From MMORPG to SRPG?!

The trustsystem will get expanded to "get all the FF series singleplayer into this game".

So SE spends dozens of ressources to get more paypigs into the game meanwhile killing the core-aspect of a MMORPG, the multiplayer one. Congratz to this.

Wow almost like this game is part of the Final Fantasy franchise and they want to appeal to the core playerbase of the series?? In many ways, the expanded Trust functionality will probably do more to help than harm the new player experience.

ARR has been reduced to the status of a visual novel due to the nonexistent combat length-each fight is over too way too soon. Trusts in earlier dungeons will give them a chance to experience a fight longer than 30 seconds and will offer those of us who are learning new jobs a way to enter an easier instance and work our way up, getting the hangs of things as we go for practice.

You lose nothing by having more options. Goodness, they even confirmed a second Ultimate last Live Letter. I understand that almost everyone feels exhausted due to the staggered release of battle content during Shadowbringers but that era of troubles is largely over. Instead of frontloading us with content that has nothing to do with fighting, it is currently being prioritized over things like Island Sanctuary and Gold Saucer - which were rightfully delayed in this case.

Deep Dungeon is making a return, Criterion Dungeons are likely going to be another way to form close-knit groups and socialize, along with Ultimates/Raids. Whether or not the core single-player base of Final Fantasy chooses to engage in that content is irrelevant, we stand only to gain from the money they pour into this game. These players are extremely unlikely to be a bother to people as doing things with the NPCs will probably make them better than newer players who are effectively being carried through most of the game by players who compensate for their refusal to do mechanics properly or learn their rotations so they can finish dungeons on time. The only times you might see them are in 8-man story trials, where the balance overwhelmingly leans in favor of easy in all fights except Titania.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

The trustsystem will get expanded to "get all the FF series singleplayer into this game".

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Where, exactly, do you see this quote from anyone at Square Enix?

I do believe that you are projecting your own assumptions and fears onto something that players have asked for since the Trust system was introduced in Shadowbringers.

more like its just future proofing the game,
MMO aspect is not dying anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Where, exactly, do you see this quote from anyone at Square Enix?

I do believe that you are projecting your own assumptions and fears onto something that players have asked for since the Trust system was introduced in Shadowbringers.

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Liveletter?

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Originally Posted by Duskane

more like its just future proofing the game,
MMO aspect is not dying anytime soon.

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This game is already 90% singleplayer. The multiplayer content is pretty "rare" and only common playable/enjoyable in savage, everything else is a no-brainer you can solo with tank / healer classes. Now they waste more ressources into an unneccessary trust system, because a bunch of players don´t respect that this is a MMO and want a whole singleplayer-experience. It might be another thing if they would expand the old ARR "trust" systems with ranks, new rewards etc, but not just "here some trusts to go through dungeons and raids easily!".
It´s just nonsense because this game offers not a great singleplayer experience as the real series does by far. On top they just waste time / efford to create more MMO content. The reason is obvious and it´s milking new cows with low efford, not anything else.

Solo dungeons and trials are a thing in some other MMO´s aswell and guess what? They killed the whole MMORPG aspect. A bunch of korean MMO´s or SWTOR proofs that.

Group play in dungeons and trials aren't ending.

Trusts are slower.

Trusts can't be used for the roulette queues.

You can't queue with a friend and do trusts so a pair of a group of three will always have to go in with other players.

Trusts are only being added to storyline content. Aurum Vale and other non-story dungeons will not have tryst options and will still require other players. Anyone who seriously interpreted that as "every dungeon in the game" needs to reexamine what they read.

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Originally Posted by Wolfsbane706

Trusts are only being added to storyline content. Aurum Vale and other non-story dungeons will not have tryst options and will still require other players. Anyone who seriously interpreted that as "every dungeon in the game" needs to reexamine what they read.

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For now, but they already keep in mind to do the same stuff for raids etc... and i´m sure it´ll follow like all the easy buttons and dumbdowns to cater the "What is a MMORPG?"-audience.

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Originally Posted by Seera1024

Group play in dungeons and trials aren't ending.

Trusts are slower.

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Of course they won´t end. But it´s still wasted efford, wasted time and wasted ressources to make a singleplayer RPG out of a MMORPG. Imagine they would use the time to develop more group content, more dungeons, more trials and all that with more variety instead of copy & paste. Heck they could even use the time to finally sync the content properly.

And no, not all trust runs are slower since a bunch of players are even worse than scripted NPCs.

Just trying to give another perspective from someone who is excited for this feature.

Currently 8 months pregnant, I have had issues with dropping blood pressure and almost passing out during a dungeon run and felt so bad for making everyone wait as I had to lay down for a bit XD
Since that started I've mostly used the trust system currently in place this expansion.

Once baby gets here it'll be great to still be able to run story content and level alts without slowing others down, and not feel bad if I need to get up quickly or leave in the middle.
I'll still be able to play with friends, but it'll be nice to do things on my own too :)

I don't think it will take away from the MMO aspect of the game, it'll just make it more convenient for people who for various reasons would prefer to run dungeons on their own.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Of course they won´t end. But it´s still wasted efford, wasted time and wasted ressources to make a singleplayer RPG out of a MMORPG. Imagine they would use the time to develop more group content, more dungeons, more trials and all that with more variety instead of copy & paste. Heck they could even use the time to finally sync the content properly..

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Add "in my opinion" and I'll allow your generalization. To a point. As also announced, they are adding a new deep dungeon, three "Criterion dungeons" (whatever that means, it is group battle content), and Ultimate and Unreal trial, and the same raids and dungeons that they do every expansion. You are actually getting more group content. You've ignored all of that, deliberately, in my opinion, as it makes your point a non-issue.

Better still, just say it: "In your opinion, anything that doesn't personally satisfy your desires is a waste of development time".

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

For now, but they already keep in mind to do the same stuff for raids etc.

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They have not

People who loathe the idea of paying a sub to play a solo game aren't going to change their minds anyway.
Trusts will be useful yes, but not in the way they think... It will help new players who want a MMORPG but want to catch up at their own pace.
The DQ team had the correct idea with using DQX Offline for people who just wanted a single player experience. What they do with XI and XIV isn't it... Moreover even when content is solo'able in XIV, the experience is nowhere near the same as a single player jRPG due all the design decisions applied because it's a MMORPG that wants to keep players subbed and still "respect your time".

Also the acronym "SRPG" doesn't mean what you think it does. SRPG is a sub-genre of RPGs called "Strategy RPG".

It's not a waste of development time when they bring more paying customers into the game.

In WoW you could reach max level solo, there wasn't a long list of mandatory story dungeons and trials. In ff14 there is and you have to group with other players. This doesn't appeal to the type of player who just wants to enjoy an RPG storyline, then mostly RP and mess about with glamour and housing as their endgame. FF14 actually has a considerable number of players in that category.

It really doesn't affect the rest of us, they'll enjoy the story and do their own thing and contribute to financing the game, keeping it running for the foreseeable future. The rest of us can group and do combat based content.

Also for those who are actually worried that Trusts will kill off roulettes and dungeons, if that ever happened it would be entirely on the playerbase. If running dungeons alone is preferable to grouping with people, then there's something wrong with general player behavior and it would be a bad idea for any developer to try and force players to continue playing in the more toxic environment. The fact that we need to push people to group with others is a sign we should behave better instead, whether it's the toxic casual "you don't pay my sub" and putting in no effort, or the toxic elite harassing a player over small mistakes, or rescuing tanks into mobs to go faster, leaving sprouts behind in cutscenes, blaming healers when you got one-shot or any of the other common DF issues.
If we want this to be multiplayer, then we need to make it a game where multiplayer activity and interaction is actually fun.

My only real concern about this is the potential for the RMT abuse and additional strain on the instance servers if they switch over to having four separate bots running trust parties vs. one full party of bots in their own instance.

Think of all the GC loot boxes you'll get by taking all the treasure chests for yourself! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3


I believe the expansion to the trust system is going to be a good thing for the game in the long term. They're not going to be doing away with group content, and those of us who want to do stuff with actual living people will continue to be able to do so. I look forward to these as a way to level alt jobs at my own pace, without the pressure of worrying if I'm pissing off other players by being too slow.

Giving people the mechanism to 100% solo MSQ content can only benefit the whole player base and CBU3. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a substantial number of people interested in FFXIV as a game, but aren't excited about forced interaction. Playing a game like this solo but seeing lots of people going about their business has a charm of its own and gives the world a lived-in feel. I know I appreciate that when I'm the only one in my FC on.

I agree with op

For the first time in years I let my sub drop, the game is to aimed at bringing in players who won't stick around, just finish the story and bounce, there's more than a dozen other normal final fantasy games so why force this one to be like those, the best part of the game is playing with others, you don't know if you'll group with players who know their s**t and cruise through something or a group that's in low level gear and spamming one attack, single pulling enemies, that's the fun of it

If you don't like mmorpgs then it's not the game for you, I suck at CoD but I'm not mad at it begging for it to change or cater to me.

Honestly why are you paying a subscription fee to play by yourself? Feels like a slap in the face to all of the players that have let this game get this big, I've watched as less and less content comes, blue mages I ignored, but this last news just snatched the wind from my sails, when you remember that these devs are constantly harping how theyre short on manpower you know that the ones who are waiting for true content will be screwed.

I don't mind dropping the game, endwalker was a phenomenal end to the story for me.

My interpretation of the Live Letter:

"There are a number of [Japanese] gamers out there who've bought every single Final Fantasy game but haven't played Final Fantasy XI or XIV because they don't like the MMO experience. It would be nice to enable those gamers to enjoy the stories in our MMOs by providing them with the ability to run through them with minimal requirements for 'group' encounters. At the same time, many players who experienced Trusts in Shadow Bringers appear to have enjoyed that experience and have actually requested that it be extended to earlier gaming content; enough to make it worthwhile to do so, thus allowing both those who enjoy MMOs and those who've only played single-player JRPGs to experience the game without worries about major 'group' encounters. Hopefully those who prefer single games will enjoy their MMO experience and continue with it. At the least, they'll have played the game through and had a good time doing so."