Why doesn't the MSQ have quests where you participate in large open battles?

Remember the Stormblood benchmark trailer, where you had many Alliance warriors fighting against Garlemald forces in the Fringes?

https://youtu.be/3_JxY2pRHn4?t=72

https://i.imgur.com/T10hlan.gif

But in the actual Stormblood campaign, nothing remotely happens like that. The capturing of the tower in the Fringes involves half a dozen to a dozen Resistance troops at most. In Doma, a dozen Doman soldiers, a dozen Xaela tribesmen, and one ship with a half dozen pirates on board somehow manage to successfully assault and capture an entire capital city occupied by a provincial army.


Remember the Endwalker benchmark trailer, where you had an Alliance army fighting in Garlemald, with the different faction leaders charging in with their forces?

https://youtu.be/IkC1r0eJZ-c?t=142

https://i.imgur.com/Xn0HFrF.gif

But in the actual Endwalker campaign, you have a solo instance where there are a dozen people or so trudging through the snow to fight a dozen Garleans, and then another solo instances where groups of half a dozen people are spread out across different screens fighting monsters, making for an extremely low density battlefield, even with the magitek squad shows up.


Remember the Dawntrail trailer advertising an airship invasion?

https://youtu.be/7BghYTigv8E?t=165

https://i.imgur.com/M6KkTG8.gif

But in the actual campaign, the battle of Tulliyolal is just a dozen plastic robots waltzing through the streets and then a half dozen dragons show up, and then a dozen cowboys + Estinien fight a few more robots in the desert.

Why does FF14 have an aversion to showing large scale battles? Not even RTS game large, just benchmark trailer large, which the game is capable of?

Purpose of a benchmark is to see how hard it can push your computer, hence why it keeps ramping up the amount of stuff being shown then gives you a score at the end. Considering that a lot of people still play this game on toasters and PS4s, it wouldn't be very fun for them if they had to do content at 3 FPS because it includes a few hundred extra NPCs in the background.

Although, I would like to see something better than clone city like in that recent Solution 9 cutscene.

Prior to Stormblood, they could not have as many NPCs on the screen. You will notice Stormblood dungeons are flooded with NPCs compared to prior expansions. This was due to abandoning PS3 support. In Shadowbringers, they abandoned support for 32-bit and we saw a lot more special effects after that.

It does happen in a solo battle after beating Bardam's Mettle where there is a giant battle for the Azim Steppe. You also see lots of NPCs fighting in the background of the Ala Mhigo dungeon (I actually had to upgrade my computer at the time due to it), which I think is meant to be the battle from the Benchmark (but in a different location).

It also happens in the Ghimlyt Dark, where the allied forces are fighting Garleans in the background. Shadowbringers released Bozja, which had fighting everywhere and was trying to create a battlefield. Endwalker sent the allied forces to Garlemald and we participate in a giant solo battle there to win what's left of it, but there are NPCs fighting everywhere.

They put a lot of escaping villagers and animals in Holminster Switch and Amaurot. The Heroes' Gauntlet has some battles taking place as well, but more sporadic due to the nature of the conflict. And there are some giant solo battles against Eulmore in Shadowbringers with fighting going on all around.

In the Benchmark, they don't have to account for possible players actions or other players and it's really just a test of the limits they want your GPU to manage. It doesn't mean they will actually push to those limits unless the story wants it. And they use the Benchmark to throw you off a bit so as to not spoil the story so that's why the battles don't actually happen.

I do agree that they could have had more solo instances and battles in Dawntrail though.

I think their animated characters are expensive. All cutscenes with a lot of characters cheat by using many static character models.

Also the game has to run on ps4, which is a pretty limited platform by today's standards. And when you make a ps4 game, it is a mandatory requirement from sony that you should never drop below 30 fps. Obviously that probably happens in the open world when a lots of players are around, but it's very possible that Sony could have agreed to waive that requirement in those situations, but not during "solo" gameplay.

Why cant people play the MSQ together when those same cutscenes you refer to have multiple warriors of light fighing next to each other. but then when you play the MSQ you have to do it alone because...

"You cannot proceed with this quest because you are in a party. please disband in order to contiue."

One of my biggest peeves since i first had to fight a voidscent in thanalan at level 6 or so...
It's an MMO i want to play with my friends!

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Why cant people play the MSQ together when those same cutscenes you refer to have multiple warriors of light fighing next to each other. but then when you play the MSQ you have to do it alone because...

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I would have liked the lore to incorporate other players, but for whatever reason, SE thought about it carefully and decided to make the lore exclude other players. I don't know why they thought this was a good idea, but apparently they did think about it and it was intentional to do it this way.

As such, there is no other Warrior of Light other than yourself. Just people with the Echo, who usually aren't good fighters. The closest we come to having other Warriors of Light post-1.0 are the Company of Heroes, Ysayle, Arenvald and Fordola. And well, SE was quick to get rid of them the moment you thought about teaming with them.

Starting with Endwalker, we can include all the fighters we know in this by handing them the items that repel primal influence. Starting with Dawntrail, we can include Krile in this because she has the Echo and becomes a fighter. All of it is arguably not relevant anymore because primals are done with, but I can't rule out us being immune to other threats due to the Blessing of Light.

I wanted to imagine that there are other nameless people with the Echo in the scions that I could pretend are players, but ARR ruined those hopes by killing off most of the nameless scions and having you carry their bodies to Eastern Thanalan.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I would have liked the lore to incorporate other players,

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So would thousands of other players.. and in many cases i think the ability to play with others would have helped save a lot of the flak DT story has.

its like you can go do a restaurant. the place may be a bit of a dive, the food maybe a bit naff, and the service isnt great. but if your there with a solid group of friends you can still have an amazing evening.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Why cant people play the MSQ together when those same cutscenes you refer to have multiple warriors of light fighing next to each other. but then when you play the MSQ you have to do it alone because...

"You cannot proceed with this quest because you are in a party. please disband in order to contiue."

One of my biggest peeves since i first had to fight a voidscent in thanalan at level 6 or so...
It's an MMO i want to play with my friends!

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Yeah, its incredibly baffling. You cant form a band of adventurers with friends to experience the world and story together. That part feels so incredibly isolating, and infuriating considering GW2 and SWTOR manage to incorporate your party.

Its what makes selling the game to new people hard for me as well.
"But can we play together?" they ask.
"Na, only during dungeons that happen after every couple of hours of mandatory cutscenes." I reply.
"But can we quest together?" they inquire, hope leaving their voices.
"Sadly no, i cannot do overworld content with you outside of occasional fight events that happen on the overworld." I admit. "I could make an alt, but a lot of the time we just walk around next to each other."
"Lets play something else instead."

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Its what makes selling the game to new people hard for me as well.
"But can we play together?" they ask.
"Na, only during dungeons that happen after every couple of hours of mandatory cutscenes." I reply.
"But can we quest together?" they inquire, hope leaving their voices.
"Sadly no, i cannot do overworld content with you outside of occasional fight events that happen on the overworld." I admit. "I could make an alt, but a lot of the time we just walk around next to each other."
"Lets play something else instead."

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Truer words have neverbeen spoken. so many times ive had this exact conversation.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Why cant people play the MSQ together when those same cutscenes you refer to have multiple warriors of light fighing next to each other. but then when you play the MSQ you have to do it alone because...

"You cannot proceed with this quest because you are in a party. please disband in order to contiue."

One of my biggest peeves since i first had to fight a voidscent in thanalan at level 6 or so...
It's an MMO i want to play with my friends!

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It's primarily a Final Fantasy game wearing the skin of an mmo, worth keeping in mind.

I don't know that be a cool idea... I mean they've simulated battles before in solo duties even the original castrum meridium was like that, Baelsar's wall, doma castle, ala mhigo, Ghimlyt dark...

That cool solo duty in Shadow Bringers where you Alphinaud and Alisae come in to save the day.

I guess the idea is there are large battles going on around you but you and your crack squad of attractive and smart team members are going in as a vanguard.

Its because they have a small dev team and cannot do that on a large scale.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

It's primarily a Final Fantasy game wearing the skin of an mmo, worth keeping in mind.

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Yeah but 24 years ago Final Fantasy XI was released and you could do the entire story together with friends and those friends would appear in your cut scenes. I think somewhere buried in my archives I have some old screenshots from my CoP journey with some of my friends.
That's a Final Fantasy game as well as an MMO. Soo............

Amazing story as well.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Yeah but 24 years ago final fantasy x1 was released and you could do the entire storiybtogetherbwith friends and those friends would appear in your cut scenes. I think somewhere buried in my archives I have some old screenshots from my cop journey with some of my friends.
That's a final fantasy game as well. Soo............

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Okay? Is that game this game?

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

Okay? Is that game this game?

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Point was you used the argument it's a final fantasy game in an mmo skin to justify why we can't play the story with friends.

The fact that it's predecessor mmo let you do exactly that kind of invalidates that argument.

Large scale open battles should be the norm for an MMO, as should general large-scale content, IMO..

Truthfully though, whilst XIV is a good game, it does a terrible job at feeling like an MMO for 90% of the time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Point was you used the argument it's a final fantasy game in an mmo skin to justify why we can't play the story with friends.

The fact that it's predecessor mmo let you do exactly that kind of invalidates that argument.

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No it doesn't. You're comparing an entirely different game to this one. Same premise as the thread comparing Elden Ring to FF14 saying that they're two different games? Yeah, that applies here too. x1 isn't FF14.

Someone's toaster might catch fire and burn their house down.
Jokes aside...I'd love to have large scale battles but I think they're also considering the bare minimum of specs to run the game so they can maybe reach a bigger audience? It makes sense not to make your uhh graphical requirements too high, and well, probably held back and will always be held back by consoles.

This would be welcomed and much needed going forward, while we are a one person army, I still enjoy large scale battles, it just makes the immersion better when it truly feels like a group effort to save the day. I hope they can implement this much more in 8.0 since I feel PS4 support may finally be dropped as the PS4 would be 13 years old by then.