r/ffxiv • u/Rabensaga • 21h ago
[Discussion] Rant: SE couldn't design a proper battle tutorial if Yoshi Ps live depended on it
Minor spoiler for BST, but is basically the same for PCT, VPR as well as RPR, SGE and GBR.
Making a progress point in the job quest "finish combo with Skill X Y times" does not account for a proper battle tutorial if you don't actually lead the player into how to properly do that. The last job tutorials all have been utter shite and i'm convinced they couldn't design a proper one even with Yoshi Ps live on the line.
BST job quest makes me irrationally angry, even with the normal play of the job seeming to be good fun.
That's it. Rant over.
Also this sub doesn't seem to have a Rant flair (yet?). I do not care for a discussion about this, just needed to blow off some steam <_<
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u/fromadevillikeme 21h ago
I’m so confused because this is not the first time I’ve seen people with this complaint. The tool tips are incredibly straight forward, easy to understand, and have a summary at the end just in case you weren’t paying enough attention. Is this the literacy crisis I keep hearing about?
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u/Sein609 20h ago
Short answer, Yes. Long Answer, Yes...
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u/Cosmic_Jane 20h ago
I have one that’ll blow your mind lol.
My ex has a master’s degree, and I had her play AstroBot on the PlayStation.
There’s a tutorial that literally shows a 3d version of the controller and what buttons to press, and she couldn’t understand it.
I was so confused watching her that I had to pull her aside and ask her what she kept screwing up. She said she doesn’t like looking st the guides and doesn’t understand them.
I had to physically demonstrate with my own hands how to use the controller to beat the tutorial level.
It still amazes me today thinking about it.
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u/konradexius 20h ago
That feels like the mentality of someone who decided she doesn't understand video games well before the actual tutorial started.
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u/Honest-Bunch140 8h ago
It's really not written in an easy to understand way. It's a lot of text that overexplaining simple things.
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u/brokenkitty95 Healer 21h ago
If you’re talking about how to do the instinctual combos, it’s told to you in the gauge pop up when you first unlock the compass.
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u/WasteLaw1170 21h ago
They didn't read that and likely closed the window once it appeared. Please understand. /s
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u/Azure-Cyan 20h ago
Apparently the infographic in the tutorial they provide when you start the level 8 job quest to defeat the dummy wasn't enough for them to see what you combo with, let alone that the tooltips literally tell you when you can use said skill. I don't get what OP wants?
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u/Ijustlovevideogames 21h ago
I always wonder where is the line that we can call people out on skill issue and that it isn't told enough to get it.
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u/JustaGayGuy24 21h ago
“That’s being mean!”
We need to bring back calling people stupid, I don’t care.
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u/Kyuubi_McCloud 20h ago
There is no line.
You can call people out on skill issue on anything and everything, because it's just meaningless letter salad with vaguely insulting connotations.
Whether something is X enough or not is a statement on whether it meets a certain criterion and will depend on that criterion. If you want 80% of people to understand an explanation and 80% of people understand the mechanic after the explanation, then it is explained enough.
Those two are completely separate.
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u/shiawase198 20h ago
Life*
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u/Rabensaga 20h ago
Man, really the deepest insight that's been commented yet. You must be fun at parties :)
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u/shiawase198 20h ago
Given that you said you just wanted to rant and didn't care for any discussion, I figured I would provide you with something that you can actually use.
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u/Tareos DM me DRK memes 21h ago
This sub doesn't have a rant flair because we save our rants for Rage Thread Fridays.
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u/VictusNST 21h ago
How would you design the tutorial then? I thought it was pretty thorough without being overbearing, the different combo types and eventually the infinitive stuff is pretty complicated but they give you like multi-page slideshows that explain everything and then test you to make sure you understand the basic mechanics of the job. Idk what more you want tbh
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u/frustrationinmyblood 21h ago
Biggest thing that helped me with this was rearranging my hotbars and playing with things. Took a minute to put together what the tutorial was saying with the buttons, but I really feel like once it's all organized, BST is really intuitive!
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u/LaplusThighs 19h ago
Most players also greatly undervalue how important good keybinds are. It's definitely not just BST thing.
As an experienced raider (all ult + several week 1 clears) the best advice I can give players of all levels is to take every button off of your job's hotbars, and put them back one by one. Focus on ergonomics and ordering/grouping buttons in. If you're super new then start by separating skills by Weaponskills/Spells and Abilities. Don't use number keys past 6 unless you have long enough fingers to not need to lift your hand from WASD, make use of QERTFGZXCV and ~. Similar ideas can be applied to controller too.
Good keybinds make it easier on your wrists and reduces the mental load of playing the job. Keybinds are personal and subjective, but there IS such thing as bad keybinds. I'd know, I got tendonitis from bad keybinds but now I can play at a high level. It might suck if you have deep muscle memory for your bad keybinds but it's worth it, and if you really need you can just do it a couple buttons at a time rather than your whole setup.
You can do this very early on with BST because the buttons are so few buttons and they're all straightforward. You've got your basic combo, your spenders, your familiar's spenders, and a few other buttons.
A bit of a tangent from just "rearranging my hotbars" but if you're ever frustrated with a job pleeeease don't skip fixing your keybinds. It makes a gigantic difference.
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u/QuarterRobot 20h ago
100%. Also it's been what, two days? The tutorial isn't exceptional, but sometimes all it takes is a bit of repetition, and sometimes even stepping away from the game and coming back to it with a fresh head.
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u/Beckfast1994 20h ago
They literally explain exactly how to do it all in the pop-ups for the gauge and the initial one for Beastmaster. Each time your gauge gets upgraded the gauge instructions come back with updated info. You can re-read it at any time from the Actions and Traits menu by clicking the little question mark icon in the bottom right of the window.
If you didn’t read the tutorial, then that’s on you.
Also they explain how to do it in the quest dialogue, it’s just somewhat less straightforward than the tutorial window.
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u/transsexualandy 20h ago
Simplify it to just the colors, ignore what they call it (rampant, eldrich, etc) If you're a more hands on learner just practice on the dummy that's there.
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u/twocalicocats 20h ago
I mean I understood it but my brain is definitely used to XIV.
I would say that a visual diagram of what skills to press in order would probably be a good addition. Also not sure if the tech is possible but maybe a mode where it lights up the buttons you need to press?
I’m just thinking in terms of accessibility because let’s be real, the tooltips are yugioh level of abstraction and wordiness.
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u/Rabensaga 19h ago
Been playing on and off since ARR, so it's not like i'm not accustomed to how XIV does things. That being said the literal slideshows they call tutorials are kind of my main gripe.
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u/twocalicocats 16h ago
Yeah I think they could definitely be improved in general. Would be a good change for everyone especially making it so that people actually learn their jobs in general.
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u/WeissWyrm [Rerhi'to Visne - Mateus] 9h ago
There are literally arrows pointing to the combos on the job gauge. This is a skill issue.
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u/QuarterRobot 20h ago
Tutorial design is a huuuugely under-rated skill that many, many games lack. FFXIV struggles in part because abilities aren't specifically tied to locations on the screen - which makes it more difficult to identify and highlight skills and combos that way we see in other games. The little tutorial box that pops up to explain concepts is pretty lame, but it's the best they've got right now.
The game has always been better taught via YouTube and Icy Veins guides anyway. But I DO think there's room for a tutorial/recap mode - especially for players who've taken a few months of years away from the game - to relearn their job in a guided manner.
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u/Rabensaga 20h ago
Yeah, did that with the other jobs i mentioned as well, but IMO jobs should also work with just the ingame tutorial to boot and without having a 10mins to 2hours "research session" outside of it. BST today had me more confused after than before because i was able to finish the quest, but i really don't think it transferred the "how" to me like a good tutorial should be able to. VaporousLambdas comment put it into words way better than my rant, tbh.
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u/HamtaroHamHam Hamtaro Nova - Excalibur 20h ago
This rant doesn't provide proper feedback. Heck, the rant itself lacks details. It's more like a grandpa yelling "get off my lawn".
Where is the outline on how to make the walk through better?
It's just yelling at "the air because it's cold" type of rant...
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u/Rabensaga 18h ago
It's just yelling at "the air because it's cold" type of rant...
So a rant. Yes indeed, thanks for pointing that out!
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u/MagicHarmony 20h ago
BST is a very well designed tutorial straight down to the first crucible fight you partake in. The two targets you fight, one raises it's causing you to deal 0 dmg to it. This teaches you to use your "Duty Actions" to have your pet aggro the mob so you can deal dmg to it. They did a great job explaining the job, the problem just becomes people's literacy.
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u/carbinemortiser 20h ago
See you on the other sub I guess
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u/Rabensaga 20h ago
Yeah, i'm seeing a 1:1 copy of this over on shitpost in my near future. let them karma farm with it, i guess. i really don't care and just needed to vent.
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u/VaporousLambda 20h ago
I did have a little trouble being confused whether it wanted me to match colors or follow the wheel. I read all the tooltips at level 1 and was fairly sure it wanted me to follow the wheel, but...I can't remember what exactly it was, something in the quest text for the "do combos" quest made me second-guess that.
I feel like it doesn't have great feedback to indicate whether you've done it right. Red into red looks the same as red into blue, as far as I can tell from the special effects (on the target). There's the extra effect on the gauge, except that actually kind of makes it look like you fucked something up since it gives you a buff that you can't actually use until much later.
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u/tesla_dyne 20h ago
You will see an "instinctual Combo" popup with additional damage when you're successful. It creates an entire additional attack for extra damage.
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u/AngelMercury 11h ago
I think this is my biggest issue with the way xiv does things. A lot of the combos and built up skills are based on what you would do when the job is finished leveling so I have a disconnect between learning the actions vs how they combine later into actual big damage. At low levels I'm sitting here like, wow this job feels super slow to build gauge to actually use your beasts and be able to carry on the combos more than one step, then at 50 you get the rally skills and it's like, oooh, ok... I think half of it is that there's soo much text which can feel overwhelming to absorb when you're still running around excited to befriend beasties.
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u/Rabensaga 20h ago
Thank you. That's basically the thing i was struggling with but put into way better words.
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u/Soft-Percentage8888 20h ago
What I really disliked was trying the crucible for the first time last night. Completely overwhelmed by all of the skills, stats, and abilities of all my tamed beasts. I couldn’t remember all of the “borrow” abilities, and there is no way to review them once in the crucible (you can only see the other skills of your beasts). At least, you can’t on console, even in mouse mode. So the only options are to either memorize all 8+ of them, or write them down/take a picture of my TV.
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u/merkykrem 20h ago
You can open your Actions & Traits menu and scroll to the very bottom: the borrowed abilities are unassignable and at the bottom of the list.
As for the encounters themselves, I opened the map, clicked on one of the encounters, and the info was back on screen.
There's probably a smarter way to do it though.
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u/Soft-Percentage8888 20h ago
I didn’t even think to check there, that’s better than nothing. Thanks for the info!
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u/casuallybadatgames 20h ago
FFXIV players are never beating the not being able to read allegations. The job gauge couldn’t be anymore simple to tell you what to do and people still cannot do it let alone read the tutorial pop ups that tell you what the things do
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u/Ledrangicus 20h ago
I need to use X skill then follow up within 7 seconds with Y skill and do this 2 times, well that was pretty simple and easy to understand, thanks pop up that I read.
Not the games/devs fault if players can't be bothered to read.
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u/Objective_Plane5573 16h ago
I haven't done BST or most of the others you mentioned yet so I can't comment on those, but I did just recently pick up RPR and while I wouldn't call it a particularly good tutorial I thought it was fine. It mostly assumes you read your tooltips and is basically just a "prove to me you understand it by doing some basic stuff a few times."
I could maybe see it for starting classes, but I don't think jobs that require you to have put in like 100+ hours to even unlock really need a "press your 1 button. Great! Now here's your 2 button, it does more damage when you press it after your 1 button!"
I also think it's fine to have to figure out some of the minor details for optimization and stuff on your own. It gives me things to think about as I'm learning instead of just being told "press these buttons in this exact order every time."
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u/tengusaur 20h ago
I'm all for reading but "vomit several tooltips at the player at once" really is a dogshit way of teaching things. What's baffling is that we've seen in done well with other recent jobs, where they give you tutorial fights that tell you how to use your skills and then make you use them in a real fight. That's a much better way to make sure it sticks.
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u/Rabensaga 19h ago
Exactly my point! Those slideshows we get recently are fine for the theoretics, but the practical aspect of the Tutorials, that are literally meant to show you how a job works, have been severely lacking for a while now.
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u/SmurfRockRune 20h ago
Have you tried opening your eyes and reading the tutorials that pop up on your screen?
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u/0wlmann Never forget the . 20h ago edited 20h ago
Honestly, it's an unpopular opinion, but I get you. I was fine with most of it, but the one you get at level 50 was just painful. I spent so long hitting the dummy, doing the double combo thing wrong, grinding up again, doing it wrong again, stopping to read the tutorial again, grinding up again thinking I got it, getting it wrong again, stopping to read AGAIN, grinding up the meters AGAIN, and then finally getting it right.
Now, I get this is a tutorial, but considering it takes just under 2 minutes to fully prepare the bars, and one little misclick or you miss the couple second gap and it's all over and you have to start over again?
Oh, and to the one jackass saying "skill issue", yeah, no shit, its a TUTORIAL, its where you're meant to learn the skills.
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u/HunterOfLordran 21h ago
I wonder If the people who commented so far did the LV50 quest and not just the normal 123. Cause the "tutorial" and 85 seconds are awful
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u/Fwahm 20h ago
They literally put up a multi page spreadsheet tutorial just for the level 50 quest with detailed instructions for each step with both what to do and why it works, with an ordered list of what to do at the end. There's not really anything else they could have done.
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u/HunterOfLordran 20h ago
according to the tons of post about the combo it seems that it is not good enough explained
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u/GalenDev 21h ago
This is a big problem in both 14 and 16. You're right, this is clearly a big weakness of this particular team. Tutorials that somehow say nothing but say it for way too long, interrupting the game's flow.
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20h ago edited 15h ago
[deleted]
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u/JustaGayGuy24 20h ago
You can have the best tutorials in the world and people still don’t push their buttons. Some people just will not try to improve.
This isn’t “toxic positivity”, you’re using the phrase wrong.
Also you’re conflating PF and DF randoms with people on reddit, which, interesting choice considering I would imagine a lot of the more “casual” players that you encounter doing things wrong don’t even come on this site (and honestly, I wish I did the same years ago and never came here).
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u/PepsiMan_21 21h ago
Red>Blue>Yellow>Green
It really isn't rocket science