Stories that focus on the individual should never require parties.

[Seif]

Difficulty scaling on the pt size from 1 to however many they can support please?

Monster Hunter 3 does this really well so why can't XIV?

I don't think a storyline mission should be a cakewalk no matter what kind of party you're doing it with but at the same time begging other people to do storyline quests with you is not only humiliating but also boring to participate in.

I hate the idea that thousands of players won't finish the storyline not because of their skill level but because of the arbitrary limits placed on it by bad game design.

Scaling is not that hard because in instances SE controls the amount of enemies and participants without any random elements.

Instances take away a lot of emergent gameplay possibilities but the upside of instances should be utilized too.

[Eard]

star wars: the old republic anyone?

game starts off with a very big bang and you(and tom and dick and harry) rambo all the way to the end saving the galaxy single-handedly.

but what's happening to it now? nobody complain about not being able to do the story, they just quietly leave the game.

what went wrong?

its just a game, not a mmorpg

[Esk]

The Job quests make little sense in regards to group quests.
They are about you being the hero, so they should let you be the hero alone, their aren't a handful of people who help the BRD guy overcome his issues, its you..

IMO they should have a lot of story content and quests for you, if they are going your the hero style story, over the your one of the hero's style.

Both solo and group are needed in a mmo, so why can't they have both types running alone side each other?
Why do people seem so focused on applying the failed logic of have one or the other to it.
We Can And Should Have Both!

star wars: the old republic anyone?

game starts off with a very big bang and you(and tom and dick and harry) rambo all the way to the end saving the galaxy single-handedly.

but what's happening to it now? nobody complain about not being able to do the story, they just quietly leave the game.

what went wrong?

its just a game, not a mmorpg

I've not got around to SWToR yet, but I'll agree my interest was the story as the game appeared to be hugely lacking in some areas.

But lets see.. What a mmo can do that is group focused:
- Group story content.
- Actually having enough end game objectives/instances.
- Group Dungeons.
- Group Crafting.
- Guild/LS/Company based quests/content.
- Group Achievements.
- Chocobo Racing.
- Group Mini Games.

And solo we could have:
- Multiple Storyline's.
- Solo challenges.
- Area style quests/challenge.
- Achievements.
- Chocobo Racing.
- Mini Games.
- LS/Company based quests/content.

Some of the content should cross from solo to group and group to solo but not heavy story related content, but the more challenge based content..
But a lot or even most shouldn't, you should be able to chose to play solo or in a group.

Having great and lots of solo content isn't a bad thing, as long as you have the same and more Group.
Ok at least 50% of the games End content should be group focused imo, it is an mmo.

But what reason is their not to have a lot of good solo content along side the great group content?

[Yellow]

I have to agree to some extent.

I'm completely for group involvement... but not at the expense of sitting in Ul'dah for 4 hours and to not get a group.

I don't want to do a leve. I want to freaking progress in my story.

See group content is only successful as long as there are people who are willing to help others who haven't done it, or enough people who haven't done it to make a group.

It's easy for most of you guys to find groups because you're usually all on in US (assuming most of you are American) time.

How people in different timezones generally log on when there's hardly anyone else on.. so how is it fair for us to miss out?

I don't want content to be easier -- so don't mistake me for some 'solo play casual' that I see happening a lot.

I'm just getting sick of waiting hours in Ul'dah with a bunch of lazy players sitting around me complaining they have nothing to do. Not to mention 2 nights ago I finally formed a party after 3 hours of waiting, I get to Natalan, we wipe in the first couple of minutes (party problems) and then some guy leaves.

This is not enjoyable or fun. To those who say 'Get your LS to help', uhh I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on spamming my LS for assistance as well as the fact that not everyone is in a LS that has people who are willing to help.

I'm always stuck with Japanese players who most of the time do not want anything to do with me because I don't speak their language (I try as hard as I can with the Auto translate feature, and It's not like I'm rude...) 'JP ONRY'


I feel like there has been a huge change in the game. When I first started playing, I could walk into Gridania and have a level 50 ask me if I need any help. Now I need to sit amongst groups of level 50s running in circles in Ul'dah spamming /shout until someone pities me enough to help.


(this is before 2.0 .. there is no freaking way I'm waiting for 2.0 to finally get AF gear...)

[giolli]

If anything, you have three pillars of content...

Top Tier - These are your full party raids and instances. These off the most lucrative rewards. Currently this includes, Ifrit, Moogle, Garuda, AV, CC, Hamlet, Darkhold, Company, AF and Relic Weapons.

Middle Tier - This is content that will at least require light party to complete. The rewards will won't be a awesome as Top Tier, but they'll still be worth completing for many players. Currently this includes most NMs, Dzemael, strongholds.

Bottom Tier - This is solo content or content that may require an additional player. It is the most accessible and rewards are "sufficient". Currently this includes seal farming, gil farming, levequests.

Yoshi talks about his 3 pillars that make it an MMO and that you need it balanced in order for it to stand. The content that makes up a MMO is no different... you need a balance of Bottom, Middle and Top Tier content. Too much on the bottom, and the game won't be of interest to anyone (not even casuals!). Too much on Top, and you really alienate casuals (your biggest audience!).

Currently the game is very top heavy. Even middle tier content is relegated to seal farming (Darkhold) and completionists (NM achievements and items). Even Hamlet requires a full group - which is unacceptable imo. Something like that should be scalable.

Progress through your company should open up Top Tier content as it currently does. However, to continue through the rest of the soloable quests, you should not have to complete any of the raids or instances. I am actually okay with AF having a dependency on Top Tier content. I am actually okay with Relic Weapons having a dependency on Top Tier content but right now its just too painful in its current implementation.

Some people just want to play the game (could care less about the shiny rewards). In its current state, its just to painful to experience a bulk of the game. Hopefully this will all change with 2.0.

[Antipika]

star wars: the old republic anyone?

game starts off with a very big bang and you(and tom and dick and harry) rambo all the way to the end saving the galaxy single-handedly.

but what's happening to it now? nobody complain about not being able to do the story, they just quietly leave the game.

what went wrong?

its just a game, not a mmorpg

I really would like to see XIV storyline getting on SWTOR level first before being even criticizing SWTOR... So far XIV is far behind, so far...

People aren't leaving the game because the storyline was soloable. Lack of updates and unbalanced endgame/raid is also what made people progressing too fast leaving.

The storyline and leveling phase were extremely polished, and on the first months after release, everyone was really enjoying it. But then, when it suddently all ends, all you are left with is a huge "I saved the galaxy, I made my way to the top, what now?".

Dungeons (Flashpoints)? Raids (Operations)? It was fun for a bit, but lacked balance and raids weren't rewarding enough (lol at 8-mans giving the same rewards as 16-mans raids). Rewards stats were barely any better than Hard Mode Dungeons rewards as well. Itemization wasn't well made (crafting made useless).

Daily activities weren't fun. Once you were done with storyline all you could do is:

- Run Hard Mode 4-mans dungeons
- Do the only available raid (8-mans or 16-mans), once a week.
- Chain daily quests, all on the same planet and always the very same 6-7 quests (don't do this if you get loot in raid, because they're superior)
- PvP (if you like PvP)

I really got bored quickly :s

[RahJah]

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.

How do you take a boss fight that should require several jobs working together in unison (i.e. whm, blm, tank, DD, support jobs) and turn it into a solo battle? I played FFXI and it took me i dunno 350+days of compiled play time to get though all the story line through Treasures of Aht Urhgan, but when I think about it... how fun would those fights have been if I would have used my whm to solo through all the battle content lol. PATIENCE is a virtue. If the content is epic then its worth the wait. This is MMO, I say content should require party play.

The same people that want to do all the content solo probably can't wait to open their Christmas presents on Christmas day, am I right? lol just teasing

[LillithaFenimore]

You can see videos at youtube is you really want to know the story.

No offense, but going to Youtube to see another character's adventure kinda cheapens an already lacking story :/ No thanks, I'd rather exp it for myself on my own time, Op I agree with you 100%

[Kowen]

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.

I'm pretty sure you're referring to GW2 in particular since you seem to like it a lot (heck, I love it too!).

Even though it works really well in that game, and would be great for some things here, I wouldn't want everything in XIV to scale. I think having really challenging boss fights that require a full group is something that's very "Final Fantasy," and taking that away would also take a way a bit of that FF feeling Yoshida (rightly) feels the game should have.

I would rather see big fights like that create incentive by giving worthwhile bonus rewards to people who help, rather than scale down in difficulty for smaller parties.

[Goufunaki]

How do you take a boss fight that should require several jobs working together in unison (i.e. whm, blm, tank, DD, support jobs) and turn it into a solo battle?

As for the GC missions at least, don't design the fights to be so party heavy.

This game isn't exactly booming with people on the same quest as you yet, or those willing to repeat them again for nothing. Too late to change that now, I know. But if I had a plot that wasn't going to be around for long, I'd want everyone currently playing to have a fair chance at experincing it.