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.
Thats a really interesting point about the adjustments of skills and game balance over the years- it also affects higher-level content where players can kill bosses a bit faster than was originally intended meaning that you don't see all of the mechanics. I think they may have adjusted stats at some point a few years ago? but like you I can't find info about that either.
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 RUclips 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.
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.
I agree that the intro is very coherent, one of the main things it does well is giving clear objectives and goals to new players which hopefully came across well in the first half. Whilst FFXIV's intro is a bit slow it could have been worse in a lot of ways!
@@game_design_diary It is not a big one, but it is better, for example i was playing Halatali, a dg that used be very boring but now they change all 3 bosses to indicate better the mechanics for new players and put things for players to react like mechs that made you move properly and even tank busters.
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
Tutorial yet the game is still resident sleeper until Stormblood patches. It's just poorly designed and outdated, Heavensward is no more challenging than ARR, in fact it's worse because not a single fight in HW or SB's MSQ comes close to the difficulty of the new Roegadyn fight
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
14 is the epitome of "it gets good at 90 hours"
This is one of the main criticisms that the game usually gets so you're definitely not alone in thinking that!
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.
Thats a really interesting point about the adjustments of skills and game balance over the years- it also affects higher-level content where players can kill bosses a bit faster than was originally intended meaning that you don't see all of the mechanics. I think they may have adjusted stats at some point a few years ago? but like you I can't find info about that either.
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 RUclips 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.
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.
I agree that the intro is very coherent, one of the main things it does well is giving clear objectives and goals to new players which hopefully came across well in the first half. Whilst FFXIV's intro is a bit slow it could have been worse in a lot of ways!
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
I will need to go and check those out and see how much of the difference the changes make!
@@game_design_diary It is not a big one, but it is better, for example i was playing Halatali, a dg that used be very boring but now they change all 3 bosses to indicate better the mechanics for new players and put things for players to react like mechs that made you move properly and even tank busters.
Only one dungeon, there will be more later
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
Tutorial yet the game is still resident sleeper until Stormblood patches. It's just poorly designed and outdated, Heavensward is no more challenging than ARR, in fact it's worse because not a single fight in HW or SB's MSQ comes close to the difficulty of the new Roegadyn fight
Couldn't ever get past the beginning of the game. The combat is horrendous, and the pacing is sooo slow.
Where do I get your voice pack at bro you sounds like the rest of these noob player or like you reading me a roblox story
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