Doubling down on "Playing solo" is a stupid direction

[DuskTS]

What do you need to do multiplayer for? It doesn't add anything to the experience. Personally I'm very pleased that XIV is embracing it's franchise single player traditions and I look forward to trusts in all story content 4-man and 8-man included.

[Shin96]

What do you need to do multiplayer for? It doesn't add anything to the experience. Personally I'm very pleased that XIV is embracing it's franchise single player traditions and I look forward to trusts in all story content 4-man and 8-man included.

Talking to other people and enjoying your time together doesn't add anything to the experience? Then why attaching a monthly subscription to a singleplayer oriented game at all. If that's the way they like to dance then remove the subscription model indefinitely and make it a once in a lifetime purchase. Including buying the expansions seperately.

[QooEr]

if theyre making the game solo they should change healer design to match it. as it is you only get enjoyment out of healing from actual players being humans and making mistakes. must be so fun to play as a solo white mage and spam stone from lv 4 to lv 90

[Blindheart]

Someday in the far future, ffxiv will go offline. They cannot run the game forever. When that day comes, they will still be able to release a single player version of the game because they are building those tools into the game world now.

This is a mistake they have learned from 11. I know i’ve read stuff about them trying to make other ports of 11 but those have fizzled out. Yes its still online but someday it too will go offline and it may be gone forever without major reworks into a single player experience.

[Illmaeran]

However, the general idea/direction behind it is just misguided. Am I the only one who's annoyed that me and a few other friends who decided to play FFXIV essentially have to play solo 80% of the time through MSQ?

New Game+ doesn't even give exp so I can't play an alt job with another friend on a new play through.

FFXIV is bad for multiplayer through MSQ, and the way to fix it is not "to make solo experience better". Please make MSQ more multiplayer friendly.

There's nothing keeping you from playing though the MSQ together except for yourselves. People have been grouping for quests since MMOs came into existence. All you need to do is be good about only doing the MSQ together and doing side content solo on a secondary job. Of all the MMOs I've played, XIV's by far the best suited for this since we've got access to everything on a single character, so you don't feel like you're wasting progress doing other things on an alt.

I would absolutely LOVE for NG+ to give XP equivalent to running the MSQ from scratch. Not only would this be a killer way of fast-leveling secondary jobs, it would continuously add new players to the MSQ and Leveling roulette pools. I see zero downside to this.

Yes, the MSQ could be more group friendly, but that being said, none of the other MMOs I've played have been great about their equivalent of an MSQ, as meager as they may be, group friendly. Early WoW was the best at this primarily because there wasn't an MSQ and the zone quest lines were the normal quests. As long as you and your leveling partner stuck together, it was questing as usual.

SE have found a new market in people who want to play XIV as a solo Final Fantasy game and are capitalizing on it. It's only sound business strategy. Adding Trusts, Duty Support, and other solo-support mechanisms don't take away the option of multiplay MSQ; they simply add another way to make progress.

[Jirah]

I’ve said this before on Reddit and got downvoted to hell “A community so good, that you can disregard them entirely”

And yes I agree. MMO are all about communication and FF14 has utterly lost that and is more like a interactive chat room/story

[Oizen]

Maybe they want to avoid the overuse of the duty finder to keep giving new players people to play with.
Especially with how new players from the launch of the game up until 6.1 basically never REALLY got to expierence shit like Praetorium legitimately due to players doing Praetorium Speedrun Any% [WR] runs to just maximize it for EXP gain.

I think its a fantastic option, especially for anyone who doesn't want to wait absurd q times, and its not like party content is going anywhere.

[Dzian]

However, the general idea/direction behind it is just misguided. Am I the only one who's annoyed that me and a few other friends who decided to play FFXIV essentially have to play solo 80% of the time through MSQ? And we eventually just decide to not bother and play something like Civ6 for our game nights.

It's been something many friends and I've said quite a few times over the years and others aswell.
"Let players do the MSQ together. it's an MMO people want to play with there friends.."

It'd only benefit everyone to let players do it. Those notorious bottlenecks you get in quests like "cold steel" where there's hundreds on players crowded around an npc trying to get in an instance and progress the story. and spending days stuck there.
Letting players group up with friends would ultimately reduce server load.. If 5 of my friends and I are all on the same quest.. thats ONE instance the server needs to run not SIX....
multiply that by x number of players grouped up and that could equate to hundreds lesser instances needed. and speed things up even for the player that wants to go solo.

Not to mention it'd be so much cooler to see my friends in the Cutscenes.. Especially some of the ones after you've done a dungeon where the scions magically appear behind you when you win, Wheres the friends I just ran with?? I want to see them..

In the earlier days players used to say that it'd be broken to let people group up as it'd make things too easy but even thats BS these days baecause you can dumb it right down to breaindead easy mode anyway and win.

FFXIV is bad for multiplayer through MSQ, and the way to fix it is not "to make solo experience better". Please make MSQ more multiplayer friendly.

FFXIV is bad for multiplayer full stop.. One of the reasons people can't do the harder content is not because its hard. but because the push on single player means they dont make connections or friends. so content becomes difficult simply because getting a group is difficult.

It's an MMO it needs to be an MMO, not a single player game...
dont get me wrong im all for solo friendly,, but solo focussed is just wrong imo. and is the cause for most of this games problems. right down to housing.... community housing, neighbourhoods, players working together and building bonds... nice idea but doomed because of the push to be a single player game

Personally I'm very pleased that XIV is embracing it's franchise single player traditions.

So where are all those Final fantasy traditions.. Elemental weaknesses, buffs, debuffs, status effects, diversity between jobs and characters, strengths and weakness of different characters, bosses and monsters.. Deep engaging battle systems.. All those other things you traditionally see in the franchises single player games... WHERE ARE THEY?

[Shin96]

I’ve said this before on Reddit and got downvoted to hell “A community so good, that you can disregard them entirely”

That's their definition of a community. Someone or something you can use when you need them but screw them after that. Narcissists the lot of them.

[Jaquan]

Talking to other people and enjoying your time together doesn't add anything to the experience? Then why attaching a monthly subscription to a singleplayer oriented game at all. If that's the way they like to dance then remove the subscription model indefinitely and make it a once in a lifetime purchase. Including buying the expansions seperately.

Yeah how many times does it happen if you don't have static? Let's be fair the dungeons aren't exactly filled with people that want to heavily socialize. At least not most of them. We get vets that just want to tick the leveling queue out of their "to do list" and want to do it as soon as possible. Not exactly talkative barely exchanging greetings and leaving ASAP. Not to say I didn't have some social experiences but they were drop in the ocean of just going fast.