A Worry: The game needs to be less isolating and less on-rails; more OPEN!

With Duty Finder, instances for everything, and cutscenes upon cutscenes, this game can end up very isolating.

I'm worried that if this trend continues it'll end up being a single player game that other people just happen to be playing.


I strongly feel there needs to be more to do as groups out in the field. There needs to be more of a reason to communicate with other- and less isolation involved with instanced content and dungeons.

There needs to be more opportunities to come across other players, and more reasons to be forced to communicate with them!

If the game keeps locking people away into little isolated quest-lines and well defined, instanced progression, then it's not an MMO at all; just an RPG.

To be honest XIV is a very bad game to play with other people.
Trying to level with a friend felt more like a hassle than both of us simply progressing through the main story solo and queueing up together for dungeons/trials and endgame content.

That's the problem, right?! It's an MMO- more of it needs to be open for everyone to play together- and communication needs to be *encouraged*. Hell, I'm almost for scrapping the duty finder altogether and having people need to physically be outside the dungeon to go in. It would be more fun that way!

I agree, even though I do like playing solo... it IS an MMO after all

Though, look at all the crafters complaining about specialization and red scrips...something I see as making you have to work with other people (make a deal with someone who specializes in something you don't, and vice versa) yet people complain that it isn't easy to do all crafters by yourself. Sigh, well, whatever.

I don't play sandbox mmos because of lack of direction, and open world content leads to the bs that is the hunt issue.

Just tossing that out there.

I feel this often. It's a shame when I have friends online but I can't go see them because they are locked into instances. I think the solution is even bigger field zones which contain open dungeons (not instanced) but then it's harder on the servers and PS3 memory issues. Maybe in a future expansion.

Keep in mind that this game is primarily a final fantasy title, and secondary an mmo.
Even if it's online, a final fantasy game is gonna be a final fantasy game, which i am very happy about. Otherwise, i probably never would have picked it up.

I think 1.0 was much more friendlier.

Then in 2.0 we got duty finder.

Hopefully the sky island explorations will give us what real really need in open world group content.

FF games are traditionally story driven. Story driven content tends to be locked on rails.

What do you suppose they do? WoW style rep grinds? WoD(latest expansion) released a load of old school rep grinds and open world content(latter, specifically this latest patch). You know what the general consensus is?

"Wtf Blizzard, this shit sucks!"

And instanced dungeons don't separate friends. Only certain roulettes.

Duty quests being forced solo is annoying however. ESO did that.... Rage.

I think things are alright at the moment, but we definitely need to do something about it. It's easier when you're in an active FC/FC alliance/Linkshell to have more community engagement - I think it's within everyone's interests to ensure this game stays clear of what happened in World of Warcraft where the 'community' feeling vanished (not to forget how horrible people treat each other in their version of the Duty Finder).

We need to encourage more server participation without disadvantaging people who are on less populated servers.