[Suggestion] Can we get a “Hide All Players” option?

[MagicPeanut]

i mean, i can't stop someone irl in my community from wearing something stupid or having a giant poodle dyed neon pink and puke green. i see no reason to enforce the same upon an MMO which, fundamentally, was created to be based around a community. aka a group of loosely connected people with all their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc. the ability to see someone's glam/char and think "yes, i want that, too!" or to see another and be like "i will never do that ever wtf". to be inspired by people and views you wouldn't ordinarily encounter in other games, whether they be offline or only transiently-online (a la darksouls, splatoon, etc). as many have said in the thread, why play an MMO if that's what you want?

why would you ask for something that takes away from the reason why most others are here? there are literal hundreds of thousands of games out there with just as much if not more customization that you don't even need to pay a subscription fee for. if all you want to do is hide -certain- players, such as the ones you've deemed gaudy -- then what you actually should be asking for is a proper, functioning blacklist system unlike the horrible one we have set up right now.

Yeah, cuz there's hundreds of games with this exact plotline, right? With these exact characters, voice actors, music, is updated regularly, literally everything. Please point me towards that game. I would LOVE to play it.

And I'm literally taking nothing away from anyone. Literally nothing. I'm asking for a feature that wouldn't affect their personal gameplay at all, period. It would only be applicable in the overworld. Dungeons and the like would be off limits. How, how, how, on earth would this somehow be detrimental to other players if I'm using it?

Everyone who does want to look at/interact with other players (including myself) can do so to their hearts content. And when you'd rather have a break from it, the option would be there.

And lastly, I've already explained in the thread multiple times that I mainly play for the MSQ (and other story content), not the social aspects of playing an MMO. That's why I'm asking for it. When I'm playing through story content, I want to turn other players off. When I'm not, I'll uncheck "Hide All." Have I explained it well enough now?

[Silverbane]

And I'm literally taking nothing away from anyone. Literally nothing.

Every change made to the game comes at the cost of a change not made, because the developers have finite resources.

This is an MMO and that's what all the subscribers signed up for and what most of them want.
Accordingly, investing developer resources to eliminate the multi-player part seems a poor investment, compared to everything else the developers could do with those resources (like, for example, develop more content).

[MagicPeanut]

I think you are looking for "Skyrim"

Western RPGs are hella boring to me. And yes, I get that your point was to go play a single player game instead. But that point is awful and dismissive of my argument. Not to mention it has been stated already multiple times and doesn't address the actual issue.

[MagicPeanut]

Every change made to the game comes at the cost of a change not made, because the developers have finite resources.

This is an MMO and that's what all the subscribers signed up for and what most of them want.
Accordingly, investing developer resources to eliminate the multi-player part seems a poor investment, compared to everything else the developers could do with those resources (like, for example, develop more content).

I seriously doubt adding a button to hide things on screen would take more time than modeling multiple hairstyles and faces or revamping a whole Job. Probably wouldn't even take a day.

[Iustitia-sama]

If you're playing on pc there's a plug in that does this. If you're console you're out of luck

[Amorzinho]

Honestly, i like the idea. The game is already very solo player style, with tons of instanced content for the Main Story that you can't progress as group, the only few moments you need people is for Dungeons and Trials
The devs are already alocating resources to address that with Duty Support, which been confirmed to be getting update to support dungeons even more dungeons and trials

We already have a in game option to limit Characters and Object quantity displayed, so they already have a code for a setting very similar to that, the diference would be instead of displaying 20 players, would display only you, expanding a little further probably is not that resource expensive, even with spaghetti code

[NitrogenFixation]

This feature would not affect server load or be difficult to implement in any way, it would only need to be client-side, just like volume and player animation changes, so all the arguments that it would be difficult to implement from a technical standpoint are faulty fundamentally. It probably wouldn't improve load times either because it would only need to be client-side, but it would likely improve hunt viability, jump puzzle viability, and MSQ progress so NPCs don't disappear when I take two steps from them.

It's just a matter of whether or not the devs want to allow it. We can already turn off various chat logs and choose not to see or interact with the ways people choose to talk in chat, there's not really any good reason to act like not seeing people's player models is any different than that. Whether you understand others' reasons is totally irrelevant to whether or not the feature would be useful to people.

People overcrowding (sometimes intentionally) MSQ NPCs is an issue that has been acknowledged and which they have tried to mitigate in other ways (like additional instances of zones that are heavily trafficked for MSQ). It's also an issue with jump puzzles and hunts and fates. I think it would be a necessity to force the client to show player models when engaged in combat because FATEs do have stack mechanics and flares and such, which would be about as taxing as it is for those of us with "Show names only when in combat" on. It would still be an improvement for people who prefer to experience the story and other content with minimal visual clutter, and for those whose experiences are actively worsened by massive numbers of people progressing through things simultaneously.

Acting like this is a totally unreasonable request is...really weird, especially when overcrowding in some areas is an acknowledged problem. It's very reasonable, and the problem that it solves (or mitigates, at least) actively affects the experience of virtually every player in the game. The improvement would affect a much larger scope than the many, many recent crafter/gatherer improvements, or the PVP overhaul, and it wouldn't be a very difficult change to implement, AND it wouldn't detract from ANYONE'S experience.

As mentioned earlier, the developers are already looking to make the story entirely solo playable -- "fun alone or with friends", according to the live letter back in February. Naysaying other people's way of having fun does not jive with YoshiP's stated current explicit goal.

[Silverbane]

I seriously doubt adding a button to hide things on screen would take more time than modeling multiple hairstyles and faces or revamping a whole Job. Probably wouldn't even take a day.

You've never been part of a large team that wrote a complex software system, have you? Nothing takes a day.

[Derio]

Honestly I would only use this option when a new patch drops so it doesnt feel bad when there are hundreds of people surrounding the quest NPC.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

I've played another MMO where all other player models can be made invisible while pressing the ESC key -- this was a feature mainly to deal with the problem of things being impossible to see when there's a huge crowd.
That seems to be a more reasonable solution. Personally, a feature that allows other players to disappear permanently runs counter to the entire purpose of an MMO.