Grand Company Ranks

[Preypacer]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3635325

From today's Live Letter. Platoons are supposed to a part of GC content, and hopefully soon but maybe not till 4.0 xpac.

Disclaimer: What follows is just me expressing concerns about the system, in the absence of more specific details. I'm not, in any way, pretending or presuming to know exactly how it will be. Please keep that in mind while reading.

I remember Yoshi-P touching on this in a previous Live Letter, or an interview. He basically mentioned wanting to bring something like FFXII's Gambit system into FFXIV. That system would become part of the Platoons.


Now, while I enjoyed that system in theory - the idea of sorta "programming" your party members to be semi-automated - I enjoyed it in the context of FFXII, a single player FF game.

That he wants to bring it to FFXIV has me a bit concerned. I've not seen any kind of specific info about this anywhere, but I have seen him mention, a few times now, that he'd like players to be able to use it in Dungeons, though I've not seen him explain in what capacity.

Now, I *seriously* hope this is side content, separate from dungeons/trials/relevant content that we currently do through Duty Finder or even Party Finder. Further, I hope the rewards are separate from those attainable through normal content, and only provide rewards through your GC, etc.

My reasons are pretty much two-fold:
1) This game is already quite solo-friendly for the vast majority of it. Dungeons and Trials are pretty much the only compulsory content that requires a group of players to complete. Adding a way for people to bring a Platoon of semi-automated characters through, instead of queueing up with other players, would be undermining one of the few truly multiplayer elements this game has. Why even call it a MMO at that point,if that's what he has in mind.

2) I've seen people compare it to the Trust system in FFXI. That's a fair comparison, from what we know so far (very little). Understand, in FFXI the Trust system works and is arguably necessary, because the game is old. The population is substantially lower, and is largely at the end of the content. Thanks to Abyssea making power-leveling to 99 a stupidly easy endeavor, people doing multiplayer content, outside of end-game stuff, has already been mostly dead for a long time now. Outside of end-game stuff, the mantra has become "power-level to 99, get some Trusts, and solo it". Thanks to sweeping, unnecessary changes made through Abyssea (which SE themselves would later admit were a mistake), any sense of player interdependence, outside of a few activities, is dead, and has been for some years now.

So, I'd like to see some more specific information on that system and what role/niche he expects it to fill in the game. I really hope he delves into it more in future letters, interviews, etc.

If he says anything on the level of "I'd like to allow players to use a Platoon to complete game content solo, rather than using Duty/Party Finder to do so", then I would - at that point - officially say he's jumped the shark with FFXIV, and has given up on even pretending to care about player interaction or interdependence; that FFXIV will have effectively become a single player game with an only superficial multiplayer component.

Again, that's a big, glaring if, and I'm not jumping to conclusions here. I'm just concerned that might be where he wants to take it, because he's already shown a predilection for making things ever faster, easier and more convenient, even when they don't need to be.

Would really like to hear more details about this system and what space he sees it filling in the game.

My two gil.