FF14 Becoming More "Solo Friendly" is bad, Maybe

[Kuritzkale]

Does anybody else really dislike the direction the devs seem to be interested in taking the game? When I hear them say things like how they want the game to be more solo friendly my head starts to swim, like... it's an MMO. There are singleplayer final fantasy games. FFXIV is not one of them. FFXIV should not cater to people looking for a singleplayer game. I don't necessarily have a problem with people playing the game as a mostly solo experience, but like 90% of story content is ALREADY solo, why make it even more disconnected from the community?

I don't think it's bad to occasionally force the player to interact with the community in the form of a dungeon run, or a trial completion. Why would a new player EVER choose to run dungeons with other players when every dungeon and trial needed for MSQ completion is doable with trusts? Not to mention the issues that crop up with needing every piece of new content (besides maybe savages and ultimates) to be doable by NPCs as well. And just to be clear, there are arguments for doing all of these things I dislike, I personally just do not think they justify the negatives that come with removing social aspects from your MMO.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've been lurking the forums like a psycho for the past couple of days hoping somebody else might bring this topic up, but no luck. I've just never seen a game with such a friendly and interactive community completely ignore that aspect of their MMO. The players keep the community interaction in this game afloat because the devs seem completely unwilling to. To anyone who doesn't run content that requires party finder, when was the last time you NEEDED to interact with another player, in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game you play? Come on SE, it's IN THE NAME.

[Dzian]

Given thats it's an MMO yeah I think pushing it more and more single player is incredibly backwards.

It also seems to be a very common opinion that it's friends and connections that keep people playing and not the quality of the game itself. This seems to be highly visible when it comes to keeping new players interested, Without those friends or social connections the game gets boring very quickly and as a result most new players drop the game very quickly. So pushing it in an even more single player direction seems like it would only make that worse by removing what few opportunites players have left to interact with each other.

It seems they don't know there audience anymore. Alienating MMO players by focussing so hard on single player. Alienating Final Fantasy fans by trying so hard to be so simplistic shallow and dull and getting rid of all those final fantasy nuances, elemental weaknesses, statuses, debuffs, etc.

I know more than a few people that literally only stay subbed because it's where they interact with friends and social connections built up over the years. Some of my friends I've known 20 years at this point since meeting them in XI.

The game needs to remember what it is. An MMO and a Final Fantasy, and thats what it needs to build on. But at the same time at this point it's pretty safe to say it's too late.

To anyone who doesn't run content that requires party finder, when was the last time you NEEDED to interact with another player, in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game you play? Come on SE, it's IN THE NAME.

That depends on how you define interaction. But my answer "Rarely ever"
You could argue "Everyday in the duty finder." BUt thats not team work or social bonding / interaction.
It's just 4 or 8 players all soloing the same thing.

What were the names of the players in your last roulette? Can't remember? Because there was no meaningful interaction between them. You'd be lucky if you got a o/ at the start of the duty.

You could probably apply the same question to the last party finder farm or whatever you joined.

[Hasrat]

It's the introvert's MMO.

At least this way, if I'm going to be wasting anyone's time, it's only going to be my own.

Maybe, after years of community interaction, they've finally realized, "Man, people are just exhausting."

Take your pick. End of the day, prolly doesn't matter a great deal one way or the other. Never going to have everyone satisfied.

[IdowhatIwant]

I don't think this is something the dev team decided. I have mentioned in another thread that this sounds like a decision made by the board of directors or at least some one that is far from understanding the product and it's consumers. It is a decision that is soley thought out for profits. I believe some one mentioned Yoshi P stating in live letter 77 that hopefully they reach live letter 100. If I had to guess SE is ready to try to sap as much profit out of FFXIV as possible and move on from the project, now that the 6.0 expansion has completed its story that started 10 years ago. Sadly I don't think asking the devs to change this will make any difference in this case.

Now that being said, I do not really care about the idea over all as long as the game play is not affected, but I do not think it will work. It will result in 1 of 2 things, a decrease in over all player count due to unfavorable changes to make the game more solo friendly. The second would be no real change in the over all game play but no new players purchase it for it's new single player type mode. I think they misunderstand that people that don't have interest in MMO's is not because of having to play with others, community, or online experience in general. Most people that avoid MMO's strictly do it because they do not like the game play, or they do not like the monthly subscription as well as MMOs have a time commitment to consider as well. The only potential type of people that may enjoy a MMO like FFXIV are people that enjoy games like Xenoblade chronicles, but that does not change the monthly subscription issue these people may have.

With that noted, I think we are sadly seeing the 1st happen where the game play is being changed to favor a better single player experience. Not sure how the over all community feels, I know I personally have not liked the direction that the game has been going, and I have seen others on the forums express similar feelings. From what I understand there are also players in the JP community that are also expressing concerns about this direction. But in reality, I have major doubts that Yoshi P or anyone in his dev team have any say in this.

It sucks but corporate greed and appeasing shareholders always wins.

[Knot_D]

You guys play with friends??

I've been sitting at my house like a hermit and barely do conversation at Limsa, mostly at FC chat...

[Rongway]

This is, first and foremost, in Yoshi-P's own words, "a numbered Final Fantasy". That makes it a game whose primary goal is to tell a story, and there are Final Fantasy fans both new and old who want to play it for that story. So do I begrudge a developer, whose lifelong dream has been to tell a story in one of Square's flagship RPGs, for taking steps to make sure more people can enjoy that story, even people who don't want to take what they might perceive as a gamble by subjecting themselves to unpredictable social experiences? Not at all.

[Hasrat]

Consider as well that this isn't solely laid on the devs. An argument can be made that we the players have been just as involved in pushing in this direction. Anyone still working on Zodiac/Anima relics? How often are you actually queuing for content to run with a group, and how often are you just going to go solo unsync? Look at everything they've had to do to Castrum/Prae because, despite being forced into a group, all anyone wants to do is immediately throw that community interaction in the trash so they can get their rewards as fast as possible. Look at housing, and their insistence on the "neighborhood" model which, on paper, you'd think would push for more of that community interaction, but in practice, everyone is just shouting for their own solo instanced house. Look at Eureka/Bozja and all the ways players complained about how unforgiving those are if you're not with a group.

Just a few examples, but, a lot of that "community interaction" content gets a lot of backlash and is poorly received.

[IdowhatIwant]

This is, first and foremost, in Yoshi-P's own words, "a numbered Final Fantasy". That makes it a game whose primary goal is to tell a story, and there are Final Fantasy fans both new and old who want to play it for that story. So do I begrudge a developer, whose lifelong dream has been to tell a story in one of Square's flagship RPGs, for taking steps to make sure more people can enjoy that story, even people who don't want to take what they might perceive as a gamble by subjecting themselves to unpredictable social experiences? Not at all.

That is kind of a poor excuse.

FFXI, was a MMO and a numbered Final Fantasy game. It did not go through the same length of game play changes to make it more of a single player experience as far as I am aware. They added the trust system to allow you to solo most of the games content which there is nothing wrong with, as long as you are not ruining other players experience by changing the game play. But I have not played the game in a long time and there may be other people that could shine a better light on how FFXI made the game more solo friendly.

Also Yoshi P is working on FFXVI so that's 2 flagship RPGs he can practice his single player mechanics there.

But once again, I doubt they have any say on making a single player experience in the game, but I do feel they can go about it in various ways that would be least impactful to the current player base.

[Vidu]

I don't think it's bad to occasionally force the player to interact with the community in the form of a dungeon run, or a trial completion. Why would a new player EVER choose to run dungeons with other players when every dungeon and trial needed for MSQ completion is doable with trusts? Not to mention the issues that crop up with needing every piece of new content (besides maybe savages and ultimates) to be doable by NPCs as well. And just to be clear, there are arguments for doing all of these things Idislike, I personally just do not think they justify the negatives that come with removing social aspects from your MMO.

This line of thinking kinda gets me here - why is it a good idea to force people to do something during their freetime, when practising their hobby? And why do you assume that people need to be forced to interact with the community? If that is your assumption - that people in general dont want to interact with each other in an online game - we should maybe get rid of the MMO genre alltogether.
I'm not sure why but quite often when this topic comes up people (who I assume like playing with others) seem to worry that there will be no on left to play with them, because everyone else will simply pick the singel player option. For some reason everyone whos worried about these changes believes that they're the only person on the planet who likes running dungeons with other people - and is in addition perfectly fine with forcing the rest of the games popultaion to do that with them even though they must be sure that everyone else loathes it...

The truth is probably: There are people playing this game for the MMO aspect. And they will continue to play this game for the MMO aspect. The only thing that will change here is that they wont force people who are not intrested in that to play with them. Which should be considered a good thing, in my opinion. This whole idea of forcing people into "interacting with the community" (in my book dungeons can hardly be considered that - for most dungeon runs it makes little difference if they're done with trusts or real humans, because there is no interaction anyways) is almost disgusting to me.
No. We do not need to force people into stuff.

Personally I would have been very happy if this had been an option when I first started the game - I enjoyed previous FFs and those are, as has been pointed out correctly, solo games. The MMO aspect of FFXIV almost made me not play the game - I'm glad I bit the bullet eventually, but coming here to seek the FF experience is as valid to me as coming here to seek the MMO experience - people who enjoy MMOs sometimes come across as if they believe they hold a certain monopoly about the game (aka "ITs an MMO!!!") and want to force that on everyone else whos enjoying different aspects of the game, which in my opinion is simply wrong.

They're also not removing the social aspect - they're just doing things that will enforce it less. You'll still be able to socialise, if you want that. New people coming to the game might still want to play if with other people! The social aspect will stay - it just wont be mandatory anymore. How is that bad?

[Imoye]

Agree. The issue is also that if you make the entire story soloable, people will actually never take the step to queue up with other people. Thus, once they are max level there is nothing left in the game for them. This solo move might actually hurt the game's recruitment. It's 100% for sure not going to do the game any favors.