Please don't add the autorun

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

Thanks for detailed answer, didn't realise it was that much.

I still maintain if the auto-run is optional, it's a "whatever" feature, that some people might enjoy.

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You're missing two important ceveats however.

1. Adding this may impact map design. They would need the maps to be designed for auto-pathing and likely remove aggro'able mobs from the auto path so players don't die during transit. This will potentially limit map design very heavily.

2. The maps are already dead. They should be thinking up ways to breathe more life into the open world, not remove it. If people are just going AFK to watch TikToks between quest objectives, we now don't even have people actively questing, just mindless zombies essentially waiting for a loading screen.

We aren't protesting because we don't want people to have a feature they might like. We are protesting because this could impact map design negatively and would take even more life out of an already dead open world.

eh i mean Autorun is kind of one those things i dont understand on either side, it just movement to get from point a to point b, and you can already do that basicly with the autorun button thats in the game, that i use to not get kicked out of the game when im afk

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

I highly doubt the auto-run will be a forced mechanic. They won’t remove the manual run at all.

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Even if it's literally just an auto run and nothing else changes. That is still the dev team focusing on something the game doesn't need nor that any one really wants. Which takes time and resources away from other aspects of the game. The last thing XIV needs is yet more simplification.

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

Trust system exists for people wanting to play alone, I don’t see the connection with it and the fact dungeons are all same easy design.

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Several older dungeons were intentionally simplified because Trusts couldn't do their original mechanics. Likewise, every dungeon now needs to be made to accommodate the basic of Trusts. This is why you'll never see anything overly complex or interesting in dungeon design. While Trusts aren't the only reason for how samey dungeons have become, they've contributed to it.

I get peoples aversion to an auto-run, I don't think the game needs it, nor would I use it if they added it, but I think the argument "what's the point of making big open maps if we just use auto run" kinda loses its point when 99% of the player base already goes from A to B with auto run (the run forward one) and alt tabs.

Add this, and auto combo or whatever the other thing is people seemed to want

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

Add this, and auto combo or whatever the other thing is people seemed to want

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autocombo- no but make it one button still has to be hit 3 times but just condense it down to a single button

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Originally Posted by NecroprincessCleo

autocombo- no but make it one button still has to be hit 3 times but just condense it down to a single button

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That was the one, couldn't remember the specific name, thank you

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Originally Posted by Sorabaka

You already have it, it's in the shop. You can skip MSQ up to any expansion of your choice.

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Needs to be free. You really can not ask a new player to pony up $60 for full game + $50 on top of that just to actually get to actually play the expansion they came for and expect game to gain any popularity whatsoever.

Either MSQ hyperfixation is to be stopped, or this game will just die. Maybe you could ask a player to do whole MSQ in ARR or HW, but we're now looking at 5 expansions worth of "content" (boring mindless back and forth with a lot of filler) before they can actually start playing. Seriously how do you attract new player? "Oh hmm, well, we have this epic battle but like, please spend 500 hours reading pray return to walking sands first"?

We need to begin accepting that players come to game to play. Not read. Not watch cutscenes. Play.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Needs to be free. You really can not ask a new player to pony up $60 for full game + $50 on top of that just to actually get to actually play the expansion they came for and expect game to gain any popularity whatsoever.

Either MSQ hyperfixation is to be stopped, or this game will just die. Maybe you could ask a player to do whole MSQ in ARR or HW, but we're now looking at 5 expansions worth of "content" (boring mindless back and forth with a lot of filler) before they can actually start playing. Seriously how do you attract new player? "Oh hmm, well, we have this epic battle but like, please spend 500 hours reading pray return to walking sands first"?

We need to begin accepting that players come to game to play. Not read. Not watch cutscenes. Play.

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I actually agree, and I say that as someone who finds the story of this game to be the major draw. If we want to retain new players, we can't put a mountain in front of them and say "climb it". Nobody likes dredging through old content while all their friends are doing the new stuff, even if it's new to -you-. Easy fix for this however, first time buyers of the game should get an optional story skip to the current expansion. Easy and clean. Will this hurt sales of story skips? Yeah probably, but they'll make that back and more when the player who got the free skip decides to actually stick around, pay their sub, and probably buy cosmetic mog station stuff over time.

I DO agree with it. But at the same time i understand that they will never get it off the cash shop. Because it brings money. Because ppl who make alts (and there's a LOT of them) do buy this.

The most we can hope for is if they go WoW route and make a special edition for the expansion that includes story skip and leveling potion by default, nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Sorabaka

I DO agree with it. But at the same time i understand that they will never get it off the cash shop. Because it brings money. Because ppl who make alts (and there's a LOT of them) do buy this.

The most we can hope for is if they go WoW route and make a special edition for the expansion that includes story skip and leveling potion by default, nothing else.

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I mean yeah like I said in my post above yours, they should just throw the skip in for people buying the game for the first time. Or as you mention, add a special addition which includes a heavily discounted skip at least. Whichever route they take, the end result will be alts still buying skips as usual. Everyone wins really.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Needs to be free. You really can not ask a new player to pony up $60 for full game + $50 on top of that just to actually get to actually play the expansion they came for and expect game to gain any popularity whatsoever.

Either MSQ hyperfixation is to be stopped, or this game will just die. Maybe you could ask a player to do whole MSQ in ARR or HW, but we're now looking at 5 expansions worth of "content" (boring mindless back and forth with a lot of filler) before they can actually start playing. Seriously how do you attract new player? "Oh hmm, well, we have this epic battle but like, please spend 500 hours reading pray return to walking sands first"?

We need to begin accepting that players come to game to play. Not read. Not watch cutscenes. Play.

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The MSQ hyperfixation is the entire reason why this game blew up in the first place.
If they sacrifice the MSQ just for the sake of endgame raiding then that is the moment it will die.

I really don't understand you guys. You act like people who join hate the story and only do it because of the "endgame".
The newbies I met actually started because of the story and didn't have any rush. Is it so hard to understand that those people exist?

If someone want's to do endgame so quickly, they are free to skip. I also give my upvote for an alternate starting point or an ingame story skip.
But I fill fight to the end against compromising the MSQ and changing the game away from why me and others started it just because you guys can't be bothered to skip cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Just to name a few:

Thousand Maws, removed interactables, removed goo puddles and removed the vacuum spider web walls.
Removed interactables on the 2nd boss, removed the adds and walls on the 3rd boss of Copperbell Mines.
Removed interactable torches on the 3rd boss in Haukke Manor.
Removed adds on the 1st boss in Halatali, probably because the trusts aren't very good at target prioritization or switching targets mid-fight unless it is heavily scripted and their current target simply disappears.
Removed the snowball mechanic on the 2nd boss of Snowcloak.
Removed the need to kill the floating stone heads on specific platforms in Sunken Temple of Qarn.
Removed the cannon on the 2nd boss in Stone Vigil.
Removed dynamically placed poison puddles and the boss healing while standing in said puddles from the 4th boss in Brayflox Longstop (and for some reason removed the optional path when going from the 2nd to the 3rd boss???)

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You quite literally just reiterated what I said:

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Originally Posted by SkankyRoe

Pretty sure Thousand Maws is quite literally the only reworked dungeon that removed any environmental interactivity outside of boss fights.

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Note the bold, everything you listed off was either Thousand Maws or boss fights, and the Qarn heads+tiles mechanic was reworked rather than removed. That is a stark difference from your original implication that all interactivity had been removed. Aside from bosses almost all environmental interactivity was left intact. Just to name a few of my own:

Sastasha still has the coloured switches before the first boss and the clue at the start to tell you the correct colour. It still has the keys and doors as well as the optional side paths, and the first boss still has the bubbling floor grate thing.
Toto-Rak still has the orbs to disable and the bit where you have to grab an interactable from a dead end to remove the barrier in front of the final set of orbs
Copperbell still has the spots where you collect firesand and blow holes in walls
Halatali still has the chain interactables on the way to the second boss and the flame adds for the third boss
Haukke Manor still has all the keys and doors, as well as the barrier at the top of the stairs that requires grabbing an interactable dropped by the second boss.
Brayflox's Longstop still has keys and gates, and still has the optional goblins you can save for extra treasures
Qarn still has the heads to kill on tiles, they just no longer have the finicky positioning aspect. It still has the four tablets to be collected and placed as well as the puzzle before the 3rd boss, and the 1st boss still has the doom that needs to be cleansed by standing on the glowing tile.

Dzemael was already slightly reworked a while back and will likely be left as is. Aurum Vale will likely trim the room at the start in a similar manner as the big area between the 2nd and 3rd bosses of Brayflox but I expect the rest of the dungeon will be left as is. For the first and third bosses I expect the fruits will either be left as is or removed and replaced with a duty action subject to a cooldown matching the fruit respawn rates. Dusk Vigil will prolly rework the first boss and Shisui will prolly rework the first two bosses.

As someone who plays on pc i thought auto run was already on there click v and your character auto moves you just control their movements with the mouse and tou click sprint bam auto running.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

As someone who plays on pc i thought auto run was already on there click v and your character auto moves you just control their movements with the mouse and tou click sprint bam auto running.

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"Auto-run" is a bit of a false label for what they are talking about here. It's auto-pathing. Your character will automatically move between quest objectives for you, zero input on your part required once you turn it on. No steering required, the game takes you to the next part of the quest and you can just alt tab or watch tiktoks or whatever.

So something from the Mobile MMO?

Good, keep doing it. The more things we get from the mobile client, the better.

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Originally Posted by SkankyRoe

Note the bold, everything you listed off was either Thousand Maws or boss fights, and the Qarn heads+tiles mechanic was reworked rather than removed. That is a stark difference from your original implication that all interactivity had been removed. Aside from bosses almost all environmental interactivity was left intact. Just to name a few of my own:

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Yes, I probably should've mentioned that they removed them specifically from fight design when I first mentioned it.
I thought it was obvious because environmental and traversal interactables do not require any input from trusts in the first place, a single real player can deal with those, but clearly it was not obvious.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Yes, I probably should've mentioned that they removed them specifically from fight design when I first mentioned it.
I thought it was obvious because environmental and traversal interactables do not require any input from trusts in the first place, a single real player can deal with those, but clearly it was not obvious.

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True if we're primarily focusing on boss fights then the vast majority were indeed removed. Which makes it odd that they left in the floor grate mechanic for the last boss of Sastasha which was completely ignored even before Duty Support was added. Also very odd is the removal of the flame adds from the first boss of Halatali but not the third boss.

You can already auto run and follow if you want to zone out in a dungeon or CT.

I think this will make players to be even less interested in the world of Eorzea and players won't get that connected to the areas.

Maybe they will upgrade that feature in the far future from auto run to just teleport to the quest npc or area.

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Originally Posted by jomas_45

You can already auto run and follow if you want to zone out in a dungeon or CT.

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What Yoshida talked about was making it so that all the movement directly to the next quest step is automated, either pathing out of the way of mobs (which would mean creating clear routes that are completely empty no matter what) or otherwise removing anything that might interrupt it. Zones would need actual guardrails put up to facilitate it.

Pretty sure everyone supporting auto-run from quest to quest (auto-pathing) is either a bot or someone plotting the game to die.

How about we add a feature where our char fights in scripted battles itself and we just sit back and relax?

I really hope Yoshida looks at the life span and user retention rates of the MMOs that have that feature. He probably got the idea from Blue Protocol: Star Resonance

long cutscenes which show a lot of major events instead being able to play them

auto run?


i think they should make a movie instead

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Needs to be free. You really can not ask a new player to pony up $60 for full game + $50 on top of that just to actually get to actually play the expansion they came for and expect game to gain any popularity whatsoever.

Either MSQ hyperfixation is to be stopped, or this game will just die. Maybe you could ask a player to do whole MSQ in ARR or HW, but we're now looking at 5 expansions worth of "content" (boring mindless back and forth with a lot of filler) before they can actually start playing. Seriously how do you attract new player? "Oh hmm, well, we have this epic battle but like, please spend 500 hours reading pray return to walking sands first"?

We need to begin accepting that players come to game to play. Not read. Not watch cutscenes. Play.

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FFXIV is a Final Fantasy title which means it’s built as a JRPG before it’s an MMO. Every FF game has hours of cutscenes and story, even single‑player ones like XII make you go through quests and narrative gates before opening up the bigger world.

When I first started XIV I also thought, “wow, that’s a lot of story.” But I grew invested and loved it. Many people genuinely care about it. Look at how often WoW players complain about weak storytelling... players do want narrative in their MMOs. XIV blew up because of its story, and when the story doesn’t land (like with Dawntrail), even strong gameplay can’t carry the expansion.

I don’t think it makes sense to frame the game as if it should only cater to endgame. If that were true, why is Dawntrail still struggling despite raiders getting plenty of content? Casual players and story‑focused players are the backbone of XIV’s popularity.

Endgame players often rush through new content in a day and then complain there’s nothing to do. The story is what sustains the wider community between those bursts of content. Sacrificing it would undermine the very thing that makes XIV stand out.

And also, the pricing isn’t what you described. XIV doesn’t cost $60 plus $50 per expansion. The base game and expansions are bundled differently, and there are sales really often. The base game right now is $20. If you want the base game + DT that is $60. For all the hours of content you get with that money, I'd say it's well worth it.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i think they should make a movie instead

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I've been saying that since final fantasy 10.

Totally agree. Making the MSQ and quests even more boring in design that you can just press a button and watch the game do it for you is such an awful idea. Yoshi P needs someone to tell him what he needs to hear, because right now it seems like he is completely out of touch with what people actually want.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

long cutscenes which show a lot of major events instead being able to play them

auto run?


i think they should make a movie instead

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They've made multiple movies, and they've all sucked.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i think they should make a movie instead

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They've tried that. Spirits Within bombed so hard they buried it and pretend it doesn't exist. Advent Children was -okay- but no where near the success they wanted it to be either and then there's Kingsglaive which while a fairly decent (but still not good) movie itself was ruined by FF15 being one of the biggest disappointments in the franchise. They really can't handle making movies. Even back in the golden days of this company when they had all their best talent it was beyond them. Nowadays? It'd be a disaster.

Fast travel to the starting point of MSQ quests would be a good thing. You won't have to do it, you'll be able to ride your bird like usual, in fact I probably won't use the fast travel on my main but I will on alts for sure. It's a QoL change with no downside.

I genuinely cannot see autorun not affecting the overworld maps and making them even worse than they already are. I felt this concern when they added trusts and when they prattled on about making the game "less like an MMORPG", and in the end none of my concerns were unfounded. Dungeons are all designed at their most boring and simplified yet for the sake of trusts (as a guy who genuinely liked how Aurum Vale's pulls actually made me think when I was a baby player...RIP forever). The MSQ is a visual novel where cutscenes take the place of interactions that could be instances or even simple dialogue bubbles with a combat quest now. After EW and DT I feel a dread for the start of new expansions because I distinctly remember doing outright nothing for the first 2 hours or so of both of those MSQs. I'm taking this as a soft confirmation that it's going to be more of the same.

Also god damn do I just hate the trend of videogames that basically play themselves. I literally never touch mobile games for that exact reason. FFXIV is already perilously close to playing itself in basically every instance that isn't PvP or endgame; it really doesn't need more help.

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

Oh my god this thread and entire forum really is all about crying over stupid things.

If you don’t want to auto-run, don’t press the auto-run button, life is simple as that my goodness. Some will enjoy that features, and other won’t. World isn’t black and white.

Again, nobody will force you to use auto-run.

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"Dear players.

Due to the workload for our new and highly desired feature Auto-Run, we have to delay the release of the new Expansion for four months. With the release of 8.0 we altered all ARR Zones by flatting them to accomodate the new Auto-Run Feature.

In the next patches we will start working on the other zones in Heavensward up to Dawntrail before 8.58. The new flattened zones for Auto-Walk will take some time, so we have to decrease the amount of dungeons each patch.

Please look forward to it!"

The simple solution would be to improve the increasingly neglected chocobo porter network, which has gone from the "cheaper and better coverage than aetherytes, but slower" option to being more expensive and not providing any options that you can't just teleport to.

NGL I almost forgot about Chocobo porters. I had fond memories of utilizing them in my lv35 cap free trial/ARR days when I wanted to take a quick look away from PC or getting a drink, or simply enjoying the view while my character riding it.

Past HW they're rendered obsolete for the most part, it was saddening.

I could tolerate an auto travel system if it was considerably slower than using the porters or traveling there yourself on your own. What I don’t want, is a teleportation system from one quest giver to another, and you never see people.

I'd actually like an auto-pathing system - though not to "the next quest NPC", but simply to a place on the screen I clicked on, pathing around obstacles and holes I could fall into, like in every game with a click-to-move control option. Then it would still be interactive, still on me to not run into a pack of aggressive mobs I can't or don't want to handle, and unless it's one of those "talk to the NPC that's standing ten paces away because I can't be bothered" type of quest, it won't make me engage with the game less.

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Originally Posted by HammAndCheese

I'd be ok with more "hop onto this animal and ride across the map with an ally while talking lore about the region" quests personally. I'd like more of those voiced too tbh. We already technically have an autorun, you just go straight until you run into something. I don't see a need to fully afk this game during quests.

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It'd be great if they were voiced so I can actually enjoy the scenery! My eyes are glued to the dialogue box with the auto-advance wheel turning, it makes me anxious I won't have enough time to read what the NPC said because I was checking out the view lol

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

The issue I'm seeing is that this is CBU3/CS3 we're talking about here. Dungeons got dumbed down for the trust system already so who is to say we aren't getting a monkey's paw with the auto-run as well?

I can already imagine extremely simplified terrain layouts just so the auto-run doesn't get stuck on things when pathing to the quest objective.

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This is just the slippery slope fallacy and isn't a real argument.

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Originally Posted by Varilyon

"Dear players.

Due to the workload for our new and highly desired feature Auto-Run, we have to delay the release of the new Expansion for four months. With the release of 8.0 we altered all ARR Zones by flatting them to accomodate the new Auto-Run Feature.

In the next patches we will start working on the other zones in Heavensward up to Dawntrail before 8.58. The new flattened zones for Auto-Walk will take some time, so we have to decrease the amount of dungeons each patch.

Please look forward to it!"

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Making up situations in your head that aren't real and basing your opinions on the made up fantasy in your head seems rather odd.