7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

[ValkyrieL]

SE has already mentioned that they want players to be able to complete the story as a single player and has already made several adjustments to old dungeon mechanics so NPC can do them. Personally I'm NOT a fan of NPC been able to complete 8 man trials. I would say though that I didn't mind as much for Scions 8 man in Endwalker because it seems thematic and it was a 10 year journey.

My question is, how would everyone feel if 7.0 was DESIGNED from the start to be 100% done with NPC on mind? (Including 8 man)

I'm Personally not a fan of it, base on adjustments SE made to dungeons, they dumb down several mechanics so an NPC can do them. My fear is that 8 man raids would be dumb down as well so it can be complete with NPC.

[Saraide]

I genuinely dont think they are dumbing down dungeons so that trusts can do them. There is just no way trust AI couldnt have handled the elemental towers in castrum abania. We know trusts can handle standing in a circle. They can handle different variantions of the same mechanic. We've seen that in numerous dungeons already (dead ends for example).

[Jeeqbit]

I think that 7.0 patches will see MSQ trials given Duty Support, so it is pretty likely that 7.0 trials will have it from the start. We should find out at Fan Fest later this month.

I genuinely dont think they are dumbing down dungeons so that trusts can do them. There is just no way trust AI couldnt have handled the elemental towers in castrum abania.

I agree that in Castrum Abania it changed because many people didn't know the mechanic and never figured it out, so they would take an extreme amount of damage that other people did not or the party would wipe.

If you look at all the changes over the course of this expansion, you will notice one thing about the most extensive changes, which is that they make mechanics intuitive (aka obvious). They want a new player to figure them out immediately, instead of still being confused after the fight is over and dying to things they don't understand.

We can argue they should read status effects, and that was SE's mindset in Heavensward and ARR, but it doesn't seem to be anymore.

[vetch]

I genuinely dont think they are dumbing down dungeons so that trusts can do them. There is just no way trust AI couldnt have handled the elemental towers in castrum abania. We know trusts can handle standing in a circle. They can handle different variantions of the same mechanic. We've seen that in numerous dungeons already (dead ends for example).

There's definitely something to this.

Why leave Chief Moglin's 'knock these targets away' mechanic but erase Einhander's and Yeti's? Because the latter two required an iota of forethought instead of just flailing clumsily at it. Why remove any hint of strategy from the King Mog trial beyond 'hit everything until it stops moving' when it's not even Trust-compatible? Why delete Vishap's trial outright when it's long-since-past being possible to lose?

Some of the changes might be for the Trust AI, but others are just as obviously for the people new and old alike who don't want to learn or teach and get discouraged and annoyed with anything that takes more than one pull (or even just takes a while, as with Vishap).

But everyone who plays for more than the story still needs to do roulettes for alt jobs or tomes, so they end up doing these boring new lowest-common-denominator dungeons over, and over, and over, and-

Its hard to say as of the moment, a lot of the reworked dungeons from ARR are fine (thank god copperbell was changed into something more entertaining) [...]

Not even a little. Both versions of Copperbell are boring, but at least the old one was conceptually interesting and only ended up boring because powercreep made it piss-easy, not because it's 3 fights of the same phoned-in AoE-spamming slop and still powercrept to irrelevance.

Say what you like, but being overrun by spriggans and bombs, or having to interact with an object and exercise care with an add, or balance killing a boss with suppressing his adds, could have been great fun with some stat tuning to make it so you can't just ignore everything, and a perfect opportunity to hook new players into the videogame. They're all more interesting concepts than 'lol just dodge the orange floor and hit the thing'.

Almost every ARR dungeon boss we lost was more fun than what replaced it. Fenrir is the only one that was improved, because they changed no mechanics and simply made him a little more difficult instead.

If you look at all the changes over the course of this expansion, you will notice one thing about the most extensive changes, which is that they make mechanics intuitive (aka obvious). They want a new player to figure them out immediately, instead of still being confused after the fight is over and dying to things they don't understand.

Damn, it sucks that there's no other way to design fights than to have failed mechanics kill you.

[OperaMorgana]

then it would be the end of ff14, i started to play this game because it was an mmo, the problem is those people that keep saying they have anxiety with playing with other people, well, then dont play mmo, simple as that

[Zebraoracle]

I dislike the idea of taking an MMO and catering to the single player community. If you wanted a single player FF, then don't make an MMO. A lot of people play 14 because it is an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin.

[sagacious]

I dislike the idea of taking an MMO and catering to the single player community. If you wanted a single player FF, then don't make an MMO. A lot of people play 14 because it is an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin.

I don't like being gated in anyway so providing a way for me to pass gates is very good game play style. They won't single out the game and you can play with family and friends. Don't overreact ....

[Nebelheim]

If it becomes even more of a single player game ill probably spend more time in ff11 for a mmo fix and spend less time on this game.

[Kes13a]

I am not a fan of the single player direction, if I want that kind of game I have plenty, and none of those I need to pay a subscription for.

while the current direction is certainly concerning to me, it has not yet reached the point that it no longer resembles an mmo, but we will have to see what the future brings in. Yoshi needs to clearly understand the game is not all dolly dress-up and RP venues, some of us actually came here to play things with others, if we wanted a FF single player, there are plenty of offerings in the franchise to play solo, FF14 should not be made in to one.

[Theodric]

There's far better single player games out there to be enjoyed so it really does strike me as very strange for the game to essentially step away from what it advertised itself as primarily being - an MMO.

It's not like it has the sort of broad choice that single player games are known for with their overall narrative. Our character is given very little agency or ability to make decisions after all - and even with the move to a single player focus, I doubt that is going to change. FFXVI certainly didn't tap into the amount of choice afforded with the likes of The Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 3.

My best guess is that the game is just going to pander more and more to the crowd that essentially want a visual novel that tells them how amazing their self insert is with ample ship teasing even as more content designed to be completed with other players is chipped away at.

I'm sure some of the usual suspects will show up to downplay the problem but the more the game panders to venue goers and gposers the less those of us who want more than that seem to get.