Please grow the MMO part of the game. End game is lousy.

[DPZ2]

it's a mmo go play a solo game if you want to only do solo content .

By your definition, World of Warcraft is not an MMO, since it does not require you to group up for any content in order to get to max level.

[Amon-ster]

MMORPG = an online game with a persistent world and multiple players who you can interact with.

MMORPG =/= an online game that requires playing in groups.

If you don't agree with the second statement, you no longer believe World of Warcraft is an MMORPG. There isn't a single dungeon instance required to get to max level in that game.

I also think WoW has gone too far down the soloable route, which is likely one of the reasons why it's been losing players since WotLK and why one of the biggest successes in the MMO space in the last 5 years was the re-releasing of a 17 year old game, WoW Classic.
I don't think that you shouldn't be able to do anything at all as a solo player in an MMORPG, but I do think that multiplayer cooperation should be encouraged rather than more ways be invented to circumvent it.

[DPZ2]

I also think WoW has gone too far down the soloable route

Hahahaha. Nice one. Having played from Burning Crusade through Battle for Azeroth, I can pretty much guarantee that WoW went too far down the soloable route in, um, 2004, when it released. I got extremely good at leveling alt characters classes over those ten years.

[Amon-ster]

Hahahaha. Nice one. Having played from Burning Crusade through Battle for Azeroth, I can pretty much guarantee that WoW went too far down the soloable route in, um, 2004, when it released. I got extremely good at leveling alt characters classes over those ten years.

Compared to like, Everquest before it? Absolutely.
Compared to XI or XIV where you can literally bring in NPCs to do content? I mean...I guess if you consider other players NPCs then sure.

[kaynide]

Both of those assessments are untrue. They opted to cut out Deep Dungeon before Shadowbringers even launched, and have repeatedly said they were surprised how much demand there was for it to return. Which kinda throws out the whole retention argument since the numbers would have shown player interest yet they never realized it. As for Ultimate, Yoshida openly admitted it was due to poor management more than anything else. Not only was putting it in the .5 patch cycle incredibly shortsighted as it put a major encounter design up against the expansion development but they were only using eight people to play test it. If anything happened to them, be it the odd sick day; other projects, and etc., they literally couldn't test the fight.

Neither content being cut had anything to do with them focusing more on side activities like Ocean Fishing or treasure maps. The people designing that content aren't playtesting Ultimate, or likely any battle content. And Yoshida has acknowledged their mistakes last expansion.

That is literally my point; they laid out all the things on the table to decide whether to devote time/resources/staff to it, or cut. Some things were cut, some things were not. Especially with Covid, resources got stretched very thin.

They've said it is hard to do combat stuff because they either don't have enough staff to do it (who can play at that difficulty), or that it's otherwise very time intensive. If it was truly a priority, the dev team could work a way to test it better, or hire staff to do it (or even just contract players to beta test). Initially hiring staff is big negative for development time because a huge time loss in training, but it's been years since they've been aware of this problem. Nearly 2 years since Covid started; 3ish since Shadowbringers was released. They absolutely could have put out Ultimate or whatever other content, but it might have been at a large cost, easily cutting something they felt was more important... so they opted to cut the more "troublesome" content, and not invest in additional staff to devote towards this. Or they understand it's not a worthwhile investment to do at all.

All that said, I prefer things as they are- I do not care at all for endgame stuff and I trust them to do what they think is in the players' best interest.

[Imoen]

Compared to like, Everquest before it? Absolutely.
Compared to XI or XIV where you can literally bring in NPCs to do content? I mean...I guess if you consider other players NPCs then sure.

Uh, Trusts were not in XI at that time, don't think they were even added till like 2013. You could solo WoW on release. Obviously not all the content but that's the same thing here, so I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Either way it really doesn't matter. It's not like mp interest is going to suddenly evaporate. Do you think you're the only person that likes playing mp or something? It just seems really weird to be upset about this. It's not like the multiplayer aspect is going anywhere, yet you seem like you think it is or is on the verge of disappearing. Like they are putting trusts in Savage raids or EX trials or something.

I don't see in any way, how forcing people that don't want to team with people, to team with people, makes your game play experience better. I can however think of how doing that would make those people not play the game at all.

As I said earlier, anyone that doesn't want to play with people, already is not playing with people, either they are leveled up and running trust dungeon, doing other content that doesn't require people, or they simply don't play the game at all.

[Shurrikhan]

I either stop this game due to burn out or having nothing (enjoyable) to do. Things like the Bozja relic grind - where they stretch out what little content there is to an exhausting amount. Even the casual content is taking a hit. Often times, I don't actually want to stop playing the game, but there really is just nothing to do. Right now, if I had things I actually wanted to do in the game, I'd still be playing it. I am not currently burned out, but I have been playing other things for about a month. Yeah, I know Yoshida has said to take breaks, but this is a problem in their game design.

I have to tentatively agree. No one enjoys every possible piece of content just for the sake of it --and most will, in the end, still turn their sight towards whatever gives progress meaningful to them, whether that be housing, glams, and/or gear-- so outside of relic grind patches, those able to play more than an hour or two per day will soon enough end up with nothing to do. Even in those patches, the remaining places in which to spend that time are very narrow in what spans of players they attract in terms of mostly intrinsic entertaininment; essentially, if one doesn't particularly enjoy progging Ultimate or grinding Exploratory Missions, that's it -- the options are exhausted.

We have a decent number of content styles, but relatively few at much polish, and even fewer at breadth of difficulty enough to engage but a small portion of players (where engagement first requires just having perceived access -- in a practical, not just technical, sense).

[Shurrikhan]

Hahahaha. Nice one. Having played from Burning Crusade through Battle for Azeroth, I can pretty much guarantee that WoW went too far down the soloable route in, um, 2004, when it released. I got extremely good at leveling alt characters classes over those ten years.

How do you play XIV, then? It's far more solo-focused than WoW even now, let alone back in Vanilla.

WoW soloing was an inferior way to level, but an option nonetheless. Here, for the majority of leveling, there isn't even any real disadvantage in leveling solo and the storyline frequently forces you to drop your party.

[SieyaM]

The way I understand their new direction is that they want the MSQ to be able to be completed completely solo if a player so desires, and I think they chose this direction in part because of the near constant complaining from the NA/EU players about MSQ roulette and the DF in general. Everything else that would be considered side quests or extra content in a single player game will all be multiplayer in this one, so alliance raiding and the 8 man stuff and probably even extra 4 person dungeons will all still require matchmaking and the DF. What they should not do is try to turn this into WoW 2.0 just to appease the new players that migrated which would in turn alienate the player base that has been subbed for years and the players that joined looking for something new. To be honest I am not sure why so many people are worried about the new direction when for years people complained about the "bad players" that only wanted to play for the story and plagued their roulette runs making them take maybe 2 or 3 minutes longer.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Well the devs did do a research survey that the majority of the player base would be in favor in having more ways for solo content. Dont know the specifics or where and how they got that data but it was something that was mentioned in the live letter and not just something that they pulled out of their butt. Honestly though the major thing that's going to occur is the fact that Trusts will be implemented in previous msq content; a system we already had in both Shadowbringers and now Endwalker and nobody is crying about it from what Ive seen.

Its not like the devs are going to abandon multiplayer content in general, this is an MMO after all. They're just trying to keep a good portion of their playerbase and future players happy to have more ways to play the game. Nobody is forcing you to do solo content if you dont want to. I for one dont bother with trusts when I level through dungeons because its a lot more fun and efficient to run with a group anyway and besides enticing new players who enjoy the solo aspect of Final Fantasy will also potentially entice them on the appeal of playing with friends, since they'll still be exposed to all other content as well as other players. This is how and why Dragon Quest X is such a huge deal over in Japan.