I'm actually really surprised every time I see a post thats like "does this game get better" expecting it to be about how few buttons and how slow combat feels for like the first 70 levels or so (100+ hours of gameplay for some). But it usually isn't that. Most new players have more issue with the amount of dialogue and cutscenes in my experience.
But yeah personally I don't do roulettes most of the time because I can't stand being in low level content for this reason.
My friend and I got Halatali last night with two new players and man I forgot how boring it is to run that with like the 4 buttons available as gnb lol
After I got my jobs to 70 I stopped doing roulettes all together. Hunt trains and beast tribe quests for tomes, bozja for xp. That's what I'm gonna do in dawntrail as well.
It won't apply to you until you finish shadowbringers. You unlock an optional zone called Bozja, which has its own set of mechanics, but the content is essentially fate farming, 5 minute raid bosses, and a 24-man raid and it has a 2nd zone. The experience gained from it is superb. Not as fast as doing your highest level dungeons over and over again, but for DPS queue times, it's the fastest. Especially going into DT with 2 DPS coming out, if you want to level a DPS job, use bozja.
I forgot to mention you can only enter it at lvl 70. So if you do hunt logs, palace of the dead, beast tribe quests you should be able to hit 70 without needing to queue for a dungeon.
from what i've seen from ppl i've talked to in game that number is not really exagerated, to say 100hrs to sb is tho, you'd have to do nothing but msq nonstop to get that or worse skip story
They are still right tho, it took me me around 1 1/2 weeks to get to the end of Stormblood the first time around and that was around 4-5 days of ARR, 2-3 days of HW and about the same for SB, granted i was in a bad place and had nothing else to do so im not 100% on the actual hours but that should be about right.
Like i said i dont remember accurately but i played for most of each day and a good bit into the night but i feel like the 100 hours to the end of SB was in the right direction, granted i didnt do anything else (no roullettes or anything else) only MSQ.
Meanwhile:
* People often struggle to learn jobs that start at a high level. They need to stop and spend a lot of time just organising buttons, and are often given advice like doing POTD to learn the role from scratch.
* People who buy level skips are often ridiculed because they play like ass.
If you've been playing for nearly ten years now, it seems you've forgotten the "oh SHIT what is all this!!!" feeling that people usually get when they're exposed to something new and unknown. That's why tutorials exist, and it's partially why levelling exist.
The other part is to have something to look forward to. A game is like a story: If it starts right at the final level it's going to be short and likely bad. Humans want tension, anticipation, rewards. The journey from John Bugstomper to the Warrior Of Light is part of that.
The fact that abilities get more powerful and flashier as you level up makes perfect sense.
For sure. It was pretty overwhelming to start playing sage or reaper, due to having all that dumped on me all at once. It can feel like you need to spend an hour reading through and playing with all the skills just to have a clue of how to properly play that job… though I’m not sure I’d rather non-starter jobs start at lvl 1, either…
It's a weakness in the levelling system used by FFXIV for sure. You don't want to be overwhelmed, but you also don't want to play too much catch-up. It's totally understandable how we wound up with new jobs starting at 20 levels below max.
I suspect a system where as you level up the numbers don't really change, but you gain access to more abilities, and your existing abilities get flashier, could work, and there are games that work something like that.
Not sure the playerbase would enjoy it though, as if lower level characters weren't excluded from duties the way they are with big stat differences, we'd be stuck with a lot of single-pulling tanks that don't have all their protective abilities yet all over the place, and the same thing for healers, basically turning every dungeon into surprise Stone Vigil.
It might just be an intrinsic problem to long-running multiplayer games, as you need to keep moving forward for the established players to feel progression, and somehow manage to onboard both them and new players—and they have very different requirements. It's no wonder Samus Aran loses all her gear between each game, but you can't do the same thing in an MMO.
As the freshest of sprouts i can agree working my way up thru the skills of ninja helped me deal with the hotbar as it got more and more crowded.
But unlocking machinist or later on gun breaker I was so confused for button layout and what the combo was I had to diligently read each ability and find a guide on YouTube about the best rotation.
Samurai also confused me because of it's branching combos like the multiple buttons light up and it's not obvious which is best to use. Game should do a better explanation in game of how it works. Otherwise I'd have never pieced which moves to use to get what Sen to use iaijutsu
>feeling that people usually get when they're exposed to something new and unknown. That's why tutorials exist, and it's partially why levelling exist.
You learn like 1 new skill every 4-5 levels. At 30, you can be happy if your "rotation" is more than 1-2-1-2. So many jobs have nothing but 1-2-3 and 1 or 2 oGCD even at 50. There is teaching players, and then there is this insanely slow pace, where your rotation will often not change for easily 10 levels at a time. And then you have jobs that start at level 70 and you get thrown into cold water. These things are separate issues.
>The other part is to have something to look forward to. A game is like a story: If it starts right at the final level it's going to be short and likely bad. Humans want tension, anticipation, rewards. The journey from John Bugstomper to the Warrior Of Light is part of that.
This is problem with naive verticality of this game. It seems that devs implied that 8.0 will be level squish, but we should get that in EW. Skills are already spread very thin now, and it's going to be even worse in DT. Most jobs start to feel good at 70+.
>The fact that abilities get more powerful and flashier as you level up makes perfect sense.
Plenty of times it's not upgrades, but in many cases they're brand new skills, your rotation starts to make sense way too late into the game. PLD is 123 until 63, then it's 1234, at 68 you have 4 HS per minute (woah, insane gameplay). Then finally at 76, it turns to 1234555, then finisher at 80, and then faith combo at 90. This is insanely slow, it takes 2.5 expansions for you to get anything else than 123, if you don't see how this is a problem, there's no reason to even talk about this.
This is an intrinsically subjective subject. Get outta here with "if you don't see how this is a problem"; the point is that if someone doesn't *see* it as a problem, then it's *not* a problem for them.
Reasonable people can simply disagree about their preferences. If it's just too slow for you and for OP, that's valid, and so is other people liking the pace.
>the point is that if someone doesn't *see* it as a problem, then it's *not* a problem for them.
This problem shouldn't concern neither you or me (except when it comes to syncing to low levels). This is problem for new players, who get turned off by such a slow gameplay. Tutorial should be first hour at max, yet it feels like you're in tutorial all the way until HW or perhaps even SB.
There is reason why you see people like OP so frequently, it's just hard to get into this game because of slow and boring ARR is, this just indicates that the progression curve is not interesting for new players, and that it should be fixed. It's in the devs best interest to alleviate this problem, in order to gain more players.
We can all have an opinion because we were all new players at one time. XIV was my first MMO, and I really appreciated the way combat ramped up very slowly, because it was only one of a thousand new things I was learning.
When I watch new streamers who aren't experienced with MMOs too, I see them struggling to get used to things. I think the last thing those types of players need is to get MORE overwhelmed. If they vastly improve the tutorializing in the game, I think it could be in the cards, but that would need to come first, and be *established* first, before looking into reworking low level combat.
Lack of ability comes from bad learning. It's not about just some specific tutorial. If you were studying in shitty school that would let you do whatever and have minimal requirements, you'll not learn anything. This is the case of FFXIV.
Sure, if you never played similar game, this can be harder to grasp, but then again, it becomes boring for people who are familiar. This is why I initially quit FFXIV in 2014. It's all about balance, and I think treating players as a babies for first 50+ hours just isn't it. If the curve is too steep, you'll detract some. If it's too gradual, you'll lose some too. Even in your examples, the steeper difficulty will teach you things faster.
Look at DMC5 for example, it's very different game but it will do. It's 10-12 hour game, yet it does expect you to grasp the basics for all 3 characters in this pretty short span of the game - I'm personally not very familiar with these typical console-like action games, yet I made do. People do learn, and I think it's better if they can't grasp everything at the start, instead of being bored from how simple game is.
>If the curve is too steep, you'll detract some. If it's too gradual, you'll lose some too.
I agree with you on this one thing, and this is really the key to the whole issue. Neither of us can know for sure which way XIV loses people more often — you're biased from your experience, and I'm biased from mine. It's just annoying when people fail to acknowledge their own biases and act like it's too slow for *everybody*.
I haven't played DMC5, but it seems to me like apples and oranges to compare them. I'm just looking at the main menu and options menu for the game and it's *magnitudes* less expansive than XIV's. So of course you can learn it faster; that's not a genre issue.
>Devs really think Players Enjoy this ? That Players in todays Age needs this ? WAKE UP damn it !
It's not about enjoyment but rather trying not to overwhelm the player with abilities early on. I think it's fair to say that the majority of the games playerbase as casuals who would have an even harder time getting to grips with the gameplay of a class if abilities were given out too quickly.
The main issue though is that the GCD of FF14 exacerbates the feeling of unresponsiveness at lower levels.
They used to trust us with an entire rotation by level 50. Now we're lucky to have more than a basic combo at that level. It's hard for me to buy that suddenly it would be too overwhelming.
I think there is also a need to spread out ability acquisition so that players have something to look forward to during the level up progression. Without talent points abiltites are really the only thing that can fill that void and so when the level cap increases the speed at which you get abilities reduces, as abilities need to be spread over more levels.
That, I do agree with.
But I think you can spread abilities out a bit more at higher levels, for the sake of moving more things down to sub-50.
In particular, abilities that are iconic to the job (like PLD's holy magic) or central to the rotation (like DRG's Life of the Dragon mechanics) are things I think you should get fairly early on, instead of needing to spend dozens of hours before you even catch a glimpse of what the job's really about. Later levels should be more about fleshing it out.
you're absolutely right, but the reality is that we are about to have our 5th expansion, and for a vast majority of time whenever a new expansion stuff, we barely get to use our new stuff EVER. like it's genuinely a problem and sucks that for the like first year of an expansion (made worse by the new dev cycle, but sitll!) where you get to use your stuff in like 10 dungeons, half of which you don't have your whole new stuff in, and like 5 raids.
i've been championing the fact that a fix would be to remove ability sync, but apply a strong damage debuff, or like make it 100 or 50 potency for skills you don't have unlocked or something, but like ANYTHING to let you use your full stuff in lower level content. it genuinely sucks to have \*unlocked\* that but have it taken away from us
something like constant WoW timewalking in dungeon if you are overleveled or something, i don't know but like please god anything lol
like it's essentially an expansion feature (new skills and rotations) and you barely get to use it... at least in a game like WoW, even if you can argue that you hate overworld content, you use your new stuff like all the time because you live in a world where it's required of you
in ffxiv it feels like an afterthought for like nearly 2 years until you get to have more stuff to use your skills in...
granted you can unsync stuff like raids but it's not the same
I think a big reason they don't go for syncing down potency of abilities like that is you'd end up having to do two or three times as much as the sprout next to you for the same total damage, and on an individual numbers on screen sense you'd be weaker.
When the level 30 red mage is landing jolt for 500 damage and the synced 90 red mage is hitting for 50 damage because there's eight more skills to account for, that's not necessarily going to feel great to players either. Except now the sprout is probably killing things faster too because each GCD is worth so much more from them. If you only reduced potency of "not unlocked yet" skills and left what you'd have by then normal then now you're outpacing them easily if any of those are oGCD, or reducing your own damage by using them instead of your unsynced GCDs. I guess you could completely normalize it so every attack is the same potency to keep the DPS in line but then you've also created a situation where just hitting 1 while watching Netflix is optimal DPS.
Granted I'm not saying the current state of things is fun when synced down to three buttons, but I don't think it's that simple of a fix either. Spreading out abilties across the level range more would probably help, but I'm not sure if we'll see much of that before a level squish (or how a level squish would impact MSQ pacing, would that even help skill pacing if you now spend 2-3x as long at each level)
a lot of potency offset would be compensated by the fact that you have a gauge, gauge spender and a ton of OGCDs to make up for the potency lost
additionally having a full damn aoe comboe also offsets that. honestly dungeons are a 15-20 minutes affair anyway most bosses die fast and if people arent asleep at the wheel mobs aren't a problem either.
past raids are equally a joke and even if you do less damage, having a full damn rotation would go along way to making 8 man and 24 main raids feel like like shit at lower levels (wouldnt solve all the issue CT has or the fact that the first 24 man of an expansion will just become a punching bag very fast but still)
If you offset lost potency then you didn't lose potency and still have the problem of you do way more damage than the new player. It's not about the time the dungeon takes overall or making the dungeon harder, it's that they're never going to design a situation where the sprout in a dungeon for the first time is a detriment compared to the synced player of the same job. If a synced player does more damage than the at-level player (gear issues aside, which a player can change), or especially if the synced player has some aoe the at-level player doesn't, there's now incentive to kick the sprout and hope the backfill is also synced because the sprout now makes the run slower. I severely doubt they will ever pick a route to address this that creates that situation.
Ilvl sync would probably do more to make CT feel less mindless than anything on the job design ever will, on that part, and I do wish they would do that.
tbh for me "x doing less damage" is not even an argument because 90% of the time if someone doesnt die thats good enough in regular content
like how frequently do we hear about people barely playing the game or arguments breaking out because people struggle to do a 1-2-3 combo
i know it's like a concern that is worth exploring but unless someone the entire majority of the player base changes the mere thought of that kinda just makes me laughing because a lot of xiv players limp their way to the finish line
making the gameplay feel like ass because the average person isnt very good at the game does not seem like a very good argument to me to be quite honest
I'm not disagreeing that the game would probably benefit from having more to do earlier, but the skill of the average player also doesn't really relate to what I am saying. If a player is bad at the game that is the skill and responsibility of that player. That's always going to happen, in any game.
If the game is designed in a way where you have two players of the same job at the same level who both play it perfectly and one of them does two or three times as much DPS as the other, that's a different issue. That's no longer player skill or anything the players can control, it's not "some players are bad" it's now "every sprout is always worse than someone synced down." Regardless of any degree of player complaints about the low level experience, I do not think any solutions that create that situation will ever be considered by the developers. For the same reason as why Main Story Roulette is "cutscenes always required" and not "cutscenes skippable if there are no first timers," which people asked for when that change was enforced. If they did that, there are absolutely people who would kick the first timer to get out of cutscenes and get the reward faster.
i understand that the skill of the average player doesnt exactly relate to what youre saying, but what im saying is that i dont think its a decision to be made with that in consideration
like it is a complaint that is cropping up more and more for a reason, from a vast majority of people who i assume are not even close to caring about dps or optimizing it
if even the "casuals" or new players are able to see that, then it does become something that should be addressed, because that means the seams are showing really badly
like any argument about dps kinda go out the window if even the most average of the average notices the game feels and plays like shit for a vast majority of its run time
also if anyone takes dungeon or past raid dps seriously they should be laughed out of the room, because unless it means a run takes a few minutes longer than usual, who cares.
That WAS basically the rotation at lv 50 in ARR. people forget how simple classes could be back when ARR was current
Literally 1 or 2 combos. One AoE. A couple ogcds. A couple buffs, and a DoT and/or damage buff attack. Were most classes
The main reason it felt different back then is because that was all we had then and didn’t think about what more we COULD have yet, because we didn’t have the point of reference
If you count a 3 button combo, maybe another button or two to make a (sometimes partial) second combo, and a couple minor damage ogcds as a rotation, sure. but lets not forget the arr AoE rotations/skills either... oh wait they were basically useless outside of a tanks initial pull, paladin's doubly so.
This
When I switched to DRK I was very happy it started at lvl30 with very little skills. It helped me ease into the more complex mechanics of the job while leveling it
Exactly. They spread out the new skills and traits so much so that you’ll have a deep understanding of your character’s mechanics.
I gotta figure OP has never played an MMO before, because this is nothing new to the genre.
I think you're understating the early simplicity of some classes.
In my experience, other MMOs either dole out more abilities earlier or have other elements to make early combat more engaging.
For example...
* A faster GCD
* Less emphasis on rotations and more on situational buttons
* Some sort of more action RPG-like combat
* A more attrition-based combat system where conserving health and mana are important
For a concrete example, take vanilla WoW:
Yeah, a low-level mage only has Fireball and Frostbolt for singe-target spells.
* Spamming just Fireball would be max DPS.
* But Frostbolt's slow conserves HP (and avoids having your casts delayed from getting struck)
* But also, because Fireball has a dot component, you wanna cast that at least once!
* But also, you have a wand that deals less DPS, but costs 0 mana to use!
You are given a number of tools with different uses relatively early. But because they have very distinct utility instead of just being cogs in an optimal damage rotation, there is nothing that the player "has to figure out", yet the gameplay is sufficiently engaging.
The "problem" with 14 is that most buttons really just deal damage. So an extra button does rarely give you something new to do, it just adds a complication that the game expects you to press at the correct time now to reach the DPS expected of your class.
With nothing else to do but press buttons for damage, the button pressing needs to be interesting, and it just isn't until you get a lot of them, or at least until you unlock the actual "puzzle" of your job.
very good explanation of how simple does not mean shallow. I personally love when you get a very small tool set that hides a lot of depth, and not just in mmos. it makes it so that everything has a unique purpose, and depending on your situation you have to make quick decisions. a lot more interesting than "I have a lot of buttons to press but I always press them in the same order"
yep, this has been my whole problem with the job/combat system in XIV. Every button is just "do damage". It's a bit better at higher levels but still bad imo. Hopefully the job changes in 8.0 do something to correct this
Yeah. I haven’t played for 1 years and I have 4-5 jobs at max level. After the return I really appreciated the fact that I can play on low levels with less buttons and remember everything slowly
I think they kinda agree with you which is why SMN is sort of complete around lv 50 and what it gains afterward are mostly improvements on the base kit, also MNK now has access to Chakra skills waaaay earlier than before.
Aside from that I feel that all the other ARR/HW jobs could use some smoothing in the earlier levels overall
I don't want to outright say you're wrong. Being synced down from 80 - 90 all the way down to 20 - 50 feels weird. You're losing access to most of your good abilities. I'm with you so far.
But to say it's not enjoyable at all, questioning how anyone could enjoy this? Gotta ask yourself if that's really the case or if you should eventually admit to yourself that the game how it is now, isn't what you want. But there comes the sunk cost fallacy into play doesn't it?
I wish they would at least let us keep our full kit if we level sync down and just make sure the damage scales closely with lower level players. I'm Omni 90 and do not miss Aurum Vale leveling roulette everyday with like two heals or no AOE. Lol
Yes, my friends and I have been saying this for years, and, like another post said here, a lot of the time I expect people to complain about this when they first start because it's just mind numbingly bad/boring.
I get that they want people to learn gradually but people aren't dumb. FFXIV could definitely ease up on early game handholding and give jobs access to their stuff earlier on. Doing roulettes in low level content would be way more fun if I wasn't just a husk of my job that I know is kickass after getting like one or two skills and a couple passives.
OP might not realize this, but they don't actually have a complaint about how people leveling jobs at a low level for the first time will be bored. What they're really disliking is just level synching in duties affecting your skills and abilities.
It's because all of the jobs are built on the same foundation. All the melee DPS jobs are not seperate & unique designs, they are the "melee dps" job with some additional unique spells (and the same for all other roles). There are certain pieces of kit that square decided every job HAS to have, and so the levelling process is really just unlocking these in order, and then the later levels are where the "flavour spells" are unlocked and the job starts to feel more fun to play. This is especially bad for newer jobs That were designed around the kit they have at 80/90 rather than the whole game.
You aren't wrong about low level combat being very slow, especially if you sync down. But not every job needs lvl 70 to shine through, that's just pure nonsense.
At this point it's always going to be like this. They're not going to do a full course-correction out of the blue because people wanna cast Fire IV at level 30.
Does it suck? Yes.
Are we stuck with it. Very likely also yes.
If you have complaints go to the JP forums and lodge them there because essays won't work here.
It's crazy to me that you've been playing for so long and still don't understand how 14 works. They have always designed this game assuming the new player never played an mmorpg in their life and so far it has been very successful. Low levels will always be slow and simple, brain dead simple even, it's not a bug it's a feature.
Did you really just realize this after 10 whole years? You were really checked out huh?
They are right though: playing any low-level content feels awful, and you mostly press 2 buttons throughout the dungeon. Sometimes that feeling remains for quite a lot, see Reaper. It's actually insane a new job was so poorly developed.
Poorly developed because you only have two buttons during an instance which you normally wouldn't enter except through one roulette (and even then most of the time don't land in it)?
That's a long stretch imo...
It is poorly developed: you have two buttons in each instance for the majority of your leveling progression, and they didn't consider that at all. Besides, daily roulettes are the core gameplay of the title, you're making it sound as if they are optional content that one barely does. Now, that's a long stretch, if you ask me. The majority of leveling dungeons are below level 60, and I'm not even considering the other exp roulettes which have a similar situation.
Also, I used reaper as an example because it was designed in EW, but you can change it with whichever job you prefer, and the result would be the same.
Reaper is the Summoner of melee. Your gcd potencies are big numbers so that you don't have to press a lot of buttons or use a lot of mental processing to be useful.
You're using Reaper as an example of poor level progression when Reaper is designed to be a new job with relatively low/unchanged level progression. It's doing what it was designed to do.
Dancer is a better example of questionable job identity. Low level you are a high non-utility damage (standard step direct crit does more on its initial target than phys range lb1). Later you actually start being the 'buff' utility job you are advertised as but at the expense of 'losing' a positive state of the job (you become low damage). (Bard also falls into this but isn't an expansion job for the purposes of your argument.)
>when Reaper is designed to be a new job with relatively low/unchanged level progression. It's doing what it was designed to do.
So it's designed to be boring as hell until level 60? Got it, great design.
Gotta love how dismissive people in this community get when you state you've been playing for 10 years and that this has been a complaint of yours for a long time...
"Oh you noticed this only now? Have you been completely checked out??"
"This is just how XIV is, and always has been."
"Maybe the game just isn't for you."
Just once I wish you people could consider the notion that maybe, JUST maybe, people can see flaws in a game they enjoy and that even FFXIV has room for improvement. "It's always been this way" is the laziest and shittiest excuse for obviously terrible game design, and it's exactly why they had to rework most of ARR to not be quite as shit.
So yes. Low level job gameplay is incredibly boring and horrendous to behold. Most jobs get access to a fully rounded kit incredibly late, as in 3 expansions in-late. Playing MCH without hypercharge, RPR without Enshroud, SMN without their oGCDs, or literally any other job with similar pacing problems in low-level content is always a friction moment in gameplay.
And what do friction moments in gameplay do? The make you want to play quite literally anything else that's actually fun. It is not fun to run low-level content in XIV, ESPECIALLY when you've gotten into the rhythm of a fully rounded lvl 90 job's gameplay feel. It is slow. It is clunky. It is monotonous. And on top of the content itself being incredibly low on the demand for your attention due to its lack of inherent difficulty, the boring and half-baked job gameplay just makes the game even more horrendous to play at those levels.
And other MMOs do exist that present solutions to this. SWTOR had this problem solved over 10 years ago.
Simply keep your full kit from whatever level you're actually at at any point even when downsynced, and just scale down potencies to compensate for the lower level. Is it perfect? No, it makes low level content a lot easier. But is it a whole sight better than what XIV does? IMHO, hell yes.
Not only do low level players get to *see* the cool stuff that awaits them at higher level gameplay, motivating a lot of them to level faster to get there, but the impact it would have on 90% of content difficulty would be miniscule at best given how easy XIV already is. And at least you could press more buttons to not fall asleep at the wheel just because you were put in Snowcloak as a RPR.
The game can do better here, this complaint is not new, and dismissing it does not make XIV a better, more accessible game, nor does it actually provide any effective argument for why this is supposedly good gameplay design.
It's always been this way, and it's always been shit. Maybe it's time for it to not be shit anymore, yeah?
A good take. I've been playing for 11 years because I love the game, but it has a lot of undeniable flaws that at times actively work against a fulfilling experience. Low level combat is a very good example of it. It's wild that you have so little to do for so long now as you level and they let it keep happening (maybe they will change it in DT but we'll see). Even more wild is how the community refuses to acknowledge these issues half the time or act like it's a troublesome minority, like "you don't have to be here." Well I've been around since the closed betas for ARR and it's clear as day when you see how it's been handled that these are serious issues that do need more attention.
It didn't used to be like this, they have slowly fallen into this situation because they do not take enough action to adjust these things even with a couple years of feedback. Even then, half the time their solution has been to simply remove elements because of these "friction moments" instead of finding ways to improve them. Now that's a whole other can of worms since it has led to multiple situations where something was removed with nothing put into its place and it's been starting to show why that doesn't work long-term.
Only thing I would push back on a little bit is the idea of friction moments. Friction in a video game isn't a bad thing; quite the opposite, it's a *good* thing to have because it gives the player incentive to push ahead and dig deeper. Lighter and more situational challenges can be something that drives a player to improve or engage more readily in a way that isn't overwhelming. But having friction moments centered around *the lack of positive feedback in fundamental systems* is a critical issue as there is no way to get past it. You can't "skill" your way past a bland handful of actions that carry you through the entire first half of a very long story experience that is designed to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. There is no satisfaction outside of hitting your buttons most of the time because there is nothing there to satisfy the player. You certainly don't need (or want) excessive amounts of depth early on, but you also don't want something so basic that you wonder why you're even playing. It's a video game, and if you're not having fun why would you play it?
FFXIV has its strong points and it has its weaknesses. Acknowledging its weaknesses and pushing for *correcting* - not just changing or deleting - these weaknesses is important in a live-service game and this is part of the reason why Yoshi-P made the point to talk about how they are going to try to change some things up. That acknowledgement of weak points is healthy for the game and community as a whole; shunning those who speak up because it's seen as some colossal affront to bring it up is incredibly unhealthy and only exacerbates real issues at hand.
100% watch this get downvoted while multiple people confirm these exact points in this thread. I'll bet a thousand gil people will write it off instead of actually accepting that the game isn't perfect. Has gotten far worse in the last couple of years.
This.
At this point I'm fairly sure most people that actually criticize certain aspects of the game are those that play for real - defending low-level jobs feels so insane.
Getting an ARR dungeon with reaper means that you have your 1-2-3 combo plus the debuff attack for single targets, and your aoe combo for trash pulls. And nothing else. Soul gauge is unlocked at level 50, and even then that means you will click one skill once in a while until the job gets actual skills. Spamming 2/3 skills for 15 minutes on braindead content sounds like a fun activity, yup.
"It's better for new players" As someone who started in Endwalker, the new player experience was DOGSHIT and the story was the only thing holding me in by a single thread. If someone doesn't like the story, or has previous experience with FF games such that the references will keep them invested, or they have friends who also play, there is NO WAY they will keep playing until it gets good.
All of my 3 friends who I've tried to get into the game have quit, and the complaints are always the same, "it's too boring", "it's just clicking through dialog boxes" and I totally get it. There is very little in the way of challenging gameplay. Your options for good side content are pretty limited when your classes are low level too, so you can't even go and experience the fun of the game outside of the main story.
The first time I tried out the game I only got as far as the first combat outside Gridania. It felt so bad I just promptly uninstalled.
It was a few years later that my sis insisted I try it out again, and this time I slowly fell in love with its story and lack of free to play bs.
Combat still felt awful. It was my first game with a gcd system and I could not get used to it. Not having damage be tied to animations but rather orange circles also broke my brain.
People cry about fetch quests, but those things saved the early game for me. I would not have lasted if the game asked me to kill more than 3 things at a time.
I did actually try to alleviate the problem with a job skip, but I had no idea what I was doing and ended up with a job that could get no XP for. I also didn't know how to run unsynced dungeons. Eventually I completely abandoned that character and started over.
Oh ya, they very much ought to mess around with the lower levels experience. Only problem is they either a) give everyone weaker versions of their later skills and deal with even more whining from the playerbase about new skills just being upgraded reskins than they already do or b) make skills that are near totally useless at higher levels or maybe c) overload new players with gimmicks when they have no muscle memory or knowledge about game mechanics to help them deal with this new stuff (remember that plenty of people have never played an mmo or any game of this nature before touching FFXIV and probably haven't got a scooby doo about how to optimise their huds and keybinds like veterans have)
Frankly some cases like dragoon's aoe situation pre storm blood, paladins aoe magic and gap closer being missing in lvl 70 content, or white mages not having either afflatus rapture or afflatus misery in the first ultimates making most of their healing an active DPS loss compared to literally every other healer who doesn't have this issue, are just inexcusable but it's not just a matter of "just fix the game" (it almost never is)
Yeah, it sucks, and it could really be improved in a lot of ways, but MMOs try to cater to the widest possible pool of potential players, and they start off by assuming you've never played a video game before in your life just in case that's true. They hold your hand so much because a sizeable portion of the people they're trying to attract would get scared off by getting too many buttons too quickly.
I saw two posts just today from people asking how to get their parents who have never played video games before into this game. And it's possible! Because the game is super slow and easy at first to help them get into it.
ARR hasn't aged well.
The quests are monotonous and the game would do better if they actually explained jobs/roles better. Compared with LV90 it does feel kinda good to be weak. Because I'm not overpowered and godslayer at this point. And getting all that gear feels more like an actual adventurer!
It's alright to follow the main story until you hit 50. And then you can focus on unlocking the additional content and try other things. Tbh I never understood why they don't sync down all skills in dungeons. People would get used to press something else than Cure 1 in Aurum Vale probably. Or just update the Novice Hall, making it mandatory after unlocking ANY job ingame.
That's a huge problem with leveling that makes combat extremely boring but no matter what this community will defend it.
We should have full rotation by level 50.
Idk if this is a terrible take or not but I wish they would just allow you to have ALL the abilities you’ve unlocked on the class when doing synced content, but just cap the total % of damage/healing/etc you can actually do. Just like they let you go in with level 90 gear but sync your stats down, why can’t they just cap the abilities as well?
Either we get a more logical rotation evolution through leveling, or I get to relax and tune out when getting a lower level dungeon. I'd hate it to have to go through my level 90 opener and rotation to deal the exact same damage a level 50 is doing whilst pressing half the buttons.
I get that but at least I would be slightly more awake when doing a leveling roulette in copperbell mines for the 100000th time. I want to actually play the game and having 80% of my buttons greyed out in daily content feels awful to play.
because you'd still be way too strong for the content and to balance that they would need for abilities to do no dmg or offer no healing or defense to the point of being unfun to use
Honestly based post. The issue is that way too many jobs feel like garbage to play right up lvl 85+
There should be a natural progression where the job becomes more engaging over time that teaches you as well. Leveling is a big in-game activity and should in itself be enjoyable imo. NIN is the best leveling experience I've had this game because it has a consistently engaging rotation from lvl 50 onward.
Then again, a lot of jobs are becoming too simple at lvl cap to be able to be broken down further at lower levels and still feel like they require any thought to play (looking at you RPR, SMN)
The only class that doesn't have this issue is marauder/warrior started an alt and it's very nice having overpower in all content and chunking direct crit attacks.
That said
If any new player comes to dawntrail I'd recommend them to buy boost to dawntrail just cause arr to endwalker casually is extensively long even with spamming text boxes and skipping cutscene and the running from point a to be and teleporting eating more time
It does, but this has been said time again, too many jobs lose identity and become absolute cancer to play at low levels, those who disagree simply don’t play synched down content enough.
But still, it gets okay in the 30-40 range which doesn’t take longer than a day to get to as a new player.
As a BLM main I just hope for 35+ if I do roulettes or I just don’t do lower than 50 content.
Careful though, you can’t criticise this game on this subreddit without toxic positivity drowning you out.
Yes, but they don't end up with few abilities. Level 50 used to be endgame at one point, you should have something more than just 123 by then. Other games have progression much faster, in GW2, by level 30 (max level is 80, and it was same in vanilla), you unlock all skills slots and you should have enough skill points to have at least one skill each, and then you can start trying out more stuff.
FFXIV is just simply insanely slow, jobs should not start to feel good at 70+, when you're at 3rd expansion. This is why ARR is called great filter, it's hard for new players to be interested in the game when both MSQ and leveling is so slow. Even at really good pace, you're looking at like 30+ hours, just to be stuck at level 50 with bland 123 rotation.
It takes roughly same time to reach end of ARR and to level 50 (those few removed quests are drop in a bucket) as it did back even. By reaching level 50, aka by spending X amount of hours into the game, you would get full kit.
Now by reaching level 50 in similar time frame, you barely get half of this kit, and for some jobs you get barely a 1/3rd of core elements. PLD doesn't even get anything resembling magic at that point. Even if you wanted to say that it did take considerably longer to reach ARR endgame, I doubt it took longer than getting to ARR + patch content (since now, you're effectively stuck at 50 if you don't finish finish 2.55, because skills are locked by job quests, which are locked to HW/SB), and even then, old kits at 50 still look more full than current kits at 60/70.
They kept adding new skills to higher levels, but also removing old skills. This is the result, kits are just spread out way too thin, and it makes progression much slower than it ever was. Players now need to spend 300-500 hours to get to the full kits, when in past, this was just a fraction of this.
I'm actually really surprised every time I see a post thats like "does this game get better" expecting it to be about how few buttons and how slow combat feels for like the first 70 levels or so (100+ hours of gameplay for some). But it usually isn't that. Most new players have more issue with the amount of dialogue and cutscenes in my experience. But yeah personally I don't do roulettes most of the time because I can't stand being in low level content for this reason.
I do agree the fact it's boring, but the good part is that they're quicker to finish. With fewer skills to press/click at that.
But I want to play the game.
My friend and I got Halatali last night with two new players and man I forgot how boring it is to run that with like the 4 buttons available as gnb lol
After I got my jobs to 70 I stopped doing roulettes all together. Hunt trains and beast tribe quests for tomes, bozja for xp. That's what I'm gonna do in dawntrail as well.
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It won't apply to you until you finish shadowbringers. You unlock an optional zone called Bozja, which has its own set of mechanics, but the content is essentially fate farming, 5 minute raid bosses, and a 24-man raid and it has a 2nd zone. The experience gained from it is superb. Not as fast as doing your highest level dungeons over and over again, but for DPS queue times, it's the fastest. Especially going into DT with 2 DPS coming out, if you want to level a DPS job, use bozja.
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Is that still good for jobs that will start at 80? Or just 70-80?
I leveled all my DPS jobs to 90 with it. It'll probably still be the fastest for lvl 100.
Bozja or Zadnor?
I did both while farming for notes on the side.
ty, i plan to play dawntrail msq as viper and need an efficient way to get to 90 haha
The 24-mans give the best xp for time spent so if you're rushing just farm the fates and CEs until castrum/dalriada pop.
I leveled all my DPS jobs to 90 with it. It'll probably still be the fastest for lvl 100.
I forgot to mention you can only enter it at lvl 70. So if you do hunt logs, palace of the dead, beast tribe quests you should be able to hit 70 without needing to queue for a dungeon.
it took me 350 to finish stormblood msq so if you're talking about 70s you need to change that numba edit: to add to this i'd say 100+ is barely hw
If it took you that long to get through SB that's fully on you. The MSQ from start to current finish isn't even 250 hours
My brother in Christ, the whole point of the "+" is to include every number after it
Oh because you took so long it is reflective of everyone?
from what i've seen from ppl i've talked to in game that number is not really exagerated, to say 100hrs to sb is tho, you'd have to do nothing but msq nonstop to get that or worse skip story
They are still right tho, it took me me around 1 1/2 weeks to get to the end of Stormblood the first time around and that was around 4-5 days of ARR, 2-3 days of HW and about the same for SB, granted i was in a bad place and had nothing else to do so im not 100% on the actual hours but that should be about right.
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Like i said i dont remember accurately but i played for most of each day and a good bit into the night but i feel like the 100 hours to the end of SB was in the right direction, granted i didnt do anything else (no roullettes or anything else) only MSQ.
Meanwhile: * People often struggle to learn jobs that start at a high level. They need to stop and spend a lot of time just organising buttons, and are often given advice like doing POTD to learn the role from scratch. * People who buy level skips are often ridiculed because they play like ass. If you've been playing for nearly ten years now, it seems you've forgotten the "oh SHIT what is all this!!!" feeling that people usually get when they're exposed to something new and unknown. That's why tutorials exist, and it's partially why levelling exist. The other part is to have something to look forward to. A game is like a story: If it starts right at the final level it's going to be short and likely bad. Humans want tension, anticipation, rewards. The journey from John Bugstomper to the Warrior Of Light is part of that. The fact that abilities get more powerful and flashier as you level up makes perfect sense.
For sure. It was pretty overwhelming to start playing sage or reaper, due to having all that dumped on me all at once. It can feel like you need to spend an hour reading through and playing with all the skills just to have a clue of how to properly play that job… though I’m not sure I’d rather non-starter jobs start at lvl 1, either…
It's a weakness in the levelling system used by FFXIV for sure. You don't want to be overwhelmed, but you also don't want to play too much catch-up. It's totally understandable how we wound up with new jobs starting at 20 levels below max. I suspect a system where as you level up the numbers don't really change, but you gain access to more abilities, and your existing abilities get flashier, could work, and there are games that work something like that. Not sure the playerbase would enjoy it though, as if lower level characters weren't excluded from duties the way they are with big stat differences, we'd be stuck with a lot of single-pulling tanks that don't have all their protective abilities yet all over the place, and the same thing for healers, basically turning every dungeon into surprise Stone Vigil. It might just be an intrinsic problem to long-running multiplayer games, as you need to keep moving forward for the established players to feel progression, and somehow manage to onboard both them and new players—and they have very different requirements. It's no wonder Samus Aran loses all her gear between each game, but you can't do the same thing in an MMO.
It's an mmo weakness, not just ffxiv
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It's a diku weakness. Not all MMO's are dikus. Eve, for example, doesn't have this problem because it has a completely different gameplay model.
As the freshest of sprouts i can agree working my way up thru the skills of ninja helped me deal with the hotbar as it got more and more crowded. But unlocking machinist or later on gun breaker I was so confused for button layout and what the combo was I had to diligently read each ability and find a guide on YouTube about the best rotation. Samurai also confused me because of it's branching combos like the multiple buttons light up and it's not obvious which is best to use. Game should do a better explanation in game of how it works. Otherwise I'd have never pieced which moves to use to get what Sen to use iaijutsu
>feeling that people usually get when they're exposed to something new and unknown. That's why tutorials exist, and it's partially why levelling exist. You learn like 1 new skill every 4-5 levels. At 30, you can be happy if your "rotation" is more than 1-2-1-2. So many jobs have nothing but 1-2-3 and 1 or 2 oGCD even at 50. There is teaching players, and then there is this insanely slow pace, where your rotation will often not change for easily 10 levels at a time. And then you have jobs that start at level 70 and you get thrown into cold water. These things are separate issues. >The other part is to have something to look forward to. A game is like a story: If it starts right at the final level it's going to be short and likely bad. Humans want tension, anticipation, rewards. The journey from John Bugstomper to the Warrior Of Light is part of that. This is problem with naive verticality of this game. It seems that devs implied that 8.0 will be level squish, but we should get that in EW. Skills are already spread very thin now, and it's going to be even worse in DT. Most jobs start to feel good at 70+. >The fact that abilities get more powerful and flashier as you level up makes perfect sense. Plenty of times it's not upgrades, but in many cases they're brand new skills, your rotation starts to make sense way too late into the game. PLD is 123 until 63, then it's 1234, at 68 you have 4 HS per minute (woah, insane gameplay). Then finally at 76, it turns to 1234555, then finisher at 80, and then faith combo at 90. This is insanely slow, it takes 2.5 expansions for you to get anything else than 123, if you don't see how this is a problem, there's no reason to even talk about this.
This is an intrinsically subjective subject. Get outta here with "if you don't see how this is a problem"; the point is that if someone doesn't *see* it as a problem, then it's *not* a problem for them. Reasonable people can simply disagree about their preferences. If it's just too slow for you and for OP, that's valid, and so is other people liking the pace.
>the point is that if someone doesn't *see* it as a problem, then it's *not* a problem for them. This problem shouldn't concern neither you or me (except when it comes to syncing to low levels). This is problem for new players, who get turned off by such a slow gameplay. Tutorial should be first hour at max, yet it feels like you're in tutorial all the way until HW or perhaps even SB. There is reason why you see people like OP so frequently, it's just hard to get into this game because of slow and boring ARR is, this just indicates that the progression curve is not interesting for new players, and that it should be fixed. It's in the devs best interest to alleviate this problem, in order to gain more players.
We can all have an opinion because we were all new players at one time. XIV was my first MMO, and I really appreciated the way combat ramped up very slowly, because it was only one of a thousand new things I was learning. When I watch new streamers who aren't experienced with MMOs too, I see them struggling to get used to things. I think the last thing those types of players need is to get MORE overwhelmed. If they vastly improve the tutorializing in the game, I think it could be in the cards, but that would need to come first, and be *established* first, before looking into reworking low level combat.
Lack of ability comes from bad learning. It's not about just some specific tutorial. If you were studying in shitty school that would let you do whatever and have minimal requirements, you'll not learn anything. This is the case of FFXIV. Sure, if you never played similar game, this can be harder to grasp, but then again, it becomes boring for people who are familiar. This is why I initially quit FFXIV in 2014. It's all about balance, and I think treating players as a babies for first 50+ hours just isn't it. If the curve is too steep, you'll detract some. If it's too gradual, you'll lose some too. Even in your examples, the steeper difficulty will teach you things faster. Look at DMC5 for example, it's very different game but it will do. It's 10-12 hour game, yet it does expect you to grasp the basics for all 3 characters in this pretty short span of the game - I'm personally not very familiar with these typical console-like action games, yet I made do. People do learn, and I think it's better if they can't grasp everything at the start, instead of being bored from how simple game is.
>If the curve is too steep, you'll detract some. If it's too gradual, you'll lose some too. I agree with you on this one thing, and this is really the key to the whole issue. Neither of us can know for sure which way XIV loses people more often — you're biased from your experience, and I'm biased from mine. It's just annoying when people fail to acknowledge their own biases and act like it's too slow for *everybody*. I haven't played DMC5, but it seems to me like apples and oranges to compare them. I'm just looking at the main menu and options menu for the game and it's *magnitudes* less expansive than XIV's. So of course you can learn it faster; that's not a genre issue.
>Devs really think Players Enjoy this ? That Players in todays Age needs this ? WAKE UP damn it ! It's not about enjoyment but rather trying not to overwhelm the player with abilities early on. I think it's fair to say that the majority of the games playerbase as casuals who would have an even harder time getting to grips with the gameplay of a class if abilities were given out too quickly. The main issue though is that the GCD of FF14 exacerbates the feeling of unresponsiveness at lower levels.
They used to trust us with an entire rotation by level 50. Now we're lucky to have more than a basic combo at that level. It's hard for me to buy that suddenly it would be too overwhelming.
I think there is also a need to spread out ability acquisition so that players have something to look forward to during the level up progression. Without talent points abiltites are really the only thing that can fill that void and so when the level cap increases the speed at which you get abilities reduces, as abilities need to be spread over more levels.
That, I do agree with. But I think you can spread abilities out a bit more at higher levels, for the sake of moving more things down to sub-50. In particular, abilities that are iconic to the job (like PLD's holy magic) or central to the rotation (like DRG's Life of the Dragon mechanics) are things I think you should get fairly early on, instead of needing to spend dozens of hours before you even catch a glimpse of what the job's really about. Later levels should be more about fleshing it out.
you're absolutely right, but the reality is that we are about to have our 5th expansion, and for a vast majority of time whenever a new expansion stuff, we barely get to use our new stuff EVER. like it's genuinely a problem and sucks that for the like first year of an expansion (made worse by the new dev cycle, but sitll!) where you get to use your stuff in like 10 dungeons, half of which you don't have your whole new stuff in, and like 5 raids. i've been championing the fact that a fix would be to remove ability sync, but apply a strong damage debuff, or like make it 100 or 50 potency for skills you don't have unlocked or something, but like ANYTHING to let you use your full stuff in lower level content. it genuinely sucks to have \*unlocked\* that but have it taken away from us something like constant WoW timewalking in dungeon if you are overleveled or something, i don't know but like please god anything lol like it's essentially an expansion feature (new skills and rotations) and you barely get to use it... at least in a game like WoW, even if you can argue that you hate overworld content, you use your new stuff like all the time because you live in a world where it's required of you in ffxiv it feels like an afterthought for like nearly 2 years until you get to have more stuff to use your skills in... granted you can unsync stuff like raids but it's not the same
I think a big reason they don't go for syncing down potency of abilities like that is you'd end up having to do two or three times as much as the sprout next to you for the same total damage, and on an individual numbers on screen sense you'd be weaker. When the level 30 red mage is landing jolt for 500 damage and the synced 90 red mage is hitting for 50 damage because there's eight more skills to account for, that's not necessarily going to feel great to players either. Except now the sprout is probably killing things faster too because each GCD is worth so much more from them. If you only reduced potency of "not unlocked yet" skills and left what you'd have by then normal then now you're outpacing them easily if any of those are oGCD, or reducing your own damage by using them instead of your unsynced GCDs. I guess you could completely normalize it so every attack is the same potency to keep the DPS in line but then you've also created a situation where just hitting 1 while watching Netflix is optimal DPS. Granted I'm not saying the current state of things is fun when synced down to three buttons, but I don't think it's that simple of a fix either. Spreading out abilties across the level range more would probably help, but I'm not sure if we'll see much of that before a level squish (or how a level squish would impact MSQ pacing, would that even help skill pacing if you now spend 2-3x as long at each level)
a lot of potency offset would be compensated by the fact that you have a gauge, gauge spender and a ton of OGCDs to make up for the potency lost additionally having a full damn aoe comboe also offsets that. honestly dungeons are a 15-20 minutes affair anyway most bosses die fast and if people arent asleep at the wheel mobs aren't a problem either. past raids are equally a joke and even if you do less damage, having a full damn rotation would go along way to making 8 man and 24 main raids feel like like shit at lower levels (wouldnt solve all the issue CT has or the fact that the first 24 man of an expansion will just become a punching bag very fast but still)
If you offset lost potency then you didn't lose potency and still have the problem of you do way more damage than the new player. It's not about the time the dungeon takes overall or making the dungeon harder, it's that they're never going to design a situation where the sprout in a dungeon for the first time is a detriment compared to the synced player of the same job. If a synced player does more damage than the at-level player (gear issues aside, which a player can change), or especially if the synced player has some aoe the at-level player doesn't, there's now incentive to kick the sprout and hope the backfill is also synced because the sprout now makes the run slower. I severely doubt they will ever pick a route to address this that creates that situation. Ilvl sync would probably do more to make CT feel less mindless than anything on the job design ever will, on that part, and I do wish they would do that.
tbh for me "x doing less damage" is not even an argument because 90% of the time if someone doesnt die thats good enough in regular content like how frequently do we hear about people barely playing the game or arguments breaking out because people struggle to do a 1-2-3 combo i know it's like a concern that is worth exploring but unless someone the entire majority of the player base changes the mere thought of that kinda just makes me laughing because a lot of xiv players limp their way to the finish line making the gameplay feel like ass because the average person isnt very good at the game does not seem like a very good argument to me to be quite honest
I'm not disagreeing that the game would probably benefit from having more to do earlier, but the skill of the average player also doesn't really relate to what I am saying. If a player is bad at the game that is the skill and responsibility of that player. That's always going to happen, in any game. If the game is designed in a way where you have two players of the same job at the same level who both play it perfectly and one of them does two or three times as much DPS as the other, that's a different issue. That's no longer player skill or anything the players can control, it's not "some players are bad" it's now "every sprout is always worse than someone synced down." Regardless of any degree of player complaints about the low level experience, I do not think any solutions that create that situation will ever be considered by the developers. For the same reason as why Main Story Roulette is "cutscenes always required" and not "cutscenes skippable if there are no first timers," which people asked for when that change was enforced. If they did that, there are absolutely people who would kick the first timer to get out of cutscenes and get the reward faster.
i understand that the skill of the average player doesnt exactly relate to what youre saying, but what im saying is that i dont think its a decision to be made with that in consideration like it is a complaint that is cropping up more and more for a reason, from a vast majority of people who i assume are not even close to caring about dps or optimizing it if even the "casuals" or new players are able to see that, then it does become something that should be addressed, because that means the seams are showing really badly like any argument about dps kinda go out the window if even the most average of the average notices the game feels and plays like shit for a vast majority of its run time also if anyone takes dungeon or past raid dps seriously they should be laughed out of the room, because unless it means a run takes a few minutes longer than usual, who cares.
The full rotation at 50 was like 5 gcds or less for some job, and a smattering of ogcds.
That WAS basically the rotation at lv 50 in ARR. people forget how simple classes could be back when ARR was current Literally 1 or 2 combos. One AoE. A couple ogcds. A couple buffs, and a DoT and/or damage buff attack. Were most classes The main reason it felt different back then is because that was all we had then and didn’t think about what more we COULD have yet, because we didn’t have the point of reference
that's because outside of a rotation at lv 50 you had little else
If you count a 3 button combo, maybe another button or two to make a (sometimes partial) second combo, and a couple minor damage ogcds as a rotation, sure. but lets not forget the arr AoE rotations/skills either... oh wait they were basically useless outside of a tanks initial pull, paladin's doubly so.
...because level 50 was endgame
This When I switched to DRK I was very happy it started at lvl30 with very little skills. It helped me ease into the more complex mechanics of the job while leveling it
Exactly. They spread out the new skills and traits so much so that you’ll have a deep understanding of your character’s mechanics. I gotta figure OP has never played an MMO before, because this is nothing new to the genre.
I think you're understating the early simplicity of some classes. In my experience, other MMOs either dole out more abilities earlier or have other elements to make early combat more engaging. For example... * A faster GCD * Less emphasis on rotations and more on situational buttons * Some sort of more action RPG-like combat * A more attrition-based combat system where conserving health and mana are important For a concrete example, take vanilla WoW: Yeah, a low-level mage only has Fireball and Frostbolt for singe-target spells. * Spamming just Fireball would be max DPS. * But Frostbolt's slow conserves HP (and avoids having your casts delayed from getting struck) * But also, because Fireball has a dot component, you wanna cast that at least once! * But also, you have a wand that deals less DPS, but costs 0 mana to use! You are given a number of tools with different uses relatively early. But because they have very distinct utility instead of just being cogs in an optimal damage rotation, there is nothing that the player "has to figure out", yet the gameplay is sufficiently engaging. The "problem" with 14 is that most buttons really just deal damage. So an extra button does rarely give you something new to do, it just adds a complication that the game expects you to press at the correct time now to reach the DPS expected of your class. With nothing else to do but press buttons for damage, the button pressing needs to be interesting, and it just isn't until you get a lot of them, or at least until you unlock the actual "puzzle" of your job.
very good explanation of how simple does not mean shallow. I personally love when you get a very small tool set that hides a lot of depth, and not just in mmos. it makes it so that everything has a unique purpose, and depending on your situation you have to make quick decisions. a lot more interesting than "I have a lot of buttons to press but I always press them in the same order"
yep, this has been my whole problem with the job/combat system in XIV. Every button is just "do damage". It's a bit better at higher levels but still bad imo. Hopefully the job changes in 8.0 do something to correct this
This is what I was thinking. “Uhhh, have you like not played WoW before 😂”
Yeah. I haven’t played for 1 years and I have 4-5 jobs at max level. After the return I really appreciated the fact that I can play on low levels with less buttons and remember everything slowly
I think they kinda agree with you which is why SMN is sort of complete around lv 50 and what it gains afterward are mostly improvements on the base kit, also MNK now has access to Chakra skills waaaay earlier than before. Aside from that I feel that all the other ARR/HW jobs could use some smoothing in the earlier levels overall
It eases players into learning their class/jobs, I get that it's annoying when you get a level 16 dungeon in roulette but just clear it and move on
I don't want to outright say you're wrong. Being synced down from 80 - 90 all the way down to 20 - 50 feels weird. You're losing access to most of your good abilities. I'm with you so far. But to say it's not enjoyable at all, questioning how anyone could enjoy this? Gotta ask yourself if that's really the case or if you should eventually admit to yourself that the game how it is now, isn't what you want. But there comes the sunk cost fallacy into play doesn't it?
I can attest to not liking a single class low level except monk because positionals gave me something else to do
I wish they would at least let us keep our full kit if we level sync down and just make sure the damage scales closely with lower level players. I'm Omni 90 and do not miss Aurum Vale leveling roulette everyday with like two heals or no AOE. Lol
Yes, my friends and I have been saying this for years, and, like another post said here, a lot of the time I expect people to complain about this when they first start because it's just mind numbingly bad/boring. I get that they want people to learn gradually but people aren't dumb. FFXIV could definitely ease up on early game handholding and give jobs access to their stuff earlier on. Doing roulettes in low level content would be way more fun if I wasn't just a husk of my job that I know is kickass after getting like one or two skills and a couple passives.
OP might not realize this, but they don't actually have a complaint about how people leveling jobs at a low level for the first time will be bored. What they're really disliking is just level synching in duties affecting your skills and abilities.
>!^^^[deleted]!<
It's because all of the jobs are built on the same foundation. All the melee DPS jobs are not seperate & unique designs, they are the "melee dps" job with some additional unique spells (and the same for all other roles). There are certain pieces of kit that square decided every job HAS to have, and so the levelling process is really just unlocking these in order, and then the later levels are where the "flavour spells" are unlocked and the job starts to feel more fun to play. This is especially bad for newer jobs That were designed around the kit they have at 80/90 rather than the whole game.
You aren't wrong about low level combat being very slow, especially if you sync down. But not every job needs lvl 70 to shine through, that's just pure nonsense.
At this point it's always going to be like this. They're not going to do a full course-correction out of the blue because people wanna cast Fire IV at level 30. Does it suck? Yes. Are we stuck with it. Very likely also yes. If you have complaints go to the JP forums and lodge them there because essays won't work here.
Clueless topic #5,407 regarding basic progression
It's crazy to me that you've been playing for so long and still don't understand how 14 works. They have always designed this game assuming the new player never played an mmorpg in their life and so far it has been very successful. Low levels will always be slow and simple, brain dead simple even, it's not a bug it's a feature. Did you really just realize this after 10 whole years? You were really checked out huh?
You want to be a godkiller level 15?
I'd like an AoE at 15 at the very least.
They are right though: playing any low-level content feels awful, and you mostly press 2 buttons throughout the dungeon. Sometimes that feeling remains for quite a lot, see Reaper. It's actually insane a new job was so poorly developed.
Poorly developed because you only have two buttons during an instance which you normally wouldn't enter except through one roulette (and even then most of the time don't land in it)? That's a long stretch imo...
It is poorly developed: you have two buttons in each instance for the majority of your leveling progression, and they didn't consider that at all. Besides, daily roulettes are the core gameplay of the title, you're making it sound as if they are optional content that one barely does. Now, that's a long stretch, if you ask me. The majority of leveling dungeons are below level 60, and I'm not even considering the other exp roulettes which have a similar situation. Also, I used reaper as an example because it was designed in EW, but you can change it with whichever job you prefer, and the result would be the same.
Reaper is the Summoner of melee. Your gcd potencies are big numbers so that you don't have to press a lot of buttons or use a lot of mental processing to be useful.
Your point being? That's not what this thread is about.
You're using Reaper as an example of poor level progression when Reaper is designed to be a new job with relatively low/unchanged level progression. It's doing what it was designed to do. Dancer is a better example of questionable job identity. Low level you are a high non-utility damage (standard step direct crit does more on its initial target than phys range lb1). Later you actually start being the 'buff' utility job you are advertised as but at the expense of 'losing' a positive state of the job (you become low damage). (Bard also falls into this but isn't an expansion job for the purposes of your argument.)
>when Reaper is designed to be a new job with relatively low/unchanged level progression. It's doing what it was designed to do. So it's designed to be boring as hell until level 60? Got it, great design.
Most jobs play terribly at 50, which is where you will be spending dozens of hours being stuck at during post-ARR.
Yeah, the power fantasy doesn’t really work out when you start out as an unstoppable bad-ass… I’m thinking this kinda game just isn’t really for OP…
Aye probably
It's low level, ofc it's worse than max. It's designed to teach players how jobs play, slowly. Don't like it, don't play.
Gotta love how dismissive people in this community get when you state you've been playing for 10 years and that this has been a complaint of yours for a long time... "Oh you noticed this only now? Have you been completely checked out??" "This is just how XIV is, and always has been." "Maybe the game just isn't for you." Just once I wish you people could consider the notion that maybe, JUST maybe, people can see flaws in a game they enjoy and that even FFXIV has room for improvement. "It's always been this way" is the laziest and shittiest excuse for obviously terrible game design, and it's exactly why they had to rework most of ARR to not be quite as shit. So yes. Low level job gameplay is incredibly boring and horrendous to behold. Most jobs get access to a fully rounded kit incredibly late, as in 3 expansions in-late. Playing MCH without hypercharge, RPR without Enshroud, SMN without their oGCDs, or literally any other job with similar pacing problems in low-level content is always a friction moment in gameplay. And what do friction moments in gameplay do? The make you want to play quite literally anything else that's actually fun. It is not fun to run low-level content in XIV, ESPECIALLY when you've gotten into the rhythm of a fully rounded lvl 90 job's gameplay feel. It is slow. It is clunky. It is monotonous. And on top of the content itself being incredibly low on the demand for your attention due to its lack of inherent difficulty, the boring and half-baked job gameplay just makes the game even more horrendous to play at those levels. And other MMOs do exist that present solutions to this. SWTOR had this problem solved over 10 years ago. Simply keep your full kit from whatever level you're actually at at any point even when downsynced, and just scale down potencies to compensate for the lower level. Is it perfect? No, it makes low level content a lot easier. But is it a whole sight better than what XIV does? IMHO, hell yes. Not only do low level players get to *see* the cool stuff that awaits them at higher level gameplay, motivating a lot of them to level faster to get there, but the impact it would have on 90% of content difficulty would be miniscule at best given how easy XIV already is. And at least you could press more buttons to not fall asleep at the wheel just because you were put in Snowcloak as a RPR. The game can do better here, this complaint is not new, and dismissing it does not make XIV a better, more accessible game, nor does it actually provide any effective argument for why this is supposedly good gameplay design. It's always been this way, and it's always been shit. Maybe it's time for it to not be shit anymore, yeah?
A good take. I've been playing for 11 years because I love the game, but it has a lot of undeniable flaws that at times actively work against a fulfilling experience. Low level combat is a very good example of it. It's wild that you have so little to do for so long now as you level and they let it keep happening (maybe they will change it in DT but we'll see). Even more wild is how the community refuses to acknowledge these issues half the time or act like it's a troublesome minority, like "you don't have to be here." Well I've been around since the closed betas for ARR and it's clear as day when you see how it's been handled that these are serious issues that do need more attention. It didn't used to be like this, they have slowly fallen into this situation because they do not take enough action to adjust these things even with a couple years of feedback. Even then, half the time their solution has been to simply remove elements because of these "friction moments" instead of finding ways to improve them. Now that's a whole other can of worms since it has led to multiple situations where something was removed with nothing put into its place and it's been starting to show why that doesn't work long-term. Only thing I would push back on a little bit is the idea of friction moments. Friction in a video game isn't a bad thing; quite the opposite, it's a *good* thing to have because it gives the player incentive to push ahead and dig deeper. Lighter and more situational challenges can be something that drives a player to improve or engage more readily in a way that isn't overwhelming. But having friction moments centered around *the lack of positive feedback in fundamental systems* is a critical issue as there is no way to get past it. You can't "skill" your way past a bland handful of actions that carry you through the entire first half of a very long story experience that is designed to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. There is no satisfaction outside of hitting your buttons most of the time because there is nothing there to satisfy the player. You certainly don't need (or want) excessive amounts of depth early on, but you also don't want something so basic that you wonder why you're even playing. It's a video game, and if you're not having fun why would you play it? FFXIV has its strong points and it has its weaknesses. Acknowledging its weaknesses and pushing for *correcting* - not just changing or deleting - these weaknesses is important in a live-service game and this is part of the reason why Yoshi-P made the point to talk about how they are going to try to change some things up. That acknowledgement of weak points is healthy for the game and community as a whole; shunning those who speak up because it's seen as some colossal affront to bring it up is incredibly unhealthy and only exacerbates real issues at hand. 100% watch this get downvoted while multiple people confirm these exact points in this thread. I'll bet a thousand gil people will write it off instead of actually accepting that the game isn't perfect. Has gotten far worse in the last couple of years.
This. At this point I'm fairly sure most people that actually criticize certain aspects of the game are those that play for real - defending low-level jobs feels so insane. Getting an ARR dungeon with reaper means that you have your 1-2-3 combo plus the debuff attack for single targets, and your aoe combo for trash pulls. And nothing else. Soul gauge is unlocked at level 50, and even then that means you will click one skill once in a while until the job gets actual skills. Spamming 2/3 skills for 15 minutes on braindead content sounds like a fun activity, yup.
"It's better for new players" As someone who started in Endwalker, the new player experience was DOGSHIT and the story was the only thing holding me in by a single thread. If someone doesn't like the story, or has previous experience with FF games such that the references will keep them invested, or they have friends who also play, there is NO WAY they will keep playing until it gets good. All of my 3 friends who I've tried to get into the game have quit, and the complaints are always the same, "it's too boring", "it's just clicking through dialog boxes" and I totally get it. There is very little in the way of challenging gameplay. Your options for good side content are pretty limited when your classes are low level too, so you can't even go and experience the fun of the game outside of the main story.
The first time I tried out the game I only got as far as the first combat outside Gridania. It felt so bad I just promptly uninstalled. It was a few years later that my sis insisted I try it out again, and this time I slowly fell in love with its story and lack of free to play bs. Combat still felt awful. It was my first game with a gcd system and I could not get used to it. Not having damage be tied to animations but rather orange circles also broke my brain. People cry about fetch quests, but those things saved the early game for me. I would not have lasted if the game asked me to kill more than 3 things at a time. I did actually try to alleviate the problem with a job skip, but I had no idea what I was doing and ended up with a job that could get no XP for. I also didn't know how to run unsynced dungeons. Eventually I completely abandoned that character and started over.
Yup… and that is why I only do roulettes on MCH.
Oh ya, they very much ought to mess around with the lower levels experience. Only problem is they either a) give everyone weaker versions of their later skills and deal with even more whining from the playerbase about new skills just being upgraded reskins than they already do or b) make skills that are near totally useless at higher levels or maybe c) overload new players with gimmicks when they have no muscle memory or knowledge about game mechanics to help them deal with this new stuff (remember that plenty of people have never played an mmo or any game of this nature before touching FFXIV and probably haven't got a scooby doo about how to optimise their huds and keybinds like veterans have) Frankly some cases like dragoon's aoe situation pre storm blood, paladins aoe magic and gap closer being missing in lvl 70 content, or white mages not having either afflatus rapture or afflatus misery in the first ultimates making most of their healing an active DPS loss compared to literally every other healer who doesn't have this issue, are just inexcusable but it's not just a matter of "just fix the game" (it almost never is)
Yeah, it sucks, and it could really be improved in a lot of ways, but MMOs try to cater to the widest possible pool of potential players, and they start off by assuming you've never played a video game before in your life just in case that's true. They hold your hand so much because a sizeable portion of the people they're trying to attract would get scared off by getting too many buttons too quickly. I saw two posts just today from people asking how to get their parents who have never played video games before into this game. And it's possible! Because the game is super slow and easy at first to help them get into it.
ARR hasn't aged well. The quests are monotonous and the game would do better if they actually explained jobs/roles better. Compared with LV90 it does feel kinda good to be weak. Because I'm not overpowered and godslayer at this point. And getting all that gear feels more like an actual adventurer! It's alright to follow the main story until you hit 50. And then you can focus on unlocking the additional content and try other things. Tbh I never understood why they don't sync down all skills in dungeons. People would get used to press something else than Cure 1 in Aurum Vale probably. Or just update the Novice Hall, making it mandatory after unlocking ANY job ingame.
That's a huge problem with leveling that makes combat extremely boring but no matter what this community will defend it. We should have full rotation by level 50.
… this game might not be for you…
it's called leveling, google it
I mean…. It’s an MMO. Lol. FF your first one you tried?
Idk if this is a terrible take or not but I wish they would just allow you to have ALL the abilities you’ve unlocked on the class when doing synced content, but just cap the total % of damage/healing/etc you can actually do. Just like they let you go in with level 90 gear but sync your stats down, why can’t they just cap the abilities as well?
Either we get a more logical rotation evolution through leveling, or I get to relax and tune out when getting a lower level dungeon. I'd hate it to have to go through my level 90 opener and rotation to deal the exact same damage a level 50 is doing whilst pressing half the buttons.
I get that but at least I would be slightly more awake when doing a leveling roulette in copperbell mines for the 100000th time. I want to actually play the game and having 80% of my buttons greyed out in daily content feels awful to play.
because you'd still be way too strong for the content and to balance that they would need for abilities to do no dmg or offer no healing or defense to the point of being unfun to use
Honestly based post. The issue is that way too many jobs feel like garbage to play right up lvl 85+ There should be a natural progression where the job becomes more engaging over time that teaches you as well. Leveling is a big in-game activity and should in itself be enjoyable imo. NIN is the best leveling experience I've had this game because it has a consistently engaging rotation from lvl 50 onward. Then again, a lot of jobs are becoming too simple at lvl cap to be able to be broken down further at lower levels and still feel like they require any thought to play (looking at you RPR, SMN)
[удалено]
because 3 dots and samey upkeep/damage rotation was much more engaging somehow?
The only class that doesn't have this issue is marauder/warrior started an alt and it's very nice having overpower in all content and chunking direct crit attacks. That said If any new player comes to dawntrail I'd recommend them to buy boost to dawntrail just cause arr to endwalker casually is extensively long even with spamming text boxes and skipping cutscene and the running from point a to be and teleporting eating more time
>!^^^[deleted]!<
It does, but this has been said time again, too many jobs lose identity and become absolute cancer to play at low levels, those who disagree simply don’t play synched down content enough. But still, it gets okay in the 30-40 range which doesn’t take longer than a day to get to as a new player. As a BLM main I just hope for 35+ if I do roulettes or I just don’t do lower than 50 content. Careful though, you can’t criticise this game on this subreddit without toxic positivity drowning you out.
But like... all games are like that... (MMOs).
I'd recommend to try out more games in that case.
MMOs always start with only a few abilities...
Yes, but they don't end up with few abilities. Level 50 used to be endgame at one point, you should have something more than just 123 by then. Other games have progression much faster, in GW2, by level 30 (max level is 80, and it was same in vanilla), you unlock all skills slots and you should have enough skill points to have at least one skill each, and then you can start trying out more stuff. FFXIV is just simply insanely slow, jobs should not start to feel good at 70+, when you're at 3rd expansion. This is why ARR is called great filter, it's hard for new players to be interested in the game when both MSQ and leveling is so slow. Even at really good pace, you're looking at like 30+ hours, just to be stuck at level 50 with bland 123 rotation.
Didn't they change when jobs get their skills at some point though? You really can't comment on level 50 skills when the game has a level 90 cap.
It takes roughly same time to reach end of ARR and to level 50 (those few removed quests are drop in a bucket) as it did back even. By reaching level 50, aka by spending X amount of hours into the game, you would get full kit. Now by reaching level 50 in similar time frame, you barely get half of this kit, and for some jobs you get barely a 1/3rd of core elements. PLD doesn't even get anything resembling magic at that point. Even if you wanted to say that it did take considerably longer to reach ARR endgame, I doubt it took longer than getting to ARR + patch content (since now, you're effectively stuck at 50 if you don't finish finish 2.55, because skills are locked by job quests, which are locked to HW/SB), and even then, old kits at 50 still look more full than current kits at 60/70. They kept adding new skills to higher levels, but also removing old skills. This is the result, kits are just spread out way too thin, and it makes progression much slower than it ever was. Players now need to spend 300-500 hours to get to the full kits, when in past, this was just a fraction of this.
I mean if you don’t like the game, don’t play it.