FF14 Becoming More "Solo Friendly" is bad, Maybe

[VigilanteXII]

I mean there's a reason solo-friendly MMOs have been the prevailing trend in MMOs for the past two decades or so. It's because a lot of people prefer it that way. They might even be in the majority. It probably doesn't feel that way if you just look around your personal FC or Reddit or this forum, but that's because the vast majority of players doesn't interact with any of these things. Square on the other hand certainly has their metrics that show them how people play the game, and I'd assume their decisions are informed by these numbers. It can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, but I guess they must have getting things right more often than not given how much the game has been flourishing.

Playing MMOs "solo" might seem like a contradiction, but it's really not. While I'm sure there's people out there who only ever want to play solo, or who only ever want to play in groups, the majority probably does something in the middle. So best way to cater to all of these people is to make sure people can decide when and how often they want to do group content. Does of course involve some compromise, so FFXIV is likely never gonna be perfect for everyone, but that's just how it goes in life.

Also, instead of berating those people from taking valuable resources away from things you would have preferred, keep in mind that all those "seasonal story-only players" also bring in quite a bit of money, and if it wasn't for all of these people FFXIV probably wouldn't be around anymore. Can't sustain this game just with hardcore savage raiders.

[Arrius]

I think it's also for making the journey to the current expansion a bit more manageable, since getting there from the very start can take quite a while now and you probably not always other people available to help you out on this.

[Kaurhz]

There’s a stark difference between enabling the opportunity of solo play so players can still experience the story if they so wish, and outright making the game a solo experience. Don’t really see an issue until it seeps into the more general, optional content. If you want a solo experience you can do trusts, if you do not then you can play via the Duty Finder with a multiplayer experience. The devs are hardly forcing players into a solo experience. It’s completely optional…

[LaylaTsarra]

I enjoy trusts I use them all the time for main story quest leveling for both my main and alts. I'm also happy to see them expanding them to 8 person trials because some of those would take forever to queue when trying to progress the main story.

We have them for SHB and EW so for me at least it only seems reasonable to expand them to the other expansions as well. I'm sure SE has excellent data on the popularity of trusts and I doubt they'd be doing this if they weren't popular enough.

Certainly hasn't stopped me from using DF.

[Demetri_Delethorn]

I think the push toward solo stuff can be a slippery slope. It already feels hard enough to socialize in the game. But I do like the direction they're taking with reducing actions and button bloat.

[Nekokaori]

No its a good thing, Only ONLY FINAL FANTASY XIV forces interaction and social bullshit

Wow- everything was soloable u could play alone if u desired
dcuo same deal
Mabinogi same thing
guild wars same deal
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Every other mmo does not hold content hostage unless you "social with x number of people" every other game is and was decent enough to make it opitonal more so for the story part of the game.

As long as u can walk into Limsa and see people cluttering your path its a mmo regardless of 100% o f the game having all content optional solo.


Some days I don't want to deal with people and desire to beat them to the inch of their life, and i get on a game to relax and calm down forcing me into a group and then expecting me to be friendly 24/7 without a word is not only wrong but is the most retarded bullshit ever.

Some days im perfectly fine playing with people SO LONG AS ITS MY CHOICE 2 PLAY WITH PEOPLE. it hasnt been our choice to play with others since 2005 on mmos now its all forced interaction which is and always will be the most horrible thing in the world

[RobynDaBank]

All for MSQ and required content becoming soloable personally. It's accessible to people playing in the more dead hours of a DC, or to people much too behind the rest of the players. I really doubt those in charge of the game want people who can't find a group at 2 AM server time to drop out of the game completely. They want you logged on. And this is the direction MMOs will be going in. The original MMO playerbase is long past playing till midnight after school hours, or gaming their college semesters away. You either have older fans who have work and families, or younger ones with a million other things to explore online.

Social content in FFXIV is out there, BTW. Good luck trying to do content like Bozja/Zadnor leveling or Eureka by yourself. Or optional dungeons. Or most of the trials, MINE, alliance raids...

[Kyrj]

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.

Not if they keep chucking everything into the trust system. How long until 8-mans are in the trust? 24-mans? Savage and Ultimates?

[CaptainLagbeard]

They're treating the game as a RPG first, a MMO second.
With the story being one of the biggest highlights of the game to be honest, I don't mind them making it more solo friendly for the MSQ. Means more people get to enjoy it, even people who might not otherwise be into MMOs.

Besides, new players kind of have to rely on people doing Roulettes, the 50/60/70/80 one in particular, to get into old dungeons for the MSQ because surprisingly there isn't a huge amount of players queuing for those dungeons. With the Duty Support stuff, they can get to more recent stuff more seamlessly.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm 100% fine with trusts and solo content. If you hate random groups but love the game, then this is great. I think the idea of "forcing" people to group up to make them socially interact more, or even worse because of some misguided idea that they'll learn to play better (remember mentors are a meme, spamming roulette doesn't make you good), is damaging for a game. The encouragement to group together should be because it's fun. If people aren't grouping together, think about how the experience could be improved. Forcing them to do something that's not fun is ridiculous.

What I strongly dislike is the lack of focus on FC's. Why do we still have no event calendars. Why isn't raiding designed to be FC friendly? Why are there no small bonuses for running content in FC groups? FC's are just big linkshells.
Why is the Hunt neglected too? That's one piece of content that has great community potential and they just let us muddle about on third party sites and ignore all the player conflict it breeds over early pulls and SS rank griefing.
Why are housing Wards neglected? They rely entirely on players making their own entertainment (and many do), but there's no Ward invasions or ingame Ward events or anything to encourage seeing your neighbors.

Remember in WoW you could essentially skip every dungeon and solo your way to max level. Yet (before that game fell apart) there were dungeon groups running all the time and guild raid night was your big thing to look forward to multiple times a week.

Trusts are not an issue. Forcing players into DF doesn't foster community spirit, it builds resentment towards other players. I definitely like other players less the more I run DF. But outside of duties, they need to think of ways to build community spirit more. FF14 feels like a game where lots of people who like FF14 simply coexist.