FF14 Becoming More "Solo Friendly" is bad, Maybe

[TaleraRistain]

Oof Im not sure really, my understanding is that Lahabrea is a solo instance, cape westwind is removed completely? and castrum + prae is downsized to 4 person duty? xD

Westwind is a solo instance, Castrum is a 4-man dungeon, Prae is a 4-man dungeon that ends with Gaius, Ultima is a trial, and Lahabrea is another solo instance

[SpiralMask]

@OP: i think that making the game solo-friendly is fine, so that people who just want to be here for the (really good) story can do so without any pressures if they want, as well as providing a sort of layer of protection against the game winding down--when expansion 12 comes out and people dont want to boost to level 150 and have no earthly idea what's going on, and all pre-EW content is so ancient that queues are eternally empty (like trying to actually regularly queue for coils right now), or if the game shifts to maintenance mode when the next SQEX final fantasy mmo is inevitably released and the playerbase largely dies out here (barring some catastrophic incident like 1.0). it's a great final fantasy game, full stop, the MMO part is secondary there.

of course the tradeoff there is that it sure does open the door to further disregarding some gameplay issues--queues taking forever because healers not fun and nobody's playing them (or because we hit a 12:1:1 role ratio by expansion 8 and dps are now entirely oversaturated)? just do the content solo! unless you want to solo as BLU, in which case we must politely ask you to leave the building.

[IdowhatIwant]

Since I started this game as a healer where I don't get the to experience the difference in muscle memory I think its ok so far and accepted as is xD I guess SE could improve the heal potency and cooldown of some skills to change more gcd heals to gcd dps skills? Maybe a compromise of when used on friendly target = heal, on unfriendly target = damage? I guess I cant see the issue yet on my end since Glare, Dia and Afflatus Misery seem smooth in normal play with cleansing, mitigation and healing but maybe in a perfect play comp where there's not much healing needed unless raidwide its super boring xD

I dont know any of those skills nor have been here long enough to know a job's identity I saw on the ff14 site there's pure healers and barrier healers, are these the identity thing? I've only play summoner as a pure dps class so far and it does summon stuff to deal damage lol Hmm might it be nostalgia?

See your knowledge is a bit limited on the subject as a whole, which is why I said many opinions you have do not hold as much merit. Barrier healers and pure healers is essentially new to this expansion, and was another step of homogenization between the classes. Astrologian, use to have two different stances, one which provided regens, and one that provided barriers. The card system was completely different from what it is now, where most cards now improve damage on x and y roles, they used to apply different buffs so would have to think as to who would benefit most from the differing buffs. It was a very support oriented healer compared to the other healers and had a lot of spell speed buffs for itself to cast fast. Scholar used to have a large part of summoners kit, which is not the kit it has currently. It was a very high DPS healer that also provided shields and direct heals from it's fairy (which also provided various buffs to dps and to healing as well). WHM used to be a very strong single target and aoe healer, with dots and direct damage spells that was never expanded upon. Biggest problem, is most of your healers simply heal through OGCDs, and the content doesn't promote much healing outside of raid wide healing which like you said is super boring. It has been a problem for several expansions now which is why a lot of healers are fed up.

Job identity can be a little more complicated to really dive into with out getting into specifics. A good example is summoner right now has a pretty good identity as a summoner, but its identity used to be a dot mage. Now I think the direction they have moved in summoner is good, but its game play has taken major steps backwards.
Machinest, is now the pure ranged DPS with no buffs, summons a robot and uses various random tools to blast enemies with. This class use to actually be a ranged class that provided a bit of damage buff support with various turrets, and relied on a ammo system to increase the damage of there attacks and make them combo into other attacks. Machinest has also always had a heat gauge but it served a different purpose than it does now. The current heat gauge builds up and you dump it on heat blasts pretty boring. The old gauge would buff your skills and damage based off the heat level while guass barrel was on (ie 10 heat was a 10% damage buff). When the gauge was between 50 - 100 heat your skills would upgrade to stronger skills, once the gun would over heat, you would keep the 100% damage buff for about 10 seconds before the gun would cool off and gauss barrel would be unusable for 10 seconds. I know in heavensward you had to actually reactive gauss barrel after each over heat, I can't remember if you had to in Stormblood.

Most of the tanks used to have a specific identity as well which came from there tank and dps stances. For tank stances Warrior would get increased health, increased healing. Paladin and Dark Knight would take reduced damage and all tank stances would reduce damage dealt. Warrior specifically also had different skills based on the stances. For DPS stance, Warrior would get increased damage, as well as build stacks (later gauge) that would also increase it's crit stance but could be dumped on Fell Cleave for high damage (the stacks and gauge was built in both stances but provided a parry buff in tank stance IIRC). Paladin dps stance would cause there auto attacks to double attack. Darkknight dps stance would increase it's damage by 15% IIRC and was usable while tank stance was on. Dark Knight also played much more differently as it had to manage MP due to it's dps stance halting MP regeneration and slowly draining it as well. It hard a skill called Dark Arts which would buff up various skills at the cost of a large chunk of mp. Gun Breaker never really had stance identity attached to it, as it came after DPS stances was removed and tank stance was turned into emnity generation on / off. I guess Gun Breaker can be the lots of combos tank.

I could go on and how these classes used to play and how they are now, but I wanted to give a couple specific examples some you may be familiar with some you may not be to help you understand why people don't like the pruning and want class identity and engagement back. As you can clearly kind of see where that engagement fell off as pruning and reworks happened, and it is really a matter of opinion as to which versions were better. Personally I preferred the older versions of most of the classes.

[Xavier_Firbold]

@OP: i think that making the game solo-friendly is fine, so that people who just want to be here for the (really good) story can do so without any pressures if they want, as well as providing a sort of layer of protection against the game winding down--when expansion 12 comes out and people dont want to boost to level 150 and have no earthly idea what's going on, and all pre-EW content is so ancient that queues are eternally empty (like trying to actually regularly queue for coils right now), or if the game shifts to maintenance mode when the next SQEX final fantasy mmo is inevitably released and the playerbase largely dies out here (barring some catastrophic incident like 1.0). it's a great final fantasy game, full stop, the MMO part is secondary there.

of course the tradeoff there is that it sure does open the door to further disregarding some gameplay issues--queues taking forever because healers not fun and nobody's playing them (or because we hit a 12:1:1 role ratio by expansion 8 and dps are now entirely oversaturated)? just do the content solo! unless you want to solo as BLU, in which case we must politely ask you to leave the building.

"Really good story"....

Reeaalllyyyyy

[DPZ2]

Personally I preferred the older versions of most of the classes.

And this is what the entire argument boils down to ... personal preference.

Tanks were not designed to move in and out of Tank Stance, players found a way to make it work and called it 'complexity'.

Healers were not designed to move in and out of Cleric Stance, players found a way to make it work and called it 'complexity'

Some people really enjoyed that unintended style of play. Others did not. The people who enjoyed it look nostalgically on the heydey of those classes, mostly those who played Heavensward when the expansion came out.

The problem is that only a small number of players can actually pull off that kind of 'complexity'. The rest reverted to DPS, since 'pew-pew' is relatively uncomplicated. The complicated playstyle many veterans on the forums fondly recall became less complicated because of changes to the tank and healer classes to encourage DPS players to work on those sorts of jobs.

What all of that has to do with Solo Friendly trusts is anyone's guess.

I will point out that SE has stats on how many people leveled alts through Trusts in Shadowbringers and came to some conclusions about its utility that inevitably led to its current direction. This includes many posts on these very forums about how it should be used to replace the MSQ roulette.

[Broken_Wind]

It's the players that have chosen to make FFXIV a more solo focused game.

If you just try to run through the dungeons as fast as possible, without even stopping to say hi or comment on someone's ridiculous/cool glam, and dont even comm when its over whats the difference if its done with all NPCs?

[Xavier_Firbold]

It's the players that have chosen to make FFXIV a more solo focused game.

If you just try to run through the dungeons as fast as possible, without even stopping to say hi or comment on someone's ridiculous/cool glam, and dont even comm when its over whats the difference if its done with all NPCs?

The complexity of the dungeons becoming braindead is not the same as not talking when in/out of a instanced area. There are THOUSANDS of socially inept players in this game, I'm sure there are many in their number dissatisfied with the current state of the game and the direction in which it's heading...

[cactusbees]

I prefer the solo experience.

Why:

I play mostly at night when my kids are in bed. Queues are always 30+ minutes and party finder is dead.

As a hands-on player, trusts and solo play gives me a chance to learn content without having to waste anyone else's time or patience.

This gives me a chance to learn content AND classes at my own pace.

There's some days where I'm just so burnt out from the grind of the normal day, I just want to sit back and hit things and not deal with anyone else. There's only so much socializing a person can do before they snap. When the game becomes a chore, it's not fun anymore.

IM GUILTY. Part of me is nooooooo 24 hour maintainence and part of me is like phew its finally time to play warhammer3 that I preordered a few months ago xD

I'm finally getting to paint that Tifa garage kit that's sitting in the cubby next to me.. Whoops!

[HisShadowX]

I prefer the solo experience.

Why:

I play mostly at night when my kids are in bed. Queues are always 30+ minutes and party finder is dead.

As a hands-on player, trusts and solo play gives me a chance to learn content without having to waste anyone else's time or patience.

This gives me a chance to learn content AND classes at my own pace.

There's some days where I'm just so burnt out from the grind of the normal day, I just want to sit back and hit things and not deal with anyone else. There's only so much socializing a person can do before they snap. When the game becomes a chore, it's not fun anymore.

Yes it sounds like you main DPS characters so the queues are tough. I am hoping most of the raids get converted to Trusts as I love soloing content and taking my time. Multiplayer is required for leveling characters quickly.

[Xavier_Firbold]

I prefer the solo experience.

Why:

I play mostly at night when my kids are in bed. Queues are always 30+ minutes and party finder is dead.

As a hands-on player, trusts and solo play gives me a chance to learn content without having to waste anyone else's time or patience.

This gives me a chance to learn content AND classes at my own pace.

There's some days where I'm just so burnt out from the grind of the normal day, I just want to sit back and hit things and not deal with anyone else. There's only so much socializing a person can do before they snap. When the game becomes a chore, it's not fun anymore.

This is a great example and I'm glad you've found your niche. If I may ask though, does the "hands on" aspect include doing literally anything other than trust dungeons or are you specifically logging in to complete your dailies and log off?

If so, I wonder if it would be worthwhile for the dev team to create a more "ASMR chill experience" that some players can hop in and out of, while the other side has their complexity, difficult content and general "more high energy" environments. The Dev team seem to enjoy wasting their time on things like Hrothgar Ear-less hair for example, why not create a new game++ where this is possible?