FFXIV needs to stop accommodating Solo Players

[Lyth]

Redundancy is a feature of casual content. Even if one person messes up the mechanics completely, the rest of the team will still find a way to the finish line. Nobody wants to sit around and watch you prog Sastasha as healer.

The core problem that healers face is that there is little scope for you to translate your skill as a player into a performance advantage for the team, like there is on other roles. Pass-fail healer checks in casual content is not how you do this. It may make people superficially 'value' healers, but not for their skill. We can talk about how to improve this, but that's a subject for another thread.

I don't know what trilogy-based design is. Trinity design in this game, on the other hand, is just here in name only. Everyone is DPS. I'm sure that if they could have switched format, they would have done so years ago.

[IDontPetLalas]

Redundancy is a feature of casual content. Even if one person messes up the mechanics completely, the rest of the team will still find a way to the finish line. Nobody wants to sit around and watch you prog Sastasha as healer.

The core problem that healers face is that there is little scope for you to translate your skill as a player into a performance advantage for the team, like there is on other roles. Pass-fail healer checks in casual content is not how you do this. It may make people superficially 'value' healers, but not for their skill. We can talk about how to improve this, but that's a subject for another thread.

I don't know what trilogy-based design is. Trinity design in this game, on the other hand, is just here in name only. Everyone is DPS. I'm sure that if they could have switched format, they would have done so years ago.

There's an error in your reasoning - I would agree that a certain degree of redundancy should be considered in job and encounter design but that does not necessarily equate to the party will complete the content without one of the roles. This game is designed around healers, tanks, and DPS, it is disingenuous to state that "trinity design is here in name only" , I haven't played another MMO in recent memory where tanks didn't DPS , or healers didn't also DPS in group content in various degrees.

I don't want to be unfair, however I doubt we share the same view of a "performance benefit" and I would add that we likely don't even define healer "skill", and I would typically a discussion probably best left to the healer forums, where healer design issues have been under discussion for years - however it tends to be forgotten there..

[Jojoya]

For much of the MSQ, for example, the optimal (as in time/reward-efficient) way to play is to blast through it solo.

Optimal is the enemy of fun.

So many complaints of dissatisfaction and boredom come from those who choose to blast through content the "optimal" way instead of in a way that would have been more fun, such as playing with others even though it would be at a slower pace. They try to convince themselves that being optimal is fun and yet in the end they are rarely satisfied.

Just something to consider.

What is remotely “cooperative” about the daily roulettes

You can’t fail them if you tried, the tank doesn’t even need to care about the existence of the other players because they are functionally immortal, the raid bosses never have mechanics that require you to care about other players you all just collectively wail on the boss (myths is the worst for this)

If you swapped out 99% of players in this game with bots most people wouldn’t even notice

There is no cooperation in the daily roulettes, the only casual content that has any cooperation is field content and IR

There is plenty of cooperation in the daily roulettes, even if there is no open acknowledgement of it.

Ever try doing a roulette where half the group has chosen not to cooperate and stands at the entrance instead of helping to kill mobs/bosses to progress through the instance?

Those who actively participate are choosing to cooperate. Those who stand around doing nothing aren't.

What most of the daily roulettes don't require is coordination, which would be a different topic.

[Supersnow845]

^which as I’ve explained in the 7 points I’ve made since the single one you apparently read if half the party decides they would rather stand at the entrance and the content is still totally clearable (which it js) then you aren’t really cooperating with each other in a practical sense, you are wailing individually on the content with a vaguely aligned goal

Cooperation implies you are actually working with each other and work with each others strengths to achieve something, 14’s casual content is not that

[Suniva]

Cooperation implies you are actually working with each other and work with each others strengths to achieve something, 14’s casual content is not that

Hello again, new day! I have a question I would like to ask you, Supersnow845. You're a healer, yes? Could you, as a scholar, queue up in party finder and take on the whole instance by yourself? No help from the tank, no help from the dps, but just you and you alone? And no, I am not talking about using trusts. I am talking about you queueing up with three other people, telling them to sit back and afk while you solo the entire instance by yourself? Are you capable of doing that?

[Maltothoris]

Hello again, new day! I have a question I would like to ask you, Supersnow845. You're a healer, yes? Could you, as a scholar, queue up in party finder and take on the whole instance by yourself? No help from the tank, no help from the dps, but just you and you alone? And no, I am not talking about using trusts. I am talking about you queueing up with three other people, telling them to sit back and afk while you solo the entire instance by yourself? Are you capable of doing that?

Well its quite possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzsiQWjhRp8 Of course the sch was being very annoying but it can be done.

[Supersnow845]

Hello again, new day! I have a question I would like to ask you, Supersnow845. You're a healer, yes? Could you, as a scholar, queue up in party finder and take on the whole instance by yourself? No help from the tank, no help from the dps, but just you and you alone? And no, I am not talking about using trusts. I am talking about you queueing up with three other people, telling them to sit back and afk while you solo the entire instance by yourself? Are you capable of doing that?

In a lot of the current dungeons the answer would be yes because of the pitiful damage the content puts out but that’s not really the point I’m making.

If I queue into the content and we all run forward from that moment till the moment the dungeon ends I as the SCH don’t have to care about anyone else, the tank doesn’t need me, the DPS don’t care if I’m a physick bot or doing twice their DPS, I don’t have to care that the DPS is trash, I don’t have to care to hat the tank is doing, if they can’t hold mobs they barely do any damage anyway and mobs no longer cancel casts if they hit me. The tank no longer has to meter CD’s because they have cost less CD’s on tiny CD’s so their other mitigations become fluff and the healers heals are just there, this also removes the DPS needing to be decent to not exhaust the healers/tanks

If I queue in and literally don’t have to care about anyone else in the instance for the duration of the instance because we don’t have to I don’t see that as cooperating with anyone

[Suniva]

I thank you for the incredibly toxic sch video, but the video only shows the sch handling trash mobs, while being a class A ickwad. Doesn't show him/her doing the boss at all, so my question isn't exactly answered.

[Maltothoris]

Well the thing is the mobs are more dangerous than the bosses for the most part in dungeon. Take the final boss of that dungeon from the video, doesn't do a single tank buster.

[Suniva]

If I queue in and literally don’t have to care about anyone else in the instance for the duration of the instance because we don’t have to I don’t see that as cooperating with anyone

I still feel like you want to change the definition of what cooperation means, and like Jojoya said, you seem to be arguing about coordination more so than cooperation.

co·​or·​di·​na·​tion

"The process of organizing people or groups so that they work together properly and well.

There is cooperation, which again basically means working together toward a common goal, and then there is coordination, which means organizing people to work well together. I think what you are saying is that in roulettes, you don't have to be very coordinated, which I think we can all, mostly, agree that that is a fair statement compared to the other content available, but in roulettes, it is much easier, and faster, if you cooperate together to complete the task in front of you. Sorry if I am repeating myself or being pedantic. I just really feel like you are confusing the two definitions.