Is this game going to be solo friendly? or have you scraped that.

[Chezen]

If you want to solo, why not play a single player FF game? This has always confused me. IMO, make it so nothing is soloable, make this a group game, after all, it's online, that's it's biggest strength. If you can solo something, why bother grouping? Why bother chatting? Why bother playing?

Question I hear a lot. "Why play an mmo, why not a console?". I can only answer from my point of view, of course.

I do play console. And when I'm not playing console, I play mmos, because I like them and they are fun. FF in particular, I want to play for the story, not just the mmo.

My reasons for soloing are personal, except that I will say that I doubt I will allow myself to be part of an inner circle again. I have always and will continue to care about people very much, but I would rather keep to myself than put my feelings out on the line. I was always a lone wolf growing up, and I'm content that way.

I have no problem helping someone out, and if someone asks, I will help them. But for my own quests, I'd rather do them on my own than with strangers. Every once in a while though, I'll find myself in a very nice group, and certainly that is pleasant.

This of course is just me. I'm sure there are many, many reasons why someone might solo. I was actually rather surprised at how many Japanese respondents to the poll wanted solo content. In any case, companies make that kind of content available because it's a sizable group demographic.

But as I said earlier, although I appreciate soloble content, I don't expect mmos to really cater to it. I just appreciate whatever content they put out there, and have fun in my own little corner of it.

[zaviermhigo]

I just have to say again that while people do want to solo, this was the party based gamers last hope of a party based game unless they wanted to go back to FFXI (which most can't, I can't stomach it, I watched a blm get from 1-85 in 8 days), while they should have a game that has solo content for lower levels (ffxi at level 10 go party, was a lil harsh for some), this whole game should not be soloable, the majority of leveling should not be soloable, that isn't an MMO, not matter what excuse you have. The WoW model of "solo through quests till you hit 80 and then do endgame with a group" is so lame. ALL FF games take advantage of learning your job or class over time. If you don't group play lets say around rank 30 and up, you don't know how to group play. The group play at this level should lead us to the group play at endgame. (that being said, it looks like endgame strategy will be......ZERG. LOL)

[Chezen]

I just have to say again that while people do want to solo, this was the party based gamers last hope of a party based game unless they wanted to go back to FFXI (which most can't, I can't stomach it, I watched a blm get from 1-85 in 8 days), while they should have a game that has solo content for lower levels (ffxi at level 10 go party, was a lil harsh for some), this whole game should not be soloable, the majority of leveling should not be soloable, that isn't an MMO, not matter what excuse you have. The WoW model of "solo through quests till you hit 80 and then do endgame with a group" is so lame. ALL FF games take advantage of learning your job or class over time. If you don't group play lets say around rank 30 and up, you don't know how to group play. The group play at this level should lead us to the group play at endgame. (that being said, it looks like endgame strategy will be......ZERG. LOL)

And it may yet be that kind of game.

I play this game knowing full well I might never see the end of the story, and that at one point I may hit a wall. It's my choice to make. What the devs do, I have no control over, I can only put out my one voice on what I would like, same as you. When there are enough voices, that's when things change, for better or for worse.

The bottom line for this particular game, SE never hid that they would be making it casual/solo friendly. They've been saying it for a long time. I didn't write a letter and ask them to do that, I just picked up the game because they said they were. I'm probably not the only one.

[Xatsh]

Square never said the game was designed for soloers, they said it was for more casual gamer.

Which means it is made for gamers who have a limited amount of playtime.

Currently you can
1) Solo everything besides NMS, well you can do that too but it is not easy
2) Do leves in duo for no sp penalty, or do them in a large group for a large bonus.
-Leves can take 30mins or 4hrs depending on your playtime and how many you do.
-The party seatch system is designed to get in a party fast, Instant joining. (the fact no one uses it is a topic in another thread though)
-The teleport system allows you to instantly get to leves to start so no down time.

With that being said the game is extremely casual atm. ( in terms of soloability, and time constraints)

The game is also a group based game (it was never designed as a solo game even by the original devs), there is an incentive to group. This is what all mmos should be like, a mmo should never NEVER put focus on solo game play, it is not what the genre is about.

Solo game play should always be an option, but grouping should always be far superior.

[Sileface]

There is decent SP to be bad solo. I solo a lot and have fun doing it.

You should be fighting much harder mobs. I don't fight anything that gives me less than 300sp/kill. Then factor in the time it takes me to kill it, shooting for < 3min/kill. i fight new and exciting mobs all the time always looking for that golden egg. I die a lot but say, "I think I can avoid that TP-attack" or "maybe if I add this skill." Fight many mobs several times. Maybe you can shave 30-60sec off the kill time. Look for large groups of high level mobs that give you an endless supply. Right now I've been fighting Mountain Peiste in Coerthas near Twin Lakes (I believe it's called). It is a favored destination. At R40, I get 450SP/kill/2-3min. I have never timed SP/hr, but I would guess 10-15k/hr with me taking cigarette, drink, bio, and other breaks often (which I don't really get to to in a group). In short, stay away from weak "field mobs" that give crap SP. A level 50 Peiste and level 50 doblyn do not give the same SP. Challenging mobs give better SP. Also try Eyes, toads, and goblins.

I wouldn't bother with behest, not very fun or rewarding for either solo or group play. Leve, however, are all soloable, fun, and challenging. I have solo'd most, but we can't expect them to give the same SP when we are solo as when we full-link Dunes Folk. If the SP rewards were switched between solo and group play then most everyone would be solo and this would just be an RPG. You are not going to make 20k SP in 15min on Dunes, but it will be fun and challenging to see how many stars you can take down. There isn't a lot of content out there for either solo or group play right now, but rest assured they will add both. In my opinion, solo play is more fun right now but group play more rewarding (in SP at least). There is a lot of fun and good SP to be had solo, but you have to put forth the effort.

I think you and I have same play style, but you just haven't found the right places to go yet. The adventure is half the challenge. Isn't that why you are here? ^^

Good Luck,
Sil

[Noctix]

I think it's solo friendly. I'm the type of person that watches movies or listens to music and doesnt pay much attention to anybody.

I always get into the behests, if you cant go to a different region for them they're great for leveling and really easy.

Guildleves are very easy at one star if you're the suitable level, maybe you just dont have very good gear or aren't using your abilities correctly.

So far I think it's quite an easy game to solo.

[DeadRiser]

All MMO's are going to this casual/solo friendly thing and there isn't as much group opportunities as there used to be. I don't get why people would wanna play an MMO and not pay attention or talk to the others in game. Sounds boring to me but that's my personal taste.

[Shiyo]

When I want to play solo I play my psp @_@; I only solo for gil/farming/crafting, for actually gaining sp 20+ I always party.

[Burn]

I'm going to make a very long post talking about my experience as an MMO gamer that goes back until 1997 to present day and tell you exactly why FFXIV got into the trouble its currently in. The games i'm going to talk about are for comparison purposes only, i'm not going to say whether x game or y game is better and why.

I started with a free to play game in 1997 called Odyssey the Online Classic, it was one of the first popular online rpg's that featured quests, guilding up and pking, it was a simple game, it was widely popular. This was a game that was all about the pvp and not about the grind, it was unheard of at this very early point in online gaming. In the early days it was about being the simple game that anybody could jump right into and have a lot of fun.

Next came Lineage 1, I remember playing the Beta in 1998, the game was different, it was a huge grindfest that had solid pvp gameplay even though it was highly unbalanced and had some boss content, It was a decent game for its time.

I then tried out EQ and that just took grind to the whole next level, this is the game that was flat out ridiculous for its time, this game blew everyone away including me while I played it.

FFXI was the next MMO i tried, I loved it despite it being an oldschool type of mmo with a lot of grind, forced party play which was annoying depending on the class you played, the gameplay fit the time of the era, it was slow paced, leveling was a crawl for the longest time. FFXI had a certain charm about it even though it was a very frustrating game when things didn't go your way. FFXI was notorious for having roadblocks in place to slow the player down at every corner early in its life and this turned off a ton of players.

WoW was the next game I tried, solo'ing to the level cap was unheard of at this point, mmo's up until that point had been all about parties. Instances were a life saver at the time because all the other MMO's had contested content so now you got to experience the end game at your own pace without fighting the guilds over the same mobs. WoW elevated MMO gaming to the highest level even when a lot of people just couldn't stand WoW for whatever reason.

Various other games like Aion, Warhammer, Conan had tried their hand but all were pretty bad, content was a mess and some had way excessive grinding like in Aion.

Now onto FFXIV: It was released in the wrong time, FFXIV would have been a perfectly fine game in a pre-wow era of MMO gaming because the games before then were all about the struggle to the level cap, grinding through parties, extreme struggles to get your crafting to the highest while overcoming the roadblocks placed in your way.

This just doesn't fly in the modern era of mmo gaming, now an MMO is expected to be casual, focused on gameplay and not all about the struggle to get to the level cap. Modern MMO's are expected to be fast paced, challenging and have content for casual and hardcore audiences, FFXIV only has modern graphics at this point.

Right now we have a modern MMO interms of graphics but we have 1998-2003 gameplay and systems, this is hard to see if your only MMO experience has been FFXI because you're used to the old school style. Leveling to the cap should only be the beginning of the game, it shouldn't be the whole point of the game. FFXIV is now at the point where it has to find an indentity, Yoshida-san has the experience with MMO's to deliver a very fine game that is competitive for them against other MMO's and fun for us players.

Solo leveling is perfectly fine, heck even at a good pace is ok. People need to stop looking at this from an FFXI point of view, today's MMO's are a completely different beast than it was back in 2002/2003.

None of the games that follow the old mmo formula work today, people don't want games like that anymore and this is the exact reason why yoshida-san has been brought in with his experience of other mmo's. FFXIV needs the modern gameplay to match its modern graphics, you can't have 2010(when the game was released) graphics and combat + ingame systems be at 1998-2003 level in quality. This formula doesn't work anymore and is the reason why many mmo's fail these days, you have to adapt your game to the modern MMO standard which unfortunately didn't happen with the start of FFXIV.

[zaviermhigo]

But not everyone particularly wants to solo to max rank and then group together for end game, a good example being rift and how it lets people jump into parties no matter what actions the player is doing. Rift isn't the game for me, but I think that's a pretty cool system, it might not work in FFXIV, but they just need to find a way to make group based play appeal to a modern market and that they haven't done.