Howdy everyone! So looking around this sub and general FFXIV content across the broader internet I see a lot of doom posting about the declining player base without a lot of thought given to the current attempt at onboarding that FFXIV has, the free trial. So I wanna talk about it as someone who has recently played quite a bit of it.
So here’s my credentials before we start. I’m a new player who’s been playing the free trial. I’ve completed all the MSQ content for ARR, Heavensward and StormBlood, tried my best to complete as many extremes as possible (we’ll get back to this), have 5 maxed out jobs, currently trying to solo the second deep dungeon and have about 300 hours of playtime put in. Safe to say, I like this game and will be purchasing a subscription as soon as I can afford it (shout out the economy for being awful) but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a fair few critiques of what I have experienced mostly stemming from frustrations with how the free trial is handled. So please join me as I talk about this free trial at exhaustive length.
So let’s start with… THE GOOD Firstly and most obviously the sheer amount of content for free is insane. Like I said I’ve spent 300 hours in this game and that’s super impressive for something they tout as a free sample of the real experience. I also want to weirdly applaud where they decided to cut off the MSQ for the free trial. I know that it wasn’t likely near the top of their list of priorities when they extended the trial to storm blood but the story genuinely does end off on a super exciting note that does make me excited to play more. (also why does everyone say StormBlood was the bad expansion I really loved the story here more than Heavensward?) Also seeing cross over events like the rathalos fight and fall guts event be available on free trial was also a very nice surprise. Honestly this feels like the big things I want to point out cuz everything else nice I have to say can easily be boiled down to “it’s FFXIV” you probably already know all the other stuff I liked about it lol.
Now let’s move onto… THE BAD Okay so I did say I had complaints and oooh boy do I have some complaints. My major critique of the free trial is how weirdly isolating the experience is. Now while I understand that part of this is intentionally design and a form of fomo marketing I think this is the game genuinely shooting itself in the foot when it comes to hooking new players.
So what do I mean? Well let’s start with the limited chat features, I cannot tell you how many times someone would send me a tell that was like “I like your outfit : )” only for my only way to respond was doing the thumbs up emote at them like some strange socially inept mime. I think this limit to one on one chating is in hopes to prevent spam but in that case wouldn’t be easier to let me tell so I have a lower chance of spamming the say chat with shit that’s going to annoy everyone around me? This also really limited my ability to connect with other players. I would finish a dungeon or raid with a player who I thought was really cool or friendly only for me to have no way to communicate with them.
Now onto something else that annoyed the shit out of me was the removed party functionality. Now for context I started playing this game with my loving partner and I cannot communicate to you how annoying it is to have to beg the sprout chat for someone to come party us up rather than just being able to hit two buttons and get it done with immediately. I fail to see what exploit they could be possibly be trying to block out with this?
Speaking of my partner, why can’t I friend people? Like is the threat of free accounts sending friend requests so high that this is something that must be stoped? Once again I would constantly meet old and new players who I thought where cool or funny only to know that I’ll never see them again or given the opportunity to form any way to contact them again. And for those new players wouldn’t having a healthy ecosystem of other new players to socialize and encourage eachother help make the game stick better in the minds of new players?
These social elements being blocked also effects gameplay in a lot of meaningful ways. When I have no way of forming a party than I’m effectively blocked out of a LARGE majority of extreme content due to duty finder being so limited on those trials. Also I would love to try out ultimate concent but that’s also removed from the free trial, which like fine but even if it was in the trial I wouldn’t be able to do it because of the complete lack of social elements. This also applies to free companies, near the end of StormBlood I got frequently asked if I would be interested in joining a free company and unfortunately I’d have to decline every time simply because I wasn’t allowed to have friends.
Also I understand why for game economy reasons you can’t trade but my god not having the market board makes leveling any crafting job a nightmare. Maybe there’s some other solution that can be implemented like a playtime/level limited spending limit on the market board? I’m just throwing out ideas here.
It’s just so frustrating especially for a game where the number 1 piece of advice I see given to new players is “do it with a buddy : )” and like yeah man I agree, I to would love to make friends on here, unfortunately the game is kind of making that impossible! And even if I wanna start playing it with a friend I already have there’s a good chance we won’t even be able to party up for a while. I understand fomo marketing but for a game that’s so largely defined by social elements and interaction with other players the free trial does an AWFUL job making those social hooks connect. And for a game that’s so largely has the balls to be like “your a sprout until you complete my 1200 hour main story” it would be maybe in their best interest for players to feel that social element to encourage them to get through all that content early on rather than having to spend cash before they can even start making friends.
As someone who really likes this game and who was hooked by the story, this isn’t enough to make me like drop it or whatever but it is frustrating and I could easily see how this would turn off a lot of other people. I think the main reason I can easily go “ehhhh I’ll get the full game and a subscription later” is because I have no friends on the game. If i had friends my thought would likely be “well I can’t let myself fall behind all my cool game friends I gotta buy this ASAP!!!” Which I would hope is a more effective marketing.
I got to thinking about all of this because I got an ad for FFXIV on YouTube and instead of advertising their new expansion or high end content they made the ad entirely about the free trial. This is how they intend on getting new players in through the door and if that’s the case I think the major way it fails in doing that is it’s severe lack of social elements (ironic since the ad proudly claimed you could socialize lmao)
Now there is a lot of fixes here, introduce more content that makes players of all levels socialize, remove the restrictions on free trial social interactions, so on so forth so I definitely don’t want it to seem like I’m just making this post out of spite, I genuinely would love for these elements to be improved because then I think more people would be able to enjoy this game but for that to work I think this MMO needs to show off it’s multiplayer social elements a little better.
But all of this is just my perspective, what do y’all think? Anything you’d change about the free trial/onboarding experience for FFXIV? I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts on my observations here. And once again I’m saying this all because I love this game and would love to be able to recommend it to more people but unfortunately the free trial makes that really hard for me.
Thanks for reading! -(๑☆‿ ☆#)ᕗ
submitted by /u/Professional-Pie3175
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So here’s my credentials before we start. I’m a new player who’s been playing the free trial. I’ve completed all the MSQ content for ARR, Heavensward and StormBlood, tried my best to complete as many extremes as possible (we’ll get back to this), have 5 maxed out jobs, currently trying to solo the second deep dungeon and have about 300 hours of playtime put in. Safe to say, I like this game and will be purchasing a subscription as soon as I can afford it (shout out the economy for being awful) but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a fair few critiques of what I have experienced mostly stemming from frustrations with how the free trial is handled. So please join me as I talk about this free trial at exhaustive length.
So let’s start with… THE GOOD Firstly and most obviously the sheer amount of content for free is insane. Like I said I’ve spent 300 hours in this game and that’s super impressive for something they tout as a free sample of the real experience. I also want to weirdly applaud where they decided to cut off the MSQ for the free trial. I know that it wasn’t likely near the top of their list of priorities when they extended the trial to storm blood but the story genuinely does end off on a super exciting note that does make me excited to play more. (also why does everyone say StormBlood was the bad expansion I really loved the story here more than Heavensward?) Also seeing cross over events like the rathalos fight and fall guts event be available on free trial was also a very nice surprise. Honestly this feels like the big things I want to point out cuz everything else nice I have to say can easily be boiled down to “it’s FFXIV” you probably already know all the other stuff I liked about it lol.
Now let’s move onto… THE BAD Okay so I did say I had complaints and oooh boy do I have some complaints. My major critique of the free trial is how weirdly isolating the experience is. Now while I understand that part of this is intentionally design and a form of fomo marketing I think this is the game genuinely shooting itself in the foot when it comes to hooking new players.
So what do I mean? Well let’s start with the limited chat features, I cannot tell you how many times someone would send me a tell that was like “I like your outfit : )” only for my only way to respond was doing the thumbs up emote at them like some strange socially inept mime. I think this limit to one on one chating is in hopes to prevent spam but in that case wouldn’t be easier to let me tell so I have a lower chance of spamming the say chat with shit that’s going to annoy everyone around me? This also really limited my ability to connect with other players. I would finish a dungeon or raid with a player who I thought was really cool or friendly only for me to have no way to communicate with them.
Now onto something else that annoyed the shit out of me was the removed party functionality. Now for context I started playing this game with my loving partner and I cannot communicate to you how annoying it is to have to beg the sprout chat for someone to come party us up rather than just being able to hit two buttons and get it done with immediately. I fail to see what exploit they could be possibly be trying to block out with this?
Speaking of my partner, why can’t I friend people? Like is the threat of free accounts sending friend requests so high that this is something that must be stoped? Once again I would constantly meet old and new players who I thought where cool or funny only to know that I’ll never see them again or given the opportunity to form any way to contact them again. And for those new players wouldn’t having a healthy ecosystem of other new players to socialize and encourage eachother help make the game stick better in the minds of new players?
These social elements being blocked also effects gameplay in a lot of meaningful ways. When I have no way of forming a party than I’m effectively blocked out of a LARGE majority of extreme content due to duty finder being so limited on those trials. Also I would love to try out ultimate concent but that’s also removed from the free trial, which like fine but even if it was in the trial I wouldn’t be able to do it because of the complete lack of social elements. This also applies to free companies, near the end of StormBlood I got frequently asked if I would be interested in joining a free company and unfortunately I’d have to decline every time simply because I wasn’t allowed to have friends.
Also I understand why for game economy reasons you can’t trade but my god not having the market board makes leveling any crafting job a nightmare. Maybe there’s some other solution that can be implemented like a playtime/level limited spending limit on the market board? I’m just throwing out ideas here.
It’s just so frustrating especially for a game where the number 1 piece of advice I see given to new players is “do it with a buddy : )” and like yeah man I agree, I to would love to make friends on here, unfortunately the game is kind of making that impossible! And even if I wanna start playing it with a friend I already have there’s a good chance we won’t even be able to party up for a while. I understand fomo marketing but for a game that’s so largely defined by social elements and interaction with other players the free trial does an AWFUL job making those social hooks connect. And for a game that’s so largely has the balls to be like “your a sprout until you complete my 1200 hour main story” it would be maybe in their best interest for players to feel that social element to encourage them to get through all that content early on rather than having to spend cash before they can even start making friends.
As someone who really likes this game and who was hooked by the story, this isn’t enough to make me like drop it or whatever but it is frustrating and I could easily see how this would turn off a lot of other people. I think the main reason I can easily go “ehhhh I’ll get the full game and a subscription later” is because I have no friends on the game. If i had friends my thought would likely be “well I can’t let myself fall behind all my cool game friends I gotta buy this ASAP!!!” Which I would hope is a more effective marketing.
I got to thinking about all of this because I got an ad for FFXIV on YouTube and instead of advertising their new expansion or high end content they made the ad entirely about the free trial. This is how they intend on getting new players in through the door and if that’s the case I think the major way it fails in doing that is it’s severe lack of social elements (ironic since the ad proudly claimed you could socialize lmao)
Now there is a lot of fixes here, introduce more content that makes players of all levels socialize, remove the restrictions on free trial social interactions, so on so forth so I definitely don’t want it to seem like I’m just making this post out of spite, I genuinely would love for these elements to be improved because then I think more people would be able to enjoy this game but for that to work I think this MMO needs to show off it’s multiplayer social elements a little better.
But all of this is just my perspective, what do y’all think? Anything you’d change about the free trial/onboarding experience for FFXIV? I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts on my observations here. And once again I’m saying this all because I love this game and would love to be able to recommend it to more people but unfortunately the free trial makes that really hard for me.
Thanks for reading! -(๑☆‿ ☆#)ᕗ
submitted by /u/Professional-Pie3175
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...