For Final Fantasy Friday I'm not going to write about the main story, because if I get started on one of my favourite NPCs I won't stop at 1500 words like last week, so instead let's have a look at the Hall of the Novice update we received this week.
This was an update many mentors were begging for since a while and we almost gave up on it, especially because in an interview this summer producer and director Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) said he thought this content was fine as it was, since the player community is very nice and surely veterans will help new players if they struggle with mechanics in a dungeon.
That might be the case on the Japanese servers, but sadly it is not always like this in the Western regions.
So I was very much surprised when this update was announced as we were not expecting it to happen! Yoshi-P can hold a poker face for sure, because given how long game development takes, this update must have been already in the making at the time of that interview.
Hall of the Novice is a series of trial exercises which gets unlocked at lvl15 when the players face the first dungeon duty in the game. It teaches you core mechanics like tanks taking up aggro, how to protect your healer, which enemy to focus first and how to interact with objects. While these are good advise for new players, especially to those who were new to MMOs, there were two major issues with this trial series:
It wasn't mandatory.
Aside from dodge the orange area damage marker on the ground it didn't really teach any major mechanics.
The first issue still stands sadly, and probably that's my only complain regarding this content: it should be mandatory for your first character.
In the 7.1 patch which released this week we got three additional exercises to the trial, which showcases some core, returning mechanics like spread markers.
As simple as this mechanics sounds, I often saw players even at higher level content not understanding what to do and running around in panic. Most of the players will learn these mechanics when they encounter them a few times, but based on how someone reacts when seeing these in a high level duty, it was a very clear sign that someone bought a level skip and didn't go through the countless dungeons before featuring this mechanics.
And this is why I said I would make this mandatory, because sadly not just experience raiders will fast-track to high level content, but others too, who might have found useful to complete a few lower level dungeons to get used to the game.
What I really liked to see was the complexity of the final trial in each exercise. It doesn't just make you execute the mechanics on their own, but mixes them together just like you would find these in the encounters through the game.
While most mechanics need the same execution regardless of the player's job, some are specific to tanks or healers, and if you complete the trial with these roles, you will have to complete the corresponding mechanics, but if you do it as DPS, your NPC companions will take on these roles.
We did these trials with my partner sitting next to each other, and went in with different job roles. It was interesting to see, that the NPC healer would cleanse the debuff from the others first, leaving themselves last, and I did the same out of instinct when I completed the trial as a healer. There is maybe a lesson to learn there, as often in real encounters a healer should be looking after themselves first, if you are dead you can't heal your party after all.
Rewards
The exercises which existed in the series before this patch were rewarding the player with a set of gear, which would be good enough for the next few dungeons and a ring which provides 30% experience boost below lvl 30.
This is another reason why I would love to see this trial be mandatory, as players usually show up to the first dungeons in very low level gear, which is not that much of an issue if they take it slow, but if a newbie tank tries to do the wall-to-wall pulls like they saw from the "big guys" wearing insufficient armour, that will make a healer's job very difficult.
The reward after completing these three exercises is a ring which gives 30% experience boost below lvl 60.
And it looks nice as a glamour too, by the way.
De ja vu
If you are a veteran player and have de ja vu from some of these mechanics combinations, that's no surprise. The second boss in the Bardam's Mettle dungeon was testing the Warrior of Light by making them execute such mechanics instead of actual fighting. I always liked that dungeon and wished there were more content like that, which would teach new players about returning mechanics.
Wait, there's more!
I would be already very happy with these exercises, but we also got a new Combat Guide which can be opened from the Hall of the Novice menu and it explains various markers which players can encounter. It is definitely not a complete list and doesn't include unique markers seen in high-end content, but it's very useful for new players who might not understand these markers easily when they first encounter them.
Apart from the story, I think this was the feature I was most excited for in this expansion and I'm really happy with how this turned out. There is definitely room for future updates to the content, one thing I would love to see is an exercise about how to use the limit breaks, as this is something still confusing for a lot of players, not just for those new to the franchise, but players coming from single-player FF games too. In single player FF games limit break is usually an individual ability which you can execute separately with each character in your party, but in FFXIV it is a shared gauge for the entire party and only one player can execute it.
How do you feel about such tutorials in co-operative games? Do you think it should be mandatory for new players or skippable? Do you get upset with fellow players making mistakes or do you try to explain things? And most importantly... do they listen? As a mentor probably the worst feeling is, when I try to explain things to the newbies in my party and when I get no reply I can't even tell if they just find it difficult to type on a controller or they didn't even read the lines I typed while while trying to keep everyone alive?
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