The problem with having a tutorial that's supposed to teach you a proper rotation is that every expansion (and sometimes even mid expansion) skills are added, removed, retooled, or completely reworked, etc, which means every time they change a job they have to completely redo the tutorial. If anything that would just encourage even further job homogenization and stagnation.
@@RinBanana Considering this, they could probably make a video series, similar to the starter guide videos they made last year, that cover everything you mention and can branch off into job-specific info in later videos. They can tie a reward into watching them, like gear coffers with a level-appropriate dungeon set or an "even newer brand-new ring" or something, then by the end of them have a list of recommended trials and instances that have the mechanics that they covered/make a new "training" roulette that have instances with important mechanics to learn. And, because they're videos and not complete in-game scenarios, it shouldn't be so hard to update every expansion when things are added/removed.
@@tisLatte No one likes doing homework, especially when it involves material that isn't in the game itself. Video tutorials are weaker than hands-on demonstrations because it's a passive form of providing data. If you just throw videos at people, even if it's in the client, some people's eyes will just glaze over.
Actually, Reaper and Sage does offer that in their first job quest sorta if I remember them correctly. May be update the quest for other job to do the same would be a debut
We definitely need more tutorials in the game, especialy at level threshold like 50-60-70-80-90 and next expansion 100,,that simply goes through mechanics, standard type markers in raids and explains atleast at the foundation level what your abilities do, that you have learned in the past few levels and a starter, how to utilize them. The amount of people even at max level, who can't recognize a stack marker, not using their mits or ignoring half of their abilities is way too high, no wonder the bar to entry into Extreme and Savage is so high. The game does poorly when it comes to teaching people or, does not realy want to punish them for not learning and avoiding to force them to adapt and learn.
I agree - it doesn't necessarily need to be some big intense thing, even something as simple as accessible solo duties or even an in-game grimoire that teaches these mechanics and job fundamentals that people have access to would be super welcome to me. I know that a lot of players struggle with things like tank or healer anxiety, and having an extra step in which they can practise a little and know "what i've learned is the base knowledge I need" before they queue into a duty for the first time on it
we all have that one friend that when you mention something that they should have, that go "what's that..." like, please for the love of god learn your class, and pay attentiont to what skills you have an CONSTANTLY reorganize and optimize your hotbars. that's the other thing i get annoyed with, the way the game works, it just dumps thing on your hotbars, if there was a bas standardized way the game organized them, it would be far easier to just go "hey in this section this skill" or something like that.
I think there's two parts to this. I absolutely agree the game needs to do a better job at teaching. The reworked dungeons do better at this than they previously did, however there's barely any punishment for not doing a mechanic correctly. Stack markers and other aoe's barely do any damage, so even if the stack is taken solo or is missing people, nobody dies so no lesson is learned. A vuln stack or damage down also means next to nothing to someone just going through MSQ. If we had more bosses like the second one in Bardam's Mettle that specifically taught mechanics or maybe had an emphasis on doing a correct rotation then things would be different. Even in normal raids, people can mess up a lot of things and make it through just fine. Things need to be more punishing and they definitely can without being too punishing. The second part to this, where the game is not at fault, is that the people that continually mess things up and can't clear content have every resource available to them that the hardcore raiders have. While it sucks that this stuff is not available in the game, that's just the reality of how it's always been and people refusing to actually utilize the resources is on them. Anyone that actually WANTS to get better has access to more than enough resources to do so and will always get better. Just for clarification, I'm not referring to addons or plugins. Console players can clear the hardest content in the game playing vanilla as long as they work towards it.
@@rfygband Pretty much this, more or less. The game's barrier of entry should be as low as possible so that as many people can come into the game and see if it's something they want to invest time into. While I do agree that there should be more baseline information about basic mechanics and basic tells present in the game, it is sort of there in the form of extremely irrelevant, and optional, content (Guildhest). The other problem is that, as you say, Normal Raids/Normal Trials are so low risk that players will basically always make it to the end which will then immediately unlock the higher difficulty version of the fight. I personally think that Extremes and Savages should have higher burden of entry through a required number of clears of their Normal version to unlock the higher difficulty. It comes at a bit of an inconvenience to high-end raiders but if Savage continues to be 1 week delayed for the foreseeable future then it's largely trivial to reach the requirement. This puts the burden onto the player to become more invested in the game they're playing, to learn more about it, and to improve within their means via practice in the field. And being an MMO, the game inherently thrived on it's player base sharing information, tips, and tricks with each other by word of mouth, blog post, forum thread, or video. That doesn't mean the game should give no information, just that it needs to supply the minimum amount necessary to garner some interest in the more complex aspects of the game. And for higher end content, you make those players practice cause the ones who won't invest the meager amounts of time necessary to learn/practice what they need to know will possibly quit before making it to the high-end content (aka the "you don't pay my sub" players). The ones who are much more likely to stick around will invest more time into learning and practicing because they would want/welcome the challenge because they would then actually enjoy the game. Yes there are the social players, they are an entirely different breed of people. But they still would need to know how to play the game, cause how else are they going to get all that good glam they want to wear to the clubs and venues and whatnots. And there are a not insignificant number of those players who are very good at the game.
Yeah this is what I think as well. Though I might space them out differently to become available just before a batch of new target markers are going to be encountered rather than at the expansions max level, that way it isn't overwhelming to learn. I can't remember when or if markers other than line/cone/circle show up in base ARR, but a lot of stacking/arrow mechanics are extremely opaque to me until someone flat out tells me if I need to run it to or away from the rest of the party. All that said as I get further into the game it is getting somewhat better at "teaching" mechanics in dungeons before you get to more serious content, but it is very difficult for me. I dropped the game before finishing ARR originally, but came back this year and am in stormblood now. Some markers/debuffs have been really baffling to me without looking for resources outside the game, and since I'm doing "old" content it can be really nerve wracking to reach a new mechanics, or worse a whole battery of them.
This seems like a good idea, but I think the major issue is the 14 team's penchant to change up how jobs operate, like Astro's constant changes for example. The hall of the novice missions, while great for beginners, have also been the same since they were created if I remember correctly. I'm sure there would be developmental will to keep the "Hall of the Experts" updated, but it might end up being something shoved to the side if jobs keep getting reworked like they do.
in reality they should probably stop reworking jobs as much as they do. some jobs are just outright difficult to learn and play, and a hall of the novice that actually teaches the basic mechanics of the job, or a "hall of the experianced" and "a hall of the expert" that teaches the skills you get, would be nice. but we also have lost all our job quests that kinda played the roll of teaching the player how to actually play their job. those went away in shadowbringers. if we could bring back just basic job quests to learn how the job works, it would be nice, but those more or less just dump info and story on you so yeah...
I'm not sure if learning rotations needs to be a tutorial, what needs to happen is for ability progression to make sense, like was discussed in the previous video. If there is a tutorial that would help facilitate learning rotations I think one for weaving would be good. Mostly because people new to MMO's in general probably aren't familiar with the concept of a global cooldown, or may be but came from a game that doesn't have OGcD's in them. A lot of the pop-up tutorials are also disgustingly out of date and reference mechanics and such that were changed or removed from the game before I started playing. Or are so cryptic as to not be very helpful to learning how new abilities work when you unlock them. It really feels like the devs don't really sanity check things, regardless of whether it's a new class or a rework. Although I've only really experienced summoner in two iterations. Both of them were reworked versions and run the gambit from hellish to play alone cause you have no damage and the pets can't aggro things, to whatever is going on with them now that feels like a completely incoherent mess. I'm trying to relearn the class on a new character and it's not as bad as before, but man it does not feel good to play at all.
I think the Hall of Novices should not be skippable and you should have to complete the full thing to progress the MSQ. If you buy a skip to skip ARR, it should force you to do the Hall of Novices before you can progress with whatever expansion you skipped to. It takes all of 10 minutes to do so it doesn't eat your time away. It should also force it before you can use the duty finder in any role you haven't completed it in yet.
If that was a thing people might just drop the game. I know i would 😂 I skipped hall of novices. Guess what I just do end game raids for fun. If I was forced to do that hall of novices, I'd just quit and find a new game.
Good video, but I think the expectation in almost every game's 'endgame' is that you're going to learn from peers rather than from the game itself. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing either as it helps to build communities, even if it can result in some people getting a bit carried away with themselves and being the expert (whether that's a community about job-specific play or encounter-specific play, e.g. Eureka or Ultimates). I think there should be more tutorial style scenarios which handle mechanics/indicators but I'm not sure about class/job specific workshops. Of course, this doesn't get away from the fact that some people will literally avoid this type of thing because they think they know better, and those are the worst people to end up in a group with anyway.
TL:DR - FF14 is designed in a way to make the average player significantly more skilled at the game than any other MMO. This also means that the bad players are significantly worse than every other MMO's bad players. The accessibility and wide reaching casual content also does not exclude bad players from enjoying the game, so there is significantly more of them. While other MMOs would just force bad players to quit. FF14 player skill gaps are incredibly unique. The game actually has incredible tutorials in the form of the MSQ slowly teaching you the same mechanics over and over. Unity in telegraphing forces the average player to learn every fights mechanics through basic patern recognition. This leads to the average skill of the entire community being significantly higher mechanical competence than nearly ever other games community. On the flipside of that, the actual difficulty of MSQ content allows players that cannot cross that simple hurdle to be dragged accross the finish line, preventing them from being completely excluded from the game. This also feeds into the wide reaching and fully developed casual content of the game. It builds a healthy base of casual gamers that have no business being in a savage or similar content to fully enjoy the game. They are not forced into it as the only pillar of content they have the option to explore. This also leaves people that are wholey committed to high end raiding content to progress within their own community. Which leads to many more super high skill level groups. The number of teams competing in world first ultimates is significantly more than any other game. Many MMOs stay afloat with a large silent casual base that survives off scraps of content they can gleen from the hard core minority. Such as progressing lower difficulty raids and dungeons while the community sees the highest difficulty of that content to be the "true" form of the content. While devs devote incredible amounts of resources to errecting these pillars of content and funneling the entire player base around them. FF14 instead divides players into skill groups and says that its ok to do what you want. Instead of funnelling the players into a theoretical end game as fast as possible. FF14 errects new pillars of content all the time and doesn't force you into any one thing. It unifies character progression accross may forms of content to add connective tissue between those pillars. So that playing another form of content never excludes you from another. Which again feeds into that skill, because being good is never handcuffed to a specific grind, a specific kind of content, a specific way to play. As long as you ahve basic mechanical competency and are playing the game in some fashion, everything short of ultimates is at your finger tips. This, again, means that everyone that wants to raid, wants to be good, whats to do these things, has all the tools at their disposal to succeed and damn near all of them do because of it. Not because the content is easy but because they worked for it and earned it with a game that rewarded their investment more than any other on the market.
I think it's more of a cultural difference. Japanese culture creating a video game hoping American gamers give all their money to the game creates barriers. Most of us are born and raised Americans. We are not Japanese. We are not from Japan. We do not think like the Japanese, and the game was created by a team of Japanese. A lot of FFXIV is dull, like Bozja, Eureka, slow leveling system for tons of classes etc. Heavensward relics are the perfect example of a hard-labor Japanese prison camp. You can't even go to the Market Board and buy some leather without having to type in 600 letters of what it's called because of the language translation. Lazy American gamers like ourselves don't talk, write, or spell like that. lol Spending 6 months progging 7 phases of DSR is a nightmare. Those who do well and can clear Ultimates like roulettes with this style of intellect in my experience tend to be Asian themselves, or have autism.
@@jimmorrison4ever529 "What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." Billy Madison, 1995
Please, take no offence in this comment, but exposing your point and opinion get way easier for people get and digest if instead of a single huge block of text if be split in paragraphs and parts a little better, and that's coming from someone that was a habit of throwing walls of text and forget to break it for easier digestion myself ^^' Also make less intimidating for people reading if be small blocks instead of huge monoblock. (Also not really a gramar complain, my own gramar is already terrible, just a bit of quality of life thing.)
i think bardams mettle was meant to teach mechanics language as stormblood was when they added jump potions but i think they need an updated one. maybe make a dungeon where trusts are compulsary so you cant get carried by more experienced players
The endwalker 87(?) trial has trust so I did it with npcs and you’re very on the money. Not having players to carry me forced me to learn mechanics, and honestly I was kinda mad this was the first time in the whole game I got to really learn anything
I dunno, trusts and duty support may work for DPS/Healer, but I got actively worse as a tank during them. With how wildly it swings whether you can pull more than one pack, their pathfinding issues once you do, and how they focus one mob at a time, you just kind of fall into the rhythm of pulling one pack at a time, which doesn't even require a mitigation cd. I've never been a worse tank than when I pushed through the msq dungeons on duty support.
Bardam's mettle did not teach mechanics too well, given it's far cooler when you do it in duty support because you actually get to attempt the trial alongside the npcs but also duty support npcs are braindead and do not know how to do mechanics themselves. They will split up when towers appear and it took me the longest time to figure out you need to all go to the same one to share the damage
yeah tbh I think a trust run of a dungeon that has it should be the required "first" run for any new dungeon you unlock. slower? yes. more punishing? also yes - because if you fuck up, that's it, start the boss over boyo, no second chances for you!
I feel like something that'd go a long way (without requiring a tutorial) would be for each skill to have an explanation button that goes with it in your ability list. The dialog that accompanies it would explain it (and any related skills), when to use it, and some tips on how to make the most of it. It wouldn't be a direct explanation of rotations (cause those can vary a little periodically, based on updates (even for memes, e.g. Dragon Kick monk), but it'd allow players to figure out how to make rotations themselves. By default the game will give you a ping for each new skill when you unlock it that will only go away once you read the explanation, but you could also access those at any time from the ability list. And it could cover a couple of skills at a time. E.g. get an explanation for all of the tank mits you have, but then explain the differences between them, how to rotate them, and how to combine them. The dialog would just be appended whenever you got a new skill that fit into that category. Also, a lot of moves are actually explained in the job quests themselves (e.g. Ninjutsu) but doubling down on that would help a lot. Ninja for instnace covers the ninjutsu to a small degree as you unlock your mudra, but just a scenario when you have all 3 where the game calls on you to use different ones for different situations would help a lot.
I think no matter what they implement, there will always be good and bad players, and people will always complain about it. The best thing to do is find like-minded people and only play with them if it bothers you so much. Going into pf or roulettes with the expectation, everyone will be good is unrealistic.
There will never be a world in which every player is good! Nor should there be. It's more about having tools accessible in a nice, categorised way for players to learn comfily should they want to.
Yes and No. if I join a PF for a reclear for anything, be that Savage or Unreal, I can expect people to know the fight enough to not eat absolute glue. the amount of players i've seen not stretching their tethers in Thordan Unreal is stupid, they die to the 1st downtime mechanic (the drop AOE puddle stretch tether soak tower) if i'm the 1 making the party I give everyone 2 shots, if you fuck up the same shit again, i'll kick you and even blacklist you if you ate shit along the way, people excuse their shitty gameplay way too much, if you're learning the fight in PF, fair game, but even then, you learn at a reasonable pace, not hold 7 others back because you're learning to slow that it's insane.
PF is a bit more controlled of an environment in terms of playing with randoms. Yes, you get varying levels of skill, but you also have to abide by the party leader’s requirements or they have the right to kick you. I wouldn’t dismiss someone in a DF duty unless they are actively trolling or AFK/offline, but I would absolutely kick someone who isn’t ready to farm/get to the prog point after giving them dozens of chances. I’m not expecting a speedkill in PF, but I am expecting to at least be able to do the content.
I agree with this. Rinon I believe only ever raids and cares nothing else about the game. He isn't wrong but I feel he could be over obsessing over this issue.
If you want a world of good players you have create that world yourself and be the hero it needs be the teacher for your own partys and carry your team of 7 players yourself 8
The thing is... yeah, the game doesn't do a great job at teaching but in my opinion you should have enough braincells to read your tooltips and make sense of them after *400 HOURS* OF STORY CONTENT!
Some people can struggle with piecing together tooltips, I can understand that, so I'm very much in favour of having more guided tutorials available, should people want them
Perhaps if the game allowed you to spend 400 hours on honing your skills instead of forcing you to endure an insufferably boring story (except ShB, that one was great) this wouldn’t bee much of a problem.
Even a way less complex game like Tekken has in game move/combo lists, plus it has a VERY comprehensive practice mode... Sure FFXIV has A LOT of tutorials too, but quantity doesn't always equal quality... Is the term 'rotation' ever mentioned ANYWHERE in the actual game..? (Seriously, I don't know - I only started playing a few months ago 😅) Ps. I play on console so I don't even have access to tools like ACT so you KNOW I suck! But then again should I need to break ToS to try and get good..?
I mean the game has button that lights up however in that 400 hours there is nothing that will body check you... so why should the average story only player care about improving when the game just allows you to win anyway?
i would like to see this in the game but i think this would not change the fact that many players are either not willing or mentally not capable to understand their class / the mechanics of a fight because they play /played stupid brainless games like Honkai Star Rail where you either have nothing to do, or you have only 3 skills to use...
While rotation tutorials would not be feasible due to constant changes, a simple tutorial could take place in the form of a soft version of Stone Sky Sea - give the player locked gear for that level and have the DPS check be strict enough to where you need to use oGCDS/combos, but still not completely full uptime
I think something for DPS could be a mini boss fight where the boss has a light regen on it's health constantly, so if you don't maintain a proper rotation for the most part, you will make very little progress, because the boss constantly heals at a similar rate to the minimum DPS you could do just doing your core rotation without any weaves.
One i think is most effective is side content for each job/role thats similar to masked carnivale. Its still optional but it teaches you through puzzle like mechanic encounters that softly guides you to be good at your job/role while being rewarded poetics or glam
100% agree that there needs to be some required training on common dungeon/raid mechanics somewhere as I have seen at least a dozen players doing level-skips and then having no idea what mitigation even is, what their job is supposed to do, or how to do their job. I also do get the "but how long before the training gets outdated?" question, while a perfectly valid concern every training also needs to be updated when job changes are introduced and should go hand-in-hand. Trainings are a continuous effort that have to be updated frequently so that it reflects the experience and allows players to learn from them. This is in my opinion the biggest issue here, SE made trainings but never bothered to update them with the newest additions to the game. Also, the trainings should include something significant in order to offset the time spent, so also including the current tier(50/60/70/80) poetic gearset for free after training completion could be a great way to incentivize completion.
im throwing this out there, its probably stupid because i am a stupid person. But i think if they implement like a grade system that shows your results at the end of every instance can help people improve. Like devil may cry, how at the end of every mission gives you your performance result. Only yours though, because square isnt big on bullying. but itll put up stuff like damaged done, missed positionals, avoidable damage taken, time, dropped combos, damage output etc.
Hands down, players need to be able to complete the stone/sky/sea or lawns/etc trial that is sync'd to the max of an expansion before moving onto the next. The 60/70/80 etc are surprisingly well tuned. If you can't beat that.....get some practice in. I think your idea of hall of the expert is a good wish, and I'd certainly encourage that but that's a bit of 'pie in the sky'. That said FF could also do with a hint more of content variety with some content acting as stopgaps, like for example delubrum reginae was actually a REALLY good step between normal 10 player raids/alliance raids and ex. We could use a few more 'steps' in the process of other content as well, like something between your normal dungeons and the savage criterion (I don't consider criterion more difficult than regular dungeons), but like it's really dated, they could use some dungeons like the pits of saron/halls of reflection that wow had in wotlk that were heroics and didn't mess around for their time. As it is you go from playing pattycakes to extremes and the gap between that is a cutoff point for a lot of players.
Ok… you have good ideas, but what you’re describing is not feasible for two reasons: 1) SE is constantly adding new classes to the game, 2) SE is also constantly balancing existing classes and making changes to their abilities. Don’t get me wrong, it would help to have some sort of generalized tutorial that tells you about markers and debuffs, but you’d have to massively scale back how specialized the job stuff can get, otherwise they’ll have to keep making new additions and changes to account for patches. More to the point, this is kinda the role that should be relegated to Job and Role Quests, and is fulfilled by them to a degree (I can attest that I didn’t know the value of interrupts until the EW tank quests). So, yeah, good ideas, but the suggested scale is too big to be added as you’re suggesting.
Neither of those points do anything to most of the suggested guides, since they cover role responsibilities and mechanics. And job-specific guides can be updated alongside the changes to the jobs.
@@MyVanir ok, what are you willing to sacrifice? Would you be willing to have one less dungeon? Forgo an activity like Ishgard Reconstruction? Give up a breast tribe quest? Add extra months to patch cycles? Because that’s something the suggestions aren’t accounting for, and why I’m saying they aren’t feasible if they get too far into a Job’s mechanical depth. Adding in Job-specific tutorials, such as what are being suggested, aren’t a one-and-done endeavor, it’s a commitment that the team would have to make to change and update dialogue and mechanics every time there is a patch. A commitment that would take resources away from other projects the team is working on to make the community happy. Consider how many times monk has been overhauled; how Astro changed from dual-healer to full-healer and had their cards simplified; how Paladin had their entire rotation reworked to be more magical. Keeping up with this would sometimes involve completely rebuilding a class’s tutorial from the ground up, the same amount, if not more, effort that would go into building a dungeon or raid boss. Thus, I reiterate: it would be nice to have a generalized tutorial that teaches you about certain mechanics, but it’s not feasible to get as specific as the original video is suggesting. Scale back the expectations.
its gettin really bad. i main Sage in a 90 expert dungeon i get paired up with a tank that only does his single target 1,2,3. of course the dps gets the aggro. if i change to my second main ( gnb ) and play with random people i get paired up with healers that only do dps and dont heal at all. players standing in every boss aoe even if it takes ages before the attack comes. in the past week alone i was paired up with soo many very bad players. even a tank at 90 who doesnt activate his tank stance. how is it even possible to get to 90 with little to no knowledge about the job you play?
Another problem that I see is the language. Not everyone speaks English, Japanese, German and French. In my case I speak Castilian or Spanish. For one reason or another I had to learn English on the job, both writing and speaking it. For people who don't know those languages, it's going to make something difficult for those people.
I would like to see a series of training dungeons for basic mechanics. A series explaining basic mechanics like orbs, tethers, stack markers, tank swapping, and doom would go a long way. Maybe make it tie in to the grand companies so that you work with a group of pseudo-random allies (randomly generated appearances, but consistent stats) that then become your squadron. It would tie the tutorial into the story (so it doesn't feel pointless), would lead into the squadron mechanic (which could use a revamp too), and not be hidden like the current hall of the novice. You could then expand on this by having a dungeon or two at the start of each expansion that teaches the new mechanics (like Bardam's Mettle tried to do). While I would love to have the same thing available for class rotations, they change every expansion so we are not likely to get that. What I would do instead is make every job's rotation be built around a solid "core" that comes online early and then has additional actions that get mixed in as you level up. Think gauge actions, OGCs, etc. Basically, make each class get the basic tool set early so that no tank needs to wait until level 70 to get more than 1 AoE button, but then spice up the rotation with new interesting abilities that players learn as they level and hopefully avoid the BLM issue where your rotation keeps changing.
PLEASE! TEACH US THE RAID MECHANICS WITHIUT HAVING TO LOOK UP VIDEOS THAT DONT HELP! The mechanics get so convoluted at times I can't keep track. I need In game indicators of what everything is and practice all of it.
Just look at the amount of tanks that dont even know mitigation outside savage and ultimates, Healers that dont know their oGCDs and DPS that dont use buffs. Dragoons with no dragon sight and dancers giving their equally trash boy/girlfriend DP Still waiting on embolden, red mages!
What I want them to do is to disallow new players from purchasing boosts (both job and story skips) until they've hit at least level 50 on a main character. Too many times have I encountered brand new players with level skips that had no idea what an aoe even is.
There's quite a few players though who do know basic game mechanics due to existing in other games. We need tutorial dungeons in game. From basic mechanics to raid ones like the savage modes have and explain how they work. It's annoying to have to look up guides and not have the ability to practice this mechanic without going into an actual raid then meeting people who just get angry at you for not having known how the convoluted mechanics work as a whole...
Honestly, just add enrages to normal content. Even if people never see enrage, it would still motivate most people to ensure they get spared the embarrassment of enraging a dungeon boss.
What'd I think would be an interesting idea to teach tanks would be that sometimes in trials and raids you might need to split up adds. In the Nidhogg fight there's 3 dragons he spawns which each do their own thing, but if grouped together are be too much for melees damage-wise. It's a mechanic that caught me off guard when i was leveling my Warrior to 80.
They must have watched this for the 7.1 updated hall of the novice. Something you didn't mentioned that works as an indirect tutorial for rotations is Stone, Sky, Sea. I use it a lot to pratice openers and reset cds.
Finding this a month later, but good gawd I would love some class specific stuff. I unlocked Gunblade and have no idea what half the skills will do. Fighting a dummy only does so much to figure out skills and rotations without seeing the buffs in action. I often forget what bard skills do since I mostly heal or tank. Only yesterday did I realize the differences between summoning ifrit, titan, and garuda on summoner. 😅 I'm a casual player and terrible with mechanics cuz my memory is piss poor but I do try to learn and grow.
Everything you mentioned but also make it mandatory, locking people out of registering for a duty with that role until the tutorial is complete, might sound harsh but one bad "you don't pay my sub" player can really ruin the experience for 3-7 others. They also need to make AI in Trust and Duty support use AOE already... You can get through pretty much every MSQ dungeon now with NPCs and if they're all single targeting its hardly going to incentivize a new player to do so.
Adjust their damage output to do barely any damage, but make them use AoEs instead. Art of War is a gain on 2, SO START USING IT YOU WASTE OF OXYGEN BLUE ALISAIE
when i initally started my FF14 journey, i never actually had issue knowing the rotation of skills to the point i outright didnt look up a guide for most till way later to see if there was anything i was missing, and the majority of the time i didnt miss anything because a good chunk actually explained in the skill info. now there are outliers of it being not enough, took a bit to exactly understand fully what white mages(job i started out on) lillys were, and black mages fire and ice states. straight up without extensive testing on exact numbers increase, its impossible to tell how strong each state actually is and is one of the few things i HAD to look up because there is just no way to know that umbral ice 3 gives 31x regen and astral fire gives 1.8x fire dmg, i honestly thought it was at best 1.15x for astral fire 3 initally. the other thing of knowing the difference of spells/weapon skills vs abilitys, i personally didnt play games that didnt have this kind of thing. but honestly i think the majority of the really bad players just refuse to read what their skill does far more then lack of teaching tools, because tbh im fairly sure they will ignore the teaching tools if they refuse to even read the skills.
The guides online that I found helpful for any game usually boils down what you want to achieve, not how you do it necessarily. For example: A monk wants keep up a dot and a damage buff as well as access stronger attacks via perfect balance while keeping up a free-form rotation that flows 2-2-3. Teach them why they press their buttons and I think they will not have to think about their rotation so much they miss the mechanics and they can also recover from rotational mistakes more easily if they actually understand fundamentals. Teaching mechanics is kind of what the normal fights are there for I think, and learning them should be alright in a trial in partyfinder.
I feel like, in some of the earlier job quests, they attempted to explain the logic of intended skills based on the story content, as well. But with all the job reworks, the job quests (and, by extension, Hall of Novice) got left behind and now there's a disconnect between what's talked about in the quests (Arcanist job quests is the most jarring example, imo) and what the jobs do at present. And with the expected additional reworks for AST and DRG, job mastery feels virtually unattainable because, at this point, we're gonna expect another rework in another year or two just as people are finally getting used to the jobs.
Idk if we need anything more to teach players their “rotation.” Aside from how the menu option now allows for you to see how certain moves combo into another, going to a higher level of weaving in GCDs and OGCDs sounds a bit much to me. In the strictest sense, there is no “rotation” as your class does not mandate any particular rotation. As a DRK player I will use myself as an example. For the longest time, I did my burst rotation like a burst: I’d pile on all my high end DPS moves at the time they were available. Later, I learned I could spread out these moves with my GCD combo to make the higher numbers last longer. I didn’t suffer, or do immensely better by shifting rotational styles. The only time I can see a mandatory rotation is for EX/Savage/Ultimate encounters. I just don’t think it’s super mandatory that the game “teach” you a rotation as it’s not really required elsewhere. Does it help if you know your rotation, yes. However, it’s an added layer of optimization that I don’t think it’s needed in game. Unless we also want to have the game give a tutorial on not only needing pentamelding, but how to optimally meld gear, which again isn’t required except for high end content. Frankly, I’ve never experienced an Expert Roulette that went on 10 min longer than it would have if the entire party knew their rotations. Frankly, i find complaining about that to be silly. We’d have to educate sprouts on boss mechanics and how not to wipe if they didn’t know dungeon mechanics anyway, which could easily add 5-8 min to a run, but I am not seeing anyone say the game needs a dungeon tutorial for every possible mechanic variation.
i'm with you. I think it is a purposeful intent that the game doesn't outright say 'this is the exact order and timing you have to do every time to play this class' they want players to be allowed a flexibility in their options and play choices even if it ends up suboptimal. That is why they even put into their harassment rules that you can't belittle and kick people for having a different playstyle then what you feel is the correct one.
Hard agree. I think the game could use a "Hall of Intermediate" that teaches you recurring mechanics, to use your global cooldowns the second they're up and not half a second later, and to weave in oGCDs (though probably don't actually make them do that because that gets to real input problems for the bottom of the skill curve) because those are important and easy to understand concepts that don't really get into the nitty gritty of the game, but these type of complaints inevitably just boil down to "I wish people were as good at the game as I am" rather than any real game design problems or gripes. I also don't see how a rotation tutorial is even supposed to work beyond "sync to this stat total and do X amount of DPS", and that's a terrible tutorial because it doesn't teach people who can't do that how they can do it. Figuring out the optimal damage rotation *is* the game for a lot of people. Nobody would play black mage in Savage or Ultimate raids if that wasn't true. Making rotations rigid enough that you can have an ingame tutorial over it just doesn't really make sense and would make the game less fun for a pretty substantial part of the hardcore playerbase. I wish I could remember which WoW dev said it, but to paraphrase him, "There is a consistent sentiment in the community that you can raise the average skill level of the game by raising the required skill floor to clear content. Our data shows that isn't the case. People below that skill floor just quit."
I generally agree but you go bit too far, I don't see reason to prepare people for savage mechanics and checks since many players will never do savages or care about them. The game should prepare the players for everything they need to get through MSQ which means normals and extremes.
I understand what you're getting at, but if the game had incredible, in depth tutorials on how everything works, none of that can compare to player to player knowledge sharing. Like, ever. There is a reason almost all games like this don't have tutorials explaining how best to play your class/job and how to be better at the game. The devs don't know you, they can't just put you in a tutorial and expect everyone understand it their way. Adding actual tips on how the game works and is played into the game itself is futile
Over the last 2 expansions the game has gone from random 4 player dungeons to 3 NPC + a solo player. But if i could design some tutorials the would focus on being better team players. Healers who know what Esuna is, DPS who know how to use the party list to know when they are out of healing range, and people who focus on they job they are playing and not try to "mentor" others and die because they are not paying attention to where they are.
Theres alot wrong with setting something like this up. Number 1 the core premise is that there is a "correct way to play" which is false. Theres an optimal way to play and just playing. Optimal is what raiders and hard core players do while everyone is just playing. Thats not even going into that some jobs used to have different rotations and openers depending on build. (I dont know if that is still the case or not but it was going all the way into SHB) Number 2 anyone who starts at level 1 is explained combos, abilities and weapon skills as the job progresses. Everytime you get a new skill your expected to read the tooltip. While i can agree for later jobs like dancer or reaper as they don't start at level one and your not explained much in the first story quest, i will also sat by that point the player shoukd already have a grasp of the core gameply by that point. But i could see something like a skills show case Especially for things like arms length. So the player could better understand the skill. Number 3 again if you play from level one ARR you are introduced to each type of boss mechanic through the story and low difficulty dungeons. You dont need a dictionary for it just know red and orange is bad and you successfully understand 90% of mechanics. This of course excludes trials and raids, as it should. Trials and raids are ment to be unique challenges tailored to each individual boss to match their unique theme. Floor drops, simon says, tilting platforms etc. Lastly no amount of extra tutorials, guides, or hand holding is going to help anyone who didnt care in the first place. Those who WANT to do better will look up the optimal rotations and reaf their tool tips, never needing the guide in the first place. While those that don't, will comtinue to do their 123 combo costing through the simple dungeons while holding their beer.
Tutorials shouldn't exist in a hall of the X. They should be integrated into the MSQ. I want community memes about how Y'shtola chastises you to use mitigation and Thancred is a disappointed dad because being an ice mage at a DPS check killed Ryne. Hall of novice is not good. The text is slow, the exercise repetitive, you have to load into every single damn instance separately and there's zero interesting story context. Oh and if are going through the MSQ on a single job, there's a good chance you're level 25+ by the time you come across it. Godforbid you're on a "recommended" server. Is it an effective tutorial? Debatable (brb wall2walling satasha) but what isn't is that it just is not an engaging experience.
The issue is it's not maintainable to have such detailed tutorials. Every time we have class reworks or modifications the tutorials would all have to be scrapped and changed again. Imagine the amount of work that would have to go into the paladin's recent overhaul alone? I've been told by friends who actually play blackmage that their rotations can change wildly every 3 levels at certain points due to skill unlocks. I can see perhaps enforcing a "hit this minimum DPS" dummy that is solo instanced at the start of every expansion. We already have this in the stone, sky, sea dummy missions, but nothing ever makes you attempt them. We should also add one more lesson to tanks hall of the novice that teaches mitigating on tank busters, raid wides, and spacing mitigation rather than blowing it all at once. We can't expect anything more detailed though because it creates far too much burden if/when they want to make tweaks or radical reworks to any class.
Haven’t played since Heavensward and just recently came back a few weeks ago. I am mainly a crafter/gatherer but also am a WAR/MNK main. Back then I enjoyed spending hours getting my rotation down (especially with Mnk positioning). Grinding the rotation complexities and how to overcome them always gave me a sense of accomplishment…and it still does surprisingly. Certain traits and abilities get upgrades as you level up. It’s an introductory to what is to come. Knowing your rotations all comes down to how much effort you’re willing to put in practicing. Once you’re comfortable with said rotation, implementation is just a matter of knowing the fight mechanics. Everything else falls into place. Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of what you mentioned naturally comes with leveling a job. Then again, people are different and receptive to different things. I pay a lot of attention to other DPS and tanks to see how they do things and if it’s something I can throw into my tool bag. Some don’t really do this and that’s fine too. BUT…my opinion may change in the future. I just hit 70 and finished stormblood lol.
They also need to inform new people about this games built in delay and funky snapshot timings. Too many people dunno about them and they scratch their heads in confusion as to way they died coming from other games that don’t have that type of delay and snapshot in it.
May I ask what Chest piece you're wearing at 4:00? I thought it looked really neat (especially if it gets dual dye for Dawntrail) and got no clue what piece it is
I would have a quick tutorial on common ways boss abilities target important mechanics; full random, closest player(s), further player(s), role based, so on. Knowing to look out and adapt to these things will help players ease into savage content, but this would probably be an optional, advanced tutorial for savage content (especially since it particularly matters mostly for people going in blind into content)
You have many good points, but really. Call me a pessimist but I don't think much would change even with the best tutorials available. As the saying goes you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. The only way I could see this maybe sinking in is if you gate keep content, like you need to finish these tutorials before moving on but even then. Some people just don't care and no amount of teaching will help them because they can't help themselves to begin with. Though for people who do care, making their lives easier with QOL changes and dynamic tutorials will just stream line them into becoming competent players, faster which is good.
Hard pass. Look, I get that it's frustrating to deal with people new to escalating levels of complexity, but what you're basically saying is, instead of teaching players organically how mechanics work as they do more and more content, to entirely front-load things and hope they either step up, or get back to the grind. That's... not playing, that's boring. But isn't that what one does anyway, with external resources? Yes. Unless you do it organically, and figure it out yourself. Does that suck for people going through things with you? Yes, because it's a multiplayer game, and these are people, not machines. But it's part of _organic growth_ to fuck up again and again until you get it right, and that's the design for fun the game aims for. "Learn as you play". And hell, FF14 is pretty solid at it, that's what's so great about those exact "standardized mechanics". There's some things that probably should be clarified properly, for sure. The fact there's different types of healers, for one thing. But you can't go full hog with the tutorials, because once again, tutorials aren't something you want to bog your players with.
I always know the basic rotation of any class Im playing. But I dont have a clue how to fit it into the 2 minute buff windows in raids. Never done a raid and kinda dont want to cause the rotations seem so intimidating. Like, it seems like you just CANT mess up. Idk how people keep perfect track of their rotation while dealing with boss mechanics
I played a lot of games, and a lot of MMOs. And while bad players are going to be everywhere to some extent regardless of what you do, FFXIV seems to have them in the highest quantity. Which is something I've always struggled to come to terms with, since FFXIV is, by all comparative metrics, a very easy game (in everything that isn't savage/ultimate). While I do think more tutorials could be beneficial, especially for some of the more arcane knowledge the game squirrels away, I, personally, think the game does an excellent job at show-don't-tell. It shows you how your job works, and how fights work, and how mechanics work. Even in the newest content, with the idea that players have played through the game, fights hold your hands in an almost coddling way. I think the problem is deeper then that. On a fundamental level of game design, the casual level that the game itself propagates with its atmosphere and wild difficulty curve gives rise to players who are simply to lazy or inept to learn the game's intricacies, even as few as they are. The game simply doesn't force you to actually try in casual content, leaving anyone not willing to put in a focused effort at a loss. You can slap as many tutorials in the game as you want, but unless the casual experience is changed to make you actually, meaningfully, develop and utilize these skills, I can't see anything changing.
II would absolutely love expert tutorials. I was lucky enough to have friends teach me high end play as GNB and WHM, but I've found myself wanting to learn everything else, both to widen my own range, as well as be able to better know how to integrate into other rotations happening in the dungeon/trial/raid.
The game does a great job of teaching mechanics, but it does it relatively slowly and/or late. They've only relatively recently changed old Dungeons and Trials to better reflect late game content. Bardams Mettle is legit one of the few that is actually designed to teach you mechanics. Everything else you're kind of expected to pick up over time by watching other players or the AI. And back on the topic of the starting experience, they have improved it significantly. I alredy mentioned the revamping of old Trials and Dungeons, but Duty Support has been a godsend for people who just want to progress the MSQ.
It's doing a better job at teaching mechanics (particularly from ShB and onward), but still could be way better. Tank swapping isn't in any normal content. Yeah the new player experience is slightly better than it used to be but man does it still have a long way to go. ARR could use another trim, and most jobs leveling experience should be like MNK or at the very least SMN (where you get a baby form of your end game rotation).
I think not knowing your rotation after a certain amount of time often comes down to not actually caring about your performance, though there are cases where someone just has a hard time wrapping their head around the info that is availlable. But in this regard the game at least gives you tools such as target dummies to figure it out at your own pace, and there's plenty of content creators making guides so you can check if you've got it right or not. The kind of tutorials I'd like to see more of are ones that actually show you the various kinds of boss mechanics that got added over the years, their visual indicators, and how to deal with them, so that people don't have to go into them either blind or seeing it from another POV in a YT video. I think it could save a lot of frustration for many groups if new players could recognize how to do a mechanic that's new for them instead of finding out the hard way what it does at the expense of other people's time. I also wish there was something like the adventure guide from WoW, which lists every boss in a raid, the items they drop, but more importantly, basic mechanics for each role and a general idea of how to deal with them. It doesn't tell you everything, but at least it gives you something. Though I could see this being considered a spoiler of the raid, looking up a video of the fight is just as much.
I like that idea of a dictionary. Actually, they could do something along those lines for guildhests. Instead of guildhests being these strange one-off tasks, why not change them so they introduce players to the actual mechanics regularly used in the game now?
Still blows my mind when I see Dragoons or Samurais do an expert and not aoe. Its disrespecful and a waste of damn time. I don't even care if the healer doesn't aoe, I just need the dps to aoe with me (the tank)
As a healer main the hall of the novice is only semi useful (not very much). Whether or not they've changed certain aspects of it recently I don't know (been a few years since I did it). But certain things such as you not being in a party means that any aoe heals you use won't be activated on the npc's you need to heal, also to single target heal them you need to click target. Both of these things alone are badly designed. In a normal party setup you can use F1-F4/F8 (depending on party size) to target each party member for pc users and your aoe heals will land on all party members in range. But I think in the end it's up to individual players to learn their chosen job. A lot of the learning for healing in general and my job specifically (astro) I got from figuring things out myself, but mostly from other players.
I'm an avid mentor. I am ready and willing to take anyone to a training dummy and explain and show off a rotation and a simple lay out. But yeah just about every class can be learned in a couple of minutes with a paragraph blurb of the greater picture and reading the tooltips. Its a social game, talk to people. If the person doesnt care then no tutorial will help.
While I think it's all a good idea, I don't think they'd ever do a job specific tutorial that in depth due to reworks. Should they? Yes, but I can see them just being lazy enough to not want to. Especially Astro, they keep changing that one every week. I just wish stone, sea and sky wasn't such an obscure feature, it's so randomly hidden away that's probably why you didn't include it or forgot to. It's a tutorial you could easily fail if you're not doing your whole kit and could actually inspire people to get good and learn, but it's like random NPC's in weird spots, like one is next to Palakas Stand in Thavnir (or whatever the 3rd teleport spot is called).
A Term/Phrase Glossory is always a nice thing. One with a small search feature, I'm new to FF14, and not played any MMO beyond a few hours here and there on GW2 or ESO. There is still some terms that trip me up, that seem to be super common at endgame, but it's not like that game ever helps teach them
No, expert roulette won't be 11-12minutes. even with dmg pots and i660 gear. Maybe lv90 roulette if everyoneis overgeared and use dmg pots but not expert. I'm logging my casualruns and after hundreds of expert roulette and lv 90 roulette I have yet seen best times as follows: Lunar SUbterrane 15:05; Aetherfront 12:52; Lapis manalis 14:18; Troia 13:55; Alzadaal 14:30; Stigma 13:05; Smileton 12:48; Dead Ends 15:00. To reach 12m or below would require premade pt, everyone with bis or nearly bis gear, using dmg pots and giving their all. But since it's a casual content you are fine just doing basic combo 1-2-3 without party buffs or long cds and you can still clear. One need to assume that in casual content people won't tryhard, their parses will be low and they won't try to optimise rotations on a freaking easy to run dungeon. and that will of course affect the time in which you clear it. SO a time of 14-15minutes is actually really fast and it means that your party performed well or had a good gear. 17m+ means either wait time because of cutscenes or just overall mediocre performance. But 11 minutes on expert roulette with random people? Forget about it. The numbers above are out of 400 lv 90/expert roulette that I logged. Not even once I finished it in 11 or 12 minutes. 13 is barely possible with a little tryharding.
Add a glossary with images or short in-game display able videos that explain all the generic markers and mechanics with recommendations on what to do in the situations where they pop up.
Tooltips could be streamlined a great deal for a start. There's a bunch of inconsistency in how it phrases things around positionals for instance. Somewhere in some piece of mandatory content they need to force you to use a limit break so that you know it exists and you have it on your bars. I think the "showing the rotation" piece could be an optional view at the ability list similar to the updates they made a bit ago where you can see the combos attached to each other. Have a "damage line" view that shows the abilities in the optimal order of use. I think that a hall of the expert could work, have a new one each expansion that's optimised for whatever the level cap is at the time and gate the day 1 extremes behind it. new expansion, new hall, sort of like a license renewal. Alternatively rather than it being a side content thing that gets refreshed, have it take the place of the role quests and then gate an MSQ behind it like ShB did. Call them the trials of light or some such and bring back some familiar job NPCs. Maybe you have trust system style things based on starting cities where you get the ninja, warrior, scholar and summoner npc and run a dungeon, and your NPCs are whichever role you aren't and then you essentially do what you're describing. I think something the game is pretty good at is exposing you to group content through the leveling experience. Yes you might suck as a player, but you've gotten raid experience through trials, done enough dungeons to have seen a bunch of mechanics and to not have a load of anxiety about doing new stuff. I would argue that your average FF player is more ready for its end game content than players of other MMOs are for theirs because of the forced group content.
Tooltips are pretty handy, yeah. My number one piece of advice I ALWAYS give to newer players is: Step 1: go to Character -> Actions and Traits Step 2: Thoroughly read what ALL of your actions do (role actions included!) and do the same for any more you learn. The reason I'm averse to tutorials and such is because they tried that with the first job quest for SGE but it's done super poorly. They just tell you that you can heal or heal with shield or heal via kardion and then just throw you in, with the last encounter being brutal for a first time healer. I would instead explain sage like this: You have six main tools in your kit: Kardia - Designates a target to get healed when you take an offensive action Dosis - basic single target damage spell Diagnosis - basic single target heal Prognosis - basic AoE heal Eukrasia - Changes the previous two abilities to heal for less but provide a shield at the cost of requiring more mp, and causes Dosis to apply a DoT rather than dealing direct damage. All of these modified actions are instant casts, as is Eukrasia itself Dyskrasia - basic AoE damage spell, what you'll be casting for most of the dungeon Keep these where you can easily cast them, because you will need to do so a lot. Beyond this, you have something called the Addersgall gauge, which generates one charge every twenty seconds to a maximum of three. You can spend the charges on the following off global cooldowns (each of which restore 700 mp to you when used): Druochole - More potent single target heal, boasting a cooldown of only one second. Taurochole - Even more potent single target heal that applies a 10% damage reduction. 45 second cooldown Ixochole - More potent AoE heal, 30 second cooldown Kerachole - Applies a 10% damage reduction to all nearby party members. 30 second cooldown. These are essential in keeping everyone healthy while still casting Dosis as often as you can, and provide a small boost to MP management as a bonus. Additionally, you have two other offensive spells: Toxikon - requires charges that generate whenever a shield you grant to someone is completely depleted within its duration, up to a max of 3. Deals decent damage to single targets or groups of enemies, but is best saved for when you need to dodge AoEs and can't sit still to cast dosis/get close to cast dyskrasia Phlegma - Powerful single target spell with a large AoE but a fairly small range. Can store up to 2 charges with a 40 second cooldown. The rest of your kit can be figured out on your own, and for the most part will help you out in more niche situations/when you're in a pinch. That might be a bit of a text wall, but all things considered it doesn't take long to read. I know if I had a similar simple beginners guide when picking up any of the dlc classes I would have gotten the hang of it very quickly. Of course, some form of hall of the expert at level 50 that tells you to use your oGCDs and to use AoE actions when fighting several enemies would probably be nice.
"Somewhere in some piece of mandatory content they need to force you to use a limit break so that you know it exists and you have it on your bars." Ultima Weapon does this now, you basically have no chance of passing the ending DPS check without the LB3 that your god explicitly gives you
"Alternatively rather than it being a side content thing that gets refreshed, have it take the place of the role quests and then gate an MSQ behind it like ShB did. Call them the trials of light or some such and bring back some familiar job NPCs. " I fucking love this idea, just, a hard stop test. Not just because I really would like to make sure that at this point I do actually know how to play each class, but because certain people would get SO MAD and it would be hilarious.
@@antheraea.mothcore honestly would be a better use of everyone's time than forcing people to find a party for each of the hard primal trials at the end of ARR
When it comes to rotations, the reason why it doesn't tell you is because they want you to figure it out. You have 90 levels, 100 when Dawntrail hits, and multiple expansions worth of content to understand what your class does and how it does it and this changes constantly anyway. They already severely homogenized everything for years to make it easier, they don't need to make it even more brainless or flatout tell people level by level exactly what to do.
I've just recently returned to the game 2 weeks ago, level 80 WHM, only really leveling to 90 via daily roulettes. 90% of the time, I'm level synched to 50 or below and never have a chance to use my class's abilities. The few times I get into a 72+ run, I often forget about the higher level abilities like being able to shield or proc an additional heal on Medicate. I can confidently say that, while I'm smart enough to figure it out in an easier dungeon run of max level, I do NOT know how to properly play my White Mage currently. I haven't touched the duty support or w/e to try with NPCs for training my rotations yet, but I've also learned from being active during past expansions that, until you hit the hardest content, you don't even need half of your abilities to easily succeed, leading to ingrained habits and muscle memory that just can't cut it in the end-game content. While I dislike doing so, my personal solution is simply going to be hitting max level and finishing the MSQ while looking at a guide or two on the rotations and just practicing simple repetition until I can get the group content unlocked and first-hand experience. It's sad that the game is built in such a way. I only came back because I have an itch to properly raid and do the hardest boss fights. Not entirely interested in the MMO experience as a whole outside of that. (Which is why I've finished the Blue Mage line in between Roulette Dailies.)
As a new-ish player there's one thing I think is needed. The ability to add a customizable colored border to skills so I can tell at a glance which skills on my bars have positionals and whether it's flank or rear without needing to read every tooltip any time i change to a less-played job. It wouldn't really make the game easier, but it would help jog my memory of how to play a job with just a quick glance at my bars. *_(After this I just kind of rant for a bit, feel free to skip)_* And some commands that are keybinds really need a button on the UI, like the control + home keybind increases the size of any window... I spent way too long looking at an inventory that was way too small only to find out from a tip video that windows can be resized. That wasn't even a tip, the person just had a larger inventory than I did so I had to google. "FF14 how to increase inventory" ""FF14 how to increase inventory size" ""FF14 how to make inventory bigger" ""FF14 how to resize window" (got chat window for that, *_which is done differently from every other window_* ) ""FF14 how to increase window size". That last one finally gave me a 3 year old reddit post with one single comment on control + home. Also the default settings are weird, especially the inventory tabs. And when using the one large bag option, the tabs still exist so rather than having new items go from left to right for the full width of the bag, it goes half the width then starts on the second line. And when it's done with the first tab, it goes to the right tab instead of the tab underneath the first. It's just inconsistent. Why is the hunting log a thing? It just seems to have never gotten an update past ARR. How did I not know there were duty finder settings? AND WHY IS LIMITED LEVELING ROULETTE ONLY FOR PREMADES?!?!?!?!?!?! That setting would really help keep alt job grinds fun. And why doesn't /macro open up my macro menu? this is just a pet peeve of mine as it's easy enough to access them through the system menu, i guess. Why doesn't it teach new players they can rent chocobo in starting cities? This literally would've save me hours before I got my personal chocobo. Spirit bound gear is never explained... never. There are too many settings menus which have too many categories and each category has too many tabs. At least give me a search box so I can find which menu -> category -> tab i need to be in.
One change that I would personally make? Require players to finish a set of class quest and unlock a jobstone before being able to progress into ARR's "Company of Heroes/Titan"-arc. Not only is the first quest of the arc a level 30 quest, but the duties it contains (Brayflox Longstop and Titan (4-player)) are the first ones where you're able to use a job's abilities even at the lowest available level. On a similar note, I would also make clearing a job's level 50 quest required for continuing the MSQ into Operation Archon (I've seen PLENTY of people completely walled by the Cape Westwind solo duty due to having horrifically outdated gear due to not doing their job quests). ...And at the same time make duties above level 30 require a jobstone equipped when not in a pre-made party so that the chances of getting Cutter's Cry with a partymember who hasn't even fought Ifrit yet will become non-existent.
While I don't think job specific tutorials would work well with how frequently they change things, the rest of this sounds like a great idea. Roles on their own need more in depth higher level tutorials, more than the solo duties for unlocking an expac job you do once and can't revisit. Hell, it took me months to pick up DNC entirely because at 60 I was completely unprepared for that solo duty, got overwhelmed, and didn't come back til I'd finished ShB and was much more confident in my abilities. And I managed to more or less figure out ShB SMN intuitively, the only adjustments I needed were Titan-egi attack on dungeon mobs instead of Garuda-egi and a bit of fine tuning with dots. Looking back, it's very silly that DNC ever felt too big brain for me, but that's just how it is for folks when they're starting out. I'd have loved a proper tutorial on any of this stuff rather than sandbagging pugs in duty finder by being complete ass.
(Sorry for the wall of text, lol) I believe as a casual player in FF14 it's sometimes too easy to join content that's way harder than expected without realizing it and that leads to the issue of Mid/Hardcore-Players thinking, those players are not being taught enough in the game. I think the game offers enough help for players already to beat most of the content. We have, Hall of the Novice, Novice Network and Mentors for offering tips, Practice/Sprout Groups for getting into the fights with potentially people explaining mechanincs and generally helping out (This is how I got into harder content when I started). We have the DPS Checks in Palaka's Stand and overall you do learn a lot during MSQ and Duty Roulettes / Normal Mode Content. If people want to get into harder content, they can choose to do it with Echo and there are also really beginner friendly fights in the game. Actually, they don't choose it, Echo is usually enabled and here lies the problem I mentioned above. The thing is, for most "Normal" content ingame you actually don't have to learn anything except what you actaully take in from the Hall of the Novice and what you learn during MSQ to beat the content and I do not blame players who don't see it necessary to improve, since it's only really worth if you actaully wanna do Extremes and Savage and even there I belive execution of mechanics and survival is way more important than doing proper rotations and actually encountering DPS Checks, unless you make the content harder (low Ilvl, no echo, and especially play hard content on release, etc.). Remember, this is what people do, that are usually already invested in that kind of content. Usually more casual players do the content later where often times encountering DPS Checks rarely happen anymore due to gear upgrades and echo. In their game enviroment, it's way more important to execute mechanics and simply survive the encounter. If someone is interested to get into harder content, the tools are there already, but I believe what would help a lot is a recommendation system for beginner friendly Extreme/Savage content. The varience for difficulty in this kind of content is too broad imo and it's easy for a Beginner-Raider to fall victim to something that's harder and for some people it's just unexpected. For example, if you always do raids with Echo and being overgeared, how are you supposed to know doing new Savages/Extremes on patch day are way more difficult, simply from a casual player perspective. I believe those are the situations where most mid-hardcore players believe, the game doesn't offer enough to teach those more casual players. It's a matter of perspective, context and game knowledge and not a skill issue I believe. As an easy example, just compare the Coils of Bahamut Raid with the MinIlvl/No Echo Version of this Raid, it's like playing a completely different game and that should be made more clear, on how huge of an impact Echo and High iLvl actually is for the difficulty of the game. Just imagine being a Casual player that only did Extremes, maybe some Savages with echo and being overgeared, now wanting to try out a new Extreme on patch day - it's a shock for them, because when else in the game do you encounter a situation where your stats are not boosted? They will think stuff like "Damn, why did the group got killed, I never needed to mitigate before" and it's legit.
The tutorial I consider the most vital is one that shows people what mechanics absolutely can't be skipped on a boss encounter. Think the one I still see wipe raids occasionally is the third boss of Dun Scaith. If nothing else, they could come up with a better indication that the add that spawns is going to wipe the raid if you don't kill it before its cast goes off.
Hall of the Veteran at level 50, for intermediate rotation, timing and teaching to include OGCD's could be incorporated into the crystal tower or even required to enter it, then Hall of the expert at level 70 for the super advanced things, make this one required to get into savage and higher content. from my experience these changes would have saved several headaches down the road.
This is why I think there should be something like what BLU gets, a solo bossfight arena which has some decent mechanics you need to do. Make a normal extreme and savage version as a way to ease someone in to it and have some nice glam as rewards and add another 3-5 arenas each expansion, the extreme and savage would have an enrage and ideally savage is actually difficult where completing it is considered a solid achievement akin to necromancer or at the least doing savage tier on content. ESO has something like this for both solo and 4 man and it's a great way of making someone really become a good player without having to do all of the learning up front in their first instance with a group of 8. For a while the weapon from solo and 4 man was actually BiS so you had to go do that before you wanted to get into a serious raiding guild anyways. I think this style works a little better too, because if you tell me there's a tutorial for your class i might do it, but if you tell me there's a cool solo arena where you can get loot and test your skills with a leaderboard and fun mechanics, I'd probably just do it for fun and do the learning in the process. You'd have to add tank/healer mechanics to make them utilize their full kit but still very doable
I'd call the teaching place Bardam's Mettle hard. It's an 8 man encounter where you pick the role you want. Mt, OT, both style healer, and each DPS style will be the options with NPCs filling the 7 you don't pick. Trash packs will be larger to simulate wall pulls with each boss having harder mechanics (tank swaps, light parties, ect). If you clear it as a role you get decent looking usable armor, but it you complete it as every role you get a unique mount with special music.
I had a similar idea using job quests - After every 10 levels, a quest is required to get the ability you'd get at that level (i.e. for SGE currently, to get Panhaima at level 80), like it is for the older expansions. Rather than being associated with your job/role story, you would get teleported to a training ground like the HotN (maybe to show off your sweet new skills to admiring onlookers from your GC, idk the lore don't matter). The quest would be a series of VERY short battle situations where you have to use each of the new skills you acquired appropriately, (e.g. for SGE, it would teach you how to use Rhizomata, Holos, and Panhaima at level 80). If you'd like, it could be complete with text boxes that actually freeze the game, highlight the button you have to use, and do not unfreeze until you press it (I think the current UI with silent text boxes is part of why attempts to do this sort of thing with current job quests aren't super effective). Something as simple as "[Enemy name here] is about to release a series of repeated attacks, press Panhaima to repeatedly shield your party!". Simple 10 second repeated raidwide, a green checkmark, and you're on your way, in total hopefully shorter than most of the solo duties you currently have to do at those levels. Stolen straight out of your everyday modern single-player RPG, and essentially a gate to make sure if you're doing content at the level cap for that expansion, you know what all the relevant buttons are. A similar role-based system could teach how to use all of the role abilities at level 50 for each role to unlock the final one (e.g. Rescue). Is this a metric ton of work that would have to get partially redone each expansion, and could people just skip through it and not learn anything? Absolutely! But I think maintaining up-to-date and relevant tutorials is a worthwhile expense, and overall I don't think it'd be IMPOSSIBLY burdensome to essentially bring the player to the HotN and have a generic enemy do a single action, with the appropriate counter from the player allowing them to pass (for DPS skills, the enemy doesn't have to do anything at all!). It'll also give SE a good chance to teach use cases for things that aren't super intuitive for new players (e.g. Pepsis and Emergency Tactics, using Holos before damage, etc), and take a second look at things that are more or less useless like Repose. It'd be nice as well to allow them to keep the ease of normal content where it is, where players aren't punished for being bad, but force them into a single situation where they do have to show a little bit of job competence once per expansion, with no stakes, at the very end. Can even give em a handsome sack of gil as a congratulations.
I don't know, maybe it's just me but Rhizomata and Holos are rather intuitive for the level at which you get them. With Rhizomata being a simple "I'm out of charges but want to use one" button and Holos being an overall great action for preventing party wide damage, as I understand (I'm level 79 rn). It's explaining the "secondary basics" as one might call them, such as making sure to use your AoE and not sleep on any of your off global cooldowns that actually matter imo. Hell, until recently I completely ignored Druochole thinking it wouldn't be helpful and I already have enough ways to spend my charges but seeing the dps drop to below half health all of a sudden so I gotta drop what I'm doing to cast diagnosis too often changed that.
I think they should use the updated Hall of the novice Idea as a replacement for Guildhests since they effectively serve no further purpose in the game at this time. They were good for leveling, but we have multiple other options available to us rather than spamming guildhests. If incorporated correctly you could even incentivise their completion by introducing a small story with a secondary rise of smaller adventuring groups or maybe add them as an upgrade to squadrons. They could expand further by having the job quests come back as an exclusive skill capstone for ensuring you know how to use your job effectively onstead of making a long quest chain so you get the general use of a gap closer or other OGCD and then a slightly more targeted use for the job itself with access to the full kit.
Best tutorial for melee dps is the samurai lvl54 quest back in shadowbringers. As a sprout going in that thing without accessories was definitely a humbling experience.
The only thing I think is CRUCIALLY needed is an actual explicit explanation of all the universal mechanic markers, like you mentioned. These markers are great and extremely easy to read ONCE YOU KNOW THEM, but the process of actually LEARNING what they mean pretty much requires that you have someone to explain them to you. If you're not playing with experienced friends and no one ever bothers to explain what they see as "basic" mechanics in party chat, you're gonna have a really hard time figuring a lot of them out. And this doesn't just affect high-end raiding - even by the end of ARR you're gonna start having trouble staying alive in mandatory fights if you don't know what some of these markers mean. This is BY FAR the biggest thing the game is lacking in terms of tutorials IMO. I don't think they'll ever do something that teaches a specific rotation, partly because they change jobs a lot and partly because I think most game devs don't want to enforce a single "correct" way of playing their game, even when the game is designed such that a de-facto "correct" way clearly exists. Most rotations can be figured out to a competent level just by reading tooltips anyway; if anything they might just want to encourage that somehow. Beyond that I think the main stuff you called out that I would be interested in is the universal "how to play the game" type stuff, like teaching tanks to aggro adds or teaching healers to use their oGCDs. Honestly some of that could just be put in the Hall of the Novice. Anything more advanced like efficient mitigation usage is probably getting too technical (people who care will look it up anyway, people who don't will skip the tutorial), and some stuff like tank swaps are kinda too fight-specific to give a lot of general advice on.
I find this video a little hilarious. I wrote about this topic on lodestone back in 2016 when these were introduced. I had very similar sentiments and even some early suggestions. I quit FFXIV back in 2020 due to working too much to effectively raid, something I loved dearly. I still follow the game mildly, thinking it could be fun to return, but find myself lacking the time. It's a little sad that something like this still hasn't been addressed. I used to do small guides for BLM as that was my main, teaching rotations and such as with the start of Heavensward many people struggled to understand how to play BLM well. I kept it going up until I stopped playing, trying to add resources on UA-cam and Lodestone to help other Black Mages get their footing.
I don't really think it's the game's job to teach a rotation though. Better teach class mechanics, absolutely, but nothing about the rotation. That's such a subjective topic and the goal post is constantly changing for jobs even between gear sets let alone levels. These are games where players learn from each other. That's literally the whole point of the game -- working together to reach a goal. A big part of the game is the mystique of how it works and how it works best. Edit: half my post for erased when I submitted and I'm too lazy to rewrite the part that got deleted so I'll summarize: I think we've gotten so far on the perfect answer for everything that its sucked a lot of fun out of games like this. People are in such a rush to reach the end, to be perfect, that they totally eliminate one of the funnest parts of the game. I don't expect someone at level cap to have mastered their rotation, so long as they're actually "doing OK" and that is subjective as hell I'll readily admit. If a dungeon is taking an extra 15 minutes to clear, it's likely not because one guy doesn't know his rotation.
i feel like the level 70 job quests would have been a really great place to put some sort of "you've come this far, now let's see what you know" kind of skill-check/tutorial, since that's the last level we have proper job quests before transitioning into role quests. not only would it be a good way to prepare people for the difficulty ramping up in SHB content by reminding them about some of their skills they may not have been using because stormblood content may not have pushed them hard enough to need them, but it's also a nice narrative capstone to the job quests themselves and a lot of the stories could very well benefit from a final duel with your teachers or something similar another tutorial to consider would be a 2-minute burst tutorial, especially if the game is going to force us into playing around a 2-minute meta, since it hurts the entire party in all levels of content if bursts are not lined up. it doesn't need to be "this is how you fully optimize your burst" but a simple "be sure to use this party buff every chance you get! sync it up with your NPC party members' buffs so you can defeat this trial!" should be enough to teach people they need to use their 2-minutes together with everyone else. that is, of course, assuming the 2-minute meta is here to stay, imo since it's Square's own design choice to have it they should consider putting a tutorial on it since it's now a cornerstone of the combat gameplay
I am still learning some mechs on the higher level content as I have unlocked it, but I have stuck to the same few jobs and new stuff I always use my main to learn them. Now I'm a DNC main so it's more about managing aoes vs single attacks and using my buffs as they come along. I'm sure tanks have it worse with noobs drawing agro and not knowing where the tank will end a pull. This is a good idea except when expansions change a rotation drastically like how summoner lost its DOT from its RRB rotation and turned into a game of Simon. For DNC I would love a challenge of using dance partner aoe heals and Def buff mitigation/ improvise to get a party though a raid wide attack. Could be a good lesson. We aren't the best healers but in a pinch can help and I hope more DNC are practicing that as well.
The Balance discord type resources should be in game too, a basic opener to learn and a stat/gear priority menu like ariyala would go a long way I think. Maybe even a bar that goes across your screen with the skills in order that light up DDR style to teach players their rotation/openers. And again this really comes down to that it really should be on SE to teach players how to play the game rather than relying on players to do all the work.
I don't think additional learning tools will do anything. There are just people resistant to learning. Even with fairly active people on fairly active discords, people still get things wrong and get defensive about it. I've had people apply to my static and when I point out that their rotation is incorrect in logs they've gotten mad at me. There are many people who have posted in discord about why their dps is low and when xiva says different they refuse to believe it. People argue about whether DPS should LB trash on a dungeon pull instead of the boss on a daily basis, even though all the information is available on the internet. There's also just an absurd amount of skill being offloaded to third-party tools like Cactbot, automarker, and autocombo, which is why it's a meme to do reclears after a patch release when all the tools don't work. I remember some spicy TOP drama earlier in the year when a healer publicly outed his group (something about the other healer running out of mana by spamming heals when it wasn't needed and then complaining that they weren't healing enough?) and this is the highest level with some famous streamers and yet no one in the group really understood how healing worked. The amount of content created by the community to improve everyone is honestly amazing, from YT videos to guides to savage raids to even something as crazy as xiva. Yet even with this content, people are bad and yet assertive about it even at the savage/ultimate level. Inevitably, the only way to get truly skilled players is to look for them. When I think about it, I don't think there's been any game where the skill level of the entire community improved with some additional tutorials.
The game needs additional teaching tools. The class quests in each ARR class were originally (I think) intended to teach you that class’ mechanics, but largely none of them do any more (with the exception of the Black Mage’s Sleep tutorial?). You can see this in the classes added post-ARR, where NPCs shout at you to use certain abilities at certain times. The Dancer quest in particular has a lot of this going on. A lot of abilities aren’t very intuitive. I’m sure a lot of tank players wonder why they have multiple different mitigation abilities (but real talk, why do we have multiple DIFFERENT mitigation abilities that do the same thing? Why not two charges of Rampart instead of Rampart and the other one?). I’m sure many players barely understand burst damage windows and how to activate them, etc, etc.
No, Square enix shouldn't be teaching you rotation and they will never do that. Two reasons - they suck at doing it, japanese side sometimes gets rotations for jobs and they are worse than whatever community will create(also those people thought that first iteration of ninja was balanced). Second reason - they don't make tutorials that they have to update after every balance patch and expand after every expansion. Dps check is awful idea because after failing it there would be no incentive to get better to finish "hall of experts". And again, I don't trust that SE is able to balance training dummies, check some of the patch notes for EW. All markers are taught in normal duties, there's no need for additional training to learn those. Tank/healer lessons actually sound reasonable. I still don't see why would people do this hall of expert, testing lvl 70 rotation to enter current savage or extreme? My expert roulette wouldn't even get better Ok, now my ideas - to teach rotation, I would add possibility to see community made and rated rotations in the Stone, Sky, Sea which would add highlight to correct buttons according to the rotation made by someone from community. Also Stone, Sky, Sea really needs at least achievement for destroying a dummy once, nice minion would also be welcome
The mechanics such as "stacking arrows" should be added to some early solo-duties in the MSQ, and get some of the voice actors to add one or two sentences that get played during the fight such as "That attack may hurt alone, lets deal with it together". That way players know or at the very least get taught what the mechanic is, and how to deal with it, and the fact that it's a voice clip played during a fight, and not just a text box or cutscene, means that players should not accidentally skip it.
Beside the clearly missing dictionary for markers, I think a side "what can I expect from other roles from my role's pov" for people who don't play or try every role could be useful - i.e. mitigations from other roles, LBs, etc
A big floor I see in FFXIV is how the routation changes. If I should make a system to try to help the players. I would start taking an advice from a PvP game tbh. In PvP like LoL, Valorant, CS2 and so on a good advice is to find something and main it, it makes so every game have one thing in common, and by that not so random. in LoL pick the same champion, Valorant and CS2 pick the same weapon. The same could be implementet into FFXIV too. And to an extend we already have one job that follows this logic. The Summoner after rework is more or less finished in level 50, its fine that they get some new skills too. with like Ruin IV, and the primal summoning that starts in level 70. But a lot of the Summoners changes is how much the damage is on a skill and how it looks. It perfom the same as in level 50. I think that is a good model, for how all jobs should be in the game. So the game up to level 50 should mainly be to learn your basic 1, 2 and 3. Also give all classes and jobs their AoE in level 15. After that I would implement a Halls of Novice trial on every 10th level that focus on the new skills that had been added.
I think a good bare minimum change for the language of the standardized mechanics markers would be to at least have little tutorial pop ups similar to the ones they have for job guages. Have them show up before someone queues the first piece of content they show up in that someone does explain hey, this mechanic indicator is about to be in the content you're going into, this is what that means.
I've only been playing ffxiv for a little under 6 months, but have already noticed that just by having friends who know the game and by researching myself i'm already above avarage in the game and this video reall does shine a light on why. If I didnt have good tutorials in the form of friends explaining stuff i'd probably be just as bad as everyone else is when playing for under a year. The new player experience is probably so different when you dont have a friend whos experienced and knows whats going on.
Yeah, I do agree there is some struggle in early content, which only translates to bad habits in later content. I was in the leveling queue for healer, and the tank totally disregarded multiple pain points for WHM at level 50. They pulled too many mobs that had detrimental effects that I needed to esuna, making it impossible to esuna everything. They ran out of my line of sight. They didn't wait for the DPS to catch up to AoE skill packs down down, and yes, we were all sprinting after. The tank didn't use AoE skills either, meaning the rest of us kept yanking aggro and getting hurt. And worst of all, they kitchen sinked all their buttons, making it brutal to heal. Aka, nigh impossible, especially when WHM has poor MP sustain at level 50, at least when I have to spam heal/esuna, and you run off where I can't see you. It was brutal. Multiple times the DPS asked to slow down on my behalf (I didn't even ask myself, as I know not to say anything when I have nothing nice to say lol, self control wins) and the dungeon took unbelievably long. The tank never responded to the DPS, either. Now, I do think constant milestone tutorials for each cap (50, 60, 70, etc) that I see some people commenting is never gonna happen. Not just from an implimentation standpoint, but I just doubt it would get used. But I do wish there was gameplay in MSQ content itself that required higher skill checks. That wouldn't realistically happen either, I know, but I think base MSQ dungeons taking a smaaall page from harder content and putting them into dungeons would benefit everybody overall. It'd suck ass for a while, but forcing skills to improve in base casual content is (in my opinion) the only way to raise the overall skill level of players. Most people don't do extreme, let alone savage or ultimates - so they've never needed to improve. I doubt they ever would, so drip feeding skill checks is, in my opinion, the only way to really achieve overall improvement.
As for what I think should be added tutorial wise, I think telling people what mechanics are is more helpful over teaching rotations since they change so often. So that being what stack markers are, what spread markers are, what line of sight is, what baiting is, etc.
I recently started kearning healer when i made an alt to play with a friend that wanted to tank, and i gotta say, the major thing i would put in Hall if the Novice is teaching the player how/why/when to use two specific tools: their DoT abd their AoE heal. Most healers going into HotN are probably new players on conjurer, yet medica doesn't even FUNCTION in the lesson thats supposed tk be about healing multiple allies because they dont put the npcs in your party with you. Combining that with making them aware of the DoT so they become more accustomed to the idea of dealing damage even as a non dps
I once had a max level healer running out of MP in stone vigil because she kept using Cure 3 when the tank was the only one who needed healing. She thought it was better than cure 2 until I reminded her lmao. But other than that, I see too many healers doing below lvl 30 dungeons who just spam medica or do other weird stuff. I swear they are bots or something cuz they rarely respond to advice when me or someone else try to help.
SE needs to standardize the 1-50 skills. If you get AOE at 15 and 30, well all jobs do. Its fine to have some off timed skills but there needs to be something done with that as well when making this.
Just a thing that I do when I decide to kinda practice with my healing or tanking (both of which I loathe doing) I'll go into a trust. The NPC AI aren't perfect but it at least simulates a party. I agree with the idea of at least a tutorial on mechanic markers, especially when they throw a new one on us. I can't count the number of times while I was a sprout being like "oh hey what does this mean..... aaaaaand I'm dead." We're just supposed to automatically know this means stack together, this one means the tank has body odor, this Dorito is for sharing and this one isn't even though they're the same damn Dorito (they could at least spicy nacho vs cool ranch for that or something...), go stand in the blue puddle and then the yellow puddle while Nophica blows kisses at you, you get what I mean... And things like that are another reason I don't like tanking or healing.
As a player who has struggled to improve over the years, I wonder that SE hasn't made use of Stone,Sea & Sky to use as a tutorial instead of just go in and practice. It could be separated by job grouping [type of dps, healers, tank] without creating something entirely new. Doing this would mean that each expansion would have a ready made place for job classes to learn new skils and meld them with their current rotation. Yes, there are some who can just read the description of the ability and use it well, but it certainly makes for more enjoyable play when one really has a feel for the why and how of abilities [and I'm still trying to get the hang of OGCD-GCD...] It may take the dev seeing a decrease in player numbers [i.e., $$$] to consider an adjustment.
If I could design any tutorial, it'd be specific to ninja. Teach them that doton isn't a gain until theres three or more enemies, even before factoring in TA windows and Hollow. I'm so tired of doing crystal tower (alliance raid) roulette and seeing three different dotons on the field.
The problem with having a tutorial that's supposed to teach you a proper rotation is that every expansion (and sometimes even mid expansion) skills are added, removed, retooled, or completely reworked, etc, which means every time they change a job they have to completely redo the tutorial. If anything that would just encourage even further job homogenization and stagnation.
This is a very valid point!
@@RinBanana Considering this, they could probably make a video series, similar to the starter guide videos they made last year, that cover everything you mention and can branch off into job-specific info in later videos. They can tie a reward into watching them, like gear coffers with a level-appropriate dungeon set or an "even newer brand-new ring" or something, then by the end of them have a list of recommended trials and instances that have the mechanics that they covered/make a new "training" roulette that have instances with important mechanics to learn. And, because they're videos and not complete in-game scenarios, it shouldn't be so hard to update every expansion when things are added/removed.
@@tisLatte No one likes doing homework, especially when it involves material that isn't in the game itself. Video tutorials are weaker than hands-on demonstrations because it's a passive form of providing data. If you just throw videos at people, even if it's in the client, some people's eyes will just glaze over.
Yoshi P has said himself this is a big reason they decided not to do job rotation tutorials
* Astro jobs quests still mentioning Nocturnal Sect has entered the chat *
Actually, Reaper and Sage does offer that in their first job quest sorta if I remember them correctly. May be update the quest for other job to do the same would be a debut
Sage tells you to apply Kardia but does a piss poor job of explaining what that does going by the number of sages that straight up ignore Kardia.
@@24hr-Gaming 💯
@@24hr-Gaming THIS I ACTUALLY WAS MORE CONFUSED ON SAGE AFTER THE QUEST
We definitely need more tutorials in the game, especialy at level threshold like 50-60-70-80-90 and next expansion 100,,that simply goes through mechanics, standard type markers in raids and explains atleast at the foundation level what your abilities do, that you have learned in the past few levels and a starter, how to utilize them. The amount of people even at max level, who can't recognize a stack marker, not using their mits or ignoring half of their abilities is way too high, no wonder the bar to entry into Extreme and Savage is so high. The game does poorly when it comes to teaching people or, does not realy want to punish them for not learning and avoiding to force them to adapt and learn.
I agree - it doesn't necessarily need to be some big intense thing, even something as simple as accessible solo duties or even an in-game grimoire that teaches these mechanics and job fundamentals that people have access to would be super welcome to me. I know that a lot of players struggle with things like tank or healer anxiety, and having an extra step in which they can practise a little and know "what i've learned is the base knowledge I need" before they queue into a duty for the first time on it
we all have that one friend that when you mention something that they should have, that go "what's that..." like, please for the love of god learn your class, and pay attentiont to what skills you have an CONSTANTLY reorganize and optimize your hotbars. that's the other thing i get annoyed with, the way the game works, it just dumps thing on your hotbars, if there was a bas standardized way the game organized them, it would be far easier to just go "hey in this section this skill" or something like that.
I think there's two parts to this. I absolutely agree the game needs to do a better job at teaching. The reworked dungeons do better at this than they previously did, however there's barely any punishment for not doing a mechanic correctly. Stack markers and other aoe's barely do any damage, so even if the stack is taken solo or is missing people, nobody dies so no lesson is learned. A vuln stack or damage down also means next to nothing to someone just going through MSQ. If we had more bosses like the second one in Bardam's Mettle that specifically taught mechanics or maybe had an emphasis on doing a correct rotation then things would be different. Even in normal raids, people can mess up a lot of things and make it through just fine. Things need to be more punishing and they definitely can without being too punishing.
The second part to this, where the game is not at fault, is that the people that continually mess things up and can't clear content have every resource available to them that the hardcore raiders have. While it sucks that this stuff is not available in the game, that's just the reality of how it's always been and people refusing to actually utilize the resources is on them. Anyone that actually WANTS to get better has access to more than enough resources to do so and will always get better. Just for clarification, I'm not referring to addons or plugins. Console players can clear the hardest content in the game playing vanilla as long as they work towards it.
@@rfygband Pretty much this, more or less. The game's barrier of entry should be as low as possible so that as many people can come into the game and see if it's something they want to invest time into. While I do agree that there should be more baseline information about basic mechanics and basic tells present in the game, it is sort of there in the form of extremely irrelevant, and optional, content (Guildhest). The other problem is that, as you say, Normal Raids/Normal Trials are so low risk that players will basically always make it to the end which will then immediately unlock the higher difficulty version of the fight. I personally think that Extremes and Savages should have higher burden of entry through a required number of clears of their Normal version to unlock the higher difficulty. It comes at a bit of an inconvenience to high-end raiders but if Savage continues to be 1 week delayed for the foreseeable future then it's largely trivial to reach the requirement. This puts the burden onto the player to become more invested in the game they're playing, to learn more about it, and to improve within their means via practice in the field.
And being an MMO, the game inherently thrived on it's player base sharing information, tips, and tricks with each other by word of mouth, blog post, forum thread, or video. That doesn't mean the game should give no information, just that it needs to supply the minimum amount necessary to garner some interest in the more complex aspects of the game. And for higher end content, you make those players practice cause the ones who won't invest the meager amounts of time necessary to learn/practice what they need to know will possibly quit before making it to the high-end content (aka the "you don't pay my sub" players). The ones who are much more likely to stick around will invest more time into learning and practicing because they would want/welcome the challenge because they would then actually enjoy the game.
Yes there are the social players, they are an entirely different breed of people. But they still would need to know how to play the game, cause how else are they going to get all that good glam they want to wear to the clubs and venues and whatnots. And there are a not insignificant number of those players who are very good at the game.
Yeah this is what I think as well. Though I might space them out differently to become available just before a batch of new target markers are going to be encountered rather than at the expansions max level, that way it isn't overwhelming to learn. I can't remember when or if markers other than line/cone/circle show up in base ARR, but a lot of stacking/arrow mechanics are extremely opaque to me until someone flat out tells me if I need to run it to or away from the rest of the party.
All that said as I get further into the game it is getting somewhat better at "teaching" mechanics in dungeons before you get to more serious content, but it is very difficult for me. I dropped the game before finishing ARR originally, but came back this year and am in stormblood now. Some markers/debuffs have been really baffling to me without looking for resources outside the game, and since I'm doing "old" content it can be really nerve wracking to reach a new mechanics, or worse a whole battery of them.
This seems like a good idea, but I think the major issue is the 14 team's penchant to change up how jobs operate, like Astro's constant changes for example. The hall of the novice missions, while great for beginners, have also been the same since they were created if I remember correctly.
I'm sure there would be developmental will to keep the "Hall of the Experts" updated, but it might end up being something shoved to the side if jobs keep getting reworked like they do.
in reality they should probably stop reworking jobs as much as they do. some jobs are just outright difficult to learn and play, and a hall of the novice that actually teaches the basic mechanics of the job, or a "hall of the experianced" and "a hall of the expert" that teaches the skills you get, would be nice. but we also have lost all our job quests that kinda played the roll of teaching the player how to actually play their job. those went away in shadowbringers. if we could bring back just basic job quests to learn how the job works, it would be nice, but those more or less just dump info and story on you so yeah...
I'm not sure if learning rotations needs to be a tutorial, what needs to happen is for ability progression to make sense, like was discussed in the previous video. If there is a tutorial that would help facilitate learning rotations I think one for weaving would be good. Mostly because people new to MMO's in general probably aren't familiar with the concept of a global cooldown, or may be but came from a game that doesn't have OGcD's in them.
A lot of the pop-up tutorials are also disgustingly out of date and reference mechanics and such that were changed or removed from the game before I started playing. Or are so cryptic as to not be very helpful to learning how new abilities work when you unlock them.
It really feels like the devs don't really sanity check things, regardless of whether it's a new class or a rework. Although I've only really experienced summoner in two iterations. Both of them were reworked versions and run the gambit from hellish to play alone cause you have no damage and the pets can't aggro things, to whatever is going on with them now that feels like a completely incoherent mess. I'm trying to relearn the class on a new character and it's not as bad as before, but man it does not feel good to play at all.
I think the Hall of Novices should not be skippable and you should have to complete the full thing to progress the MSQ. If you buy a skip to skip ARR, it should force you to do the Hall of Novices before you can progress with whatever expansion you skipped to. It takes all of 10 minutes to do so it doesn't eat your time away. It should also force it before you can use the duty finder in any role you haven't completed it in yet.
If that was a thing people might just drop the game. I know i would 😂
I skipped hall of novices. Guess what I just do end game raids for fun.
If I was forced to do that hall of novices, I'd just quit and find a new game.
hall of novice pops up when you job skip. Even if you dud it before just so you know.
@@vincentlee7359dude, hall of the novice takes like 15 minutes to complete, no sane person would quit over that.
@@shawnscouten5184 guess I'm not sane, oh well. No one wants forced content
@@vincentlee7359 Have you dropped every game with a tutorial then?
Good video, but I think the expectation in almost every game's 'endgame' is that you're going to learn from peers rather than from the game itself. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing either as it helps to build communities, even if it can result in some people getting a bit carried away with themselves and being the expert (whether that's a community about job-specific play or encounter-specific play, e.g. Eureka or Ultimates). I think there should be more tutorial style scenarios which handle mechanics/indicators but I'm not sure about class/job specific workshops.
Of course, this doesn't get away from the fact that some people will literally avoid this type of thing because they think they know better, and those are the worst people to end up in a group with anyway.
TL:DR - FF14 is designed in a way to make the average player significantly more skilled at the game than any other MMO. This also means that the bad players are significantly worse than every other MMO's bad players. The accessibility and wide reaching casual content also does not exclude bad players from enjoying the game, so there is significantly more of them. While other MMOs would just force bad players to quit.
FF14 player skill gaps are incredibly unique. The game actually has incredible tutorials in the form of the MSQ slowly teaching you the same mechanics over and over. Unity in telegraphing forces the average player to learn every fights mechanics through basic patern recognition. This leads to the average skill of the entire community being significantly higher mechanical competence than nearly ever other games community. On the flipside of that, the actual difficulty of MSQ content allows players that cannot cross that simple hurdle to be dragged accross the finish line, preventing them from being completely excluded from the game. This also feeds into the wide reaching and fully developed casual content of the game. It builds a healthy base of casual gamers that have no business being in a savage or similar content to fully enjoy the game. They are not forced into it as the only pillar of content they have the option to explore. This also leaves people that are wholey committed to high end raiding content to progress within their own community. Which leads to many more super high skill level groups. The number of teams competing in world first ultimates is significantly more than any other game. Many MMOs stay afloat with a large silent casual base that survives off scraps of content they can gleen from the hard core minority. Such as progressing lower difficulty raids and dungeons while the community sees the highest difficulty of that content to be the "true" form of the content. While devs devote incredible amounts of resources to errecting these pillars of content and funneling the entire player base around them. FF14 instead divides players into skill groups and says that its ok to do what you want. Instead of funnelling the players into a theoretical end game as fast as possible. FF14 errects new pillars of content all the time and doesn't force you into any one thing. It unifies character progression accross may forms of content to add connective tissue between those pillars. So that playing another form of content never excludes you from another. Which again feeds into that skill, because being good is never handcuffed to a specific grind, a specific kind of content, a specific way to play. As long as you ahve basic mechanical competency and are playing the game in some fashion, everything short of ultimates is at your finger tips. This, again, means that everyone that wants to raid, wants to be good, whats to do these things, has all the tools at their disposal to succeed and damn near all of them do because of it. Not because the content is easy but because they worked for it and earned it with a game that rewarded their investment more than any other on the market.
I think it's more of a cultural difference. Japanese culture creating a video game hoping American gamers give all their money to the game creates barriers. Most of us are born and raised Americans. We are not Japanese. We are not from Japan. We do not think like the Japanese, and the game was created by a team of Japanese. A lot of FFXIV is dull, like Bozja, Eureka, slow leveling system for tons of classes etc. Heavensward relics are the perfect example of a hard-labor Japanese prison camp. You can't even go to the Market Board and buy some leather without having to type in 600 letters of what it's called because of the language translation. Lazy American gamers like ourselves don't talk, write, or spell like that. lol Spending 6 months progging 7 phases of DSR is a nightmare. Those who do well and can clear Ultimates like roulettes with this style of intellect in my experience tend to be Asian themselves, or have autism.
@@jimmorrison4ever529 "What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." Billy Madison, 1995
Please, take no offence in this comment, but exposing your point and opinion get way easier for people get and digest if instead of a single huge block of text if be split in paragraphs and parts a little better, and that's coming from someone that was a habit of throwing walls of text and forget to break it for easier digestion myself ^^'
Also make less intimidating for people reading if be small blocks instead of huge monoblock.
(Also not really a gramar complain, my own gramar is already terrible, just a bit of quality of life thing.)
i think bardams mettle was meant to teach mechanics language as stormblood was when they added jump potions but i think they need an updated one. maybe make a dungeon where trusts are compulsary so you cant get carried by more experienced players
The endwalker 87(?) trial has trust so I did it with npcs and you’re very on the money. Not having players to carry me forced me to learn mechanics, and honestly I was kinda mad this was the first time in the whole game I got to really learn anything
I dunno, trusts and duty support may work for DPS/Healer, but I got actively worse as a tank during them. With how wildly it swings whether you can pull more than one pack, their pathfinding issues once you do, and how they focus one mob at a time, you just kind of fall into the rhythm of pulling one pack at a time, which doesn't even require a mitigation cd. I've never been a worse tank than when I pushed through the msq dungeons on duty support.
The level 64 dungeon isnt trying to teach you mechanics lmao.
Bardam's mettle did not teach mechanics too well, given it's far cooler when you do it in duty support because you actually get to attempt the trial alongside the npcs but also duty support npcs are braindead and do not know how to do mechanics themselves. They will split up when towers appear and it took me the longest time to figure out you need to all go to the same one to share the damage
yeah tbh I think a trust run of a dungeon that has it should be the required "first" run for any new dungeon you unlock. slower? yes. more punishing? also yes - because if you fuck up, that's it, start the boss over boyo, no second chances for you!
I feel like something that'd go a long way (without requiring a tutorial) would be for each skill to have an explanation button that goes with it in your ability list. The dialog that accompanies it would explain it (and any related skills), when to use it, and some tips on how to make the most of it. It wouldn't be a direct explanation of rotations (cause those can vary a little periodically, based on updates (even for memes, e.g. Dragon Kick monk), but it'd allow players to figure out how to make rotations themselves.
By default the game will give you a ping for each new skill when you unlock it that will only go away once you read the explanation, but you could also access those at any time from the ability list. And it could cover a couple of skills at a time. E.g. get an explanation for all of the tank mits you have, but then explain the differences between them, how to rotate them, and how to combine them. The dialog would just be appended whenever you got a new skill that fit into that category.
Also, a lot of moves are actually explained in the job quests themselves (e.g. Ninjutsu) but doubling down on that would help a lot. Ninja for instnace covers the ninjutsu to a small degree as you unlock your mudra, but just a scenario when you have all 3 where the game calls on you to use different ones for different situations would help a lot.
I think no matter what they implement, there will always be good and bad players, and people will always complain about it. The best thing to do is find like-minded people and only play with them if it bothers you so much. Going into pf or roulettes with the expectation, everyone will be good is unrealistic.
There will never be a world in which every player is good! Nor should there be. It's more about having tools accessible in a nice, categorised way for players to learn comfily should they want to.
Yes and No.
if I join a PF for a reclear for anything, be that Savage or Unreal, I can expect people to know the fight enough to not eat absolute glue.
the amount of players i've seen not stretching their tethers in Thordan Unreal is stupid, they die to the 1st downtime mechanic (the drop AOE puddle stretch tether soak tower)
if i'm the 1 making the party I give everyone 2 shots, if you fuck up the same shit again, i'll kick you and even blacklist you if you ate shit along the way, people excuse their shitty gameplay way too much, if you're learning the fight in PF, fair game, but even then, you learn at a reasonable pace, not hold 7 others back because you're learning to slow that it's insane.
PF is a bit more controlled of an environment in terms of playing with randoms. Yes, you get varying levels of skill, but you also have to abide by the party leader’s requirements or they have the right to kick you. I wouldn’t dismiss someone in a DF duty unless they are actively trolling or AFK/offline, but I would absolutely kick someone who isn’t ready to farm/get to the prog point after giving them dozens of chances. I’m not expecting a speedkill in PF, but I am expecting to at least be able to do the content.
I agree with this. Rinon I believe only ever raids and cares nothing else about the game. He isn't wrong but I feel he could be over obsessing over this issue.
If you want a world of good players you have create that world yourself and be the hero it needs be the teacher for your own partys and carry your team of 7 players yourself 8
The thing is... yeah, the game doesn't do a great job at teaching but in my opinion you should have enough braincells to read your tooltips and make sense of them after *400 HOURS* OF STORY CONTENT!
Some people can struggle with piecing together tooltips, I can understand that, so I'm very much in favour of having more guided tutorials available, should people want them
Perhaps if the game allowed you to spend 400 hours on honing your skills instead of forcing you to endure an insufferably boring story (except ShB, that one was great) this wouldn’t bee much of a problem.
Even a way less complex game like Tekken has in game move/combo lists, plus it has a VERY comprehensive practice mode...
Sure FFXIV has A LOT of tutorials too, but quantity doesn't always equal quality... Is the term 'rotation' ever mentioned ANYWHERE in the actual game..? (Seriously, I don't know - I only started playing a few months ago 😅)
Ps. I play on console so I don't even have access to tools like ACT so you KNOW I suck! But then again should I need to break ToS to try and get good..?
It's bizarre that the job quests don't teach you how to play your class.
I mean the game has button that lights up however in that 400 hours there is nothing that will body check you... so why should the average story only player care about improving when the game just allows you to win anyway?
i would like to see this in the game but i think this would not change the fact that many players are either not willing or mentally not capable to understand their class / the mechanics of a fight because they play /played stupid brainless games like Honkai Star Rail where you either have nothing to do, or you have only 3 skills to use...
While rotation tutorials would not be feasible due to constant changes, a simple tutorial could take place in the form of a soft version of Stone Sky Sea - give the player locked gear for that level and have the DPS check be strict enough to where you need to use oGCDS/combos, but still not completely full uptime
I think something for DPS could be a mini boss fight where the boss has a light regen on it's health constantly, so if you don't maintain a proper rotation for the most part, you will make very little progress, because the boss constantly heals at a similar rate to the minimum DPS you could do just doing your core rotation without any weaves.
One i think is most effective is side content for each job/role thats similar to masked carnivale. Its still optional but it teaches you through puzzle like mechanic encounters that softly guides you to be good at your job/role while being rewarded poetics or glam
100% agree that there needs to be some required training on common dungeon/raid mechanics somewhere as I have seen at least a dozen players doing level-skips and then having no idea what mitigation even is, what their job is supposed to do, or how to do their job. I also do get the "but how long before the training gets outdated?" question, while a perfectly valid concern every training also needs to be updated when job changes are introduced and should go hand-in-hand. Trainings are a continuous effort that have to be updated frequently so that it reflects the experience and allows players to learn from them. This is in my opinion the biggest issue here, SE made trainings but never bothered to update them with the newest additions to the game. Also, the trainings should include something significant in order to offset the time spent, so also including the current tier(50/60/70/80) poetic gearset for free after training completion could be a great way to incentivize completion.
im throwing this out there, its probably stupid because i am a stupid person. But i think if they implement like a grade system that shows your results at the end of every instance can help people improve. Like devil may cry, how at the end of every mission gives you your performance result. Only yours though, because square isnt big on bullying. but itll put up stuff like damaged done, missed positionals, avoidable damage taken, time, dropped combos, damage output etc.
I feel given the battle log nature, all the data would then be sent to fflogs which would then lead to further drama.
I would love this so much!
Hands down, players need to be able to complete the stone/sky/sea or lawns/etc trial that is sync'd to the max of an expansion before moving onto the next. The 60/70/80 etc are surprisingly well tuned. If you can't beat that.....get some practice in. I think your idea of hall of the expert is a good wish, and I'd certainly encourage that but that's a bit of 'pie in the sky'. That said FF could also do with a hint more of content variety with some content acting as stopgaps, like for example delubrum reginae was actually a REALLY good step between normal 10 player raids/alliance raids and ex. We could use a few more 'steps' in the process of other content as well, like something between your normal dungeons and the savage criterion (I don't consider criterion more difficult than regular dungeons), but like it's really dated, they could use some dungeons like the pits of saron/halls of reflection that wow had in wotlk that were heroics and didn't mess around for their time. As it is you go from playing pattycakes to extremes and the gap between that is a cutoff point for a lot of players.
Ok… you have good ideas, but what you’re describing is not feasible for two reasons:
1) SE is constantly adding new classes to the game,
2) SE is also constantly balancing existing classes and making changes to their abilities.
Don’t get me wrong, it would help to have some sort of generalized tutorial that tells you about markers and debuffs, but you’d have to massively scale back how specialized the job stuff can get, otherwise they’ll have to keep making new additions and changes to account for patches.
More to the point, this is kinda the role that should be relegated to Job and Role Quests, and is fulfilled by them to a degree (I can attest that I didn’t know the value of interrupts until the EW tank quests).
So, yeah, good ideas, but the suggested scale is too big to be added as you’re suggesting.
Neither of those points do anything to most of the suggested guides, since they cover role responsibilities and mechanics. And job-specific guides can be updated alongside the changes to the jobs.
@@MyVanir ok, what are you willing to sacrifice?
Would you be willing to have one less dungeon?
Forgo an activity like Ishgard Reconstruction?
Give up a breast tribe quest?
Add extra months to patch cycles?
Because that’s something the suggestions aren’t accounting for, and why I’m saying they aren’t feasible if they get too far into a Job’s mechanical depth.
Adding in Job-specific tutorials, such as what are being suggested, aren’t a one-and-done endeavor, it’s a commitment that the team would have to make to change and update dialogue and mechanics every time there is a patch. A commitment that would take resources away from other projects the team is working on to make the community happy.
Consider how many times monk has been overhauled; how Astro changed from dual-healer to full-healer and had their cards simplified; how Paladin had their entire rotation reworked to be more magical.
Keeping up with this would sometimes involve completely rebuilding a class’s tutorial from the ground up, the same amount, if not more, effort that would go into building a dungeon or raid boss.
Thus, I reiterate: it would be nice to have a generalized tutorial that teaches you about certain mechanics, but it’s not feasible to get as specific as the original video is suggesting. Scale back the expectations.
its gettin really bad. i main Sage
in a 90 expert dungeon i get paired up with a tank that only does his single target 1,2,3.
of course the dps gets the aggro.
if i change to my second main ( gnb ) and play with random people i get paired up with healers that only do dps and dont heal at all.
players standing in every boss aoe even if it takes ages before the attack comes.
in the past week alone i was paired up with soo many very bad players.
even a tank at 90 who doesnt activate his tank stance.
how is it even possible to get to 90 with little to no knowledge about the job you play?
Another problem that I see is the language. Not everyone speaks English, Japanese, German and French. In my case I speak Castilian or Spanish. For one reason or another I had to learn English on the job, both writing and speaking it. For people who don't know those languages, it's going to make something difficult for those people.
I would like to see a series of training dungeons for basic mechanics. A series explaining basic mechanics like orbs, tethers, stack markers, tank swapping, and doom would go a long way. Maybe make it tie in to the grand companies so that you work with a group of pseudo-random allies (randomly generated appearances, but consistent stats) that then become your squadron. It would tie the tutorial into the story (so it doesn't feel pointless), would lead into the squadron mechanic (which could use a revamp too), and not be hidden like the current hall of the novice. You could then expand on this by having a dungeon or two at the start of each expansion that teaches the new mechanics (like Bardam's Mettle tried to do).
While I would love to have the same thing available for class rotations, they change every expansion so we are not likely to get that. What I would do instead is make every job's rotation be built around a solid "core" that comes online early and then has additional actions that get mixed in as you level up. Think gauge actions, OGCs, etc. Basically, make each class get the basic tool set early so that no tank needs to wait until level 70 to get more than 1 AoE button, but then spice up the rotation with new interesting abilities that players learn as they level and hopefully avoid the BLM issue where your rotation keeps changing.
PLEASE! TEACH US THE RAID MECHANICS WITHIUT HAVING TO LOOK UP VIDEOS THAT DONT HELP!
The mechanics get so convoluted at times I can't keep track. I need In game indicators of what everything is and practice all of it.
Just look at the amount of tanks that dont even know mitigation outside savage and ultimates,
Healers that dont know their oGCDs and DPS that dont use buffs. Dragoons with no dragon sight and dancers giving their equally trash boy/girlfriend DP
Still waiting on embolden, red mages!
What I want them to do is to disallow new players from purchasing boosts (both job and story skips) until they've hit at least level 50 on a main character. Too many times have I encountered brand new players with level skips that had no idea what an aoe even is.
Yeah, SE isn’t going to do that because money, but I wish.
There's quite a few players though who do know basic game mechanics due to existing in other games.
We need tutorial dungeons in game. From basic mechanics to raid ones like the savage modes have and explain how they work. It's annoying to have to look up guides and not have the ability to practice this mechanic without going into an actual raid then meeting people who just get angry at you for not having known how the convoluted mechanics work as a whole...
Honestly, just add enrages to normal content. Even if people never see enrage, it would still motivate most people to ensure they get spared the embarrassment of enraging a dungeon boss.
What'd I think would be an interesting idea to teach tanks would be that sometimes in trials and raids you might need to split up adds. In the Nidhogg fight there's 3 dragons he spawns which each do their own thing, but if grouped together are be too much for melees damage-wise. It's a mechanic that caught me off guard when i was leveling my Warrior to 80.
They must have watched this for the 7.1 updated hall of the novice.
Something you didn't mentioned that works as an indirect tutorial for rotations is Stone, Sky, Sea.
I use it a lot to pratice openers and reset cds.
Finding this a month later, but good gawd I would love some class specific stuff. I unlocked Gunblade and have no idea what half the skills will do. Fighting a dummy only does so much to figure out skills and rotations without seeing the buffs in action. I often forget what bard skills do since I mostly heal or tank. Only yesterday did I realize the differences between summoning ifrit, titan, and garuda on summoner. 😅 I'm a casual player and terrible with mechanics cuz my memory is piss poor but I do try to learn and grow.
Everything you mentioned but also make it mandatory, locking people out of registering for a duty with that role until the tutorial is complete, might sound harsh but one bad "you don't pay my sub" player can really ruin the experience for 3-7 others.
They also need to make AI in Trust and Duty support use AOE already... You can get through pretty much every MSQ dungeon now with NPCs and if they're all single targeting its hardly going to incentivize a new player to do so.
Adjust their damage output to do barely any damage, but make them use AoEs instead. Art of War is a gain on 2, SO START USING IT YOU WASTE OF OXYGEN BLUE ALISAIE
when i initally started my FF14 journey, i never actually had issue knowing the rotation of skills to the point i outright didnt look up a guide for most till way later to see if there was anything i was missing, and the majority of the time i didnt miss anything because a good chunk actually explained in the skill info. now there are outliers of it being not enough, took a bit to exactly understand fully what white mages(job i started out on) lillys were, and black mages fire and ice states. straight up without extensive testing on exact numbers increase, its impossible to tell how strong each state actually is and is one of the few things i HAD to look up because there is just no way to know that umbral ice 3 gives 31x regen and astral fire gives 1.8x fire dmg, i honestly thought it was at best 1.15x for astral fire 3 initally. the other thing of knowing the difference of spells/weapon skills vs abilitys, i personally didnt play games that didnt have this kind of thing. but honestly i think the majority of the really bad players just refuse to read what their skill does far more then lack of teaching tools, because tbh im fairly sure they will ignore the teaching tools if they refuse to even read the skills.
The guides online that I found helpful for any game usually boils down what you want to achieve, not how you do it necessarily. For example: A monk wants keep up a dot and a damage buff as well as access stronger attacks via perfect balance while keeping up a free-form rotation that flows 2-2-3. Teach them why they press their buttons and I think they will not have to think about their rotation so much they miss the mechanics and they can also recover from rotational mistakes more easily if they actually understand fundamentals. Teaching mechanics is kind of what the normal fights are there for I think, and learning them should be alright in a trial in partyfinder.
I feel like, in some of the earlier job quests, they attempted to explain the logic of intended skills based on the story content, as well.
But with all the job reworks, the job quests (and, by extension, Hall of Novice) got left behind and now there's a disconnect between what's talked about in the quests (Arcanist job quests is the most jarring example, imo) and what the jobs do at present. And with the expected additional reworks for AST and DRG, job mastery feels virtually unattainable because, at this point, we're gonna expect another rework in another year or two just as people are finally getting used to the jobs.
Great vid! Was wondering what that top glam at 0:45 was, I've never seen that chestpiece before!
It's the Endwalker artefact DNC top!
Idk if we need anything more to teach players their “rotation.” Aside from how the menu option now allows for you to see how certain moves combo into another, going to a higher level of weaving in GCDs and OGCDs sounds a bit much to me. In the strictest sense, there is no “rotation” as your class does not mandate any particular rotation.
As a DRK player I will use myself as an example. For the longest time, I did my burst rotation like a burst: I’d pile on all my high end DPS moves at the time they were available. Later, I learned I could spread out these moves with my GCD combo to make the higher numbers last longer. I didn’t suffer, or do immensely better by shifting rotational styles.
The only time I can see a mandatory rotation is for EX/Savage/Ultimate encounters. I just don’t think it’s super mandatory that the game “teach” you a rotation as it’s not really required elsewhere. Does it help if you know your rotation, yes. However, it’s an added layer of optimization that I don’t think it’s needed in game. Unless we also want to have the game give a tutorial on not only needing pentamelding, but how to optimally meld gear, which again isn’t required except for high end content.
Frankly, I’ve never experienced an Expert Roulette that went on 10 min longer than it would have if the entire party knew their rotations. Frankly, i find complaining about that to be silly. We’d have to educate sprouts on boss mechanics and how not to wipe if they didn’t know dungeon mechanics anyway, which could easily add 5-8 min to a run, but I am not seeing anyone say the game needs a dungeon tutorial for every possible mechanic variation.
Frankly, I think that's a load of bullshit.
i'm with you. I think it is a purposeful intent that the game doesn't outright say 'this is the exact order and timing you have to do every time to play this class' they want players to be allowed a flexibility in their options and play choices even if it ends up suboptimal. That is why they even put into their harassment rules that you can't belittle and kick people for having a different playstyle then what you feel is the correct one.
Hard agree. I think the game could use a "Hall of Intermediate" that teaches you recurring mechanics, to use your global cooldowns the second they're up and not half a second later, and to weave in oGCDs (though probably don't actually make them do that because that gets to real input problems for the bottom of the skill curve) because those are important and easy to understand concepts that don't really get into the nitty gritty of the game, but these type of complaints inevitably just boil down to "I wish people were as good at the game as I am" rather than any real game design problems or gripes. I also don't see how a rotation tutorial is even supposed to work beyond "sync to this stat total and do X amount of DPS", and that's a terrible tutorial because it doesn't teach people who can't do that how they can do it. Figuring out the optimal damage rotation *is* the game for a lot of people. Nobody would play black mage in Savage or Ultimate raids if that wasn't true. Making rotations rigid enough that you can have an ingame tutorial over it just doesn't really make sense and would make the game less fun for a pretty substantial part of the hardcore playerbase.
I wish I could remember which WoW dev said it, but to paraphrase him, "There is a consistent sentiment in the community that you can raise the average skill level of the game by raising the required skill floor to clear content. Our data shows that isn't the case. People below that skill floor just quit."
Honestly I think since it’s an mmorpg they think people will share and teach others cuz…well it’s an mmo >_> I thought that was the point of it
I generally agree but you go bit too far, I don't see reason to prepare people for savage mechanics and checks since many players will never do savages or care about them. The game should prepare the players for everything they need to get through MSQ which means normals and extremes.
I understand what you're getting at, but if the game had incredible, in depth tutorials on how everything works, none of that can compare to player to player knowledge sharing. Like, ever. There is a reason almost all games like this don't have tutorials explaining how best to play your class/job and how to be better at the game. The devs don't know you, they can't just put you in a tutorial and expect everyone understand it their way. Adding actual tips on how the game works and is played into the game itself is futile
Over the last 2 expansions the game has gone from random 4 player dungeons to 3 NPC + a solo player.
But if i could design some tutorials the would focus on being better team players. Healers who know what Esuna is, DPS who know how to use the party list to know when they are out of healing range, and people who focus on they job they are playing and not try to "mentor" others and die because they are not paying attention to where they are.
Theres alot wrong with setting something like this up. Number 1 the core premise is that there is a "correct way to play" which is false. Theres an optimal way to play and just playing. Optimal is what raiders and hard core players do while everyone is just playing. Thats not even going into that some jobs used to have different rotations and openers depending on build. (I dont know if that is still the case or not but it was going all the way into SHB)
Number 2 anyone who starts at level 1 is explained combos, abilities and weapon skills as the job progresses. Everytime you get a new skill your expected to read the tooltip. While i can agree for later jobs like dancer or reaper as they don't start at level one and your not explained much in the first story quest, i will also sat by that point the player shoukd already have a grasp of the core gameply by that point. But i could see something like a skills show case Especially for things like arms length. So the player could better understand the skill.
Number 3 again if you play from level one ARR you are introduced to each type of boss mechanic through the story and low difficulty dungeons. You dont need a dictionary for it just know red and orange is bad and you successfully understand 90% of mechanics. This of course excludes trials and raids, as it should. Trials and raids are ment to be unique challenges tailored to each individual boss to match their unique theme. Floor drops, simon says, tilting platforms etc.
Lastly no amount of extra tutorials, guides, or hand holding is going to help anyone who didnt care in the first place. Those who WANT to do better will look up the optimal rotations and reaf their tool tips, never needing the guide in the first place. While those that don't, will comtinue to do their 123 combo costing through the simple dungeons while holding their beer.
Tutorials shouldn't exist in a hall of the X. They should be integrated into the MSQ. I want community memes about how Y'shtola chastises you to use mitigation and Thancred is a disappointed dad because being an ice mage at a DPS check killed Ryne.
Hall of novice is not good. The text is slow, the exercise repetitive, you have to load into every single damn instance separately and there's zero interesting story context. Oh and if are going through the MSQ on a single job, there's a good chance you're level 25+ by the time you come across it. Godforbid you're on a "recommended" server. Is it an effective tutorial? Debatable (brb wall2walling satasha) but what isn't is that it just is not an engaging experience.
The issue is it's not maintainable to have such detailed tutorials. Every time we have class reworks or modifications the tutorials would all have to be scrapped and changed again. Imagine the amount of work that would have to go into the paladin's recent overhaul alone? I've been told by friends who actually play blackmage that their rotations can change wildly every 3 levels at certain points due to skill unlocks.
I can see perhaps enforcing a "hit this minimum DPS" dummy that is solo instanced at the start of every expansion. We already have this in the stone, sky, sea dummy missions, but nothing ever makes you attempt them. We should also add one more lesson to tanks hall of the novice that teaches mitigating on tank busters, raid wides, and spacing mitigation rather than blowing it all at once. We can't expect anything more detailed though because it creates far too much burden if/when they want to make tweaks or radical reworks to any class.
Haven’t played since Heavensward and just recently came back a few weeks ago. I am mainly a crafter/gatherer but also am a WAR/MNK main. Back then I enjoyed spending hours getting my rotation down (especially with Mnk positioning). Grinding the rotation complexities and how to overcome them always gave me a sense of accomplishment…and it still does surprisingly.
Certain traits and abilities get upgrades as you level up. It’s an introductory to what is to come. Knowing your rotations all comes down to how much effort you’re willing to put in practicing. Once you’re comfortable with said rotation, implementation is just a matter of knowing the fight mechanics. Everything else falls into place. Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of what you mentioned naturally comes with leveling a job.
Then again, people are different and receptive to different things. I pay a lot of attention to other DPS and tanks to see how they do things and if it’s something I can throw into my tool bag. Some don’t really do this and that’s fine too. BUT…my opinion may change in the future. I just hit 70 and finished stormblood lol.
They also need to inform new people about this games built in delay and funky snapshot timings. Too many people dunno about them and they scratch their heads in confusion as to way they died coming from other games that don’t have that type of delay and snapshot in it.
May I ask what Chest piece you're wearing at 4:00? I thought it looked really neat (especially if it gets dual dye for Dawntrail) and got no clue what piece it is
Looks like the heaven's ward coat from the mog store
@@hollowlord8253 Agreed, looks very much like it
I would have a quick tutorial on common ways boss abilities target important mechanics; full random, closest player(s), further player(s), role based, so on. Knowing to look out and adapt to these things will help players ease into savage content, but this would probably be an optional, advanced tutorial for savage content (especially since it particularly matters mostly for people going in blind into content)
You have many good points, but really. Call me a pessimist but I don't think much would change even with the best tutorials available. As the saying goes you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. The only way I could see this maybe sinking in is if you gate keep content, like you need to finish these tutorials before moving on but even then. Some people just don't care and no amount of teaching will help them because they can't help themselves to begin with. Though for people who do care, making their lives easier with QOL changes and dynamic tutorials will just stream line them into becoming competent players, faster which is good.
Hard pass.
Look, I get that it's frustrating to deal with people new to escalating levels of complexity, but what you're basically saying is, instead of teaching players organically how mechanics work as they do more and more content, to entirely front-load things and hope they either step up, or get back to the grind. That's... not playing, that's boring.
But isn't that what one does anyway, with external resources? Yes. Unless you do it organically, and figure it out yourself. Does that suck for people going through things with you? Yes, because it's a multiplayer game, and these are people, not machines. But it's part of _organic growth_ to fuck up again and again until you get it right, and that's the design for fun the game aims for. "Learn as you play". And hell, FF14 is pretty solid at it, that's what's so great about those exact "standardized mechanics".
There's some things that probably should be clarified properly, for sure. The fact there's different types of healers, for one thing. But you can't go full hog with the tutorials, because once again, tutorials aren't something you want to bog your players with.
I always know the basic rotation of any class Im playing. But I dont have a clue how to fit it into the 2 minute buff windows in raids. Never done a raid and kinda dont want to cause the rotations seem so intimidating. Like, it seems like you just CANT mess up. Idk how people keep perfect track of their rotation while dealing with boss mechanics
I played a lot of games, and a lot of MMOs. And while bad players are going to be everywhere to some extent regardless of what you do, FFXIV seems to have them in the highest quantity. Which is something I've always struggled to come to terms with, since FFXIV is, by all comparative metrics, a very easy game (in everything that isn't savage/ultimate). While I do think more tutorials could be beneficial, especially for some of the more arcane knowledge the game squirrels away, I, personally, think the game does an excellent job at show-don't-tell. It shows you how your job works, and how fights work, and how mechanics work. Even in the newest content, with the idea that players have played through the game, fights hold your hands in an almost coddling way. I think the problem is deeper then that. On a fundamental level of game design, the casual level that the game itself propagates with its atmosphere and wild difficulty curve gives rise to players who are simply to lazy or inept to learn the game's intricacies, even as few as they are. The game simply doesn't force you to actually try in casual content, leaving anyone not willing to put in a focused effort at a loss. You can slap as many tutorials in the game as you want, but unless the casual experience is changed to make you actually, meaningfully, develop and utilize these skills, I can't see anything changing.
II would absolutely love expert tutorials. I was lucky enough to have friends teach me high end play as GNB and WHM, but I've found myself wanting to learn everything else, both to widen my own range, as well as be able to better know how to integrate into other rotations happening in the dungeon/trial/raid.
The game does a great job of teaching mechanics, but it does it relatively slowly and/or late. They've only relatively recently changed old Dungeons and Trials to better reflect late game content.
Bardams Mettle is legit one of the few that is actually designed to teach you mechanics.
Everything else you're kind of expected to pick up over time by watching other players or the AI.
And back on the topic of the starting experience, they have improved it significantly. I alredy mentioned the revamping of old Trials and Dungeons, but Duty Support has been a godsend for people who just want to progress the MSQ.
It's doing a better job at teaching mechanics (particularly from ShB and onward), but still could be way better. Tank swapping isn't in any normal content. Yeah the new player experience is slightly better than it used to be but man does it still have a long way to go.
ARR could use another trim, and most jobs leveling experience should be like MNK or at the very least SMN (where you get a baby form of your end game rotation).
@@oEXTRAyeah, the early leveling slog is the main thing that's keeping me from leveling Dragoon and Summoner. Its a *nightmare*
I think not knowing your rotation after a certain amount of time often comes down to not actually caring about your performance, though there are cases where someone just has a hard time wrapping their head around the info that is availlable. But in this regard the game at least gives you tools such as target dummies to figure it out at your own pace, and there's plenty of content creators making guides so you can check if you've got it right or not.
The kind of tutorials I'd like to see more of are ones that actually show you the various kinds of boss mechanics that got added over the years, their visual indicators, and how to deal with them, so that people don't have to go into them either blind or seeing it from another POV in a YT video. I think it could save a lot of frustration for many groups if new players could recognize how to do a mechanic that's new for them instead of finding out the hard way what it does at the expense of other people's time.
I also wish there was something like the adventure guide from WoW, which lists every boss in a raid, the items they drop, but more importantly, basic mechanics for each role and a general idea of how to deal with them. It doesn't tell you everything, but at least it gives you something. Though I could see this being considered a spoiler of the raid, looking up a video of the fight is just as much.
I like that idea of a dictionary. Actually, they could do something along those lines for guildhests. Instead of guildhests being these strange one-off tasks, why not change them so they introduce players to the actual mechanics regularly used in the game now?
Still blows my mind when I see Dragoons or Samurais do an expert and not aoe.
Its disrespecful and a waste of damn time. I don't even care if the healer doesn't aoe, I just need the dps to aoe with me (the tank)
As a healer main the hall of the novice is only semi useful (not very much). Whether or not they've changed certain aspects of it recently I don't know (been a few years since I did it). But certain things such as you not being in a party means that any aoe heals you use won't be activated on the npc's you need to heal, also to single target heal them you need to click target. Both of these things alone are badly designed. In a normal party setup you can use F1-F4/F8 (depending on party size) to target each party member for pc users and your aoe heals will land on all party members in range. But I think in the end it's up to individual players to learn their chosen job. A lot of the learning for healing in general and my job specifically (astro) I got from figuring things out myself, but mostly from other players.
I'm an avid mentor. I am ready and willing to take anyone to a training dummy and explain and show off a rotation and a simple lay out. But yeah just about every class can be learned in a couple of minutes with a paragraph blurb of the greater picture and reading the tooltips. Its a social game, talk to people. If the person doesnt care then no tutorial will help.
While I think it's all a good idea, I don't think they'd ever do a job specific tutorial that in depth due to reworks. Should they? Yes, but I can see them just being lazy enough to not want to. Especially Astro, they keep changing that one every week. I just wish stone, sea and sky wasn't such an obscure feature, it's so randomly hidden away that's probably why you didn't include it or forgot to. It's a tutorial you could easily fail if you're not doing your whole kit and could actually inspire people to get good and learn, but it's like random NPC's in weird spots, like one is next to Palakas Stand in Thavnir (or whatever the 3rd teleport spot is called).
Stone sky sea definately needs to be in main cities. After returning to game with almost a year break had to google and search that npc.
Amazing video and very good points made. I gotta ask though what's the name of that coat your character is using? 👀 shit looks gud
which song is playing in the second half of the video? (~minute 7 onwards)
Eden titan's ost
A Term/Phrase Glossory is always a nice thing. One with a small search feature, I'm new to FF14, and not played any MMO beyond a few hours here and there on GW2 or ESO. There is still some terms that trip me up, that seem to be super common at endgame, but it's not like that game ever helps teach them
No, expert roulette won't be 11-12minutes. even with dmg pots and i660 gear. Maybe lv90 roulette if everyoneis overgeared and use dmg pots but not expert. I'm logging my casualruns and after hundreds of expert roulette and lv 90 roulette I have yet seen best times as follows: Lunar SUbterrane 15:05; Aetherfront 12:52; Lapis manalis 14:18; Troia 13:55; Alzadaal 14:30; Stigma 13:05; Smileton 12:48; Dead Ends 15:00. To reach 12m or below would require premade pt, everyone with bis or nearly bis gear, using dmg pots and giving their all. But since it's a casual content you are fine just doing basic combo 1-2-3 without party buffs or long cds and you can still clear. One need to assume that in casual content people won't tryhard, their parses will be low and they won't try to optimise rotations on a freaking easy to run dungeon. and that will of course affect the time in which you clear it. SO a time of 14-15minutes is actually really fast and it means that your party performed well or had a good gear. 17m+ means either wait time because of cutscenes or just overall mediocre performance. But 11 minutes on expert roulette with random people? Forget about it. The numbers above are out of 400 lv 90/expert roulette that I logged. Not even once I finished it in 11 or 12 minutes. 13 is barely possible with a little tryharding.
Add a glossary with images or short in-game display able videos that explain all the generic markers and mechanics with recommendations on what to do in the situations where they pop up.
Tooltips could be streamlined a great deal for a start. There's a bunch of inconsistency in how it phrases things around positionals for instance.
Somewhere in some piece of mandatory content they need to force you to use a limit break so that you know it exists and you have it on your bars.
I think the "showing the rotation" piece could be an optional view at the ability list similar to the updates they made a bit ago where you can see the combos attached to each other. Have a "damage line" view that shows the abilities in the optimal order of use.
I think that a hall of the expert could work, have a new one each expansion that's optimised for whatever the level cap is at the time and gate the day 1 extremes behind it. new expansion, new hall, sort of like a license renewal. Alternatively rather than it being a side content thing that gets refreshed, have it take the place of the role quests and then gate an MSQ behind it like ShB did. Call them the trials of light or some such and bring back some familiar job NPCs. Maybe you have trust system style things based on starting cities where you get the ninja, warrior, scholar and summoner npc and run a dungeon, and your NPCs are whichever role you aren't and then you essentially do what you're describing.
I think something the game is pretty good at is exposing you to group content through the leveling experience. Yes you might suck as a player, but you've gotten raid experience through trials, done enough dungeons to have seen a bunch of mechanics and to not have a load of anxiety about doing new stuff. I would argue that your average FF player is more ready for its end game content than players of other MMOs are for theirs because of the forced group content.
Tooltips are pretty handy, yeah. My number one piece of advice I ALWAYS give to newer players is:
Step 1: go to Character -> Actions and Traits
Step 2: Thoroughly read what ALL of your actions do (role actions included!) and do the same for any more you learn.
The reason I'm averse to tutorials and such is because they tried that with the first job quest for SGE but it's done super poorly. They just tell you that you can heal or heal with shield or heal via kardion and then just throw you in, with the last encounter being brutal for a first time healer. I would instead explain sage like this:
You have six main tools in your kit:
Kardia - Designates a target to get healed when you take an offensive action
Dosis - basic single target damage spell
Diagnosis - basic single target heal
Prognosis - basic AoE heal
Eukrasia - Changes the previous two abilities to heal for less but provide a shield at the cost of requiring more mp, and causes Dosis to apply a DoT rather than dealing direct damage. All of these modified actions are instant casts, as is Eukrasia itself
Dyskrasia - basic AoE damage spell, what you'll be casting for most of the dungeon
Keep these where you can easily cast them, because you will need to do so a lot.
Beyond this, you have something called the Addersgall gauge, which generates one charge every twenty seconds to a maximum of three. You can spend the charges on the following off global cooldowns (each of which restore 700 mp to you when used):
Druochole - More potent single target heal, boasting a cooldown of only one second.
Taurochole - Even more potent single target heal that applies a 10% damage reduction. 45 second cooldown
Ixochole - More potent AoE heal, 30 second cooldown
Kerachole - Applies a 10% damage reduction to all nearby party members. 30 second cooldown.
These are essential in keeping everyone healthy while still casting Dosis as often as you can, and provide a small boost to MP management as a bonus.
Additionally, you have two other offensive spells:
Toxikon - requires charges that generate whenever a shield you grant to someone is completely depleted within its duration, up to a max of 3. Deals decent damage to single targets or groups of enemies, but is best saved for when you need to dodge AoEs and can't sit still to cast dosis/get close to cast dyskrasia
Phlegma - Powerful single target spell with a large AoE but a fairly small range. Can store up to 2 charges with a 40 second cooldown.
The rest of your kit can be figured out on your own, and for the most part will help you out in more niche situations/when you're in a pinch.
That might be a bit of a text wall, but all things considered it doesn't take long to read. I know if I had a similar simple beginners guide when picking up any of the dlc classes I would have gotten the hang of it very quickly. Of course, some form of hall of the expert at level 50 that tells you to use your oGCDs and to use AoE actions when fighting several enemies would probably be nice.
"Somewhere in some piece of mandatory content they need to force you to use a limit break so that you know it exists and you have it on your bars."
Ultima Weapon does this now, you basically have no chance of passing the ending DPS check without the LB3 that your god explicitly gives you
"Alternatively rather than it being a side content thing that gets refreshed, have it take the place of the role quests and then gate an MSQ behind it like ShB did. Call them the trials of light or some such and bring back some familiar job NPCs. "
I fucking love this idea, just, a hard stop test. Not just because I really would like to make sure that at this point I do actually know how to play each class, but because certain people would get SO MAD and it would be hilarious.
@@antheraea.mothcore honestly would be a better use of everyone's time than forcing people to find a party for each of the hard primal trials at the end of ARR
When it comes to rotations, the reason why it doesn't tell you is because they want you to figure it out.
You have 90 levels, 100 when Dawntrail hits, and multiple expansions worth of content to understand what your class does and how it does it and this changes constantly anyway. They already severely homogenized everything for years to make it easier, they don't need to make it even more brainless or flatout tell people level by level exactly what to do.
I've just recently returned to the game 2 weeks ago, level 80 WHM, only really leveling to 90 via daily roulettes. 90% of the time, I'm level synched to 50 or below and never have a chance to use my class's abilities. The few times I get into a 72+ run, I often forget about the higher level abilities like being able to shield or proc an additional heal on Medicate. I can confidently say that, while I'm smart enough to figure it out in an easier dungeon run of max level, I do NOT know how to properly play my White Mage currently. I haven't touched the duty support or w/e to try with NPCs for training my rotations yet, but I've also learned from being active during past expansions that, until you hit the hardest content, you don't even need half of your abilities to easily succeed, leading to ingrained habits and muscle memory that just can't cut it in the end-game content. While I dislike doing so, my personal solution is simply going to be hitting max level and finishing the MSQ while looking at a guide or two on the rotations and just practicing simple repetition until I can get the group content unlocked and first-hand experience.
It's sad that the game is built in such a way. I only came back because I have an itch to properly raid and do the hardest boss fights. Not entirely interested in the MMO experience as a whole outside of that. (Which is why I've finished the Blue Mage line in between Roulette Dailies.)
As a new-ish player there's one thing I think is needed. The ability to add a customizable colored border to skills so I can tell at a glance which skills on my bars have positionals and whether it's flank or rear without needing to read every tooltip any time i change to a less-played job.
It wouldn't really make the game easier, but it would help jog my memory of how to play a job with just a quick glance at my bars.
*_(After this I just kind of rant for a bit, feel free to skip)_*
And some commands that are keybinds really need a button on the UI, like the control + home keybind increases the size of any window... I spent way too long looking at an inventory that was way too small only to find out from a tip video that windows can be resized. That wasn't even a tip, the person just had a larger inventory than I did so I had to google. "FF14 how to increase inventory" ""FF14 how to increase inventory size" ""FF14 how to make inventory bigger" ""FF14 how to resize window" (got chat window for that, *_which is done differently from every other window_* ) ""FF14 how to increase window size". That last one finally gave me a 3 year old reddit post with one single comment on control + home.
Also the default settings are weird, especially the inventory tabs. And when using the one large bag option, the tabs still exist so rather than having new items go from left to right for the full width of the bag, it goes half the width then starts on the second line. And when it's done with the first tab, it goes to the right tab instead of the tab underneath the first. It's just inconsistent.
Why is the hunting log a thing? It just seems to have never gotten an update past ARR.
How did I not know there were duty finder settings? AND WHY IS LIMITED LEVELING ROULETTE ONLY FOR PREMADES?!?!?!?!?!?! That setting would really help keep alt job grinds fun.
And why doesn't /macro open up my macro menu? this is just a pet peeve of mine as it's easy enough to access them through the system menu, i guess.
Why doesn't it teach new players they can rent chocobo in starting cities? This literally would've save me hours before I got my personal chocobo.
Spirit bound gear is never explained... never.
There are too many settings menus which have too many categories and each category has too many tabs. At least give me a search box so I can find which menu -> category -> tab i need to be in.
The core problem is button bloat - most *normal* players don't want 25+ buttons to manage. Even wow learnt this, let alone every other surviving mmo.
One change that I would personally make? Require players to finish a set of class quest and unlock a jobstone before being able to progress into ARR's "Company of Heroes/Titan"-arc. Not only is the first quest of the arc a level 30 quest, but the duties it contains (Brayflox Longstop and Titan (4-player)) are the first ones where you're able to use a job's abilities even at the lowest available level. On a similar note, I would also make clearing a job's level 50 quest required for continuing the MSQ into Operation Archon (I've seen PLENTY of people completely walled by the Cape Westwind solo duty due to having horrifically outdated gear due to not doing their job quests).
...And at the same time make duties above level 30 require a jobstone equipped when not in a pre-made party so that the chances of getting Cutter's Cry with a partymember who hasn't even fought Ifrit yet will become non-existent.
While I don't think job specific tutorials would work well with how frequently they change things, the rest of this sounds like a great idea. Roles on their own need more in depth higher level tutorials, more than the solo duties for unlocking an expac job you do once and can't revisit.
Hell, it took me months to pick up DNC entirely because at 60 I was completely unprepared for that solo duty, got overwhelmed, and didn't come back til I'd finished ShB and was much more confident in my abilities.
And I managed to more or less figure out ShB SMN intuitively, the only adjustments I needed were Titan-egi attack on dungeon mobs instead of Garuda-egi and a bit of fine tuning with dots.
Looking back, it's very silly that DNC ever felt too big brain for me, but that's just how it is for folks when they're starting out. I'd have loved a proper tutorial on any of this stuff rather than sandbagging pugs in duty finder by being complete ass.
(Sorry for the wall of text, lol)
I believe as a casual player in FF14 it's sometimes too easy to join content that's way harder than expected without realizing it and that leads to the issue of Mid/Hardcore-Players thinking, those players are not being taught enough in the game.
I think the game offers enough help for players already to beat most of the content. We have, Hall of the Novice, Novice Network and Mentors for offering tips, Practice/Sprout Groups for getting into the fights with potentially people explaining mechanincs and generally helping out (This is how I got into harder content when I started). We have the DPS Checks in Palaka's Stand and overall you do learn a lot during MSQ and Duty Roulettes / Normal Mode Content.
If people want to get into harder content, they can choose to do it with Echo and there are also really beginner friendly fights in the game. Actually, they don't choose it, Echo is usually enabled and here lies the problem I mentioned above.
The thing is, for most "Normal" content ingame you actually don't have to learn anything except what you actaully take in from the Hall of the Novice and what you learn during MSQ to beat the content and I do not blame players who don't see it necessary to improve, since it's only really worth if you actaully wanna do Extremes and Savage and even there I belive execution of mechanics and survival is way more important than doing proper rotations and actually encountering DPS Checks, unless you make the content harder (low Ilvl, no echo, and especially play hard content on release, etc.).
Remember, this is what people do, that are usually already invested in that kind of content. Usually more casual players do the content later where often times encountering DPS Checks rarely happen anymore due to gear upgrades and echo. In their game enviroment, it's way more important to execute mechanics and simply survive the encounter.
If someone is interested to get into harder content, the tools are there already, but I believe what would help a lot is a recommendation system for beginner friendly Extreme/Savage content. The varience for difficulty in this kind of content is too broad imo and it's easy for a Beginner-Raider to fall victim to something that's harder and for some people it's just unexpected.
For example, if you always do raids with Echo and being overgeared, how are you supposed to know doing new Savages/Extremes on patch day are way more difficult, simply from a casual player perspective. I believe those are the situations where most mid-hardcore players believe, the game doesn't offer enough to teach those more casual players. It's a matter of perspective, context and game knowledge and not a skill issue I believe.
As an easy example, just compare the Coils of Bahamut Raid with the MinIlvl/No Echo Version of this Raid, it's like playing a completely different game and that should be made more clear, on how huge of an impact Echo and High iLvl actually is for the difficulty of the game.
Just imagine being a Casual player that only did Extremes, maybe some Savages with echo and being overgeared, now wanting to try out a new Extreme on patch day - it's a shock for them, because when else in the game do you encounter a situation where your stats are not boosted? They will think stuff like "Damn, why did the group got killed, I never needed to mitigate before" and it's legit.
The tutorial I consider the most vital is one that shows people what mechanics absolutely can't be skipped on a boss encounter. Think the one I still see wipe raids occasionally is the third boss of Dun Scaith. If nothing else, they could come up with a better indication that the add that spawns is going to wipe the raid if you don't kill it before its cast goes off.
Hall of the Veteran at level 50, for intermediate rotation, timing and teaching to include OGCD's could be incorporated into the crystal tower or even required to enter it, then Hall of the expert at level 70 for the super advanced things, make this one required to get into savage and higher content. from my experience these changes would have saved several headaches down the road.
This is why I think there should be something like what BLU gets, a solo bossfight arena which has some decent mechanics you need to do.
Make a normal extreme and savage version as a way to ease someone in to it and have some nice glam as rewards and add another 3-5 arenas each expansion, the extreme and savage would have an enrage and ideally savage is actually difficult where completing it is considered a solid achievement akin to necromancer or at the least doing savage tier on content.
ESO has something like this for both solo and 4 man and it's a great way of making someone really become a good player without having to do all of the learning up front in their first instance with a group of 8. For a while the weapon from solo and 4 man was actually BiS so you had to go do that before you wanted to get into a serious raiding guild anyways.
I think this style works a little better too, because if you tell me there's a tutorial for your class i might do it, but if you tell me there's a cool solo arena where you can get loot and test your skills with a leaderboard and fun mechanics, I'd probably just do it for fun and do the learning in the process.
You'd have to add tank/healer mechanics to make them utilize their full kit but still very doable
I'd call the teaching place Bardam's Mettle hard. It's an 8 man encounter where you pick the role you want. Mt, OT, both style healer, and each DPS style will be the options with NPCs filling the 7 you don't pick. Trash packs will be larger to simulate wall pulls with each boss having harder mechanics (tank swaps, light parties, ect). If you clear it as a role you get decent looking usable armor, but it you complete it as every role you get a unique mount with special music.
I had a similar idea using job quests - After every 10 levels, a quest is required to get the ability you'd get at that level (i.e. for SGE currently, to get Panhaima at level 80), like it is for the older expansions. Rather than being associated with your job/role story, you would get teleported to a training ground like the HotN (maybe to show off your sweet new skills to admiring onlookers from your GC, idk the lore don't matter). The quest would be a series of VERY short battle situations where you have to use each of the new skills you acquired appropriately, (e.g. for SGE, it would teach you how to use Rhizomata, Holos, and Panhaima at level 80). If you'd like, it could be complete with text boxes that actually freeze the game, highlight the button you have to use, and do not unfreeze until you press it (I think the current UI with silent text boxes is part of why attempts to do this sort of thing with current job quests aren't super effective). Something as simple as "[Enemy name here] is about to release a series of repeated attacks, press Panhaima to repeatedly shield your party!". Simple 10 second repeated raidwide, a green checkmark, and you're on your way, in total hopefully shorter than most of the solo duties you currently have to do at those levels. Stolen straight out of your everyday modern single-player RPG, and essentially a gate to make sure if you're doing content at the level cap for that expansion, you know what all the relevant buttons are.
A similar role-based system could teach how to use all of the role abilities at level 50 for each role to unlock the final one (e.g. Rescue).
Is this a metric ton of work that would have to get partially redone each expansion, and could people just skip through it and not learn anything? Absolutely! But I think maintaining up-to-date and relevant tutorials is a worthwhile expense, and overall I don't think it'd be IMPOSSIBLY burdensome to essentially bring the player to the HotN and have a generic enemy do a single action, with the appropriate counter from the player allowing them to pass (for DPS skills, the enemy doesn't have to do anything at all!). It'll also give SE a good chance to teach use cases for things that aren't super intuitive for new players (e.g. Pepsis and Emergency Tactics, using Holos before damage, etc), and take a second look at things that are more or less useless like Repose.
It'd be nice as well to allow them to keep the ease of normal content where it is, where players aren't punished for being bad, but force them into a single situation where they do have to show a little bit of job competence once per expansion, with no stakes, at the very end. Can even give em a handsome sack of gil as a congratulations.
I don't know, maybe it's just me but Rhizomata and Holos are rather intuitive for the level at which you get them. With Rhizomata being a simple "I'm out of charges but want to use one" button and Holos being an overall great action for preventing party wide damage, as I understand (I'm level 79 rn). It's explaining the "secondary basics" as one might call them, such as making sure to use your AoE and not sleep on any of your off global cooldowns that actually matter imo. Hell, until recently I completely ignored Druochole thinking it wouldn't be helpful and I already have enough ways to spend my charges but seeing the dps drop to below half health all of a sudden so I gotta drop what I'm doing to cast diagnosis too often changed that.
I think they should use the updated Hall of the novice Idea as a replacement for Guildhests since they effectively serve no further purpose in the game at this time. They were good for leveling, but we have multiple other options available to us rather than spamming guildhests. If incorporated correctly you could even incentivise their completion by introducing a small story with a secondary rise of smaller adventuring groups or maybe add them as an upgrade to squadrons. They could expand further by having the job quests come back as an exclusive skill capstone for ensuring you know how to use your job effectively onstead of making a long quest chain so you get the general use of a gap closer or other OGCD and then a slightly more targeted use for the job itself with access to the full kit.
Best tutorial for melee dps is the samurai lvl54 quest back in shadowbringers. As a sprout going in that thing without accessories was definitely a humbling experience.
I think the solo story duties are "tutorials" in disguise.
The only thing I think is CRUCIALLY needed is an actual explicit explanation of all the universal mechanic markers, like you mentioned. These markers are great and extremely easy to read ONCE YOU KNOW THEM, but the process of actually LEARNING what they mean pretty much requires that you have someone to explain them to you. If you're not playing with experienced friends and no one ever bothers to explain what they see as "basic" mechanics in party chat, you're gonna have a really hard time figuring a lot of them out. And this doesn't just affect high-end raiding - even by the end of ARR you're gonna start having trouble staying alive in mandatory fights if you don't know what some of these markers mean. This is BY FAR the biggest thing the game is lacking in terms of tutorials IMO.
I don't think they'll ever do something that teaches a specific rotation, partly because they change jobs a lot and partly because I think most game devs don't want to enforce a single "correct" way of playing their game, even when the game is designed such that a de-facto "correct" way clearly exists. Most rotations can be figured out to a competent level just by reading tooltips anyway; if anything they might just want to encourage that somehow.
Beyond that I think the main stuff you called out that I would be interested in is the universal "how to play the game" type stuff, like teaching tanks to aggro adds or teaching healers to use their oGCDs. Honestly some of that could just be put in the Hall of the Novice. Anything more advanced like efficient mitigation usage is probably getting too technical (people who care will look it up anyway, people who don't will skip the tutorial), and some stuff like tank swaps are kinda too fight-specific to give a lot of general advice on.
I find this video a little hilarious. I wrote about this topic on lodestone back in 2016 when these were introduced. I had very similar sentiments and even some early suggestions. I quit FFXIV back in 2020 due to working too much to effectively raid, something I loved dearly. I still follow the game mildly, thinking it could be fun to return, but find myself lacking the time. It's a little sad that something like this still hasn't been addressed. I used to do small guides for BLM as that was my main, teaching rotations and such as with the start of Heavensward many people struggled to understand how to play BLM well. I kept it going up until I stopped playing, trying to add resources on UA-cam and Lodestone to help other Black Mages get their footing.
I don't really think it's the game's job to teach a rotation though. Better teach class mechanics, absolutely, but nothing about the rotation. That's such a subjective topic and the goal post is constantly changing for jobs even between gear sets let alone levels. These are games where players learn from each other. That's literally the whole point of the game -- working together to reach a goal. A big part of the game is the mystique of how it works and how it works best.
Edit: half my post for erased when I submitted and I'm too lazy to rewrite the part that got deleted so I'll summarize: I think we've gotten so far on the perfect answer for everything that its sucked a lot of fun out of games like this. People are in such a rush to reach the end, to be perfect, that they totally eliminate one of the funnest parts of the game. I don't expect someone at level cap to have mastered their rotation, so long as they're actually "doing OK" and that is subjective as hell I'll readily admit. If a dungeon is taking an extra 15 minutes to clear, it's likely not because one guy doesn't know his rotation.
i feel like the level 70 job quests would have been a really great place to put some sort of "you've come this far, now let's see what you know" kind of skill-check/tutorial, since that's the last level we have proper job quests before transitioning into role quests. not only would it be a good way to prepare people for the difficulty ramping up in SHB content by reminding them about some of their skills they may not have been using because stormblood content may not have pushed them hard enough to need them, but it's also a nice narrative capstone to the job quests themselves and a lot of the stories could very well benefit from a final duel with your teachers or something similar
another tutorial to consider would be a 2-minute burst tutorial, especially if the game is going to force us into playing around a 2-minute meta, since it hurts the entire party in all levels of content if bursts are not lined up. it doesn't need to be "this is how you fully optimize your burst" but a simple "be sure to use this party buff every chance you get! sync it up with your NPC party members' buffs so you can defeat this trial!" should be enough to teach people they need to use their 2-minutes together with everyone else. that is, of course, assuming the 2-minute meta is here to stay, imo since it's Square's own design choice to have it they should consider putting a tutorial on it since it's now a cornerstone of the combat gameplay
I am still learning some mechs on the higher level content as I have unlocked it, but I have stuck to the same few jobs and new stuff I always use my main to learn them. Now I'm a DNC main so it's more about managing aoes vs single attacks and using my buffs as they come along. I'm sure tanks have it worse with noobs drawing agro and not knowing where the tank will end a pull.
This is a good idea except when expansions change a rotation drastically like how summoner lost its DOT from its RRB rotation and turned into a game of Simon. For DNC I would love a challenge of using dance partner aoe heals and Def buff mitigation/ improvise to get a party though a raid wide attack. Could be a good lesson. We aren't the best healers but in a pinch can help and I hope more DNC are practicing that as well.
The Balance discord type resources should be in game too, a basic opener to learn and a stat/gear priority menu like ariyala would go a long way I think. Maybe even a bar that goes across your screen with the skills in order that light up DDR style to teach players their rotation/openers. And again this really comes down to that it really should be on SE to teach players how to play the game rather than relying on players to do all the work.
I don't think additional learning tools will do anything.
There are just people resistant to learning. Even with fairly active people on fairly active discords, people still get things wrong and get defensive about it. I've had people apply to my static and when I point out that their rotation is incorrect in logs they've gotten mad at me. There are many people who have posted in discord about why their dps is low and when xiva says different they refuse to believe it. People argue about whether DPS should LB trash on a dungeon pull instead of the boss on a daily basis, even though all the information is available on the internet. There's also just an absurd amount of skill being offloaded to third-party tools like Cactbot, automarker, and autocombo, which is why it's a meme to do reclears after a patch release when all the tools don't work. I remember some spicy TOP drama earlier in the year when a healer publicly outed his group (something about the other healer running out of mana by spamming heals when it wasn't needed and then complaining that they weren't healing enough?) and this is the highest level with some famous streamers and yet no one in the group really understood how healing worked.
The amount of content created by the community to improve everyone is honestly amazing, from YT videos to guides to savage raids to even something as crazy as xiva. Yet even with this content, people are bad and yet assertive about it even at the savage/ultimate level. Inevitably, the only way to get truly skilled players is to look for them.
When I think about it, I don't think there's been any game where the skill level of the entire community improved with some additional tutorials.
The game needs additional teaching tools. The class quests in each ARR class were originally (I think) intended to teach you that class’ mechanics, but largely none of them do any more (with the exception of the Black Mage’s Sleep tutorial?). You can see this in the classes added post-ARR, where NPCs shout at you to use certain abilities at certain times. The Dancer quest in particular has a lot of this going on.
A lot of abilities aren’t very intuitive. I’m sure a lot of tank players wonder why they have multiple different mitigation abilities (but real talk, why do we have multiple DIFFERENT mitigation abilities that do the same thing? Why not two charges of Rampart instead of Rampart and the other one?). I’m sure many players barely understand burst damage windows and how to activate them, etc, etc.
No, Square enix shouldn't be teaching you rotation and they will never do that. Two reasons - they suck at doing it, japanese side sometimes gets rotations for jobs and they are worse than whatever community will create(also those people thought that first iteration of ninja was balanced). Second reason - they don't make tutorials that they have to update after every balance patch and expand after every expansion. Dps check is awful idea because after failing it there would be no incentive to get better to finish "hall of experts". And again, I don't trust that SE is able to balance training dummies, check some of the patch notes for EW. All markers are taught in normal duties, there's no need for additional training to learn those. Tank/healer lessons actually sound reasonable. I still don't see why would people do this hall of expert, testing lvl 70 rotation to enter current savage or extreme? My expert roulette wouldn't even get better
Ok, now my ideas - to teach rotation, I would add possibility to see community made and rated rotations in the Stone, Sky, Sea which would add highlight to correct buttons according to the rotation made by someone from community. Also Stone, Sky, Sea really needs at least achievement for destroying a dummy once, nice minion would also be welcome
The mechanics such as "stacking arrows" should be added to some early solo-duties in the MSQ, and get some of the voice actors to add one or two sentences that get played during the fight such as "That attack may hurt alone, lets deal with it together". That way players know or at the very least get taught what the mechanic is, and how to deal with it, and the fact that it's a voice clip played during a fight, and not just a text box or cutscene, means that players should not accidentally skip it.
Beside the clearly missing dictionary for markers, I think a side "what can I expect from other roles from my role's pov" for people who don't play or try every role could be useful - i.e. mitigations from other roles, LBs, etc
most of your suggestions are only matter in extreme and savage content. which is not neccessary when the game is aim for casuals.
A big floor I see in FFXIV is how the routation changes. If I should make a system to try to help the players. I would start taking an advice from a PvP game tbh.
In PvP like LoL, Valorant, CS2 and so on a good advice is to find something and main it, it makes so every game have one thing in common, and by that not so random. in LoL pick the same champion, Valorant and CS2 pick the same weapon.
The same could be implementet into FFXIV too. And to an extend we already have one job that follows this logic. The Summoner after rework is more or less finished in level 50, its fine that they get some new skills too. with like Ruin IV, and the primal summoning that starts in level 70. But a lot of the Summoners changes is how much the damage is on a skill and how it looks. It perfom the same as in level 50.
I think that is a good model, for how all jobs should be in the game. So the game up to level 50 should mainly be to learn your basic 1, 2 and 3.
Also give all classes and jobs their AoE in level 15.
After that I would implement a Halls of Novice trial on every 10th level that focus on the new skills that had been added.
I think a good bare minimum change for the language of the standardized mechanics markers would be to at least have little tutorial pop ups similar to the ones they have for job guages. Have them show up before someone queues the first piece of content they show up in that someone does explain hey, this mechanic indicator is about to be in the content you're going into, this is what that means.
I've only been playing ffxiv for a little under 6 months, but have already noticed that just by having friends who know the game and by researching myself i'm already above avarage in the game and this video reall does shine a light on why.
If I didnt have good tutorials in the form of friends explaining stuff i'd probably be just as bad as everyone else is when playing for under a year.
The new player experience is probably so different when you dont have a friend whos experienced and knows whats going on.
Yeah, I do agree there is some struggle in early content, which only translates to bad habits in later content.
I was in the leveling queue for healer, and the tank totally disregarded multiple pain points for WHM at level 50. They pulled too many mobs that had detrimental effects that I needed to esuna, making it impossible to esuna everything. They ran out of my line of sight. They didn't wait for the DPS to catch up to AoE skill packs down down, and yes, we were all sprinting after. The tank didn't use AoE skills either, meaning the rest of us kept yanking aggro and getting hurt. And worst of all, they kitchen sinked all their buttons, making it brutal to heal. Aka, nigh impossible, especially when WHM has poor MP sustain at level 50, at least when I have to spam heal/esuna, and you run off where I can't see you. It was brutal. Multiple times the DPS asked to slow down on my behalf (I didn't even ask myself, as I know not to say anything when I have nothing nice to say lol, self control wins) and the dungeon took unbelievably long. The tank never responded to the DPS, either.
Now, I do think constant milestone tutorials for each cap (50, 60, 70, etc) that I see some people commenting is never gonna happen. Not just from an implimentation standpoint, but I just doubt it would get used. But I do wish there was gameplay in MSQ content itself that required higher skill checks. That wouldn't realistically happen either, I know, but I think base MSQ dungeons taking a smaaall page from harder content and putting them into dungeons would benefit everybody overall. It'd suck ass for a while, but forcing skills to improve in base casual content is (in my opinion) the only way to raise the overall skill level of players. Most people don't do extreme, let alone savage or ultimates - so they've never needed to improve. I doubt they ever would, so drip feeding skill checks is, in my opinion, the only way to really achieve overall improvement.
As for what I think should be added tutorial wise, I think telling people what mechanics are is more helpful over teaching rotations since they change so often. So that being what stack markers are, what spread markers are, what line of sight is, what baiting is, etc.
I recently started kearning healer when i made an alt to play with a friend that wanted to tank, and i gotta say, the major thing i would put in Hall if the Novice is teaching the player how/why/when to use two specific tools: their DoT abd their AoE heal. Most healers going into HotN are probably new players on conjurer, yet medica doesn't even FUNCTION in the lesson thats supposed tk be about healing multiple allies because they dont put the npcs in your party with you. Combining that with making them aware of the DoT so they become more accustomed to the idea of dealing damage even as a non dps
I once had a max level healer running out of MP in stone vigil because she kept using Cure 3 when the tank was the only one who needed healing. She thought it was better than cure 2 until I reminded her lmao. But other than that, I see too many healers doing below lvl 30 dungeons who just spam medica or do other weird stuff. I swear they are bots or something cuz they rarely respond to advice when me or someone else try to help.
SE needs to standardize the 1-50 skills. If you get AOE at 15 and 30, well all jobs do. Its fine to have some off timed skills but there needs to be something done with that as well when making this.
This was a great list of things I want to learn. So where can I learn everything in your 'Hall of the Expert' until they make a real one?
Just a thing that I do when I decide to kinda practice with my healing or tanking (both of which I loathe doing) I'll go into a trust. The NPC AI aren't perfect but it at least simulates a party. I agree with the idea of at least a tutorial on mechanic markers, especially when they throw a new one on us. I can't count the number of times while I was a sprout being like "oh hey what does this mean..... aaaaaand I'm dead." We're just supposed to automatically know this means stack together, this one means the tank has body odor, this Dorito is for sharing and this one isn't even though they're the same damn Dorito (they could at least spicy nacho vs cool ranch for that or something...), go stand in the blue puddle and then the yellow puddle while Nophica blows kisses at you, you get what I mean... And things like that are another reason I don't like tanking or healing.
As a player who has struggled to improve over the years, I wonder that SE hasn't made use of Stone,Sea & Sky to use as a tutorial instead of just go in and practice. It could be separated by job grouping [type of dps, healers, tank] without creating something entirely new. Doing this would mean that each expansion would have a ready made place for job classes to learn new skils and meld them with their current rotation. Yes, there are some who can just read the description of the ability and use it well, but it certainly makes for more enjoyable play when one really has a feel for the why and how of abilities [and I'm still trying to get the hang of OGCD-GCD...] It may take the dev seeing a decrease in player numbers [i.e., $$$] to consider an adjustment.
If I could design any tutorial, it'd be specific to ninja.
Teach them that doton isn't a gain until theres three or more enemies, even before factoring in TA windows and Hollow.
I'm so tired of doing crystal tower (alliance raid) roulette and seeing three different dotons on the field.