving the experience of players with high level Dragoons who would be put in low level dungeons through the Duty Roulette. Even just this change alone makes the character you played the beginning of the story with far stronger than the character of someone who played the game at the launch of A Realm Reborn. That's not to defend the New Player Experience feeling so anemic, however I believe that it's essential context for why the beginning leaves this impression.
Unfortunately I cannot easily find information about changes to things such as starting Defense or HP values the same way I can on skills through the wiki page, which is why I can only speculate if the golem that you killed with auto attacks used to be as much of a pushover as it is today.
14 is the epitome of "it gets good at 90 hours"
While the start of FF14 is very slow, this is true, but it's better than World of Warcrafts near complete lack of New Player experience.
I cannot say if it changed in the new current expansion, but as of Dragonflight, you do the tutorial Island, and that's a very way to be introduced, isolated, few characters, a variety of quests, and quest design philosophies, but if you are horde, after the Island, you are thrown into Orgrimmar, you go into the keep to talk to Sylvanas, and outside is a guy with a beam of light showering him, telling you we have to kill Sylvanas, lets go into the breach of death woop woop! But also if you randomly chose to timewalk to the WoD expansion instead, now it's some other dude on the throne and as soon as you level up to the current expansion you basically get forced to drop what you were doing to go to the new expansion. And also then there are entirely other dudes on the throne.
If I wasn't a World of Warcraft veteran, I would have been so fully lost.
In conclusion: FF14's story is slow, but at least it's coherent.
And also just as a petty remark: The intro to FF7 is very much not FMV, it's a pre-rendered 3d animation, FMV is specifically recordings of real actors placed as video in the game, or through a filter. Things like Her Story, the old infamous Night Trap, and the animations of the original Mortal Combat are examples of FMV.
It might be the worst time to say this to you…. but they update a lot of old dungeons in 7.1 to put some mechanics and spice the early game a bit
ff14 positives : one toon for all jobs , fast queue with roulettes, no need of addons , clear mechanics, music soundtrack, housing , UI, friendly community , time to play other games. negatives: convoluted msq, not so fluid combat with bloat buttons, cult community
The entire reason ARR feels that was is because level 1-50. IS THE TUTORIAL OF THE GAME. Until you finish the MAIN quest of ARR. Then it stops being a tutorial and becomes harder and increases every expansion. This is the biggest new player friendly experience any game ever. This is 90 year old grandma never played a game in her life and can pick up and play and learn it.
Its the point of the game witch is one of the best things a game can ever do. Its long yes. But its the best because of it
Couldn't ever get past the beginning of the game. The combat is horrendous, and the pacing is sooo slow.
This game is perfect for casuals. Midcores & hardcores can speedrun+optimize just fine, playing seasonally alongside other mid/hardcore MMOs like WoW. FFXIV is directly aimed at the average, working-class "normie" & very often disappoints NEETs + its own community of full-time Twitch streamers. There are plenty of speedrun/optimization MMORPGs in the industry – this title is NOT one of them (again, unless played seasonally). Beware of 'new player tips' & 'you've been doing this wrong' videos right here on Youtube from full-time FFXIV content creators: they just want to rush you to endgame content, which is definitely NOT worth the time/money investment unless you're comfortable skipping the entire story, literally sitting down to study the mechanics+systems of the game before playing, & you're mentally prepared to fit in with the (VERY vocal) minority of players who are comfortable with criticism/unsolicited advice/feedback/competition. The devs, especially Yoshi-P, have made it abundantly clear that the point of this game (except for the roughly 1-10% of high-end player content made specifically and only for high-end play) is to experience a lived-in, narrative-based, non-optimal, role-playing, team-player oriented, cooperative experience where the group is expected (via enforcement of the conduct clauses in the ToS) to cater to the weakest link(s) in their present group composition. Like I mentioned earlier, raiders are disproportionately vocal in online spaces like Reddit & Twitter, while being the extreme minorities of the in-game population of players. FFXIV hits the target demographic of casuals like 9-5 workers, those with accessibility/disability needs, & folks with already-busy social lifestyles. Too many speedrunners & optimization junkies get burnt out and disappointed with this title, and while their opinions & perspectives can often be valid criticism, they should be taken with a grain of salt (no pun intended) because most of the complaints surrounding the game are coming from an emotional place rather than a logical one. Misery loves company, especially when it comes to a sunk/cost addict who the devs have made crystal clear (no pun intended) that they'll cater to only 1-10% of the overall content, seasonally, and no more than that. It is on-purpose and by-design that backseating & damage meters are prohibited on a don't-ask-don't-tell basis. It's worth noting that every generation of MMORPGs' most casual title will always be the most popular, with so-called "elitists" giving tough-love advice + criticism that directly contradicts why the title is so popular in the first place. This has been a life cycle from Dungeons & Dragons to EverQuest to early-WoW – currently, it's FFXIV. This is a casual game for casual players. Expect midcores & hardcores to have disproportionate & contradictory expectations of players in random-matchmaking, as that's simply how gaming culture is at the present. They have access to tools like the Party Finder, Discord, & entire Reddit boards + Twitter accounts wholly dedicated to dunking on other players in order to simply pre-form – they CHOOSE to use random-matchmaking & bully casual/inexperienced players because they themselves are scared of receiving judgment + tough love advice from their peers/superiors. It's best to just mute/blacklist anyone being pushy or demanding. Don't let them bait you into acting irrationally: they're just trying to get you to violate ToS so they can snitch on you to the in-game moderators and punish you for sticking to your guns / learning the game at your own pace (as opposed conforming to theirs). "Toxic Casuals" is the label that these players use to bully, exclude, & socially-dominate others & I highly recommend using the mute and blacklist feature to save yourself the trouble of them trolling/backseating you. They absolutely know better & they won't stop until they realize all they are doing is socially isolating themselves & not helping anyone, least of all themselves, with such behavior.
FFXIV start is aweful, but it's worth getting through for the life changing story alone! Even forgetting that it's a top mmo with an abundance of fun stuff to do with your friends, it's worth it for the story
FFXIV in the beginning is slow and awful…. FFFXIV in the end if boring and awful. One day SE will start to listen to it's player base instead of drippling the game out drop drop drop….
PVP is broken, has been broken…
The dungeons are fun the first couple of run throughs, then they are easy to see the mechanics
The new Deep dungeons are for a niche.
The variant dungeons are a joke.
The community is good, until it isn't.. Want to stand and pose all day check…
Here is a prime example… FF11 is an amazing game for it's age… they did a cross over but still can't or won't fix the login to get to 11.. They could have offered users a chance to mingle between the two with some sort of discounts… Instead, like all gaming companies they release the bare minimum.. For them to live out another 10 years, they will need to start listening to the user base. Plain and simple.
Unless you have friends on FF14, it's just another game to play through and put on the shelf until next patch, which is get you a few hours of content if you're lucky.
When I introduced it to new friends I have to say it is story driven but we seriously have to treat it as a book to really enjoy the story… it is just lately partly dubbed.
When 1.0 ended, the game was offline for less than a year. Closer to just 6 months if you count the unsaved time the servers were up.
I feel like XIV definitely needs some action at the beginning and has to have at least somewhat challenging early areas (and overworld areas in general) – people who start game, may not even understand why game is so easy, and then they get hit by Cape Westwind and find it very difficult because it uses patterns from 6.0 and not 2.0. Although I must admit – they are slowly adding more duty support to optional content and of 7.1 tutorials were greatly expanded for more complex mechanics like stacks, spreads, line tankbusters and everything else
I have almost 2,000 hours in this game and i am still playing and even till today i feel the same kind of excitement and enjoyment as i did when i started. Sometimes i do take a short break but when i come back i enjoy it the same way i did when i first started. I highly recommend giving the game a try.
the game may not force people to learn how to optimally use their kid but i do believe that the whole abilities glowing to show its best to use this one is a good idea
Some other comments touched on this but, we have to remember 2.0 used to be the entire game at launch. There used to be more skills at the early levels (and cross class skills), you didnt get exp as fast so you had to do fates/sidequests and dungeons to catch up with the msq. Potency and skill changes throughout the years made players stronger than they used to be at the early zones (tho i didnt play back then and idk how much different it felt). Endgame and midgame players were also at the same zones as early game players so even though there were less players it might, have felt more packed. The story comments still apply however.
And yeah we have to face the fact that 10 years have passed and they haven't made the early game as enticing as it could be, other than changing some things to be more modern style and etc, but that sense of very easy combat is definetely a turn off.
I feel ppl have demonized the "it gets good at X hours" for the wrong reasons and without understanding what it meant, in the same way ppl have demonized assets reuse. That phrase doesn't means that after X hours something happens that rocks your world and it'll be all sunshine and rainbows from there, it simply asks you of giving your time to something and you'll grow to appreciate it instead of searching the instant gratification. However ppl, in good or bad faith, have twisted this notion to be a pejorative when it shouldn't be. This doesn't mean XIV does it well ofc, it could be much better and frankly seems they believe so considering they've been reworking parts of ARR often
I tried to get 3 gaming contacts into the game in hopes of forming a static for high end content and they could barely make it through the first 15 levels and one didnt really even start.
The start of the game is really not selling the experience very well.
I remember when i started, i had no clue the jobs ended up as cool as they did because all i knew was the single attack on bland mobs.
As well as needing to read the opening scene on the cart was a real put off after being spoilt with VO scenes in other games.
Something they could have done was tease a level 30 combat scene in some form of "vision" before removing it all and make you start at square one.
Just to give you an idea of whats to come.
Despite all the changes made to ARR, it's still really showing its age. Might be time for A Realm Reborn Reborn.
as someone who has played through ARR multiple times now I need to say, YES we know it is slow as fuck and boring as hell and YES it does not get better until at least lvl 50 but work has been done to fix ARR, dungeons have been remade, NPCs are able to go into dungeons with you so you don't need to wait on other players if you prefer to play alone but I BEG of you, finish ARR. Endure it and get through it to the end because if you skip ARR you will be lost the rest of the game on characters, on story, on world building for the rest of the expansions
They need to just delete ARR. No one wants to sit there and read 100 hours of trash writing