Stories that focus on the individual should never require parties.

[Nix]

Gawd Ronboo you really are a sadist!! j/k XD

[viion]

I like how people are "noway i disagree", "should be party only!", "need to work together"

Yet if you guys didnt rush through it on day 0 minute 1 you'd realise people DONT WANT TO HELP! lol

You can shout for hours on end these days for AF Armor and it can take days and days until you're very lucky and enough people who need it build up.

Hardly anyone helps, its all LS Onry, Grind Raids/Hamlets Onry. And thus the people who have busy lifes who come late to the show get fucked over because they cant do anything. And more annoyingly cannot even attempt to do it with all these stupid BS restrictions.

There should be a difficulty scale, so you can join into anything, with any amount of people and the content dynamically scales itself. A lot of games are doing this and Yoshi has mentioned it kind of in recent interviews.

So I can go do the story solo, and at least complete it with no reward, but if i go with 8 i can get awesome rewards.

[Vydos]

Gawd Ronboo you really are a sadist!! j/k XD

A pervert and a sadist! The perfect combo XD! j/k (sorta...)
Don't make me come over there and eat the Radish! lol

Randomness aside. Party play ftw even if it gives me headaches and can be nerve wrecking to find one. Took me 2 hours of shouting before finally having a gentle soul take pity on me and help me fetch my monk af in some kobold mines.
Sometimes I wished that I could gather a group of people that like to help each other and are not afraid to tackle unknown things(without the attached drama of failing things).

Wishful thinking...

[Jynx]

people DONT WANT TO HELP

Who would have thunk that having friends or being part of a community would be a pillar of a great MMO?

But your right there should be a scale so I can plow through the MMO by myself, makes perfect sense.

*edit*

Noticed the bit about no reward and just find that while a nifty idea just hamstrings the content into being created to be scaleable and take alot of dynamic content away from designing encounters/dungeons/monsters.

[Niqote]

I am all for large group content (erm... can we get some 10+ man stuff?) but having a difficulty scale where you can go in with lesser party members is not a bad idea... being able to Duo or Trio some things might be fun!

[Nix]

I agree Viion!

Game time can be sporadic for me so being able to duo stuff with my husband when we're off work really does have its plus sides. I know there's some people out there crying for party content onry, but not everyone is so lucky when it comes to being able to scrape a group together. Playing a game shouldn't entail days upon days of futile shouting.

@Ronboo -- Radish still has bite marks! and yes, great combo! XD

[Kafeen]

If the fights are made for multiple people, then make the story match.

A lot of the main story says that a lot of adventurers have been having the same visions, etc, yet these missions are generally done by you alone. If all the adventurers are supposed to be involved then use the other players to complete the missions.

Conversely, Other quests, such as the AF quests make you out to be some selected chosen one, receiving some unique artefact. Yet these fight usually need multiple people to complete that are all ignored during any story events.

I haven't done most of them yet but did recently complete the BLM AF. I arrived at the final fight with 6 other players. Who all disappeared to show me walking into the fight alone in the CS, shorty to be accompanied by the 3 NPCs from the storyline. They then disappear so I can fight the battle with the 6 other people who weren't involved in the cutscene. After the fight, the other players are gone again to conclude the cutscene with the 3 NPCs who took no place in the actual fight. How is any of this supposed to make sense?

Its good to have content for both solo and party play but keep the story segments in line with the gameplay.

[viion]

Who would have thunk that having friends or being part of a community would be a pillar of a great MMO?

But your right there should be a scale so I can plow through the MMO by myself, makes perfect sense.

*edit*

Noticed the bit about no reward and just find that while a nifty idea just hamstrings the content into being created to be scaleable and take alot of dynamic content away from designing encounters/dungeons/monsters.

Scalable content takes nothing away, it does absolutely nothing. You design it for 8 people or w/e the max is then the Scalable just adjusts the Attributes of a boss and the mobs, That is all it does. Lowers the HP, Lowers the defense, the attack and such so that a 2 man people can take it on but a 5 man or 8 man will have much difficult chance.

You can throw the whole immture remarks about "MMO" but the fact is a lot of people are NOT playing like your community MMO players. Everyone is sticking to their LS and everyone else can GTFO.

If anything XIV is a "Get-a-LS-Multiplayer-Game", its far from a community involved MMO.

I have tons of friends on my Friends List, An Endgame LS and 2 Socials that have a lot on, but many of those are restricted to LS only stuff, even I am kind of by being in an Endgame LS, but it doesnt work out well. But if you shout you get no where because everyone else is either:

1. Doing it with LS only
or
2. Already finished it

XIV is FAR from being MMO Centric. I mean the amount of people who have completed Garuda as a whole is quite appalling and its impossible to fight without a full PT but no one wants to do it lol. Everyone got their weapons and its goodbye content leaving everyone else to "deal with it".

This kind of crap wont sit well with new players.

[Jynx]

I'm sorry I still don't get it.

Why make a genre that thrives on multiple player interaction and make all that interaction pointless? It's a crying shame that some people have a hard time finding groups but should everyone have to suffer?

You can't design a boss who needs to be incapacitated to kill if it has to be scaleable for solo, and in that extent who would even party if you could just face-roll the entire game because it's scaled for every single person to be able to solo it.

I guess people just don't have that sense of satisfaction that comes from gathering your friends and slaying a behemoth sized monster and reaping the rewards or watching your friends finally get past that slump. I don't get why any sane MMO developer would make their game less dependant on community interaction. Your just asking to get yourself compared to single player games that don't have to focus on anything but delivering a single player experience and then falling short on being able to deliver.

Multiplayer games are designed around being....multiplayer.

Single player games are design around being....single player.

MMO games are designed around being....MMO's!

If you go the "no loot" route then what would the point of soloing content even be? If you reward stuff like primal drops why have all the hassel of having other players know a strategy and trusting them to pull it. Why bother having any real hardship becasue you can just do it yourself whenever you want and get your reward. Christ only a handfull of people would party if that was the case even if the drop rates were abysmally low solo.

...I just don't get it.

[Nix]

If you go the "no loot" route then what would the point of soloing content even be? If you reward stuff like primal drops why have all the hassel of having other players know a strategy and trusting them to pull it. Why bother having any real hardship becasue you can just do it yourself whenever you want and get your reward. Christ only a handfull of people would party if that was the case even if the drop rates were abysmally low solo.

...I just don't get it.

The achievement! The cutscene!

Yeah we could look it up on youtube but it's not the same as actually progressing our character. I'd happily forgo loot on something if I couldn't gather the people because of either lack of friends online or people just not wanting to rally, to me the bigger reward would be getting a bit of character progression.

I'm not sure the scaling down thing was meant to relate to all things, just storyline stuff where your character is the main protagonist in the storyline, not you+ the 7 other chaps you're dragging with you. Through main scenario, GC and AF, it's just you, uno, one.

Raids I think should stay as-is, primals as-is, or have a solo fight that is loot-less but allows for the character to get an achievement for besting it and the cutscene -- leaving primal weapons and such for the full party fight. There are a lot of people who play the game for the story, we'd love it to be more MMO-Centric but the community isn't really allowing for that . . . it's hard to get stuff done, or motivated because you spend 8hrs shouting for something only to have people join but then leave because it's taking too long to set up the party, putting you right back at square one so you can repeat the process the next day. This isn't fun.

It's not about dumbing down the game or totally taking the multiplayer part out of MMO, to me things like raids, 8man primals, hamlet etc are icing on the cake, everyone should be able to experience the storyline regardless.


Sorry for wall of text. . . I'm tired and rambly