FF14 becoming more solo friendly is good

[technole]

I mean, you can go ahead and not buy it. It doesn't make it true. Especially since your logic only works if someone decides to blot out what "Market Focus" means. Grandma had a subscription to Spotify. Therefore is she a potential to play XIV? Trust me. The answer is no.

So from a business standpoint: What?

Obviously you don't work in game development.

They didn't spend money and resources on updating 6 year old ARR content because they were feeling cool about it. Just like the cutdown on ARR quests years ago, this is all roadmapped and an investment on how to continue to grow the game with new players.

[BrokentoothMarch]

Obviously you don't work in game development.

They didn't spend money and resources on updating 6 year old ARR content because they were feeling cool about it. Just like the cutdown on ARR quests years ago, this is all roadmapped and an investment on how to continue to grow the game with new players.

Ah, and you do? Not that appeal to authority ever proved anything.

You do realize that was a quality of life change, yes? That has nothing to do with solo or grouping. Those were simply infamous activities across the board that got revamped after an entirely too long amount of time allowed to rot. A terrible example to present when we suddenly realize that discrepancy. To say nothing that I need more than developer worship to believe that this is the right move. We like to talk about WoW here, so I'll ask why people weren't okay with what the WoW devs did to the game. After all, they work in the industry, no? They know what they're doing, no?

I'm sure you realize this is insipid and so putting faith in professionals for no other reason than they're professional is mad. For the same reason mechanics and the like know far more about cars than you do, but will still delight in spinning you a lie for some more money. Cease the blind faith. It's unironically damaging the community. Think for yourself: Is solo friendliness here for us or to capture more money from people who play most FF games except this one? I'm sure you realize the problem of shifting your market focus when you already have a present market. A concept you conveniently decided to not address.

[RobynDaBank]

Interact with an inn bed

Never mind the fact that people begged for that to be a thing - being able to try on shop items on our own character, what a travesty! - and Yoshida was the one vehemently against it. I watched the Live Letter first announcing that.

[IdowhatIwant]

I personally like the direction this is going, solo-friendly.

The Duty Support system is great, can't wait for HW and SB actually.

Really the only things that should be Party up is Extreme/Savage and Raids, other than those, the rest should be Solo friendly.
I personally don't like doing Raids anymore, the screen is so packed full of effects that its hard to even see the Floor or boss, its just a huge crazy mess.

You can turn effects down or off... I would hope you realized that after playing the game 11 years.

I'm sure you realize this is insipid and so putting faith in professionals for no other reason than they're professional is mad.

Yeah, I have lost faith in Yoshi P for a while now. We just now got our promised Ishgard housing, but there have been far to many false promises, lack of content, and focus in the wrong areas. Making the game more single player friendly is good, but is that game at a state where it is really needed while content is lacking in so many other areas?

[Novae]

Take a look at 6.1 MScionsQ.
It's solo friendly to the extreme.
0 battle content outside of a dungeon.
Was it good?
Not for me.

Enough with this BS, papa Yoshida. Do you remember FF14 is a game, not a soporific yt fanfiction?

[Kuritzkale]

An MMO promoting solo play is the opposite of good. This game is going to end up like WoW where a good chunk of the playerbase will become anti social mutes because they don't need anyone for anything. We will see an influx of players across all roles that can barely play their jobs, only pull two mobs at a time and can't function in endgame content when they have to join up with other players.

This is the real issue with the game becoming more and more focused on solo play, if new players are never incentivized/""""forced"""" to interact with other people, why would they? Why do people want the community of this game to burn down in flames so much? Do you really want the only servers where you can get fun and interesting interactions with other people to be the few servers known for RP like in wow? Not to mention the people playing solo aren't going to stick around for any extended period of time, and regardless of what your god savior (creepy parasocial daddy) yoshi-p says, MMOs NEED to keep people subscribed in order to survive. At least the community is (for now at least) keeping certain social aspects unique to MMOs alive with their RP nightclubs or prostitution lounges or whatever. Guess we'll see how long that lasts.

[katz_brez]

You can turn effects down or off... I would hope you realized that after playing the game 11 years.

The other player's effects, sure. But not the boss's (for the most part).

(I'm not sure if the boss effects were the ones OP meant, but the point stands either way.)

[Ronduwil]

This is the real issue with the game becoming more and more focused on solo play, if new players are never incentivized/""""forced"""" to interact with other people, why would they?

Because most people are inherently social. If players have to be incentivized and forced to interact with you specifically, then that's a personal problem that you may need to work to solve. If you're pleasant in your online interactions with others, they will naturally interact with you without SE having to step in and guide them to you by the hand like a preschool teacher trying to get a couple of toddlers to play nice with each other. MMOs should facilitate social interactions, not force them. There's a huge difference, and SE seems to be on the right side of that.

[Imoen]

This is the real issue with the game becoming more and more focused on solo play, if new players are never incentivized/""""forced"""" to interact with other people, why would they?

Because they want to? This is a silly argument, anyone that really doesn't want to interact with people already won't, doesn't matter if they are forced into group content. They will either be silent and run it (assuming no trusts were added) or they will simply not play the game. (Which trusts help avoid)

Not to mention the people playing solo aren't going to stick around for any extended period of time,

This part is simply false, we already have tons of people that have been playing a long time, playing solo, with no intention of quitting. Some of which have posted in threads about trusts. I'm not about to speculate the numbers, but what you say here creates an image of doom and gloom for subscriptions in an attempt to make it seem like it's financially a bad move, which it isn't. Even if what you say was true, they still came in, still paid money, and still played, this is a cherry on top of the money the game is already making.

I feel I need to reiterate, they are making MSQ mandatory content optionally available to run with Trusts (Duty support, w/e you want to call it). None of the side content thus far. We can have the talk again if they start trying to make Current Tier Raids and EX Trials with trusts, then I'll join the freakout squad. The MSQ was already solo for the most part outside of MSQ Dungeons and MSQ trials, like to the point where it constantly and frequently tells you to drop the party if you are trying to play with a friend.

Back filling the content with trusts achieves multiple goals.

1. They can revisit older content and adjust it if they feel it's needed. (See :The Praetorium & The Porta Decumana)
2. It makes the entire MSQ more consistent system wise with Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
3. It has the potential to be more welcoming to people that may have been avoiding playing because of the mandatory group requirement.
4. It's a step to future proofing the game.

This isn't even to mention the various other reasons one may want to play solo at any given time for both new players and existing players. It's not the developers job to make people socialize. It is however their job to maintain spaces for community to flourish which they do, they incentivize group play with first time bonus' and extra rewards (Chests / Tomes etc...), difficult trials and raids, among many other ways. Trusts being added to 2.0-4.x MSQ content, doesn't change that at all. It simply allows a space for people that really don't want to, can't at the time, or don't have time to wait, a way to progress MSQ smoothly without pause. Anyone that wants to play with people, can and will simply enter DF instead. It really is that simple.

[Xirean]

Only thing I really want from trusts is the ability to use them with a friend or two. I'd love to fill some but not all empty slots with NPC's.