7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

[IkaraGreydancer]

At this point I have 0 faith that they can create actual proper midcore content that can have longevity, you are giving them too much faith.

Define midcore

[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.

[Payadopa]

After XVI I kinda lost hope that 7.0 will revert anything back. XIV removes the MMO aspect and XVI removed the RPG aspect. Both are very stale to me at this point once the MSQ is over. CB3 outdid themselves to make me loose interest in an IP I've been following for decades at this point. Well done? lol

[Derio]

My guess is once they finish the dungeons with Trusts they are going to go back and make all the MSQ trials trust compatible as well. Then in 8.0 they will tackle the crystal tower raids to be trust compatible and in 9.0 they will go back and do all the side quest dungeons and trials. Then in 10.0 they will just give us open world companions for boss fates and hunts.

[Ath192]

I used to play this game everyday and get excited. I’ll be around for 7.0 but the direction they announced isn’t something I’m on board with. I will play the expac and see the graphics update because I really supported that particular decision but in my mind this is no longer a game I want to be invested into so rather than a live service I planned on continuously paying for and making my main entertainment vehicle now this is something I know I have to gradually divest off of and maybe pay a month out of the year to catch up on when I’m bored.

To be clear, that is not good MMO design for me, and this is not that good of a game anymore because of all these decisions. It’s an average multiplayer game with occasionally updates and a good one time play through game.

Also because of these issues I would no longer support CBUIII and Yoshi P to head the next MMO. I am not interested in that last MMO he has to build. At least not if they’re going into it with these sort of design philosophies. As much as I respect the CBU III team and Yoshi P this isn’t what I was wanting out of an FF MMO.

[tsuchii]

I don't mind it.
I personally loved Trial #2 in Endwalker. It felt immersive. I loved all the extra dialogue. I wish it was the same with Trial #3
When I do MSQ, I tend to hide the chat box anyway to avoid any spoilers.
This should not affect endgame activities since roulettes, extremes, savages, and ultimates still require you to group up with other players.

[IkaraGreydancer]

I don't mind it.
I personally loved Trial #2 in Endwalker. It felt immersive. I loved all the extra dialogue. I wish it was the same with Trial #3
When I do MSQ, I tend to hide the chat box anyway to avoid any spoilers.
This should not affect endgame activities since roulettes, extremes, savages, and ultimates still require you to group up with other players.

Basically this. This is why I feel folks are overblowing what's being done. The game isn't suddenly going to become some barren wasteland where most players play solo. All they're doing is adding options to the game to appeal to more players. (Which is good for funding and the health of the game). You'll still be able to run your savages, your EXs, your Eureka zones, roulettes etc with folks.

If that's an issue for people then I say I hope you find a better game for yourself.

[Toutatis]

I like being able to run MSQ dungeons with npcs the first time around. I can take my time, I like the extra dialog, there’s no one starting the fights during cutscenes (watching at the inn after having had the story spoiled is no fun) and there is no waiting in queue.

However, while the npcs can do the mechanics, their dps is horrible and, other than minion farming, I see no reason to clear more than once with npcs. A team of rl players, save rare exceptions of extreme incompetence, will always be significantly faster once you are in the dungeon.

For the non guaranteed untradeable minions, I wish they would noticeably increase the currently ridiculously abysmal drop rates during RL group content to create a further incentive for grouping up. As it is, the drop rates might be a bit lower with npcs but at least it’s a guaranteed win and farming with npcs is overall much faster (even moreso if you factor in queue times for running a specific dungeon). Rng can make some things take forever. .

[Elissar]

There're so many single player ff games
why are they trying to make the mmo one more single player oriented
just go play one of the single player ones if you want to play alone
like, what even is this lol

Yep, by trying to do satisfy every audience they may ruin every good aspect of FFXIV.

[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.