Here’s why FFXIV Players are Bad 

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.

I'm not convinced this would change much unless it was made mandatory (like what you suggested) or there was a really good reward locked behind it, like the exp ring. A lot of people just skip hall of novice, don't complete it, or don't even know it exists. I also think if this was implemented it should be fully voice acted, I think people would internalize the concepts better if it was.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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.

FF players are bad due to the lack of accountability, they say that FF's community is all sunshine, estrogen and rainbows unlike WoW but in reality its a bunch of egotistical people who love to waste other people's time. I'd much rather play with the most toxic WoW player in the world who gets stuff done and pulls his own weight than with the "nicest" FF player.

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.

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

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.

Before anything, not gonna lie, I seen the thumbnail and come here just to "See what kind of bullshit this bait thumbnail will be going about" expecting to watch 3 min and close, but was a surprising interesting topic that does deserve more atention. That said, on the topic, I do agree a better tutorial of how some rotations and basics are in need, and 100% agree with the reworks getting markers unified between all content tottaly SHOULD be somewere to find a proper description of it ingame. Would be needed a bit of carefulness on what go what, but I think should be at least 2 tiers of those tutorials, a obligatory one and a optional one, On obligatory I would say a markers one and VERY basic functions, some of the ideas of the video I wonder would come here, specially the more easy/simple to do stuff (Don't point tank to the party, cleanse doom/paralisys debuff/"you know caster sleep is an AoE? You can use it if tank die to avoid full party wipe", simple not specially challenging to do stuff that a lot of people go forever without even knowing about.), while some of the more advanced concepts left for the (recomended) optional one, and then one for some basic rotations and show of job specific mechanics, also maybe a bit of a recap about rotations mechanics that would go at each new expansion, no need to cover "perfect max eficiency rotation", but the basics of a expected rotation, what combo to what, and so so, specially with changes between expansions, more than once I found myself lost and struggling to relearn a job I play, and I'm almost sure at least one or two jobs I don't play much out of leveling I have it on pretty broken rotation ignoring stuff I should probably know. A basic rotation one prob should be obligatory at end of each expansion, and a recap explaining changes optional at start of each expansion. Then on the full optional mode we could get a lot of the more advanced points the video sugested, specially anything savage/extreme tier related, but recomended optional ones could be sugested as players would be about to do their first raids and trials, covering the concept of some basic raid mechanics, maybe even with a option to train some more strickit mechanics under tighter timing for ones wanting to pratice. Random fact, Introducing mechanics and a lot of that was original function of the Guildhests back in ARR, teaching players from avoiding AoEs, to tank grabbing adds, ignoring specific mobs or killing them in specific situations, back from a era before Hall of Novice was a thing.

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

So one thing is the training mode option in FFXIV is frankly dogshit. Other games the training mode will tell you if you're doing good damage, show your damage output, let you play around with testing your aoe range, etc. It feels like actively FFXIV doesn't want you to know how to play the game and pointing out players who are clearly no assing it is considered taboo and toxic. Like people in Extremes that aren't even doing their basic rotation, which everyone can see now because their buff timing is not even in the same neighborhood as the burst window. And players pick up on that which why you have white mages at 90 fishing for free cure, dps that don't know their aoe rotation, tanks that are still arguing about ypyt and w2w when all the endwalker dungeons are 2 packs, if at level 90 you can't tank 2 packs you should just switch to dps, and all kinds of clownery you see not only in dungeons, but even in Extreme and Savage. You can't say anything. You either leave the party or quietly convince the party lead to kick them. That, to me, is way more toxic than other games where there is a clear baseline of expectation, and if you're actively wasting your party's time, you get kicked.

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.

i dont play ff14, and i gave up on it because it was too slow and i hate that besides the absurd lag everyone that isn NA suffers with. but i have to say both 14 and destiny 2 does a SHIT AF JOB teaching people how to play their game and its up's and downs of equipment and it's perks or add-on systems on the equips. poorly explained stats that you HAVE TO GOOGLE to know the meaning off its just so off putting trying to get anyone to play either....

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.

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!

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.

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.

So I feel this video forgot one major question that needed to be answered before any of this "Why do you need to be good? And how do I know if I am good or bad compared to my fellow player?" There is no modivation in FF14 to be good and it is better to live in blissful ignorance unless you find a way for a player to be able to track there performance and measure it to the perofrmance of there peers. Teaching is fine but without any means of showing your perofrmance in ablity to take those lessons and improve it is about as effective as showing a child the alphabet and then never checking in if they remember it or abel to use it. Now there is a tool that does all of this but I know the FF14 community doesnt want this in there game at all. So maybe just let the bad players be bad, if they want to one day learn they will do it on there own for the want to perform alone.

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 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...

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.

most of your suggestions are only matter in extreme and savage content. which is not neccessary when the game is aim for casuals.

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)

I don't think a better tutorial would do much. Just look at all the healbot WHMs. The people that play that shit don't want to play better. They do the tutorial and just go back to being shit.

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.

The WoW players were right to say “get good.” It was tough love but it made players better.

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.

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.

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.

BOOM! another critical video about the disconnect between ARR and early leveling and the state of play after lv80.

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.

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.

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.

Healer is the easiest role in a dungeon, but saying its the eaiest role in savage is definitely false.

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.

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.

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

I must be one of the rare players who know how READ every ability. Best thing to do is be courteous to your newer players and remind them when bad things happen: "might want to check your ability page around the level __ "

I think the solo story duties are "tutorials" in disguise.

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 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?

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.

I think FF14 attracts a lot of players who play it for the name and not the genre. So you get people who never learned some of the MMO basics that are prevalent across many games. A genre veteran can skip the Hall of Novice and do just fine but someone who has never picked up an MMO before would benefit from it.

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).

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.

Truly agree with all u said, and instead we got that funny starter guides by SE instead of adding to wat theyve already started

Kinda disagree with this video. Yeah a lot of players are bad, but you propose players getting babied through their rotation. Rotations change, and that would require the duty to change, youtube videos on rotations do well enough for those that can't bother spend a half hour reading tooltips and working out a rotation on a target dummy. Those type of people likely won't bother reading npc dialogue telling you to use your damn Empyrean Arrow for that extra charge. The visual of it happening would do more than MROEAMBRUSS the Roe telling you to press overpower somewhere in a 400 character dialogue written entirely in pirate speak. You propose players go through duties that teach you standardized mechanics. So you mean dungeons.. and trials. The very duties already in the game. Yea we all laugh at the newb running away with a stack marker, but that is how you learn. You get absolutely decimated by one and you know "I did something wrong". Every boss whether that be from a dungeon, trial, 8-man or 24-man raid, always has a warmup phase. This is where you are taught standard and unique mechanics. Mechanics you've seen before, or new mechanics that catch you off-guard- but won't kill you, instead giving a vuln stack. They even changed the old ARR dungeon bosses (rip) to standardized mechanics, since they had antiquated mechanic ideas that never stuck. How are you so convinced players are not learning from these mechanics? Players can be atrocious at the game but you can't tell me it's the games fault.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Make a WeskAlber npc

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.

Some players genuinely are not trying...like the players who stand in huge obvious AOEs are refuse to move...or the ones they can't see the telegraph but NEVER pick up on the fact that they could follow the team if they don't understand what to look for. Had a dude once just stand in the half-room AOE with that boss where you burn the furniture. He kept insisting there was no telegraph, we kept insisting there was, just look at the boss, see which side of him was looking all fiery...kept insisting there was no telegraph...said fine just follow the team then. Refused, claimed there was NO WAY to dodge it, then cussed us out because we demanded he pay attention to the telegraph or at least follow the party and stop wiping us.

I admit that the idea sounds neat, but you went so deep into this with some examples, that I just couldn't see it as possible, that the devs would create such detailed tutorials. I didn't say they were BAD, but just simply impossible, because it would mean going from the "barebones minimum" that we have, to something so detailed and fine-tuned to where it would require intense workforce to be put on the job. It would be costly, and hard to rationalize. Still, I say this from the perspective of likelyhood, because if you ask me about a perfect scenario, then I absolutely agree with you about everything.

As someone who have played many different mmos since 2004 I can confidently say that the average FFXIV player is better than most other average mmo players. I think a large reason for this is that doing dungeon, trial and raid content is mandatory for completing the MSQ and it takes players through several of them in each expansion. The difficulty of this content for anyone who is moderately familiar with mmos is mostly a joke. Yet for new players and especially people who are completely new to the mmo genre it teaches them the basics on a slow but gradually increasing learning curve. By the time they finish the msq they will have learned a foundational knowledge of the game that if they chose they can build upon while still not being a burden for other players, which I think helps contribute to the healthy community ffxiv has. Contrast this with other mmos where doing any form of group content before endgame is not only not required but it is in some cases actively discouraged. In ffxiv there might be players that do subpar rotations, but at least they know how to play the game and what different boss mechanics are. Imagine someone hitting max lvl and they don't even know what a line aoe is, never mind what a stack marker or flare marker is supposed to be. All of these players are no longer at the lower levels but at endgame with you, filling your dungeons, raids, trials and party finders. We got a small taste of this with the WoW refugee wave 2 years ago where some people couldn't clear "The world of Darkness" since people kept wiping at the Eye boss since most of the new players didn't know the mechanics.

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.

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

The problem is: players might also not really want to learn, which is pretty common. So, make it an achievement/reward-earning, you know, like combo trials on a fighting game 😌

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.

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.

i kinda disagree, players should have the burden to learn and adapt as they level up, handholding players with a 'hall of the expert' is not a solution imo. imo, what really should happen is, the players should be REQUIRED to do all the leasons of a given role, before being alowed to queue into content

add a dps meter into the game, remove all positionals, make heals stronger, name enemy abilities consistently in a manner in which the average player could probably guess what to do by reading the name of the ability/spell

Change the ToS so people arent afraid to speak out on others mistakes Make actual training instances where you are able to reset cooldowns and add dummies. Make a tutorial section for additional common mechanics like stacks, dynamos, proteans, chariots etc. Add an advanced combat tutorial for each role at level 50 each one explaining the advanceds of each role, tank and how to use mitigations, healer and how to dps and not overheal, dps and add them dps checks alongside mechanics to dodge n solve. Add rewards for each of them like an xp boost ring to level 70. Then add a level 70 tutorial with basic standard rotations mayhaps. All of this square wont do because its a trash company, but this is my take.

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.

You've heard of Hall of the Novice but how about Hall of the Intermediate and Hall of the Master? :)

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.

I bet anything that if the game had excellent, top tier teaching sytems, tutorials, and balancing, most players would still suck.

They have the infrastrcucture to put a rotation in one button all this complaining about button bloat just make that the default option for all players (and you get the old way of doing things if you want to do it manually) this way they can add as many skills as they want and people no longer can complain about lack of skill difference or button bloat so you should have an aoe button that cycle rotation and a single target that cycles rotation you should have both of these fully by level 30 and some ogcds as for the game not teaching people bold of you to assume with the game teaching you that people won't still be trash

ure cute bro

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 useless requirements for mentorship in this game are all that you need to know to understand Square's never going to do any of this. Raiders are a vast, VAST minority in this game, and dungeons and normal trials and raids have no enrage (except the duty timer I suppose) so none of the casuals actually care about doing proper rotations. According to lodestone-extractable statistics, on NA and EU only around 10% of players who completed 6.0 MSQ (which represents ~60% of the active playerbase, mind you, meaning 40% of ACTIVE players didn't even get that far, food for thought) actually cleared P4S by patch 6.35. The numbers of raid-oriented players shoot up drastically when looking at JP servers but here in the West we're all just a bunch of catgirl-simping jerkbaiters who can't do a rotation because we've got our hands in different places... In a single patch (5.4) I went from being dragged into my first synced EX to clearing the savage raid tier on patch, plus 5.45 BLU savage along with the morbol mount - and in 5.5 scoring pink across E9-12S and clearing UCoB. With no resources in the game. It's not a matter of putting tutorials in the game. It's about what people want from their FFXIV experience, and that isn't raiding. And when it IS raiding, it's about how much effort they are willing to actually focus, and how much time they are able to invest into becoming one of the best.

Healers: Use Esuna and Rescue. JFC, I almost _never_ see these used when they are required to keep things running smoothly. Tanks: Invulnerability moves. Not just mitigation. Specifically using their I Can't Die move properly. Casters: Sleep. Add control matters. Swiftcast- not just for rezzes. Slidecasting. Ranged: Damage reduction CDs. I'm the only one that does it most of the time- and yes, I do look. Melee: Interrupts and stuns. Kick shit.

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.

I don't think Tutorials is not mandatory because of neglegence, it's about player retention. Tutorial is a QUIT moment if You're dense, and dense players still paying player. - You can't buy game because website is complicated? Quit Moment. - Can't beat the quest because can't read anything? Quit Moment. - In from the cold? Quit Moment. (If You think it's not, why nerf so much) Bonus: Remember requirments of Proving Grounds Silver medal in WoW: Warlords of Draenor to queue for Heroic Dungeons. It was easy AF, but people still were outraged, so this practice never stick. Some people just incapable of dealing with any difficutlies, just because of sheer amount of games catering to 0 brain investments and will drop the game. (I would argue same goes to character development, if You don't like character from first interaction people ignore it forever, but it's different topic on same impatience and instant gratification without effort essay)

It's funny because, as someone who has perused a lot of MMOs, FFXIV's per level experience is actually very good. For most classes, you get your buttons in an order that makes sense to receive and build on the previous buttons you've gotten. Frankly, I think FFXIV does this the best out of any MMO. The problem lies in the psychology... the story content does not require you to do good rotations for the first 1-50, it's just REALLY easy. Players will pick the path of least resistance instead of learning what all their buttons do. It's possible to get REALLY far as SMN in the story and never click Aethercharge. These bad habits continue until the player gets bodied and then they quit or figure out why.

You're absolutely right. E.g. Important dungeon mechanics are not explained and as a new player you often don't know what to do with them. THIS needs to be changed by Square! By the way, your video sounds like you wanted to screen out the players from the beginning (?) xD

A proper explaination what Stone, Sky, Sea was even meant to accomplish is something I feel thats needed too

I kinda hope something like this DOES get into the game. And it'd be hilarious if it was labeled "Hall of the Novice (Extreme)" and maybe even a much harsher version of that even, "Hall of the Novice (Savage)" with two for like "I wanna do high-end content" difficulties. And maybe just "Hall of the Novice (hard)" to help players get 'good enough' rather than 'raid ready' Only issue with those labels is that hard/extreme/savage is pretty much always used in cases where it's an 8-man instance.

This video is a bit older but anyway... i wanna give my idea! 🤣 Lvl 15 basic teachings like it is now is great. You know your job before you enter the first dungeon. Next step would be lvl 30. You get your job crystal and with that new lessions by your job npc. He tell you how your job works in basic forms in those instances like the lvl 15 one. Next stage lvl 50. Endcontent for ARR our green mentor friends from lvl 15 call us for advanced training. You learn basic raid language. What you already encountered and will encountered in future. You hit lvl 60/70/80/.... The job npcs of new classes will teach you how to deal with the new job also old job npcs wanna talk to you to tell you how your job has changed. That part will be complete optional. The first teaching will be forced. I think something like that would be my way of doing it^^

Making a Hall of the Expert mandatory for high-end content would absolutely get you fired. I don't like it, but the average player doesn't like mandatory tutorials. Making one mandatory in this game would just cost SE a significant portion of their playerbase. Some single player games solve this by making the tutorial part of the story organically (like Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami 2), and I'd like to see more of that in XIV too. Like Bardam's from Stormblood but with trash that doesn't hit like 7 dump trucks backing up onto your face all at once.

The problem we have.... is that ppl HATE solo encounter, especially more so if it serves as a dps check, or skill check, or knowledge check. Similarly, ppl also HATE reading. Like, I dont think we need a full blown ingame tutorial that teaches WHM not to spam Medica2. If ppl are so shit at reading skill description, that's on the moron to end up being blacklisted in PF. Also, fuck 'you dont pay my sub' mentality.

Yeah nah. The problem lies with the players itself. When FF14 went live i took a peak. I came from WoW where combos arent a thing and i learned VERY FAST that in FF14 combos exist. I took the time to read skill descriptions like everyone should do in every game. You dont push the buttons because they are shiny and have many different colors...you push them because you know what they do and if its needed in your specific situation. This has nothing to do with FF14 but with people being to lazy to invest even the smalest amount of time into a game. Edit: FF14 has more of a tutorial then ANY mmo ive played so far with the hall of the novice. Look at WoW tutorial and then start complaining... Blaming Square Enix about this is wrong. What about games like the Souls series which teaches you how to die at most?! People invest time to get good. Start reading, investing time and get good. Lazy children nowadays even need safty wheels for the most basic things in life. Is the next thing you want auto-quest and auto-combat?😂

Here's the thing. There is a MOUNTAIN of easy-to-understand resources available on places like The Balance. Problem is, not only does the game do a PISS poor job of teaching you how to play it, but a lot of players will skip Hall of Novices. Most players are casual and don't care enough to get better at the game, so they're never going to seek resources in game, let alone outside of it. This is fine, until you realize that this is an MMO, and you're playing with other players. By not taking the time to properly learn your role, you're more or less wasting the time of 3-7 other people because you don't know what you're doing even when you should. Even worse is the fact that when someone DOES try to take the time to teach newbies, they have a 50/50 chance of getting the classic "You don't pay my sub". It's why these days I don't interact with the general community, and I play the game almost exclusively with friends/static members. It's less of a headache for me that way.

I don't think that we need more tutorials but better ones, for example: why isn't the text of the tutor NPC skippable, why can't the player play the game? If the player thinks they can tackle it head on let them. If they hit a wall in the tutorial they have the option to read up. Yet funny that you mention Positionals since I have the feeling that Positionals may be removed, since why care about Positionals when True North exists? most of Melee Jobs biggest attacks don't have positionals anyway and Trickattack can be covered by True North 100% because True North not only a shorter Cool Down but also a Charge! And One More Thing, why learn a Job if they might change it anyway in a Patch? I am a Samurai Main and do you think I'm happy that Kenki got reduced to Shinten Spam? Also Old Summoner Muscle Memory is now trash and don't get me started with tanks and healers^^; but also pre-Shadowbringers dungeon reworks dumped this game down, removing even more opportunities for Players to learn about the Game.. What I wanna say is that this Game needs better Gameplay and mustn't waste the player's time with unskippable Cutscenes and Solo Instances.

I mean, gonna be real with you - modern games these days, even complex ones, usually don't even _need_ hamfisted all-caps TUTORIALS like Hall of the Novice because organic and dynamic tutorialization as well as conveyance are game design aspects that have advanced _tremendously_ over the decades. FFXIV making no use of any of those modern pieces of game design wisdom is simply a failure, and I'd rather not fix it by just adding more hamfisted tutorials.

WoW once tried something like this during Mists of Pandaria, to que for random heroics you had to beat the silver proving grounds. 10 waves of mobs with differences for each role, with simple mechanics too. I cannot stress enough how easy clearing the silver proving grounds was. Yet there was such a significant portion of the playerbase that COULD NOT DO THIS that Blizzard had no choice but to remove the requirement for random heroic que. It does not matter what the devs try to do, somehow, someway people who do not play the game at the simplest level of competence make it to max and continue to play the game, refusing to learn or improve in any way. This isn't just a FFXIV thing, it's a human thing.