7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

[sharknado]

I just don't really know how many people actually enjoyed playing solo and how that could affect queues etc. Data center travel for example has destroyed some raiding PF in certain data centers.

Japan population is the oldest in the world, South Korea is aging rapidly, Europe has demographic problems. Most MMO players are rather old, often with family, job and whatnot. Kids tend to play different games, mobile. Solo experience with on-demand groups when someone has some time.

[Kes13a]

Japan population is the oldest in the world, South Korea is aging rapidly, Europe has demographic problems. Most MMO players are rather old, often with family, job and whatnot. Kids tend to play different games, mobile. Solo experience with on-demand groups when someone has some time.

what do you consider "rather old"?

[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.

[CStrife912]

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) but I think they need to just speed up certain boss moves cause the AI can move in time. However in regards to Trials yeah they mentioned its something they may consider but I don't think it will be something they will do anytime soon. They are clearly making it so 7.0 is still a continuation and not a new starting point unless this is changed and announced at fanfest. The further we get from ARR story/expansion wise the harder it is for new players to get into content...I don't see it as a bad thing to have people be able to single player early game stuff. In fact I would like them to rework the 4 man primal fights with ifrit, titan, garuda and leviathan maybe ramuh too because ifrit especially is a joke with how the scaling is in the game.

I don't know its too soon to say as a whole if this is a good idea or a bad idea...guess we shall wait till fanfest to form an opinion

[Lunalepsy]

The game is already boring. It's a solo experience at this point.

[TheMightyMollusk]

If it goes that far, I'll be taking more breaks.

Would be nice if trials had more incentive to rerun beyond "I'm a few tomes short of the weekly cap and it's faster than a dungeon", though.

[Raikai]

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.

What's even the loss there? Let single players enjoy the MSQ at their own pace with NPCs - plus there's two things:

a) Raids, Alliance raids, side story Trials are all optional content. I don't remember the stance of making the story accessible to single players extending to that part as well.
b) Even if they end up doing that, the Savage/EX modes probably wouldn't be touched. Plus, they could make the weekly chests available just with player groups for the normal modes, and it wouldn't invalidate the weekly duty finder queues.

Honestly, one thing I must say: I'd actually love (if in Endwalker's example), after patch 6.1 when it's outdated content, Hydaelyn Extreme being an exception that could be used with the Trust system, for the sole reason of offering a way to practice high end content. As a DNC/RDM main, I've been really wanting to main Astrologian lately to complete this patch's Savage fights (took a break and came back late), but I really don't want to expose a group of people to someone who didn't heal a single hard fight ever, and having a way to practice in such pressure environment would go a long way.

[Dzian]

What even is the game at this point?

It calls itself an MMORPG but is neither MMO nor RPG.

It's problem Is it tries to be to much. And has lost its identity as a result.

If your game is an MMORPG. Then you should build it to cater to MMORPG players. If people don't Iike that genre that's no issue.

No one ever picks up an FPS and complains because they don't like running around shooting people...

The same should be true here. If you do tike multilayer games don't play an MMO

If you don't like RPGs don't play an RPG.

[kcj]

I suspect that moving everything in the MSQ to single-player soloable would probably improve the game experience for those of us still new to the game. I'm doing healer as a main, and I can't imagine the frustration that someone who's leveling through story must feel at the que times....

[Kes13a]

I suspect that moving everything in the MSQ to single-player soloable would probably improve the game experience for those of us still new to the game. I'm doing healer as a main, and I can't imagine the frustration that someone who's leveling through story must feel at the que times....

problem is, as a healer "main" how do you expect to learn the wonderful variety that comes with learning how to heal with real people? personally that just boggles my mind. npc's will rarely stand in things...because they are designed not to. as a healer main, never had any problems with queues, so that point is not valid. dps yes, tank, kinda sorta.. healer... never had a problem aside from one time when in Endwalker a friend needed/wanted to do the neir series...