FFXIV is a terrible coop game to play with your friends.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

For most of the game's life, they've framed us exactly as a random adventurer with the "talent" of the Echo that leads us to being pulled into the Scions. But even there, we're just a regular Scion doing standard investigations and the like.

The thing is, over time in any story of this sort, you have to get more powerful and take on bigger tasks. At some point, your list of accomplishments grows so large that it just doesn't make sense for you to still be doing only menial odd-jobs like a rookie. So the stakes have to get larger. But even then, the other Scions are doing similarly important things right alongside us. In EW, Alisaie and Alphinaud are in charge of establishing and growing ties with the remnant from Garlemald. Krile helps us obtain the Sharlayan Forum's help to change the purpose of their starship. ALL of us go to Ultima Thule together.

And even having done all of that, there are still plenty of "normal" people in the world that have heard of us, but have no clue who we actually are, what we look like, and so on.

To give an analogy to politics, people tend to steadily move "up" the ladder over time. When was the last time you saw the POTUS leave office and become Mayor of some random town? It's just the natural progression of any such story for people to start as random folk but become more important over time.

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In some other MMOs, the NPC characters are the ones who ultimately end up saving the world, or it's a team of people that are not named in the narrative. In XIV you are seen as the sole actor who saved the universe. They talk about how you kill the Primals in ARR, you defeated Nidhogg in HW, you defeated Zenos is StB, and you brought balance and defeated Emet in SB. None of the scions did those things, they may have helped you on the way but they acknowledge that is was you that actually achieved those things and the leaders of the city states and nearly anyone else in a position of power recognizes you alone as being their savior.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Given MMOs are so you can play with your friends and strangers alike I feel this game does the worst job at a coop/play with friends mode ever. Not only is the MSQ a solo experience but there are even those instanced battles where you can't take anyone with you as well. Only mainstream duties are available as a cooperative experience and they only happen ever so often during hours of solo MSQ. The PVP is a solo experience too. They are scared people in VC may have an edge in PVP against others and force you to play CC alone and yet shrug it off when a ton of players cheat in PVP using mods and hacks or whatever.

This game feels like it's a solo experience for people who don't have friends but want the presence of other strangers moving around in the same game so they don't feel lonely. Even if they're not actually doing anything together.

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Odd. I did the story with friends the whole way. Stop treating it solo lol.

Uh,

Whilst I don't entirely disagree, in the same vein, half of the problems you've described, especially surrounding the MSQ are almost entirely self-inflicted decisions. I've met people who have done the entire story solo across just a couple of weeks, just as I have met groups of people doing the story together across a much more extended period. Granted, the game could do more to facilitate group play, e.g., straying away from some reliance on solo duties, but aside from that it is self-inflicted, and is up to the player to involve themselves with other players, or a small community of players also at the same point.

I would also say, I think you would be surprised at the number of people who play MMOs, not necessarily for the social experience, but just the experience of being involved in a world that has strangers, or other people roaming around. Personally, I fall into this category, the only exception to this bizarrely enough being on a new expansion, where I usually get together with a few friends and play through the story.