I've been enjoying everything about 1.18 EXCEPT the difficulty given to the solo option. So is this going to turn into another FFXI where you have to group to get anywhere in the game?

I understand this is an MMO but it is firstly a Final Fantasy game and I am a Final Fantasy fan. I want to enjoy a rich storyline of characters and advance my character without HAVING to group to do it. Sure grouping should be necessary sometimes but what I hated about FFXI was that I had to group ALL the time.

In the last three hours I've completed all the new company quests I can do (except dungeons), completed four new quests and done three levequests... and not ranked once. I'm only rank 26. Seriously? That is terrible. I thought we were supposed to be leading away from the unfavorable grind aspect of MMOs but i dont see how you can rank/level without grinding your ass off.

I'm really confused as to how levequests are supposed to be the ideal solo option now, as stated by yoshi-P, yet now you get crap SP for levequests. As a rank 26 I did a camp horizon levequest on 3star difficulty, had to kill ten challenging guys and all i got was a mere 600 bonus SP at the end? And how much do you need to rank up? like 13000 SP or something? You get around 1000 Sp for completing quests that require you to just run around and talk to ppl and that's still not enough to avoid a grindfest. (Not to mention the new costs for spells such as Cure that really make it harder to solo)

Please please please dont make FFXIV just one big grind party. Have at least a little bit of a solo option.

But other than that 1.18 is pretty awesome. By 1.20 this is going to be one hell of a game.