7.0 MMO to a Single Player Game

[IkaraGreydancer]

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

Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

[Post]

They've hurt older dungeons already. Things are different purely because duty support NPCs were unable to execute certain mechanics, or perhaps the devs decided they'd be too demanding for a solo new player to figure out alone, like throwing the switch on Keeper of the Lake's old endboss.

Regardless of whether we agree that certain encounters are thus improved or worsened, they are now different for this reason.

Where CBU3 could have implemented altered duty support versions of these duties for their NPCs, they elected instead to make the change for everyone, solo players and group players alike.

This design will affect all of the game's encounters going forward, and likely already has given it's been around since 5.0.

[AmiableApkallu]

I personally find it interesting that [minor EW spoiler?]

the Lv.89 trial

starts you out with a buff (which totally makes sense within the context of the story!) when done with Duty Support but not with other players. So, it's not as if the design team is 100% adverse to providing different experiences between Duty Support vs. Players.

[AwesomeJr44]

They've hurt older dungeons already. Things are different purely because duty support NPCs were unable to execute certain mechanics, or perhaps the devs decided they'd be too demanding for a solo new player to figure out alone, like throwing the switch on Keeper of the Lake's old endboss.

This is why I'm not a fan of making trusts for older content. Otherwise I'd be indifferent to it, but changing the old content exclusively because poorly coded AI can't handle it is something I'm not on board with.

[Ath192]

Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

It does hurt everyone. I’ll use an argument that has been used against me plenty here when I suggest a feature. That the development time could be better used elsewhere.

They’ve invested heavily into making it a good solo experience, imagine all the other things they could’ve done for the multiplayer experience if all this wasn’t going on in the background.

At the end of the day XI started getting these crutches towards the end of its peak and so I hope they’re planning on the next FF MMO as XVII. The changes would make a lot of sense if they are planning on transferring a huge chunk of the population to their next title. As it happened with XI.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Again, I'll never understand the hyperbole here. We have yet to see anything change or really effect the core of the game. I'd be on board with this if they were talking about adding trusts to things like Exploration Zones, Extremes, Savage etc. But this has not been the case. The solo peeps having their own little space doesn't hurt any of us. If they wanna run dungeons solo so be it. Let them. It's slower so they're choosing to spend more of their own time on it. That hurts no one.
If so many people are against solo having a space then that tells me there's that same amount who will still be here for group content.

The gatekeeping is mad weird.

It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

[Heroman3003]

It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

If anything, its harder with NPCs than it is with players, because everything relies on you to take initiative and nobody can explain things to you, so you have to figure it out or fail. Also, reworked all dungeons of past have been not dumbed down, but actually turned into something that teaches players mechanics. They actually use markers that appear in later fights consistently now, making sure people have opportunity to learn what they do early on, which is a great change. It's the very fact that those older duties relied on 'unique' mechanics that made actual learning curve so steep, because all that early content did nothing to prepare players for mechanical aspect of later content. Its still not perfect and you still sometimes see players running away with stack marker in some lvl 50/60 duties, but generally, I've found all the early revamped story dungeons to be much better at demonstrating specific mechanics in non-overwhelming way by having one or two per major bossfight. Isn't that what people always asked for, early content that actually prepares people for later, more involved and difficult content? And now its terrible because its 'homogenized' in attempt to implement consistent mechanics?

[vetch]

If anything, its harder with NPCs than it is with players, because everything relies on you to take initiative and nobody can explain things to you, so you have to figure it out or fail. Also, reworked all dungeons of past have been not dumbed down, but actually turned into something that teaches players mechanics. They actually use markers that appear in later fights consistently now, making sure people have opportunity to learn what they do early on, which is a great change. It's the very fact that those older duties relied on 'unique' mechanics that made actual learning curve so steep, because all that early content did nothing to prepare players for mechanical aspect of later content. Its still not perfect and you still sometimes see players running away with stack marker in some lvl 50/60 duties, but generally, I've found all the early revamped story dungeons to be much better at demonstrating specific mechanics in non-overwhelming way by having one or two per major bossfight. Isn't that what people always asked for, early content that actually prepares people for later, more involved and difficult content? And now its terrible because its 'homogenized' in attempt to implement consistent mechanics?

Because the mechanics themselves are boring. 'Boring' is not a word you want applied to your videogame. And it quite literally has been dumbed down, because unique mechs that used to require a bit of thought were replaced with the boss running to center and casting 'dodge this' or 'stack this', which requires none.

It would have been a coup to update the markers to convey the common mechanics better while retaining the unique flavor mechanics that make the fights interesting in themselves. Instead, all of the interesting older work was gutted and the fights made repetitive, because the game was already running on a skeleton crew and then they were given FF16 to work on alongside so it's all they had time to do. And it's still so forgiving and power-crept that you can ignore tankbusters and soak AoEs. What do you learn as a new player if a tankbuster marker appears for the first time and then the boss attacks your tank for not much more HP than he was already autoing for? Nothing.

[IkaraGreydancer]

It does hurt everyone. I’ll use an argument that has been used against me plenty here when I suggest a feature. That the development time could be better used elsewhere.

They’ve invested heavily into making it a good solo experience, imagine all the other things they could’ve done for the multiplayer experience if all this wasn’t going on in the background.

At the end of the day XI started getting these crutches towards the end of its peak and so I hope they’re planning on the next FF MMO as XVII. The changes would make a lot of sense if they are planning on transferring a huge chunk of the population to their next title. As it happened with XI.

I'm not hurt in the slightest. Nor is anyone I know. Dev time could be better used elsewhere. You only say this because you dislike it which makes the point go nowhere.
They've invested into both. Yall act like the mutiplayer side has gotten nothing when this isn't the case. Not even close. Oh they retooled old dungeons most don't care about. Oh the dungeon design will lack due to this going forward. Not like most give a damn about dungeon design when speed is the only factor that matters. Don't pull wall to wall and see what happens. SE has realized this and so they've made this move.
The changes already make sense without a new game being on the horizon. Why would this be the case when devs have outright already stated they want 7.0 to be a nice starting point for new players

It's statistically impossible to make a game that appeals to everybody. Yet CBU3 has shown to continue with the pursuit of futility. Essentially the only thing they've really succeeded in doing is dumbing down this game along with FF16 to the point it requires a dozen or less functioning braincells to progress in it. You could argue that is well and fine for the offline singleplayer title FF16 except they basically forced everyone to play the game on preschooler mode just to access a somewhat normal difficulty setting on a second playthrough instead of letting us play it that way right out of the box. In terms of this game the issue is that these people progress the game and MSQ while not learning anything about how to play the game or do mechanics then jump into EX/Savage content and drag everyone else down diminishing the experience for those that did learn the game as they're just dead weight hoping to leech rewards because they want all the shiny stuff handed to them while refusing to make any effort to earn it. The frequency of this happening increased when easy mode was added to solo MSQ instances. The only reason the addition of duty support really didn't impact this is because those people were already using others to carry them through the 4 player and story mode trials before it was added. They're now taking it further and homogenizing older duties that had unique layouts or zone mechanics that made them stand out from every new duty they've added over more recent years.

Sure its impossible to make a game for everyone. But it's not impossible to make a mass appeal game. Epic Games has done this with Fornite.
Also question, who exactly cares about these old duties? Because most player I see are "gogogo let's get this done" types. In SB and ShB I didn't see even 1 person taking these unique routes in older dungeons. It was whatever gets the group to the end the fastest. You call it homogenization, I call it them responding to the way most players choose to run dungeons.
How many of these folks are just hopping into savage n ruining groups? Because I rarely hear about this. Leeches don't get to do so without the rest of the group knowing.
That's on them to not kick these people. And the retool of these duties have reworked mechanics that do a better job at teaching than before which I'd think you'd be happy about but ig not.

[Semirhage]

I mean, they've been systematically ruining and stupidifying job design for two going on three expansions now. I'd say that affects everyone, since we all have to play these jobs in all content.