7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

[Eorzean_username]

As far as Trusts, I like them a lot.

Or, well, I like what they make possible — Trusts themselves are pretty underwhelming (lol "We can't let them AOE or you won't play with other people" ).

But I think that the ability to experience the MSQ 100% "solo" is an excellent change.

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The fundamental issue is that the MSQ has always been ~90% "solo", and then randomly hits these awkward potholes where your Story pace is suddenly dictated by 3-7 other people who are really tired of doing this and just want to go home.

It's a bad clash, and the fact that Trusts allow players to keep the same wide-eyed, spectacle-awed, wandering-along seeing-the-sights feeling from MSQ start to finish is a great change.

That's why I also strongly-support adding Trial Trusts as well.

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Separate to this issue is that FFXIV's corner-cutting solution to problems isn't to rise up and excel at a new level of innovation, but instead to just amputate and break things until they're easier to deal with.

So at the same time that I strongly-value how much Trusts improve the player Story experience's consistency and atmosphere, I also intensely-dislike how content gets broken and remolded to force it to conform to the lazy level of AI that XIV's team is either willing or capable of implementing.

Basically, XIV's team trades out content potentially remaining interesting to veteran players in the long-term, for content that flows smoothly into the Story experience in the short-term.

Both goals are valuable, but coming at the expense of each other is frustrating.

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Ideally, XIV would actually do the grown-up solution like WOW, SWTOR, and... er... most other games do — implement easy versions of Dungeons for completing the Story, and then harder, more interesting, more complex versions as max-level variations.

Trusts are just fine for Story beats — "let's go through a Dungeon", "let's have a big epic Trial", etc. Pretty much RPG trope staples.

But once players begin repeating the content again and again, what Trusts can "handle" becomes a noticeably stale and repetitive handful of mechanical types.

If you split Trusts off into "first time Story content", and then created a second version of "The Real Instance" that actually shows up in Roulettes, it'd solve both issues.

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Personally, I don't really need to constantly be synced back down to Level 53 or 87. This is not enhancing the game for me. So I'm actually pretty comfortable with just letting NPCs handle "Leveling Roulette" tasks.

On the other hand, doing a WOW Mythic+ or SWTOR Master Mode or [etc, nearly every game has a similar system] type of split, where the leveling Dungeons become much harder endgame Dungeons once you complete the Story, would allow that content's layout and assets to not "go to waste", while also allowing its top-end version to be designed without needing to accommodate unintelligent AI scripts.

I'd love to revisit "real" versions of things like Toto-Rak, Sohm Al, Bardam's Mettle, Holminster Switch, etc, in — for example — Expert Roulette or Criterion at level 90, while leaving the "softened" Trust-compatible versions as Story/spectacle for people coming up through it all the first time.

[TaleraRistain]

If you split Trusts off into "first time Story content", and then created a second version of "The Real Instance" that actually shows up in Roulettes, it'd solve both issues.

Does that mean a new person has to do the Trust version alone and can't queue up with others instead? The whole idea of their MSQ revamp was to allow people to progress solo or with others.

[Eorzean_username]

Does that mean a new person has to do the Trust version alone and can't queue up with others instead?

I don't see why it would.

Trust intelligence is the limiting factor here, not player intelligence. (Remember that "effort" and "intelligence" are two different things; what a player is capable of is not necessarily what they're willing to do, but player potential for problem-solving will always(?) be more than a simplistic Trust "AI" )

So if you design all "Story" content to be Trust-clearable, then there should be no issues with leaving the option in to queue with other players — any Trust-solvable mechanic should inherently also be player-solvable.

The whole idea of their MSQ revamp was to allow people to progress solo or with others.

I'm not really 100% sold on these kinds of concerns, because it posits some Bizarro Dimension where the MSQ has "ever" been a friend-friendly experience.

You are of course free to differ in perspective, but I don't personally see "a good time with my buddies" as, "Spend 2-5 hours at a time doing completely solo quests and Story instances that are actively-hostile to multiplayer participation, and then sometimes blink your eyes for 20 minutes inside a static hallway of Trash-Trash-Boss-Repeat, but it's better because 3 silent people in Frog glamours and speedos are running next to you, then immediately get dumped back into solo quests and Story instances for another 2-5 hours".

It feels more like desperately gasping for some breath of "actual multiplayer experience" in a game that has largely never been about offering that to you until you smash into the endgame "welp, guess I used up the Story" wall that every MMORPG does.

There's a lot to be said for why that is a questionable design in a game labeled as an MMO, but it's the direction XIV chose a long time ago, and at this point, it's baked-in so deeply that Trusts are the least of your problems with trying to address it.