FFXIV has noticed this in recent patches. They've been remaking the early dungeons to have actual mechanics like you'd see in a max level dungeon, just a bit slower and easier to dodge.

Most of the time it isn't making new mechanics (except the Gaius fight, where he uses mechanics he has in later fights and Emerald Weapon) but rather recoloring/contextualizing old wonky mechanics to better fit with how the same mechanics would appear later down the road. Which is still really good.

You can access dungeons at a very low level in ESO, too. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much it's helping with the whole socializing thing. FFXIV is moving toward making more and more endgame content soloable, and I won't be surprised if ESO eventually follows in it tracks

And high level players can usually level sync and play with new players as if they were at the same place!

And they chose to remake the vault brutal 😂

Theres not even one below 50 dungeon with an actual mechanic. You just stomp through every dungeon with zero effort and wall to wall pulls. Ffxiv is the worst example you could come up with.

This was my issue with Lost Ark. All I wanted to do was run dungeons, kill bosses, and get cool loot. Watching ppl play the end game looked so fun. I played probably close to 30 hours and barely experienced any of that before burning out after my 62nd "kill 15 spiders" quest. UGH

The bigger issue with Lost Ark is that all the real content seems to be instanced solo shit. It's a Diablo clone amsquerading as an MMO but you CAN'T play with your friends? Cringe.

I don't even know if Lost Ark has spiders Oo Most of the questing is running around and pressing G to get through dialogues, killing things is barely 10% of what you need to do for questing. And I'd recommend anyone starting lost Ark, if them have the money to buy at least a North Vern or Punika Powerpass to skip days of questing.

the end game there is a grindfest, theres so much daily shit to do from the very second you get your ship and the ability to sail around to events and islands

Early game dungeons from WoW are one of my best memories from any MMO game

City of Heroes had this figured out more than 15 years ago. "Sidekick" (bring lowbies up to high player level) or "Exemplar" (allow high level player to participate in low level content via voluntary nerfs) let players play together instantly, and experience (or re-experience) content far outside their own. This actually led directly into something really interesting: since players had *unique* quest storylines based on their superhero's Origin, they would not experience any of the other Origin storylines without making another character, *OR* voluntarily Exemplaring themselves and helping out other new players through *their* origin storylines.

Came here to say the exact same thing. Having Task/Strike forces throughout levelling not to even mention being able to scale any mission to the number of players was gold. Combined with SK'ing and whatnot it was so damn good. I really hate that this never became the standard.

I miss CoH ;'(

Yeah I feel like 14 did similar and has already solved this to

@@mag51284 You can still play it. Just search for City of Heroes Homecoming to find the free fan server.

That game pioneered so many things that other games added (as a poor knockoff) later

Ironically, I forgot the early game experience of WoW to 90%, but the moment that stuck with me was the day the day didn't work. There was a bug that made the blue fiends in the Valley of Trials one-shot everyone. So, to progress in this mandatory quest you were forced to share work with other people. One taunted and got killed, the other attacked. I had honestly one of my most memorable player interactions when the game was broken.

What I'd really love to see is having to do a dungeon raid as the end of the tutorial partnered with higher level players offering protection and you both have different targets. Then as you hit a higher level, you do a mission where you "rescue" new players from the tutorial dungeon.

I think the bigger issue is that MMOs are ever expanding, and if only the latest content is relevant it puts new players further and further away from having those experiences. Because of that, one of the biggest things MMOs can do right is not phasing out older content. I remember thinking I would have to go through hundreds of hours of MSQ in FF14 before I could experience raids, only to find out that I could do Extremes and Coils of Bahamut synced as soon as I finished the base game. Managed to put together a static with random people and every few days we would "prog" content that was 8 years old, which turned out to be one of the best experiences I've had in an MMO despite being nowhere near the actual current endgame.

Hmmm. I don't think the problem is new vs old content. I think the problem is trivializing old content, or group content in general. For example I joined WoW during the last patch of Burning Crusade and back then doing low level dungeons like Dead Mines or Zul Farrak was difficult and engaging. You had to work with your group to mark enemies for CC, coordinate the CC, manage pulls, etc. Even though it was very out dated low level content it was hard and fun for a new player. And because you played only with other people on your server, you came to know people. Nowadays low level WoW is more like the "Worst MMO" Josh played/complained about last week where you literally queue with randoms on other servers you'll never talk to or see again, hold down the W key, faceroll through the dungeon, one shot everything, get your XP in 5 minutes, and start again. It's trivial and basically just a boring, trivial, pointless time sink before you get to max level

Another way to think about it -- look at looking for raid in WoW retail. It is literally the most up-to-date most end-game content available in the game (just less difficult than mythic, etc) -- yet nobody actually likes doing it or has any enjoyable memories of doing it, or found any friends doing it because it is faceroll easy, done with randoms on other servers, and basically just you holding down the W key for 25 minutes until you get your loot. There is no chance to actually have any interpersonal experiences or overcome any challenges, best case scenario you can play against yourself by trying to beat your highest DPS score on a boss.

if 'only the latest content is relevant' then you are playing a badly designed game. it means the developer failed to keep their older content relevant, interesting and rewarding. look for games which do this better, e.g. _Guild Wars 2_

>one of the biggest things MMOs can do right is not phasing out older content And then Bungie outright deletes all the Destiny2's early level content and story including story DLCs people paid for.

That's why GW2 is so great. Things released 10 years ago are still playable and fun

I think having early dungeons and raids would be a great idea. It would surely grab more player’s attention to try the game stick with it hopefully. Plus it grants some confidence in a players own ability to do group content.

One thing I loved about City of Heroes was the sidekick system. A high level character sidekicks you and you get a level boost so that you can go hero-ing together so long as you stick close. You weren't quite as good as a character who was actually that level due to having fewer buff spots etc., but good enough to play together for normal instances.

this is what i loved about maplestory. party quests were set to certain levels. from 20-30 you'd be in kerning, and from like 35-50 you'd be in ludi, etc. this created these hubs where the entire playerbase was centred around and you could party up and make friends and the game really felt like a community, or rather several interspersed communities. you COULD go and grind somewhere but that's boring, and there were really valuable drops you could sell from the party quests. this imo really made the game

I think the best part was that classic maple had so much variety in ways to progress even in the early levels. Wanted To be social? you could go Party quest, party train, quest with friends Didn't want to interact with people? you could go Solo grind (main benefit being keeping all valuable drops to yourself), mini-boss hunt, or quest. The game also did a great job keeping that variety up through the higher levels actively adding party quests for new level ranges. Once you got high enough and could raid, you could also do Zakum Arm runs with a buddy or by yourself for the EXP. Also, the way you interacted with the game changed with each Job Advancement milestone helping to keep the different grinds feel fresh. I seriously miss MMORPGS like Maplestory that have more emphasis on the journey to soft cap and a gradual level curve with the Late-end game grind acting more like a post-game rather than the main course.

I've been waiting for an MMO to do this for a decade. There should be raids and endgame-like dungeons from the very beginning, not something that only unlocks 50-100 hours in.

I think FFXIV does a good job of bringing older raid content to the leveling experience. Even if a lot of it is optional and lot part of the leveling itself, I had a ton of fun doing Coil, Alexander, and Sigmascape with my friends when we played.

I also think XIVARR has always done well in getting the parting up content out quickly. First dungeon is unlocked at lvl 15ish, which even in the ARR days you could get to in under an hour. BUT...even then you could party up on the overmap and do FATES. XIVARR+ also has one of, if not the, best stories out of any MMO on the market.

Early raids and dungeons is a good idea, in pretty much any game, making the early game resemble the late game to hook you on a experience is something known and used, it's a good idea to let a MMO have that same concept built in, MMOs are big games, and players need more than the nebulous promise of "eventually".

That's one of the reasons Final Fantasy XIV is so popular. By lvl 15 you unlock the "Hall of the Novice" which gives good gear that lasts you another 15 levels and teaches the basics of how to play your role for multiplayer content. By lvl 17 (Free companies, certain servers and items can give small exp boosts so you might be a higher level than the story progression) you're doing the first 3 dungeons of the game in pretty quick succession, by 30 you're doing your first trial (a single tough boss fight) and unlocking side dungeons to do. Raids are still "end game" but there is still a whole post game story to enjoy and unlocking harder versions of the dungeons and trails for rewards like mounts and weapons before the start of the next expansion. After the baby steps you're never left with nothing to do. Also the regular quests aren't bad either and don't creep, I think there might be 3-4 quests total that have "collect/kill 8 of X" in the base game but most, even in the latest expansion only have you collect/kill 2-5. The only real grind is if you level multiple classes at once and if you want the best gear the expansion has for it's raid series.

Tera early in it's life cycle was like that. While you played through the story, you visited a lot of dungeons and because the game was popular there were a lot of other low-level players who played these dungeons together with you. Not only that, but you actually needed to play these dungeons multiple times to get the experience and relevant gear. But there's no way to keep older players playing this low-level content.

so just make the early open world even more empty?

I actually think that ESO's setup for dungeon content is a good example of how dungeoneering in MMOs should be done - Trials (the equivalent of proper raids) are still end-game, and you ahve a dungeon finder that you can access with different dungeons unlocked as you level, usually based around where you would be zone-completion-wise if you were going through the base game. However each zone contains a series of delves and a "Public dungeon," essentially smaller instanced dungeon areas the equivalent of a cave or small ruin in Skyrim that you can explore, usually with a quest associated with the completion, a low-level boss at the end, and dailies to encourage you to return, with the Public Dungeon being more like a traditional dungeon and having more difficult bosses meant to be completed in a group. While instanced from the zone, both the Delve sand the Public Dungeon can be accessed by all the players at any time without needing a party (which to an extent is also one of their weaknesses), so players can complete them on their own time without needing to group up.

Toontown Corporate Clash does an incredible job of this by letting anyone go into any Cog Building at any point, and with certain bosses having a debuff that lowers EVERYONE's max hp to a softcap and lowers their attacks to a hardcapped level, putting everyone on an even-ish playing field while still allowing people further in the game access to a more diluted version of the tools they've earned. The tutorial is brief and technically you are set free once you're out, with the quests just serving to give you more stats or unlocking easier ways of playing.

I think this is something Destiny 2 does very well. All the older raids and dungeons have a (power) level requirement that's exactly what you have when you come out of the games tutorial, so basically you're raid-ready after that - of course you won't have good armor stats and guns, but you'll have enough power level to do it if you have friends or LFG to help you. And since those raids and dungeons are still worth farming as endgame since only the stats of the loot matters and not the level which can be upgraded after the fact.

Solving this issue can be huge for a game. Destiny 2, for all its faults, actually does this pretty well provided you have a friend to play with. Because after an expansion is no longer current, the content of said expansion (including dungeons and raids) essentially have their item level requirement lifted. This is how my friend got me into the game. After i got done with the tutorial + a tiny bit of grind to show me the rest of the game and get some gear, she took me into the Shattered Throne dungeon and it was awesome. It was challenging and fun to take on something hard together. It showed the game from its best side and if not for that I dont think i'd have stuck with the game for much longer, if at all.

Josh really knows what players want. Some gaming company should hire this dude to design an mmo.

FFXIV did a lot of right things when it comes to getting people comfortable in group settings. Having players do a dungeon 1-2 hours after starting sets the stage for the rest of the game; group PvE tasks for gear and xp.

Yes, you are shown early on what a manic speedrun frenzy FFXIV dungeons are. Rabid people trying to finish the whole thing in 5 seconds flat, then cussing like crazy when you ask to pace it, since you can't tank all the pulls at once.

​@@RealTanku Sounds like you had a WoW Refugee. Most of the FFXIV community will be understanding but it's a give and take. You can't expect them to let you put one enemy at a time but they can't expect you too pull 5 packs at a time. Tanking does have the stigma behind it though sadly of where you are expected to know everything. And that is just sadly a thing, perhaps consider doing a couple of dungeons as a DPS or Healer n get used to a few mechanics then swap back. Or better yet just play too your strengths, continue doing what you're comfortable with! If you're on Cerberus - Europe server I'd be happy to give you some pointers on how to Tank, sadly the toxicity is in every video game n is fully unavoidable. Do hope your future dungeons go well though O7

I still feel that it shoved you there too heavily, without any incentive other that progressing through the story. With how msq is showering you with gear it's just... mildly interesting, and that's it.

@@thepintsizedgamer8717 The WoW refugee thing is such a cope, there has always been toxic players in FFXIV, it's not a brand new thing

@@thepintsizedgamer8717 Can we please stop blaming all FFXIV issues on " wow refugees". This has been a thing since forever.

Why can't a game development company just hire Josh to be an advisor for an mmo. This dude is thoughtful, insightful, and knows mmo's. Please someone just make an mmo with this guy guiding its development.

I can say with some confidence that if this was how MMOs did it I'd probably play MMOs just to experience this kind of stuff with my friends

How does this man not have 1 million subscribers yet??? Everyone share this video with 1 thousand of your closest friends.

GW2 has about 8 optional story dungeons that do a good job of challenging new players, I think its the gold standard for that kind of thing.

There’s an interesting premise here, namely that every player playing an MMO is playing there with friends. My experience is that many MMO players start with no friends playing the game and that making friends in-game is part of their progression. There’s also the assumption that new/inexperienced players will only get a challenge out of ‘endgame’ content, when my experience is that there is challenge at all levels and many new players (without in-game friends) can find many challenges that are every bit as satisfying to them as doing early-stage endgame dungeons, raids or trials. Many MMOs have a heirarchy of challenging content to keep players interested. And in the best of them, both new and experienced players can work together. And while playing with my in-game friends is a big part of why I enjoy my game, it wasn’t a big thing when I started.

I agree with that. Long-gone are the day of a group of friends waiting in line at Gamestop or EB Games for a midnight release so they can go home and rush to install and login. We all play multiple games, and unless you're lucky, you inevitably you end up making more reliable friends in the games then you could bring to it nowadays. It's especially true if you're mid-20's plus working on a work-life balance, possibly a family, etc...

MMO does not mean anyone should be forced to play with others. Even the most social person has times they want to play the game but be left the F alone. someone who thinks MMOs should be group only needs to be banned from online gaming for life.

I start and end my mmo journey with no friends Lol

I am a anti social person. I don't make friends cause its hard for me to talk to new people. I play MMOs almost purely solo unless it has a pug que to do some things. Like right now I am playing Elder Scrolls Online and I have never grouped or done a group dungeon ever and I have played it off and on over the years. I tried making friends in FF14 but I got kinda frustrated as I get ignored or left behind to much and so I just go off by myself till I got tired of it and just went to ESO and GW2.

@@MrWhateverfits ESO solo for life

Maplestory was great for early level party quests. Not only was it the best way to level, but they were some of the most social aspects of the game. So many buddies were made in the depths of LPQ, and it prepares you a bit for the boss runs later in the game too. Absolutely no reason not to have them in early.

Every old school player has some fond memories of PQing no matter what level they're playing at - from waiting at KPQ sewers to abusing DC exploit in moon bunny PQ & 113-221-333-123-111

Absolutely. PQ's being a huge part in leveling forced me into interacting with other players regularly. MapleStory created a lot of opportunities for social interactions really well.

Nexon seems to not like party content outside of bosses lol

@@haschwell2757 MapleStory Pq’s are legendary. Nothing else was quite like them back in the day. Especially LPQ

The last few times I played Maple, PQ weren't a big part of it. The first ~100 or so levels were just "aight, to powerlevel you go to this map and fight these till you hit this level then you go here for this level" and so on. Yes PQ existed, but you didn't really do them unless you were playing with friends and they took you on that as a detour because its something cool.

This is actually something, (The) Secret World (Legends) got right. Dungeons and Raid have a Story Mode and Elite versions. You can play the story mode versions of an area almost as soon as you can go questing in that area (with some limitations). It's meant to enjoy the story/lore while also teaching you the basic sturcture of that Dungeon/Raid. The Elite versions are for more advanced players, increasing difficulty and adding additional mechanics.

I love the idea of early game raids and dungeons bc they let newer players and less naturally talented players learn to play rather than just casting them right into the fire. I think it would help with toxicity and impatient experienced players.

I think DCUO handled this quite well. Level 30 is the max level, where raids are the main endgame, but you are introduced to smaller, 4 player raids at around level 14, which lets you get used to what you will be doing, and learn what the multiplayer experience is like.

I like having group content to do the whole way. I always thought RIFT did this very well with dungeons, Rifts, Zone invasions, instant adventure, and so on. There was always something to do, and new events starting up.

One of the many reasons I love Guild Wars 2 is the fact that you can immediately play with your friends, starting from level 1, so matter what your own level is. Now granted, the "interesting" group content only starts at level 30/35 with the first dungeon, but you can play together and have fun before that. You can explore, fight world bosses and complete events, as well as do someone's personal story (and if you picked the same one, progress your own), all as a group of friends. And while dungeons are sadly somewhat abandoned by ArenaNet, they're still fun to play and a really cool experience for new players once they get to level 30 and have an initial understanding of their class. Now of course, Guild Wars 2 isn't completely innocent in the "group content starts at endgame" aspect, both raids and strike missions (single boss mini raids, for those unfamiliar) are only available once a player has reached level 80, which takes a while to get to. It used to take just above 40 hours and while they've accelerated it with achievements that provide experience points, it's still a really solid time investment for new players, especially ones not used to the large time requirements of MMOs. I'm curious to see if ArenaNet will eventually release a "beginner mode" for things like strike missions that can be completed before level 80, just so players can get a taste of what the combat design of Guild Wars 2 has evolved to. Because all the content available to them before max level has more or less been in the game for the entire ten years it's been out and in my opinion they really improved at combat design.

Some of my favourite memories from EverQuest 2 are from the early game. Level 20 had raids. There were more available too. These days you can just solo them, which gives a bit of that memory, but really nothing compared to grouping up with 11 other people in a spontaneous raid. (That was an x2 raid, x4 raids were available too.)

I remember low level dungeons but low level raids? There might have been a few world bosses at that level but I certainly don't remember a raid zone.

I played EQ1 for like 3 years when it came out and never hit lvl 25

There were lower level raids, but the lowest level raids I remember were Vox in Permafrost, Mistmoor Castle, Karnor's Castle, Plane of Fear, and Growth. I think the lowest level of raid was 50-55 iirc. The lowest group zone I remember was something like a lvl 11-15 gnoll cave in Commonlands or something. Or the mushroom caves in Gfay. I remember I started playing just before Veeshan's Peak came out and people were still running the old zones and raids just for fun. I was even on one of the smaller servers (Permafrost which got turned into Skyfire) and there were always people willing to help run lower zones with new people.

@@ravencrovax There was a raid in Qyenos Aqueducts for lvl 10 players. I dont know if they removed that or not.

@@manadecide That may have been the tutorial/starter raid I think. I think I went there exactly once when I was working on the achievement for visiting all the zones in an area. Also, I started in Gfay so I didn't go to the other starting areas unless I had to.

Huge part what makes WoW(mainly classic/vanilla) so good for me. The low level dungeons are an awesome leveling experience and joint effort with friends/people you meet along the way.

recently ff14 added and changed mechanics in older content to resemble what they look like at endgame. be it a big red circel around the tank, signal for big tank damage or different often used patterns that we commonly call something like dynamo, chariot etc. because the principal of the attack appears everwhere, often with a twist. replayed many dungeons since they added it and the experience is great. once oyu saw it you will know what it is and you devolope skills to handle these.

One of the biggest problems I find every time I want to convince a friend to join me in my adventures throughout the world of MMORPG's is exactly this. The fact that I can't join them until they have played solo for a long time, which goes against the main reason they joined the game in the first place: to play together.

Why not just create a new character? That's what I often did in WoW. I would create a new character to level together with a friend which I obviously only used when that specific friend was online to not level too far ahead. But I guess in some games this is not possible, because you are limited in new characters you can make.

@@Tokru86 That's not really a solution though, is it? That's kind of a sideways compromise. The game hasn't provided you with an option, you're actively removing yourself from your investment in the game, to sidestep a gameplay limitation because in an online MMO you can't actually play multiplayer with your friend.

@@Tokru86 Often the issue is not that you are a much higher level but that the game forces you to play solo in the early game. I love FFXIV but it's no exception there. Until you can really play together, a new player has to go through a lot of solo content first.

Gw2 has solved that issue imo. You can join a new player with your main toon and the game lowers your lvl based on the map level you are both playing. And if you've never been to that map before you also get to advance your world completion

I think interesting approach would ve to create high lvl quests, where high lvl players would mentor and lead low lvl dungeon with new players on their version of quest for the dungeon

The biggest issue I have when trying to get my friends to play a MMO with me is that they claim "the genre is dead" or "the game is dead". I play games like League of Legends and Apex with my friends but I also play lots of MMOs when I don't feel like those games. Recently I got back into GW2 and when trying to convince them to play I was just met with "all MMOs are the same and I already played WoW as a kid, plus I heard the genre/game is dead". I try to convince them otherwise but I guess they just go off what they have heard other content creators or gaming new sites say. It's a shame and I wonder how much the outside perspective of "genre is dead, all MMOs are WoW clones" negativity effects new MMO players from trying them out.

I agreed with this for so many years, and I still do. The moment I found out in SWTOR I could level through raids, I was like "Yes, this is awesome!" If they were literally at the same level bracket as the first flashpoints/dungeons, they would be as awesome as epic bgs in WoW. Mass multiplayer content has been something I personally enjoy and only a few MMO's let you do this from the get go. GW2's eternal battle grounds is one of the best experiences i've ever had in an MMO, opening it to low levels was one of the best things they could have done for that game. Even if you don't have all the crazy equipment and skills/levels in it, you still feel you can help, you still feel you can make a difference in some way. You are still playing that core part of the game, and you can just do that with your friends. More MMO's should embrace this idea, because the best bits of an MMO is what keeps people there. I have barely ever recommended an MMO to someone I know in RL because I know for a fact there is no fun in the early game, and time is valuable.

I love that SWTOR lets you get in on flashpoints so early in the game. Means you don't have to play through the exact same planetary storyline and sidequests you've done a million times when you can just go run Hammer Station a few times to stay on the level curve

one thing i like about lost ark is that early dungeons "prepare" you for endgame ones (for example similar but harder to dodge mechanics, battle items usage etc)

I think they should be available, accessible, and not mandatory as group content, right from the beginning of the game. As I recall, City of Heroes did an excellent job with this. You could team up with others who were max level, and they'd be de-leveled to your level and you could go do quests together, which would almost always have an instanced dungeon of some sort in it, even at the very beginning of the game.

Very well said. Guild Wars 2 does a good job with their zone scaling design to supplement this idea, and FFXIV roulettes and dungeon scaling make a good attempt at this solution too. I hope developers continue to realize the disparity that's slowly grown between the MMO and RPG elements of their games over the years, and remember that we wanted to do this thing together.

Gw2 did good. Sometimes I miss that game. Then I remeber why I left and move on with life.

@@OniRan_VT A bitter guy baited me in PM. Then Made up some story that im a huge racist. One of the guild founders had a crush on him and kicked me. No matter how much my friends of a decade stood up for me I was never welcome back. So I lost the Will to play. Great game otherwise.

@@OniRan_VT One of the best games I ever played.

@@chrisrose323 i heard similar stories with some new guild members. Dont lose hope in the game for some idiots, try again with a new guild, and one day you will find a really good group of friends. Keep it up!

@@CharrREDR I had good friends, now Im on to playing wierd and obscure indie mmos and tf2 with my son XD

Absolutely agree about group content. For me what made these games so incredible was the shared experiences with your friends/guild in game. The concept of so many new MMOs basically being a boring solo quest grind before you do any "real" content is not helping the genre IMO.

You should be a lead director (or whoever is in charge of the whole game) and make an mmorpg with your ideas and everything. It would be something.

In the ESO social guild I'm in it takes a fair bit of coaxing to get people to sign up for Trials. The 12 player raids. The usual thing is that they're nervous of doing such "big" content and don't want to fail it. To mess up for the group. I tell them Trials are just basically dungeons with bigger groups and the ones that are willing to come always end up enjoying it. So they encourage others. It's the initial hurdle. Once you get players over that hurdle they're always happy to run.

I've seen similar sentiments. I think what's happening is that people have seen to many horror stories of a new player being _mercilesly_ berated for not knowing a dungeon works,which then turns other people away because "What if that happens ro me...?" Keep in mind, there are still may, _many_ players who are unable or outright afraid to navigate certain social interactions.

I mean, most veteran players will literally kick you out of the trial if you aren't running the absolute latest meta build, and will flame you mercilessly if you so much as make a single petty mistake. Veteran players are so obsessed with minmaxing every ounce of content that the concept of newcomers not being familiar is absolute alien to them.

Exactly the same thing here. I am in a mid-sized social guild and we regularily have players new to the game. And the story does not even start at trials. Even normal dungeons are generally disregarded by new players. The game basically does many of the things requested in this video: dungeons are available early on. The activity finder makes sure that a low level character only gets rather easy dungeons, and they become harder the higher your level is. At the same time, the level scaling system means that players of all levels can work together there. And due to how the sets work, even the loot some low level dungeons is still relevant for a more advanced player. But people generally don't know this. They come to this game, thinking that it's all the same as all the other MMOs they played: dungeons are to be done when you reach end game. It sometimes really requires a good deal of persuasion to make people even try normal difficulty dungeons. While actually, the earlier they start with that, the better for them. They learn in the very easy first dungeons, and then while leveling get access to harder and harder content.

Dungeons and raids should be firmly embedded in the metagame, not just as a means of getting better gear so you can go on the next dungeon or raid.

Definitely agree...You can not lose with that cuz you got content for both social and solo players...I believe Tower of Fantasy does it well...The open world scales with your lvl so you can always find a challenge if you want...As you lvl you gain access to more and more group content with varying lvls of difficulty and you can join anything from easiest to hardest (you have unlocked for you lvl)...This without the gatcha and P2W aspects is already an insane base for a possibly great game imho.

I'd like to add 1 detail. For heavily story driven games like FF14, part of the fun is discussing the lore and story with your friends. It's content that by nature cannot be repeated. Also, there aren't many players out there who play games for story but it's still important enough that in FF14, my FC placed a spoiler rule when a new expansion is released. Some players even frown on using certain spoiler-y outfits that the game gives you.

FFXIV now does have repeatable story content, I've used NG+ to tag along with the story alongside my friends, so I can tag along with the story, experience them and comment on them, as my friend does.

Josh needs to be a head developer for an MMORPG, id buy it

Back when I played Guild Wars 2 one thing I loved was how the game auto-scaled the player. It wasn't perfect, but it meant that low level content never became irrelevant, and grouping with someone far above or below your level wasn't the huge power gap as it can be in other games.

I think GW2 did a really good job at this. Usually scaling means that power gains are irrelevant but you can actually feel changes in your equipment/skills. I picked up a class I never played before and learning it has been incredibly fun so far. There are a few flaws with the game but when it comes to gameplay it's one of the best.

I also think that GW2 is one of the best for new players who love PvP. You get equalized for the most part as far as equipment and can PvP all the way to level 80 mostly based on your skill.

Too bad there's pretty much no content that is worth doing together other than Raids and Fractals

@@helgenlane well, i love getting achievments. That a mechanic that very few people do.

GW1 was great for this. The "endgame" started really early as the low max level of 20 (can easily get in a few days of casual play) meant that the power ladder plateaued quickly and everyone was on the same level for most of the experience, and your progression as a player was more about collecting new abilities to create interesting skillbar combinations with. The story mode instance "dungeons" content leading up to level 20 did a great job of introducing players to the kinds of challenges they should expect later on in terms of enemy group compositions, and the fact mobs used the same abilities as players meant players could learn from how the mobs interacted with each other and how different team dynamics worked, preparing the player for their own role in groups of other players, as opposed to just being damage fodder to grind your way through.

and dont forget, that essentially the entire game past the tutorial WAS group based play... once youre out of the tutorial, you HAVE to have a party unless you know fairly well what to do to make a solo run work... and the henchmen did a reasonable job of filling up when youre short on people... but they were entirely inadequate for some of the more complex stuff that some of the missions required...but they will do until you have learned the ropes of how a party generally works =)

group play and individual skill (actual skill not abilities) and preparations for encounters was fantastic and it is what i miss in games in general. I it is also why atleast for me GW2 is not exactly a proper sequel.

@@SharienGaming I would disagree that the henchmen were 'inadequate.' Sure, there were some missions where you couldn't just randomly choose 3 henchmen and expect to complete it. However, it is entirely possible to do everything in the game solo + henchmen. They certainly aren't the best, but they can 100% get the job done. And that's what makes them so great. They allow you to play the game *fully*, but they don't let you play the game *optimally*. This is also one of the reason FF14's new Trust/Duty Support system is so great. The NPCs aren't the best (I have some *serious* issues with them in the newest dungeon), however, outside of a few (relatively) rare AI issues - unless you try and speedrun things with them, then the issues are *much* more common - they allow a player to complete all of the available instances solo. These are the kinds of systems that should be added to *every* MMO, as well as a lot of non-MMO multiplayer games.

With the base game you were expected to reach max level about halfway through. It was fairly easy to do it earlier of course. With the expansions their tutorials would get you to max level so you would be on a (somewhat) even ground with other players. I think they tried to do something with World Bosses and Dungeons in GW2 to that effect and it somewhat worked in the beginning. Years of neglect have made that content a bit irrelevant though. I'm not sure yet what I think about the new Emboldened buff in Raids. Sure it allows groups to defeat bosses they would have otherwise not defeated and maybe it removes a bit of the reluctance to try raids for some players because you can expect to get positive results. It also trivializes some bosses and mechanics for groups who don't really have the abilities to justify it.

@@AeriFyrein Yeah, Henchmen were good enough for most content whereas going with random players could lead to "interesting" runs. Although isn't that also a bit of the point of an MMO?

And this is why FF14 is one of the best examples of a game that has listened to this very notion. And it's KEPT listening to the point of realizing its earlier content bordered on brain dead easy, so it touched up a bunch of spots in that early content to make it resemble the more challenging bits later on. Also, it immediately dispels a lack of role tutorials by not only having them, but giving you a reward for doing them in the form of decent gear before you enter your first dungeon AND a ring that boosts

Speaking about the mechanics in endgame, ffxiv have actually worked to make mechanic markers uniform throughout the entire game. Things used to be mixed up back in ARR and HW, but now it's all reflective of what that marker will mean in endgame content, which I think is pretty cool.

There should definitely be a place for end game oriented dungeons and raids, but there needs to be a place for beginner dungeons, beginner raids,etc that have scaling difficulty if you enable them. If games like Elyon can do it, I'm sure any major release mmo in the west can too.

Despite it's failures, this is exactly why I love the alert missions from Champions Online. It puts scales everyone to the same level, shows how the game feels and gives neat rewards to everyone. The game also has the "sidekicking" thing for teams where the lower level players on a team can have their level become the same as the higher level players, which feels pretty good.

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I am so glad I played New World and discovered your channel via the ensuing train wreck of New World. You have very insightful explanations of the problems plaguing the genre. I hope developers are watching your videos and taking your advice seriously.

I do think dungeons should be spread across the leveling experience and have some High end Dungeons for late game but when i think of raids i do think of something that is Late/ End game

in a way, eso has kinda nailed that, all dungeons/raids/trials etc have a regular and a veteran version with different requirements. from what i understand, the veteran versions just crank the challenge and unforgivingness of mechanics to 11 while the regular ones are for helping you learn everyhting you need to know about them (as well as part of the levelling process and story) very much how ffxiv has done with dungeons and trials. imho the 'raids' equivalent of ffxiv is very much the same as the eso ones only more seperate. of all the mmos i'veplayed gw2 pissed that bed on that one with how impossible their dungeons are ON level that even the community doesn't touch them before lvl-cap

@@alyssavanderklift9296 that said Im not sure what I think about letting player join a raid/dungeon at level 1. as the first 10 level out of let say 60. the player is supposed to learn its class join a group of 1-2 other player at most. get learn how spells works and see how a spell works in the wild. if I joined a group I would have no ide how im doing. if im soloing and casting a few spell and see the mobs HP bar go down in X second and mine to 1/3 of max hp I know okey this feels okey. try another spel and see it not even make a practical dent after X-X secound and Am at 1/10 of max HP (I know this does not work). in a dungeon I got no clue how im performing (presuming we dont sit whit DPS addons that shows it). because stearing on the DPS addon is bad on its own right. because maybe one of the DPS are using a spell that does next to no damadge but let say removes armor form the target so that other player can hit it for masive amount of damadge.

@@alyssavanderklift9296 I dunno about you but it sounds extremely boring and anticlimatic to me that an endgame raid's just gonna be the same thing I already did 40 levels ago or whatever, just harder. I'd rather just have new content. Final Fantasy XIV's raids are objectively the best, whereby they still require level cap, but are generally easy and story-focused -- but right after clearing the normal mode, you can go ahead, unlock the Savage version, which not only has new mechanics but sometimes even new bosses/boss phases entirely.

@@maia6260 Considered you seem to refer to ESO .. they release 4 new dungeons + 1 new 12-man trial per year. So by end game you have plenty of 4-people dungeons as each year brings 8 new ones and additional trials. Add to that missions people grind for these and you have an image. Besides that, the unspoken truth is that ESO endgame is housing lol. New mechanics are also on vet versions for ESO though, so it's not just FFXIV thing. New content wise out of all MMO's ESO to my memory has new content on fastest pace.

@@maia6260 I can tell you the raids in eso in normal vs veteran vs hardmode are completely different things. you can enter normal raids with level 10 and most of the boss mechanics are not there it is a real easymode. Veteran is cranked up in difficulty several times and the hardmodes are a such a complete different kind of beast that only extreme well coordinated teams will get through it. There is really nothing boring about Sunspire vet hm. (for example) really nothing XD

Fallen Earth had a damn good "that was awesome" moment at the tutorial section, and generally speaking, just by the art style and ambience, every second you play. Except, when you travel long distances. GW 2 had an awesome intro as well, running around, getting thrown straight into battle with my Sylvari elementalist against a huge poisonous plants. And the introduction to ESO when your ship gets destroyed outside Vvardenfell and you find yourself imprisoned on an island full och story and a shitton of harvestable resources off the bat. Raids and Dungeons are honestly the most boring parts of MMORPGs to me, as I prefer a good story to be told when I play an MMORPG, whether it be solo or group, rather than just killing endless waves of mobs for minutes just to reach the boss battles, which are the only interesting aspects of raids / dungeons, but oh so prolonged just for tge sake of it for no reason. As for new player dungeons, maybe add a mentor system to award higher level players to mentor random players inside tutorial dungeons?

My favorite OG MMO City of Heroes had this great system of Sidekicking of bring lower level players up to the higher level so they could join in the adventure. It was such a great way to level alts or bring in new people I wish more MMOs had a similar feature.

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I've always wanted to make a webseries with WoW (classic) in the style of SAO (back when it actually came out and it hadn't been done to death) I like the idea of "floors" in that MMO. Zones that can only be accessed when a hidden boss in the zone is defeated in a raid. Something like that in a modern MMO would be interesting. A very large starting zone, with a slower leveling system, focusing instead on a variety of gameplay systems, and a hidden boss somewhere that a large number of players would be needed to defeat, in order to open the next zone on the server. Combine that with a Path of Exil style system of "seasons" where each server lasts maybe a year and then a new "season" is released with new events, challenges, mechanics and the boss locations are changed or even the bosses are mixed up to prevent metagaming from having players speed run zones, and you might have something pretty cool. I always wondered what it would be like, if Hogger needed 100 players to beat, and Westfall didn't open up as a zone on the server until he was beaten, and so on for every other zone

Completely agree that co-op PvE content should be ever-available and accessible. FFXIV does this pretty decent with the Hall of the Novice + level scaling, and they open up early. Bonus points for Hall of the Novice kind of being what you were talking about as a training tool for brand new players. A gripe I have with FFXIV however is that it's mandatory to do this content -- FFXIV focuses on being, in many ways, an RPG before it's an MMO. I love that about it. I got in because of the story. What I don't love however is spending 10 minutes in a que for an earlier dungeon because I'm being forced to do it. I want to progress and I want to experience the story, but I don't want to worry about getting on at the right time of day for a que to pop. Just as the upside of an MMO is readily available groups and the freedom to choose how you progress (questing, dungeoning, raiding, etc.), a downside is when they force you to do any one of them to break up the others. I WANT to quest if the writing is good, but the dungeons break up the positive experience. Also, if MMOs want to focus on group PvE content, they've got to deal with players being pricks. Few, if any, MMOs take reports seriously and little else drives more players away than doing a piece of group content and being called a slur.

Just the title alone has me convinced. Yes 100%. Giving people the opportunity to form a community early on is only ever going to be positive! I've found some of my longest lasting friends online through doing dungeons at low levels. I wish Discord had existed through the late 2000's as I'd have many more, though not just from MMO's! I've spent literally weeks of time playing with people and then lost contact with them :(

This reminds me a lot of Dungeons and Dragons Online (which I still hope you will play for 'wordt mmo ever' one day). There are raids from as early as level 6. And because a lot of the game is based on restarting a capped character at level 1 with some benefits, the low level raids were run quite often.

Low level raids at level milestones would be super awesome I feel like. They can be mid tier challenges to introduce you to how end game feels and plays and reward you with strong versions of gear to make your character instantly feel stronger and help stream line the leveling progression at the same time. For instance if the max lvl is 80 have raids at 20,40 and 60 slowly increasing in difficulty etc I think it’s a great idea you can also reward the player with a huge chunk of exp so it doesn’t feel like they wasted any time not leveling.

First impressions are literally everything. If your Early Content is great, and introduces the basic mechanics and systems from the get-go at level 5 and onwards. You have a solid understanding as you progressively learn things new, different and interesting to keep you hooked. Make us love the game to start with and keep giving us more of what you gave us and make it so the challenges and rewards scales upwards. MMOs SHOULD SHINE with other Players, together. It is literally a Massive Multiplayer Online game, where Players interact with the World and each other against odds and challenges. While the Roleplaying element makes us immersed in the World/Universe of it and develop our characters and selfs around it.

One of the few MMOs I've sunk substantial time into was Vindictis, and I appreciated that. I had a high level friend, and we'd do raids or the normal combat missions together, which made the game a lot more fun

I do think it's a good idea to keep your game-loop consistent throughout the game's content. The problem as I see it (as someone who doesn't play MMOs, I will admit) is that the early, grindy starting experience is easier to make and to monetize. Actually taking time and resources to properly build these kinds of "stepping stone" raids and dungeons is simply too much to expect. In fact, I know we've seen examples of games (not necessarily MMOs) being deliberately tedious for the sake of selling speed-up solutions for a problem they created. Grind is just more profitable than providing quality content. I think the real question is this: how do we incentivize game executives (especially big ones) to take more care in the games they create and provide solid experiences throughout their content. We've now reached a point where companies can create mediocre games and still make money, and so now these business-types are simply trying to optimize the low effort/high profit algorithm, and appeal their games to the whales who are willing to sink in the cash. Simply making a profit isn't enough for these folks anymore. And I'm sure there are game devs out there who would love to make the kind of content you're asking for, but their hands get tied because their boss's boss's boss just wants to maximize profits. Great video, as always, but I do wonder if the problem you're addressing isn't just a symptom of a much deeper problem.

You absolutely nailed it. One of my favorite MMOs, Dungeons and Dragons Online does this well. It's a flawed game, but every quest has a unique dungeon where multiple players and classes and roles are encouraged from the get go. Ton of fun, and you can get into raiding by like... Level 7, if I remember correctly (with level cap having just been raised to 32).

Something Dark Age of Camelot added for their low levels, well before they were able to participate in the grander Realm vs Realm battles, were smaller Realm vs Realm experiences called Battlegrounds. These battles over a singular, centralized keep, were some of the most memorable and enjoyable times I had in DAoC. And it was a perfect reflection of what to look forward to in the endgame!

I don't have friends to play with, but I love playing MMO's. I'm very introvert and playing mostly solo, but it's great to know in MMO's that there are people who can help me, if I need them, But in dungeons and raids it can get toxic, when new players are trying to understand the mechanics got teamed up with veterans. It really irks me. Like you have all the responsibillity to carry that team while not knowing what to do.

Warframe is pretty good about this: the entire game is pretty much centered around gathering materials. It doesn’t take much time for your friend to unlock their current planet’s map nodes, and specific materials are tied to specific planets. This means that playing with your friends is as simple as helping them get to the map node that is best for farming. Plus, leveling a frame and weapons to 30 isn’t a long process. The only obstacle between new players and endgame is mods. Nvm I just remembered that the mod system is still a major quit moment for most new players….

World Bosses in Guild Wars 2 are really similar to the solution you proposed near the end. Recently they even reworked a lot of the early zone ones, both so endgame players don't steamroll them, while also adding new mechanics that the new players get to experience and practice, so they're familiar with them as all late game bosses have similar patterns and attacks.

World of Warcraft actually addressed this problem! In the Shadowlands expansion they added "Exiles Reach" for new players. It's a questing experience level 1-10 that ends in a dungeon. There are also ways to help your friends level through dungeons and learn their class. It's not perfect (WoW is almost 20 years old lol) but so far it's been one of my favorite new-player experiences :)

Off-topic; but from all the footage and comments on GW2 you've made I have decided to give it a shot and am enjoying thoroughly. It kind of reminds me of the first time I went through Oblivion, to an extent, but with a shared world. By that I mean the music, areas, and dialogue. Amazing.

To answer the question while sitting back and think "it was awsome", it's when Endwalker came out. I picked up FF14 kinda late and catch up the MSQ to start EW. I've played it day one and being with other players discovering the new places and the dungeons, i think this was the coolest thing/feeling ever

THIS!! Oh holy gods, I love that expansion! I was there, waking up at 7 am to dodge the 7000 people queues to play and i have never regretted it XD

@@deficit06 Which miracle server do you play in!? Only 7000 ppl queue? Thats actually very good during launch, like, probably just two hours wait (if only you don't have to babysit the queue.....)

@@Verpal I WISH. Nah, first time i tried to log on It took me 5 hours, because the kept kicking me out XD

I really liked how GW2 handled pvp. You can start to queue at lv1 and you will receive a specific kit with the necessary adjustment to handle multiple situations. STILL, i'm not sure if pvp/raid should be available right from the beginning. You have players with many different skill levels and some of them may need more training than others. How do you handle context/lore in such cases? and most important, how you can keep the hype going on? If you start with everything you need unlocked, why would you pursue anything greater? TBH i feel weird when i hit the level cap in a specific job/class and the dopamine from gaining level exp just stop. Personally i just love how organized FFXIV is in your progress. From veterans to noobs, there is always something new to learn.

I feel like XIV has done this pretty well but definitely can be better, I for one advocate ARR to have a revamp of sorts like how they're updating dungeons to be more in line with current day mechanics and visuals. But they can definitely do this in other places like the MSQ so that players can have a better time to go through it.

Cult of the Lamb does a good thing: The Endboss of each region combines the skills and abilities of the minions you encounter along each run, plus a unique thing or two for itself. That means once you reach the boss you'll know most of what they will throw at you. I think an MMO should do the same thing, as making the overworld and early quests revolve around tiny mob groups with roles. Not too strong so solo players get overwhelmed, but homeopathic doses of mob roles thrown at the player in random combinations.

I completely agree, and feel like a "training dungeon" could even go a step further: If you're an experienced player who's returning to a class they haven't played in a while, it could act as a way to retrain you in that class, or give you training in a class that starts at a higher level. As an example, last night I did some leveling stuff with friends in XIV, and decided to run Samurai, since it was the highest-level DPS I had behind my full-leveled Ninja and my friends were already playing as Tank & Healer to level those classes. I had no idea what my buttons did, and didn't realize I had a whole second set of moves I could be using until we hit the boss (I play on controller, so all of my options aren't always visible to me). This is the same for every class; I haven't touched anything besides Ninja in months because it's the only class I've played as significantly, so playing as anything else requires a bit of relearning every time. If there was a way to go through a no-risk dungeon with NPCs where they explain what your buttons do (and maybe the dungeon expands depending on how many moves you have to explain what each of them does), that would be helpful to someone who only plays when new content comes out, then leaves the game for months until the next new content arrives; they could take a day to go through the dungeon and relearn the different classes instead of going into leveling roulettes and not knowing how to run a class because they haven't touched the game in months. Alternatively, I think MMOs should also be able to do the opposite of this: make end-game content available to characters of any class once it's unlocked through in-game acquisition. This is sort of done by purchasing level skips, but I think it should also be a thing that can be done through gameplay. Going back to XIV, as it's my only MMO experience, I've beaten everything in MSQ up to the current 6.2 storyline, meaning I can see all of the dungeons, trials, and raids available across the entire game. However, I can't access all of that content on anything except my main class, and since I hyper-focused the entire MSQ around running a single class through everything, I now have one class at level 90 and about 15 others at around 30-40, with the only ones higher being ones that you get at higher levels from the start, like Dancer or Gunbreaker at 60. If I want to get these other classes leveled up, I'm limited to dungeons & raids within the level range of those classes, meaning I'm stuck in ARR content when I know there's four whole expansions' worth of content I could be playing. What they could do is have a way to create scaled-down versions of those end-game dungeons to make them more accessible to low-level characters so that they can level-up classes they haven't been playing faster while continuing to allow them to learn the mechanics of both the class and the content. Maybe create level-gated versions that go up by 10 levels per version, where there's a level 20, 30, 40, 50, etc version of each dungeon where the mechanics are the same, but enemy levels are reduced to be manageable for characters in that level range. Once you've reached level 30 in a class, you can't play the level 20 version of any dungeon again, and maybe the loot dropped in those reduced-level dungeons are level-appropriate loot, possibly even loot from other dungeons in the MSQ at the same level as the reduced-level dungeon so that the devs don't have to make different-leveled versions of the same gear just so its stats match the dungeon level. That way, when you're finally at level cap, you can have run through the end-game content at a lower level and understand the mechanics of it, and when you do play with your higher-level friends who've been playing end-game content at high-level for months, you know what you're doing. Additionally, the reduced-level dungeons could also be a way to gain a ton of experience very quickly, to help you level up a class much faster than you normally would, which would help you fill roles for friends at end-game content much quicker as well.

Your ideal solution is basically just describing how ffxiv does things. The first dungeon is unlocked at 15, very early on and is mandatory. the novice training grounds tells you how to perform your role on a group, higher players scale down with you and there are low stakes in the early dungeons. Additionally they just added a new feature where if you're nervous about your role in a group you can just team up with ai controlled party members until you get comfortable. Additionally challenging raids are introduced fairly early on and remain relevant through level scaling.

I loved DDO because the entire game was dungeons, and most you couldn't solo even starting from level 1. You always had to use the group finder and actually whisper someone "Hey I'm a rogue looking to run x dungeon, can I join your party?" Nothing automatic, super social, and you often found groups you would stay with for the entire evening running dungeon after dungeon after dungeon... unlike recent MMOS where you just queue up, do the dungeon without speaking, then queue back up and find a new group to run the next dungeon

Damn, I have so many fond memories of DDO for that exact reason. It's one of the few MMOs to actually capture my attention long term because I loved the social aspect of it. A fantastic game for sure.

unfortunately the huge xp bonuses for doing all the dungeons on the hardest difficultly mode first time, xp penalty for having a high level character help out and for anybody dying mean that a lot of your experience is staying way way back, maybe even the dungeon porch whilst one or two uber powerful dudes that have reincarnated about 12 times have the actual adventure.

@@ThomasstevenSlater ugh I hated when they added the reincarnation mechainic.

This is something that's worth experimenting for an MMO dev. I can see the appeal of frontloading all of the fun dungeons and raids from the start so that friends could quickly jump in. Then if they want to delve deeper into the game and improve their character even further to unlock more fun content, they could get into the more slow paced grindy activities such as crafting or whatever. On that same note, general questing needs a huge overhaul from "kill 5 boars".

J

This is what I like about FFXIV. I sold it to my friends as a game with a great story where you can play together with friends at certain part. In FFXIV you scale down your charachter to the level of the content. This way I have been able to tackle all the dungeons with my friend as they progress with the story and level up.

I think that Guild Wars 2 is a great example how to do it right. The Open World is relevant even in endgame if u want to make leggendaries, dungeons are early game fractals and World Bosses are a great preparations for Hard Meta events in Expansions like Dragon´s end Meta.

This makes a lot of sense. MMO's like WoW used to try and address this by having open world content that required a group to tackle, such as Stromgarde but that just ended up becoming a massive stumbling block for players just trying to quest solo either by choice or because they're in an older zone where finding a group isn't going to happen. Also, having early game stuff that actually sets you up for tackling things as part of a team and dealing with mechanics that you can't just ignore would be great.

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I know it's a gacha and all, but Tower of Fantasy introduces the classic 4 player dungeon with big bosses really early on and it feels awesome. And with no piano skills rotation, only careful positioning, managing your charge, healing your friends if you are a healer and knowing when to jump in and out.

I don't know. Way back in the day when I was much younger and still played WoW, I had a lot of fun finding groups to run Deadmines.I never made it to endgame on any of my characters so it's one of my standout memories of playing the game.

original deadmines was one of best early game dungeons ever made in any MMORPG

@@hristo7777 Agreed simple yet challenging

@@asch220 It had just the right amount of spells/abilities at that point too. You had to manage your mana correctly where you quickly learned it and felt rewarding, instead of having a dozen crowd control spells and an unlimited mana pool. Learning threat but you didn't instantly die, yet posing a big risk, and healers pulling aggro too. Low enough level where you weren't a specialised class so could actually fulfil a hybrid role on the fly. The best experiences I had were going in there slightly underleveled. A fun and challenging learning experience, and not just 'do your rotation' like in later dungeons.

That's because before heirlooms were added to the game low level dungeons were actually difficult and required a lot of planning and coordination for each wave in terms of pulling, setting up CC, determining which enemy to kill first, etc. The issue isn't that low level dungeons aren't "relevant to end game" the issue is that nowadays they're trivially easy and are done with random people on random servers you'll never see again.

@@ILubBLOfficial I think servers are an outdated concept that are just a technological restrictions of the past that doesn't need to exist in 2022. Everyone should be able to play with everyone. Like, you don't need to be in the same server to actually get to know people, but you also need to realize, communicating online isn't a new novelty like it was 20 years ago.

As someone who jumped into MMO's in very early 2000's ( Runescape specifically and then WoW as well as some smaller ones that are shut down these days ), I've grown up with exactly the idea of doing quests and dungeons to eventually get to raids, so I admit I felt a bit skeptical of the point presented in the title - and in the video itself - but.. I must say you made very good and fair points and I am indeed convinced. Having raids and dungeons to help prepare you for playing your class and your role in the dungeon now sound like an awesome idea and as a nervous tank ( sometimes ) this would have been greatly helpful.

On if the things I enjoyed about "the old republic" you can start raiding as soon as level 10. Which is where you spec your class and get relevant abilities to run a raid/ dungeon

Wow (for the horde) had a lvl 10-15 dungeon. Inside main city. Alliance was 18+, but still quite early. A great learner for most. Tanks learned patience, healers learned priorities and mana conservation. And dps learned nothing.

I don't really love FFXIV for many reasons, but it does a really good job teaching dungeons from the get-go, and I love the NPC allies you can run them with.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately myself. A friend had asked me if I had any ideas on what I'd like to do if I could adapt my tabletop rpg into a videogame format. My answer was what I dubbed the "Dad Gamer MMO." A game with a short leveling tutorial that is skippable for seasoned player that teaches you the basics of your class and specialization before placing you in the larger world. The larger world being a parallel progression system so that all the content stays evergreen. Quests would be larger campaigns with multiple outcomes that allow players the chance to have something new happen when they repeat the content with friends who join the game later. Without the insane power creep you get in games like World of Warcraft from the start you can allow players to hop in with their friends from the start and you can focus on making fun content that players can enjoy without having a content destroying game squish every few years.

This is kinda how FF14 feels right now. Yes you still have to play the MSQ, but you get early game versions of raids and such throughout every tier of play. And it does well at teaching you with the sprout training.

Even more so with the redesigned early-game dungeons utilizing mechanics and markers you'll see used throughout the game, teaching you even if you DON'T attend the Hall of the Novice.

Also there will always be old players playing with them since we have daily roulettes and the mentor system

still deeply lacking im sorry im a veteran raider in ff14 and i wont make 3 paragraph of what is missing but they fail at teaching new players a lot of things then people now can do trust which make it worst (you learn faster with other people then bots doing everything for you)

@@madlinkers8595 sorry it sounds like you don't understand the difference between a raid and an ULTIMATE. Those things are brutal and definitely not for everyone. The rest of the game is perfectly challenging for a normal player and gives that taste of something more. The gap in between gets learned when they feel ready for it.

@@strikingdummy8001 It's a pity Mentors are such a mixed bag, since there's no oversight and the only requirement is practically "must have played enough FFXIV".

After many years of WoW I was shocked by how old content is integrated into every day activities in FFXIV. As I was leveling through old content this last year I was able to go through all the Raid lines very easily.

This was actually a really good design that City of Heroes figured out. You can scale up OR down any character for any story arc, depending on who's the "team leader". This goes from level 1 all the way to level 50. Obviously the optimized lv 50 will be better than the powered-up lv 1 character, but they are both viable in PvE.

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Elder Scrolls online had 4 player dungeons that become available every 10 levels starting from level 10. Playing through the game with my friends we loved them. We had to sort out roles within the builds we were working towards and work together to suceed.

I have never ever ever played an MMO to the endgame, but I always go do dungeons as soon as they unlock. It gets boring pretty quickly though, as more often than not *all* the monsters are taken out in the blink of an eye, all story sections are skipped and everything is rushed through. Maybe if I wanted to play with friends it would be different, but just the power progression of leveling means that moving the dungeon content even earlier won't be enough, there needs to be a new approach to progress in general.

It's a question I've asked ever since I first saw the "Level Boost" purchase option, why would you encourage players to skip thousands of hours worth of development just to get to the "Good bit" isn't that a HUGE design flaw? or is it just because the formula is so old the developer feels they need to follow it?

I think the problem is that questing and exploring are fundamental to the RPG genre, but a large portion of players think of it as "filler." They want a show or movie that is only fight scenes. You put anything in front of them that isn't a boss fight and they whine and wander off. I love questing, so skipping dozens of hours of content makes no sense to me.

In my case in GW2 i played too many hours on a mesmer, but as a support my friends stoped playing, so i boost a dps to continue playing the endgame

An honest reason to use it: Alts. If I've already done it, maybe i don't want to do it again just because I want to play a different character.

When you think about it, it's actually quite interesting how we value the early game experience to give you an idea of what the rest of the game experience is gonna be. My favorite single player game, Breath of the Wild, does this where it teaches you the basics of how the game works and how you interact with it in a very small section of the map that introduces just about every important mechanic needed to beat the game. I think it has a great experience. FFXIV is my favorite MMO, has this weird situation where technically speaking the first few hours are actually quite representative of what the next dozens, if not hundreds of hours will be for the average player. Lots of story, going from A to B, doing X and Y. Even the raids and dungeons themselves are just as much vehicles for telling a story as they are a form of challenging your mechanical understand of your class. One could argue that the end game is really the story, and the raids and dungeons are just bonus challenges for fun and not necessarily the point of the game. Hell, if the Island Sanctuary thing is any indication, the devs are open to adding as much variety in to the game as possible so that what the end game is what you want it to be more than specifically raiding and dungeoning.

I remember one of my friends wanted to pick up FF14, and it actually wasn't long at all before he and I were running dungeons together, and I was helping him understand how the game worked in and what his role in the team was. Now, there still are a few hours of content before you can start running dungeons in FF14, but it's not such a massive wall that I feel disinclined to get friends into it so we can start doing the dungeons together.

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Dungeons and raids should be spread throughout the leveling process. When games and expansions are developed with only endgame in mind, it shifts the focus to only one form of content which can stymie the overall feel of the game.

This issue is adressed quite well in Wakfu, a french turn based mmorpg. Dungeons on every level can be scaled in difficulty meaning everyone experiences the same bosses but on a difficulty scaled based on how hard you want the fight to be (depending on gear). From the very start you will enter the same dungeons that end game players will also farm. Players are given the option to scale down their level to match the level of the dungeon for better rewards and a competitive ladder. Veteran players can scale down to play with beginners.