This game is on a terrible state right now.

[Ath192]

I would also say it's disingenuous at best to say that people wanted the game to be less MMO-ish. - I'll be frank with you, sitting in a queue for 25 minutes just to complete first-time MSQ duties is not an ideal situation, and duty support is an appropriate remedy to this. To spout this nonsense is the equivalent of people saying that those who want the game to be more difficult are pivoting for the game overall to be of savage experience. - That is to say, it is both laughable and disingenuous.

Not disingenuous at all. MMOs are meant for player cooperation. Putting Bots in to replace people is taking the multiplayer out of the equation. Even if you feel differently about it. Part of this challenge, to get other players to cooperate with you to achieve the desired goals is a staple of MMO culture.

There is a reason you can't do savage and bigger raids with bots, so when they add bots to 4 man dungeons, it is a dilution of this formula. No matter how convenient you may find it. This sort of thing is also what partly gave purpose to guilds and free companies, wherein belonging to one added the benefits of a pool of players that could help you and you could become friends.

[Shougun]

Not disingenuous at all. MMOs are meant for player cooperation. Putting Bots in to replace people is taking the multiplayer out of the equation. Even if you feel differently about it. Part of this challenge, to get other players to cooperate with you to achieve the desired goals is a staple of MMO culture.

There is a reason you can't do savage and bigger raids with bots, so when they add bots to 4 man dungeons, it is a dilution of this formula. No matter how convenient you may find it. This sort of thing is also what partly gave purpose to guilds and free companies, wherein belonging to one added the benefits of a pool of players that could help you and you could become friends.

I think that's true for older MMOs and their design but a very clear group of people developed around the time of WoW that were multiplayer-lite but just liked existing in a living game space. At this point I wouldn't say it's a majority or minority, unsure, but I can say its tangible enough that you consistently see across multiple major MMOs an attention to that group. Also why some people are mentioning Second Life since there is likely strong overlap into that sphere. Which can create conflicts.. "I want this epic player combat, it's going to be hard, we're going to have to practice for weeks, and temporarily it'll be stressful but when we win we will jump out of our chairs!!" another player: "I want an engaging story and to feel and look cool without being stressed, and I find that stressful". I don't really think either are wrong, though they can conflict. For sRPGs I think having difficulty options that you can tailor to your style is fantastic. Even with Elden Ring where it's a "hard game" technically secretly added A LOT of ways to make it easier, hard enemy-- find out they are weak to holy.. now it's an enemy you face roll. For multiplayer it's a lot harder, but generally I feel a rolling mountain helps.

Also why I suggested I think itemization might technically be backwards to how perhaps difficulty should be- currently your skilled players get gear that makes content less engaging and are usually stuck on that treadmill until X months, meanwhile content is either designed for the players with worse gear who don't have that or the players find it too challenging and it'll have to be nerfed. In many ways it still sounds backwards as I type it, but I wonder if it would not be better to make the harder gear have less defense but more offense.. and even add potentially other systems where the game recognizes players abilities (like higher chance to drop mechanics on more achieved players, not 100% mind you). Would mean horizontal-lite like progression but your level 80 casual armor might have more defense and okay offense while the level 80 savage gear would actually have worse defense but more offense.

Certainly it's a spectrum rather than specific labels on each type of person but I feel people who have the old school view feel like the title is failing it's purpose when in reality there is just a surprisingly large amount of people who want to be able to enjoy multiplayer content but also enjoy multiplayer-noise (which means it may or may not be multiplayer but that players do exist in the world space, like doing a dungeon with a group of people and all you see is "o/" "gg").

People who are more on the noise end of things may want to simply have a good "o/" or even less (just walking by someone afk'ing in Limsa) before they reset the next day, and not the fuss that goes along with learning a savage / ultimate. Then when they want to be with people they can simply take one of those FC shouts, or talk to someone after a hunt / fate.

Not that I'm opposed to the idea of multiplayer content or concepts lol, it is a major feature of the game and remis not to take advantage of where it makes sense. . Just that I think there are a lot of people who just want / need the noise and are satisficed at that. Personally I usually incorporate them as a stage at some point in ideas and try not to skip that step.. (given I love the rolling mountain at some point the multiplayer element will likely be 'optional', but not entirely always true- like when I suggest the FC hamlets and FC hamlet defense / stronghold assaults and FC vs FC type content).

[Kaurhz]

Not disingenuous at all. MMOs are meant for player cooperation. Putting Bots in to replace people is taking the multiplayer out of the equation. Even if you feel differently about it. Part of this challenge, to get other players to cooperate with you to achieve the desired goals is a staple of MMO culture.

There is a reason you can't do savage and bigger raids with bots, so when they add bots to 4 man dungeons, it is a dilution of this formula. No matter how convenient you may find it. This sort of thing is also what gave purpose to guilds and free companies, wherein belonging to one added the benefits of a pool of players that could help you and you could become friends.

Part of that 'challenge' is being sat on duty finder, or on Party Finder for 25 minutes waiting for players in order to progress in a mandatory facet of the game, and thinking that this is an abysmal design is an equivalent of players directly asking for a less MMO experience? No...

Let me put this in another way... If players requested more difficult content, and the developers' solution was to provide a disproportionately balanced raid like Gordias or Midas... Does this therefore mean that players asked for a tragically balanced raid, just because that was the result the devs elected to go with?

Players complained and didn't like the fact of how tragically inconvenient it was for a mandatory facet of the game. The developers came up with this solution themselves, and the reality of this is that this feature was already embedded in the game in 4.1 with squadron support. The only difference is that it isn't locked behind GC, and is eventually expanded to mandatory facets of the game.

Yes, the reason you cannot do it with savage and larger-scale raids is that they're an optional facet of the game (bar crystal tower) and not mandatory for the game's progression. They haven't even added them to the optional dungeons for that matter. e.g., Wanderer's Palace, Sunken Temple, and Aurum Vale.

[Ath192]

Part of that 'challenge' is being sat on duty finder, or on Party Finder for 25 minutes waiting for players in order to progress in a mandatory facet of the game, and thinking that this is an abysmal design is an equivalent of players directly asking for a less MMO experience? No...

Let me put this in another way... If players requested more difficult content, and the developers' solution was to provide a disproportionately balanced raid like Gordias or Midas... Does this therefore mean that players asked for a tragically balanced raid, just because that was the result the devs elected to go with?

Players complained and didn't like the fact of how tragically inconvenient it was for a mandatory facet of the game. The developers came up with this solution themselves, and the reality of this is that this feature was already embedded in the game in 4.1 with squadron support. The only difference is that it isn't locked behind GC, and is eventually expanded to mandatory facets of the game.

Yes, the reason you cannot do it with savage and larger-scale raids is that they're an optional facet of the game (bar crystal tower) and not mandatory for the game's progression. They haven't even added them to the optional dungeons for that matter. e.g., Wanderer's Palace, Sunken Temple, and Aurum Vale.

It's not the devs fault you are having a hard time finding people to do things with you. But yeah, I would argue that MMOs are based around finding people to do things with, and in my honest opinion that should be mandatory. Now, if this were a single player title then yes that would be super unreasonable.

As such, instead of the devs inserting bots I would argue the onus is on you to socialize and network within the MMO to achieve your tasks. Your view on this issue is one of instant gratification or bust, and to me I view that as entitlement.

[Kaurhz]

It's not the devs fault you are having a hard time finding people to do things with you. But yeah, I would argue that MMOs are based around finding people to do things with, and in my honest opinion that should be mandatory. Now, if this were a single player title then yes that would be super unreasonable.

As such, instead of the devs inserting bots I would argue the onus is on you to socialize and network within the MMO to achieve your tasks. Your view on this issue is one of instant gratification or bust, and to me I view that as entitlement.

You need to consider that most people progressing through the MSQ, especially early on most likely will not have made a sufficient amount of friends to network suitably in the first place. e.g., the first dungeon pretty much being within the first hour of gameplay within the MSQ. Most players will simply want to progress through the MSQ, try it out, and then do networking if the game is worth the time.

My argument is just simply thus that it is not the most engaging gameplay experience to be sat in a queue for an exorbitant amount of time when you're a new player still progressing through the game. If I were, to be frank, the ideal solution for them probably wouldn't even be technically feasible in their case anyway. But regardless of what you think to say that people who were put off by this fact of sitting in a queue were asking for a less MMO experience is again just delusional. Further, the fact that every single duty is instanced in this game is practically the antithesis of an MMO experience in the first place, which actually links to the whole "Sat in a query to do dungeons with 3 other people" - Is still not the most riveting experience. It's not exactly very MMO-like. In fact, it's so bad that the larger-scale raids over-rely on events on Discord.

The above is why, regardless, I will always find your observation to be disingenuous at best. You're welcome to view it as you wish, but the criticism itself is practically one that is very open to interpretation, and the interpretation that the developers took was just duty support to streamline everything.

[Ath192]

If I were, to be frank, the ideal solution for them probably wouldn't even be technically feasible in their case anyway. But regardless of what you think to say that people who were put off by this fact of sitting in a queue were asking for a less MMO experience is again just delusional.

Can I say that you just made that up, completely by yourself, then somehow decided to blame me for it, and acted like I said that all along? You said that.

While I do agree that it dilutes the MMO formula that's not my main concern nor did I blame that specific group of players for asking for less of an MMO. As far as I know, no one asked for those bots to be rolled out to the whole game. That was the Devs idea just because.

A large part of the population asked to nerf everything and their mother in here, and it got nerfed, making it less of an MMO. So yeah, people don't even talk anymore, just o/ and gg because the content is so braindead talking about it would be cringe.

The game still would be better if they devoted those resources to make extra zones they can release mid expansion with things going on in them. 100%

[Kaurhz]

Can I say that you just made that up, completely by yourself, then somehow decided to blame me for it, and acted like I said that all along? You said that.

While I do agree that it dilutes the MMO formula that's not my main concern nor did I blame that specific group of players for asking for less of an MMO. As far as I know, no one asked for those bots to be rolled out to the whole game. That was the Devs idea just because.

The game still would be better if they devoted those resources to make extra zones they can release mid expansion with things going on in them. 100%

You pretty much made stated people were complaining the game was too MMOish... Pretty much creating the implication that said people wanted less of an MMO experience. Duty Support is just the pretty much most applicable scenario to use in this case. If your implication was not thus then I apologise but it seemed pretty clear cut what you were implying with the statement of "Too MMOish"

In an ideal world innovation shouldn't come at the expense of other systems. And it is true, other people have been put in my shoes, and they incessantly complained things were too hard, too inconvenient, too grindy, too MMOish and they were absolutely rewarded since they gutted the game.

This is the only situation where your "Too MMO-ish even applies. In fact, if the insurgence of venues etc., was indicative of anything then it just suggests that people like 'Too MMOish, not less'

I would just rather they didn't release any zones and reworked the core gameplay. As much as I love this game, and its systems (I really do), it's just impossible to shake the fact that this is a co-op game masquerading as an MMO, and has been that way since the inception of the game, anyone will struggle to convince me otherwise outside of EM in 3.55b. You say the onus is only on the player etc., However, most people are in city-states because absolutely everything in this game is an instance, and an instance that is resolved by a simple duty finder, there is very little to incentivize players to actually network in the first place, most especially with respect to veterans. - It's very easy to say this when you're a veteran player, even I could say it easily. Not so much when you're a sprout.

[Ath192]

Duty Support is just the pretty much most applicable scenario to use in this case.

You said that, not I. So it's pretty indicative of what you think of this system.


To me, that is just one of the long list of things this game has nerfed to make the cooperation between players less and less relevant each time.