7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

On the flip side however is has the exact opposite problem. If someone wants to play this game with friends they get slapped in the face by solo MSQ instances that force everyone split up.

If you plan to go through the game with friends then the supposeed main draw of XIV, the story, is an absolutely terrible experience because you are forced to play solo frequently until you finish it and reach the endgame.

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Making the MSQ entirely solo content would also mean the actual multiplayer content wouldn't have to be gated behind the MSQ for access. The MSQ for the most part anyway is written with you as the 1 and only hero with NPC support characters every now and then for plot devices.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

If you split Trusts off into "first time Story content", and then created a second version of "The Real Instance" that actually shows up in Roulettes, it'd solve both issues.

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Does that mean a new person has to do the Trust version alone and can't queue up with others instead? The whole idea of their MSQ revamp was to allow people to progress solo or with others.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I agree that in Castrum Abania it changed because many people didn't know the mechanic and never figured it out, so they would take an extreme amount of damage that other people did not or the party would wipe.

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I maintain the belief this is an engine proem more than anything to do with player skill..

There is a pretty jarring disconnect between what a player sees happening on screen and what is actually happening at that exact moment..

This can make resolving mechanics tricky because you can go over there stand if a safe spot and and bam get smacked down to the floor with no idea what hit you. Because on your screen you did that mechanic so it wasn't that. And as f8ghts go on and mechanics start to overlap that visual disconnect gets even more jarring.

This is why new players often get confused when they're running out of stupid and everyone else is running in to it... the floor is on fire but they are taking zero damage. I,m stood here out of the fire and I'm dead wtf???

It's a big part of why they can't break away from scripted battles because that visual disconnect would be impossible to deal with if you hadn't memorised the entire scripted sequence of a fight.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

On the flip side however is has the exact opposite problem. If someone wants to play this game with friends they get slapped in the face by solo MSQ instances that force everyone split up.

If you plan to go through the game with friends then the supposeed main draw of XIV, the story, is an absolutely terrible experience because you are forced to play solo frequently until you finish it and reach the endgame.

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Given the game is advertised as an MMORPG that's quite common to want to play the game with your friends. So yeah the msq forcing you to play alone is a total bummer..

"You cannot proceed with this quest because you are in a party"

it's a bloody MMO. Let me play with my friends

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

problem is, as a healer "main" how do you expect to learn the wonderful variety that comes with learning how to heal with real people? personally that just boggles my mind. npc's will rarely stand in things...because they are designed not to. as a healer main, never had any problems with queues, so that point is not valid. dps yes, tank, kinda sorta.. healer... never had a problem aside from one time when in Endwalker a friend needed/wanted to do the neir series...

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I dont "heal" when it's an NPC party, why would I? And you're clearly dismissing my point: que times are much longer for characters leveled through story as dps: it takes just that much longer to get to endgame. Not everyone likes watching paint dray, after all.

And I'm also not talking about people putting their tenth character through story, I'm talking about people doing it for the first or second time.

YoshiP stated during the Live Letter that included the 10 year roadmap that they don't want FFXIV to continue to be seen as a MMO. They want it to be seen as a game that can be played alone or with friends. He's also said that they want to create a new starting point for new players.

We'll have to wait for the FanFests to find out what changes they're making to accomplish those things.

My guesses:

We will see the new starting point introduced since 7.0 will have an all new story. Likely there will be some solo scenario for new characters to complete that will introduce them to FFXIV history and give them an opportunity to learn their core job abilities before they're moved into the main 7.0 story for 90+.

MSQ will be designed around the solo player using Duty Support, including trials. If dungeons and trials end up dumbed down, it won't be because of the NPCs. Remember how hated Tower of Zot was at EW launch? Yet it was designed to be done with Duty Support. If things are dumbed down, it will be because new players lacking 90 levels of previous experience will need to be able to complete those duties.

This doesn't mean that there won't still be high end duties for those more interested in multi-player content. The raids and EX trials can still fill that role. The concerns about CT being required for MSQ won't matter if there's a new starting point. Hopefully they will be adding in an alternate path for unlocking group duties as others have said is needed for those with no interest in the story or who have already done it on other characters.

But this will put huge pressure on the development team to finally add some midcore content. New players wanting to experience multi-player content after going through MSQ solo will have no group experience. They're going to need the right stepping stones more than ever and Alliance raid zergs is not one of them.

At this point I have 0 faith that they can create actual proper midcore content that can have longevity, you are giving them too much faith.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

YoshiP stated during the Live Letter that included the 10 year roadmap that they don't want FFXIV to continue to be seen as a MMO. They want it to be seen as a game that can be played alone or with friends. He's also said that they want to create a new starting point for new players.

We'll have to wait for the FanFests to find out what changes they're making to accomplish those things.

My guesses:

We will see the new starting point introduced since 7.0 will have an all new story. Likely there will be some solo scenario for new characters to complete that will introduce them to FFXIV history and give them an opportunity to learn their core job abilities before they're moved into the main 7.0 story for 90+.

MSQ will be designed around the solo player using Duty Support, including trials. If dungeons and trials end up dumbed down, it won't be because of the NPCs. Remember how hated Tower of Zot was at EW launch? Yet it was designed to be done with Duty Support. If things are dumbed down, it will be because new players lacking 90 levels of previous experience will need to be able to complete those duties.

This doesn't mean that there won't still be high end duties for those more interested in multi-player content. The raids and EX trials can still fill that role. The concerns about CT being required for MSQ won't matter if there's a new starting point. Hopefully they will be adding in an alternate path for unlocking group duties as others have said is needed for those with no interest in the story or who have already done it on other characters.

But this will put huge pressure on the development team to finally add some midcore content. New players wanting to experience multi-player content after going through MSQ solo will have no group experience. They're going to need the right stepping stones more than ever and Alliance raid zergs is not one of them.

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Thats some interesting thought processes there and I didn't think about it like that, this sort of direction wouldn't be good for a new MMO but an 11 year old one it makes a lot of sense to give those options. Im sure they could story wise make it so the echo allows you to relive the past to do anything pre-7.0

Either way its a lot of speculation and I think they've done almost enough work to the old content revamps to sort of say that's good now focus at the endgame or new expansion stuff. I would like them maybe just go back through ARR-SB main scenario and condense it a little more. There is filler in HW and SB as well that could be chopped or put to side quests like they did in the first trim.

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Originally Posted by kcj

I dont "heal" when it's an NPC party, why would I? And you're clearly dismissing my point: que times are much longer for characters leveled through story as dps: it takes just that much longer to get to endgame. Not everyone likes watching paint dray, after all.

And I'm also not talking about people putting their tenth character through story, I'm talking about people doing it for the first or second time.

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that was kind of my point, with an NPC party, what are you learning about healing? if you noticed, I did not dismiss your point about queue times being longer as a dps. I agree, dps queues are longer because most people, want to run as a dps, I was saying that as a healer, I very very very rarely saw longer queue times.

There're so many single player ff games
why are they trying to make the mmo one more single player oriented
just go play one of the single player ones if you want to play alone
like, what even is this lol

If they are going to continue to adjust trusts to do more content then my only request would be to let us do a mix of players and trusts. Let me take 2 trusts and a friend, or let my 3 many party fill that last spot with an NPC if we want.

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Originally Posted by OM3GA-Z3RO

At this point I have 0 faith that they can create actual proper midcore content that can have longevity, you are giving them too much faith.

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Define midcore

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I genuinely dont think they are dumbing down dungeons so that trusts can do them. There is just no way trust AI couldnt have handled the elemental towers in castrum abania. We know trusts can handle standing in a circle. They can handle different variantions of the same mechanic. We've seen that in numerous dungeons already (dead ends for example).

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There's definitely something to this.

Why leave Chief Moglin's 'knock these targets away' mechanic but erase Einhander's and Yeti's? Because the latter two required an iota of forethought instead of just flailing clumsily at it. Why remove any hint of strategy from the King Mog trial beyond 'hit everything until it stops moving' when it's not even Trust-compatible? Why delete Vishap's trial outright when it's long-since-past being possible to lose?

Some of the changes might be for the Trust AI, but others are just as obviously for the people new and old alike who don't want to learn or teach and get discouraged and annoyed with anything that takes more than one pull (or even just takes a while, as with Vishap).

But everyone who plays for more than the story still needs to do roulettes for alt jobs or tomes, so they end up doing these boring new lowest-common-denominator dungeons over, and over, and over, and-

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Originally Posted by CStrife912

Its hard to say as of the moment, a lot of the reworked dungeons from ARR are fine (thank god copperbell was changed into something more entertaining) [...]

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Not even a little. Both versions of Copperbell are boring, but at least the old one was conceptually interesting and only ended up boring because powercreep made it piss-easy, not because it's 3 fights of the same phoned-in AoE-spamming slop and still powercrept to irrelevance.

Say what you like, but being overrun by spriggans and bombs, or having to interact with an object and exercise care with an add, or balance killing a boss with suppressing his adds, could have been great fun with some stat tuning to make it so you can't just ignore everything, and a perfect opportunity to hook new players into the videogame. They're all more interesting concepts than 'lol just dodge the orange floor and hit the thing'.

Almost every ARR dungeon boss we lost was more fun than what replaced it. Fenrir is the only one that was improved, because they changed no mechanics and simply made him a little more difficult instead.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If you look at all the changes over the course of this expansion, you will notice one thing about the most extensive changes, which is that they make mechanics intuitive (aka obvious). They want a new player to figure them out immediately, instead of still being confused after the fight is over and dying to things they don't understand.

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Damn, it sucks that there's no other way to design fights than to have failed mechanics kill you.

After XVI I kinda lost hope that 7.0 will revert anything back. XIV removes the MMO aspect and XVI removed the RPG aspect. Both are very stale to me at this point once the MSQ is over. CB3 outdid themselves to make me loose interest in an IP I've been following for decades at this point. Well done? lol

My guess is once they finish the dungeons with Trusts they are going to go back and make all the MSQ trials trust compatible as well. Then in 8.0 they will tackle the crystal tower raids to be trust compatible and in 9.0 they will go back and do all the side quest dungeons and trials. Then in 10.0 they will just give us open world companions for boss fates and hunts.

I used to play this game everyday and get excited. I’ll be around for 7.0 but the direction they announced isn’t something I’m on board with. I will play the expac and see the graphics update because I really supported that particular decision but in my mind this is no longer a game I want to be invested into so rather than a live service I planned on continuously paying for and making my main entertainment vehicle now this is something I know I have to gradually divest off of and maybe pay a month out of the year to catch up on when I’m bored.

To be clear, that is not good MMO design for me, and this is not that good of a game anymore because of all these decisions. It’s an average multiplayer game with occasionally updates and a good one time play through game.

Also because of these issues I would no longer support CBUIII and Yoshi P to head the next MMO. I am not interested in that last MMO he has to build. At least not if they’re going into it with these sort of design philosophies. As much as I respect the CBU III team and Yoshi P this isn’t what I was wanting out of an FF MMO.

I don't mind it.
I personally loved Trial #2 in Endwalker. It felt immersive. I loved all the extra dialogue. I wish it was the same with Trial #3
When I do MSQ, I tend to hide the chat box anyway to avoid any spoilers.
This should not affect endgame activities since roulettes, extremes, savages, and ultimates still require you to group up with other players.

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Originally Posted by tsuchii

I don't mind it.
I personally loved Trial #2 in Endwalker. It felt immersive. I loved all the extra dialogue. I wish it was the same with Trial #3
When I do MSQ, I tend to hide the chat box anyway to avoid any spoilers.
This should not affect endgame activities since roulettes, extremes, savages, and ultimates still require you to group up with other players.

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Basically this. This is why I feel folks are overblowing what's being done. The game isn't suddenly going to become some barren wasteland where most players play solo. All they're doing is adding options to the game to appeal to more players. (Which is good for funding and the health of the game). You'll still be able to run your savages, your EXs, your Eureka zones, roulettes etc with folks.

If that's an issue for people then I say I hope you find a better game for yourself.

I like being able to run MSQ dungeons with npcs the first time around. I can take my time, I like the extra dialog, there’s no one starting the fights during cutscenes (watching at the inn after having had the story spoiled is no fun) and there is no waiting in queue.

However, while the npcs can do the mechanics, their dps is horrible and, other than minion farming, I see no reason to clear more than once with npcs. A team of rl players, save rare exceptions of extreme incompetence, will always be significantly faster once you are in the dungeon.

For the non guaranteed untradeable minions, I wish they would noticeably increase the currently ridiculously abysmal drop rates during RL group content to create a further incentive for grouping up. As it is, the drop rates might be a bit lower with npcs but at least it’s a guaranteed win and farming with npcs is overall much faster (even moreso if you factor in queue times for running a specific dungeon). Rng can make some things take forever. .

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

There're so many single player ff games
why are they trying to make the mmo one more single player oriented
just go play one of the single player ones if you want to play alone
like, what even is this lol

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Yep, by trying to do satisfy every audience they may ruin every good aspect of FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Does that mean a new person has to do the Trust version alone and can't queue up with others instead?

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I don't see why it would.

Trust intelligence is the limiting factor here, not player intelligence. (Remember that "effort" and "intelligence" are two different things; what a player is capable of is not necessarily what they're willing to do, but player potential for problem-solving will always(?) be more than a simplistic Trust "AI" )

So if you design all "Story" content to be Trust-clearable, then there should be no issues with leaving the option in to queue with other players — any Trust-solvable mechanic should inherently also be player-solvable.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

The whole idea of their MSQ revamp was to allow people to progress solo or with others.

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I'm not really 100% sold on these kinds of concerns, because it posits some Bizarro Dimension where the MSQ has "ever" been a friend-friendly experience.

You are of course free to differ in perspective, but I don't personally see "a good time with my buddies" as, "Spend 2-5 hours at a time doing completely solo quests and Story instances that are actively-hostile to multiplayer participation, and then sometimes blink your eyes for 20 minutes inside a static hallway of Trash-Trash-Boss-Repeat, but it's better because 3 silent people in Frog glamours and speedos are running next to you, then immediately get dumped back into solo quests and Story instances for another 2-5 hours".

It feels more like desperately gasping for some breath of "actual multiplayer experience" in a game that has largely never been about offering that to you until you smash into the endgame "welp, guess I used up the Story" wall that every MMORPG does.

There's a lot to be said for why that is a questionable design in a game labeled as an MMO, but it's the direction XIV chose a long time ago, and at this point, it's baked-in so deeply that Trusts are the least of your problems with trying to address it.

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Originally Posted by Elissar

Yep, by trying to do satisfy every audience they may ruin every good aspect of FFXIV.

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Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

They've hurt older dungeons already. Things are different purely because duty support NPCs were unable to execute certain mechanics, or perhaps the devs decided they'd be too demanding for a solo new player to figure out alone, like throwing the switch on Keeper of the Lake's old endboss.

Regardless of whether we agree that certain encounters are thus improved or worsened, they are now different for this reason.

Where CBU3 could have implemented altered duty support versions of these duties for their NPCs, they elected instead to make the change for everyone, solo players and group players alike.

This design will affect all of the game's encounters going forward, and likely already has given it's been around since 5.0.

I personally find it interesting that [minor EW spoiler?]

the Lv.89 trial

starts you out with a buff (which totally makes sense within the context of the story!) when done with Duty Support but not with other players. So, it's not as if the design team is 100% adverse to providing different experiences between Duty Support vs. Players.

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Originally Posted by Post

They've hurt older dungeons already. Things are different purely because duty support NPCs were unable to execute certain mechanics, or perhaps the devs decided they'd be too demanding for a solo new player to figure out alone, like throwing the switch on Keeper of the Lake's old endboss.

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This is why I'm not a fan of making trusts for older content. Otherwise I'd be indifferent to it, but changing the old content exclusively because poorly coded AI can't handle it is something I'm not on board with.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

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It does hurt everyone. I’ll use an argument that has been used against me plenty here when I suggest a feature. That the development time could be better used elsewhere.

They’ve invested heavily into making it a good solo experience, imagine all the other things they could’ve done for the multiplayer experience if all this wasn’t going on in the background.

At the end of the day XI started getting these crutches towards the end of its peak and so I hope they’re planning on the next FF MMO as XVII. The changes would make a lot of sense if they are planning on transferring a huge chunk of the population to their next title. As it happened with XI.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

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It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

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If anything, its harder with NPCs than it is with players, because everything relies on you to take initiative and nobody can explain things to you, so you have to figure it out or fail. Also, reworked all dungeons of past have been not dumbed down, but actually turned into something that teaches players mechanics. They actually use markers that appear in later fights consistently now, making sure people have opportunity to learn what they do early on, which is a great change. It's the very fact that those older duties relied on 'unique' mechanics that made actual learning curve so steep, because all that early content did nothing to prepare players for mechanical aspect of later content. Its still not perfect and you still sometimes see players running away with stack marker in some lvl 50/60 duties, but generally, I've found all the early revamped story dungeons to be much better at demonstrating specific mechanics in non-overwhelming way by having one or two per major bossfight. Isn't that what people always asked for, early content that actually prepares people for later, more involved and difficult content? And now its terrible because its 'homogenized' in attempt to implement consistent mechanics?

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

If anything, its harder with NPCs than it is with players, because everything relies on you to take initiative and nobody can explain things to you, so you have to figure it out or fail. Also, reworked all dungeons of past have been not dumbed down, but actually turned into something that teaches players mechanics. They actually use markers that appear in later fights consistently now, making sure people have opportunity to learn what they do early on, which is a great change. It's the very fact that those older duties relied on 'unique' mechanics that made actual learning curve so steep, because all that early content did nothing to prepare players for mechanical aspect of later content. Its still not perfect and you still sometimes see players running away with stack marker in some lvl 50/60 duties, but generally, I've found all the early revamped story dungeons to be much better at demonstrating specific mechanics in non-overwhelming way by having one or two per major bossfight. Isn't that what people always asked for, early content that actually prepares people for later, more involved and difficult content? And now its terrible because its 'homogenized' in attempt to implement consistent mechanics?

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Because the mechanics themselves are boring. 'Boring' is not a word you want applied to your videogame. And it quite literally has been dumbed down, because unique mechs that used to require a bit of thought were replaced with the boss running to center and casting 'dodge this' or 'stack this', which requires none.

It would have been a coup to update the markers to convey the common mechanics better while retaining the unique flavor mechanics that make the fights interesting in themselves. Instead, all of the interesting older work was gutted and the fights made repetitive, because the game was already running on a skeleton crew and then they were given FF16 to work on alongside so it's all they had time to do. And it's still so forgiving and power-crept that you can ignore tankbusters and soak AoEs. What do you learn as a new player if a tankbuster marker appears for the first time and then the boss attacks your tank for not much more HP than he was already autoing for? Nothing.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

It does hurt everyone. I’ll use an argument that has been used against me plenty here when I suggest a feature. That the development time could be better used elsewhere.

They’ve invested heavily into making it a good solo experience, imagine all the other things they could’ve done for the multiplayer experience if all this wasn’t going on in the background.

At the end of the day XI started getting these crutches towards the end of its peak and so I hope they’re planning on the next FF MMO as XVII. The changes would make a lot of sense if they are planning on transferring a huge chunk of the population to their next title. As it happened with XI.

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I'm not hurt in the slightest. Nor is anyone I know. Dev time could be better used elsewhere. You only say this because you dislike it which makes the point go nowhere.
They've invested into both. Yall act like the mutiplayer side has gotten nothing when this isn't the case. Not even close. Oh they retooled old dungeons most don't care about. Oh the dungeon design will lack due to this going forward. Not like most give a damn about dungeon design when speed is the only factor that matters. Don't pull wall to wall and see what happens. SE has realized this and so they've made this move.
The changes already make sense without a new game being on the horizon. Why would this be the case when devs have outright already stated they want 7.0 to be a nice starting point for new players

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

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Sure its impossible to make a game for everyone. But it's not impossible to make a mass appeal game. Epic Games has done this with Fornite.
Also question, who exactly cares about these old duties? Because most player I see are "gogogo let's get this done" types. In SB and ShB I didn't see even 1 person taking these unique routes in older dungeons. It was whatever gets the group to the end the fastest. You call it homogenization, I call it them responding to the way most players choose to run dungeons.
How many of these folks are just hopping into savage n ruining groups? Because I rarely hear about this. Leeches don't get to do so without the rest of the group knowing.
That's on them to not kick these people. And the retool of these duties have reworked mechanics that do a better job at teaching than before which I'd think you'd be happy about but ig not.

I mean, they've been systematically ruining and stupidifying job design for two going on three expansions now. I'd say that affects everyone, since we all have to play these jobs in all content.

ez method, save enough gils then play the lauch of 7.0 afterward quit and wait for 7.55 then play. Congrats you save hundreds USD of dollars. The best part you can use the free login to catch it up content for story, just play tank or healer to make it faster. EZ GAME

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

I'm not hurt in the slightest. Nor is anyone I know. Dev time could be better used elsewhere. You only say this because you dislike it which makes the point go nowhere.
They've invested into both. Yall act like the mutiplayer side has gotten nothing when this isn't the case. Not even close. Oh they retooled old dungeons most don't care about. Oh the dungeon design will lack due to this going forward. Not like most give a damn about dungeon design when speed is the only factor that matters. Don't pull wall to wall and see what happens. SE has realized this and so they've made this move.
The changes already make sense without a new game being on the horizon. Why would this be the case when devs have outright already stated they want 7.0 to be a nice starting point for new players

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This is peak

https://i.imgur.com/2pcrFOw.jpg

The good news is that now you know a bunch of people in the forums who feel hurt, and more than the slightest by this stuff so I guess you can't say that anymore.

Maybe your personal friends don't. But good luck on the SE defense and stuff...

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Originally Posted by vetch

Because the mechanics themselves are boring. 'Boring' is not a word you want applied to your videogame. And it quite literally has been dumbed down, because unique mechs that used to require a bit of thought were replaced with the boss running to center and casting 'dodge this' or 'stack this', which requires none.

It would have been a coup to update the markers to convey the common mechanics better while retaining the unique flavor mechanics that make the fights interesting in themselves. Instead, all of the interesting older work was gutted and the fights made repetitive, because the game was already running on a skeleton crew and then they were given FF16 to work on alongside so it's all they had time to do. And it's still so forgiving and power-crept that you can ignore tankbusters and soak AoEs. What do you learn as a new player if a tankbuster marker appears for the first time and then the boss attacks your tank for not much more HP than he was already autoing for? Nothing.

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Such unique mechanics as Ichorous Ire's 'literally just sit and wait for the lever cooldown because the entire fight is waiting for lever'. Just because something is unique doesn't make it interesting. Several fights that were basically non-fights are now actually fights, both because of adjusted scaling (looking at you, Aetherochemical Research Facility) and because of changed mechanics. I disagree that any fight became more 'boring' because most fights that were changed had basically no mechanics or had even worse mechanics before. I honestly actively prefer the switch from 'unique' boring mechanics to the 'consistent' boring mechanics that at least do barest minimum of teaching for new players throughout the story.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

This is peak

https://i.imgur.com/2pcrFOw.jpg

The good news is that now you know a bunch of people in the forums who feel hurt, and more than the slightest by this stuff so I guess you can't say that anymore.

Maybe your personal friends don't. But good luck on the SE defense and stuff...

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SE defense? Why is it that anytime someone else expresses they see what SE may be doing its called knighting or defending? You give the same company money so you look just as dumb as youre trying to make me look. Difference is you give them money while disliking whats going on which arguably makes you look worse. People DO in fact opt for the quickest option in this content. No reason for them to design intricate things because of this very fact.
People "hurt" by this aren't any more or less valid than myself.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I mean, they've been systematically ruining and stupidifying job design for two going on three expansions now. I'd say that affects everyone, since we all have to play these jobs in all content.

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Opinions are nice. To you they've been ruining things. To others they have not. No real right of wrong there. I have an issue with healers and healers only. Rest of the jobs are fine imo.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

No reason for them to design intricate things because of this very fact.

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This is all we need to know about your arguments here. You don't really want good games.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

This is all we need to know about your arguments here. You don't really want good games.

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And with this you've showed me you aren't just ignorant. You're far more than that.
Cherry pick all you want but the FACT is most players want speed. This is seen everyday. And I personally wouldnt spend time making super intricate dungeons if I were a dev if I know most will skip most of it for the optimal route. It's called working smarter and adjusting to the playerbase. But yeah, I don't want good games...Jesus christ the logic of some of you people is wild asf.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Such unique mechanics as Ichorous Ire's 'literally just sit and wait for the lever cooldown because the entire fight is waiting for lever'.

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You think the fight was sitting and waiting for the lever because the spriggan meant to attack the bomb was so undertuned that he died in two hits and the lever is all that was left. Solve that and the fight becomes interesting. Change it to 'blorp blorp there are now small AoE markers on the floor' and it never will be.

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I disagree that any fight became more 'boring' because most fights that were changed had basically no mechanics or had even worse mechanics before. I honestly actively prefer the switch from 'unique' boring mechanics to the 'consistent' boring mechanics that at least do barest minimum of teaching for new players throughout the story.

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Graffias's arena is now empty, sterile, and boring instead of dangerous and claustrophobic.

Isgebind went from teaching about lingering AoE puddles to not teaching.

Livia's mech went from teaching about protecting NPCs to not existing at all. Also the pulls in Meridianum suck now.

Updated spread markers and telegraphs would have solved all the problems with old Einhander without turning him into a striking dummy that teaches nothing.

Midgarsormr went from an exciting rush of chaotic AoEs and adds that I enjoyed every time to a tedious bloated sack of HP casting fixed-pattern AoEs even more slowly than Ichorous Ire's.

Gyascutus went from teaching about exercising restraint to not kill an important add prematurely to teaching nothing.

This is not even to go into all the tiny, fun optimizations which were deleted from fights that superficially seem the same, like saving your pot during Myath in Sohm Al to Echo Drops your healer so you can ignore the green slime's silence, or having a phys ranged collect Rangda's tether from a caster in the Aery and complete the mechanic for them so that neither needs to stop attacking.

Nothing in the new castrum meridanium has felt as satisfying as when the party brain cell aligned and pulled off the triple stun on that robot it took cid ages to reach. Mmos rewarding a modicum of teamwork. Who would have thunk it.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

I dislike the idea of taking an MMO and catering to the single player community. If you wanted a single player FF, then don't make an MMO. A lot of people play 14 because it is an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin.

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I don't like being gated in anyway so providing a way for me to pass gates is very good game play style. They won't single out the game and you can play with family and friends. Don't overreact ....

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Originally Posted by Ath192

It does hurt everyone. I’ll use an argument that has been used against me plenty here when I suggest a feature. That the development time could be better used elsewhere.

They’ve invested heavily into making it a good solo experience, imagine all the other things they could’ve done for the multiplayer experience if all this wasn’t going on in the background.

At the end of the day XI started getting these crutches towards the end of its peak and so I hope they’re planning on the next FF MMO as XVII. The changes would make a lot of sense if they are planning on transferring a huge chunk of the population to their next title. As it happened with XI.

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It might also be that they've decided that they want to leave FF as a single player franchise going forward and so they're trying to get current players used to a single player experience.

Let's face it: MMOs come with a set of problems that single player games don't face, with one of the big ones being the interactions within the player community and the frequent requests for changes to content style "because other MMOs do it this way". There's greater pressure to appeal to a wider audience to keep a steady stream of players online for the sake of the multi-player experience even if other players are sometimes just seen as background noise while someone plays alone. They may have decided internally it's just not worth it anymore.

Personally, I'm not certain how I feel about the announced plans for the game. It's their IP and their right to make the creative decisions they want for the game but I'm taking a wait and see approach. As long as I continue to have fun playing, I'll be here. If too much of the social aspect ends up feeling lost in the middle of the solo focus, I may not stick around. I've never played other FF games so I'm not carrying any emotional baggage that chains me to the game just because it's a FF title.