Give ff14 a single player mode?

[Shneibel]

Has anyone pointed out that FFXIV already IS a single-player mode game if you want it to be?

Just don't talk to, buy anything from, or party with anyone.

it make that way to counter casual player being left out. Look back at mmorpg from year 2000, in every guild/clan or outside, the ppl who playless than 5h/days always being left out of the fun. With the new fix for guildlevel, it will support the idea of the game being a "casual friendly and those who cant play more than 3h/day". In other words you have the choose of how you want to play in this game depend on your mood more or less

[Seikninkuru]

While I love FFXIV it seems to be failing as a multiplayer MMO. So why not make part of it single player? They have the basic code, they have the graphics, they have the ai, etc. All they would need is a few more graphics, a new story, and some cutscenes.

Imagine an epic cutscene-based movie like expansion that makes it feel like you're playing a -normal- final fantasy. And when i say movie like i don't mean 40 min long cutscenes. I mean an epic save-the-world storyline with actual reoccuring characters that help you fight, backstories to the chars, in-depth lore, and LOTS of zones. The zones can even be instanced as long as they are somewhat new and creative (in order to prevent the costs of expanding servers or making them server compatible). The world is so huge that they could choose from different areas to hold the story. For example you might be responsible for liberating ala-mihgo. Or maybe you have to save the world from the threat of a dragon war. Or they can just make an entirely new area and have the story there.

I know it seems like a stupid idea for an MMO but think about how many non-mmo players it would pull in who might stay -after- finishing the story. Essentially you should be able to do the entire single player (30-50 hours gameplay?) with one job and by the end have that job near max. So current players would get to level up another job while experiencing the single player mode, and new players would be able to level up and get to end game without boring grinding.

Main point is if SE markets the game as a single player mode with a different name + 1-month free, they could easily draw in 800k+ new players overnight. And a large amount of those would probably stick around to play the MMO part afterwords.

It would also make FFXIV unique compared to every other MMO.

People seem to be missing the point. Yoshi P has said you should be able to play casually and choose to solo in this game. So I'm arguing that instead of having all solo as grinding and repeated leve quests, they create a 'solo expansion' that allows you to take one job max via solo through a deep storyline comparable to non-onlne ff titles. If you think thats a bad idea then explain why people would rather grind the same mobs for 40 hours over playing an interesting story for 30 or 40.

White Knight Chronicles is kind of like that(both 1 and 2) and it is awesome!

[Zantetsuken]

I'd rather they make a single-player FFXI sequel/prequel/spinoff first. (PS VITA maybe?)

[DantesAmore]

@ OP ... .worst .... idea ... in final fantasy history... worse then FFX-2 the barbie dress up fantasy... worse then FFXIII's LACK of RPG style play being a total fricken linear game... worse then putting Abysessa into FFXI allowing you to get 30-75 in 12hours and 75-90 in another 7hours lol... please don't ever become a game designer for MMO's that's the nicest way i could formulate my thoughts on this thread.

its not entirely failing as much as its in the progress of becoming amazing. there's a lot of mmo content in here still.. i've spent countless hours already doing most of it but theres still plenty to do. 24camps 64nodes, 19jobs, 33,850,890 SP roughly maybe a few sp off, 60side quests, 52 class quests, 11story line missions, 32NM's, 680+ achievements, 42 faction leve's etc etc it's getting better every update. if you actually like the game there's a lot of fun to be had in a good linkshell still.

P.S. can i have a dislike button now SE ... k thanks

[Sypherblade]

*puts on bullet proof vest*

I see your point.... but i dont think 14 will ever do this.

a good idea "maybe" is to make leveling up solo a 1 player "kinda of" game.

like 1-50 is almost just like an offline console final fantasy game

All the big dungeon parts of the story could be instance dungeons where you que up party members (players) who do their roles.

The option to group up is always available but cutscenes will never show your party members

players who have already completed story mode and are helping others with it receive AP as a reward (See below for what AP is )
further you proceed in the storyline, more areas are unlocked, cities, dungeons, etc

at level 50 have an good "end game" part of the story which is where all the end game features are like sky sea limbus etc etc....

this idea would only work if you leveled one character up tho..since the story wouldn't be repeatable.

idea to fix that:

1. Bring back physical levels
2. No such thing as class level
3. Armory level stays intact based on weapon
4. Learn abilities from gear like in FFT and FF9, requiring Ability Points (AP) earned from doing dungeons.
5. All equipment would require specific classes to equip them.

I know this will never ever happen...but could be a fun idea for future final fantasy

[Mireille]

People seem to be missing the point. Yoshi P has said you should be able to play casually and choose to solo in this game. So I'm arguing that instead of having all solo as grinding and repeated leve quests, they create a 'solo expansion' that allows you to take one job max via solo through a deep storyline comparable to non-onlne ff titles. If you think thats a bad idea then explain why people would rather grind the same mobs for 40 hours over playing an interesting story for 30 or 40.

Actually the idea of a game within the game is sort of interesting, but my image of that is something more like content for a small dedicated party rather than solo play. Something along the lines of a quest that once a group begins they are forced to follow it to its conclusion before they can go back to accessing other game areas.

I don't think its really a marketable idea though. Story quests in MMOs work the way they do for a reason. Having a more immersive story would be nice, and I don't really agree that MMO can't pull this off because they are multiplayer, and the player can't be the hero of the story because every other player has to be worked in somehow. If you strip the story/quest element out of the game then all you are left with is grinding a job, craft, or relic item to a predefined cap which begs the question why bother in the first place?

[Abauge_Goga]

Until that happens the game is a failure because it has failed to turn a profit which is the sole goal of creating a product.

Ok, I agree with this part, but from a stockholder point of view only. I don't see this as a failure from a player point of view. I am playing for free and I am enjoying every second of it. Everything SE has done since I started playing has been an improvement to the original state the game was in when I joined.

With this said, it is heading in the right direction, but changes take time. I am patient because i know it could end up as a great game. If it doesn't, what did i lose? Nothing.

I don't agree with your point on making this a single player. It sort of contradicts your post I am referencing here because a single player game would only bring profit at purchase. You finish the game, people move on. This is planned for 5+ years, where it would normally bring 10 times more.

SE is on the right path in my opinion.

[indira]

its already single player

[Azurymber]

i'm really surprised everyone is so against this.
All this would do is turn a very long solo-grind -that already exists- into a solo story-mode. Put another way, all it would do is make the very boring solo grind into something fun to do.

But I guess people who play this game don't like stories and would rather mindlessly grind on the same few mobs for days.......

And honestly maybe its the players who are holding this game back then. Because the most successful and most demanded upcoming MMOs out there are heavily quest and lore base (WoW, SW: TOR, etc)

Maybe SE's "unique" thing will be that its a 1 button mashing grind fest. I just never realized there were that many people who enjoyed that o_o

[Konachibi]

i'm really surprised everyone is so against this.
All this would do is turn a very long solo-grind -that already exists- into a solo story-mode. Put another way, all it would do is make the very boring solo grind into something fun to do.

But I guess people who play this game don't like stories and would rather mindlessly grind on the same few mobs for days.......

And honestly maybe its the players who are holding this game back then. Because the most successful and most demanded upcoming MMOs out there are heavily quest and lore base (WoW, SW: TOR, etc)

Maybe SE's "unique" thing will be that its a 1 button mashing grind fest. I just never realized there were that many people who enjoyed that o_o

WoW has never been an MMO that concentrates strongly on story. The story IS there, but you ask most of the player-base in WoW what the story is about and they'll reply: "Who gives a ****?!" and honestly, if you played through it you'd seriously wonder where the story is, all you will experience is: *quest, go kill 10 orc* *quest complete* *quest, go kill 10 goblins* *quest complete* *quest, go collect 10 flowers* *quest complete* and so on and so on. WoW is with quest grinding as FFXIV is with leve grinding. It's all the same thing, just with a different wrapper.

Though yes SW: TOR is apparently going to be heavy story-based, but we'll wait and see.

But wait a second, hold on! Didn't I just spend 6 hours the other day playing through the La Noscea storyline with Ren along with all the side-quests, and going all the way up to rank 16 Archery with it? Yes I do believe I did! And did I feel like it was a grind? No I don't think it was because there were so many cut-scenes and things thrown around that I barely even noticed when a side-quest told me to 'go kill x amount of crabs'.