Is anyone else fed up with the single player trend of FF14?

[Saefinn]

On the other hand, I am playing for the interaction. It's weird there are many people coming up with "It's an MMO, but it does not have to be multiplayer". What the heck is that contradictory nonsense? Are these the "vegan burger" and "vegan sausage" tofu eaters of the online gaming world?

If the game keeps enough people in the Duty Roulettes I am fine, but Squeenix really need to find the balance lopsided on the multiplayer part. Playing with bots is absolutely unsatisfying. It was a blast to play with bots in UT99, but now it's not.

Not sure what you guys want. You share your life online on several platforms, pictures of your food, yourself, your pets, your vacations and post on the forums to share with others. But ingame you suddenly turn 180°. What is that schizophrenic attitude all about?

I know the OP is a troll, but you're normally a serious poster, so I'm gonna assume you're not joining the troll here.

I feel the flaw is perhaps that MMO's whilst they are multiplayer but not in the same sense it is playing multiplayer in Unreal Tournament (as you've referenced), or for that matter Call of Duty, Team Fortress, PUBG and so on. And there are multiplayer games that give plenty of room for single player play too, like Minecraft, ARK, Terraria and so on, but these aren't apt as comparisons.

MMO's I feel have many faces to them. Some tasks or activities may not be group content. In XIV this is mostly story stuff and side quests. But two points on this, MMO's are a type of game where you might log in and may not want to do something social or with a group. So in comparison to other games, it's playing Single Player mode of Call of Duty, in Minecraft, it's running a solo game. In an MMO setting, that could be side quests you can do casually in your own time.

And I think story stuff is where it gets the most 'single player' in this game. Personally? I think they've found a good balance for it. ARR felt like they were learning their balance, but I think they've got it. Sure it gets broken up by group content, but group content is all a part of the experience and the most I've felt this whole experience is in Shadowbringers, each dungeon you do could plausibly be done as though you're in a group with other adventurers and not only that but felt important or integral to the plot rather than thrown in and you feel the need to push through it one first run (now that I've done them all several times, of course that feeling is much lesser). And how they handled the last fight of the game, the transition was subtle, but it was effective. Where the explanation of having 7 other people with you blended with the story at the point.

But I don't think it is contradictory to have a single player experience for something like the most of story. Because the more you make a story a group effort, it can be harder to sustain the quality and the engagement. I've yet to find an MMO with a good quality plot that makes it a group experience. In places SW:TOR tried, but later expansions it gravitated more towards solo story experiences again (which we fun and cinematic). Actually FFXI, FFXIV and SW:TOR I feel have been the strongest I've played for story. And I don't think Shadowbringer's plot would have been anywhere near as good if they pushed harder for a group approach to it.

Yet, it's not contradictory because there are many faces to an MMO and not every aspect you do with other people.

And I get there's also trusts, these haven't been added to replace players doing group content because in terms of efficiency and how quickly you clear those dungeons is counter productive. But some may like it for the immersive experience of doing stuff with the scions, but it also serves as a good practice or learning tool. Say you're not a confident tank, you've decided to take it up in Shadowbringers or you're one of those people who used jump potions? You can jump in without ruining somebody else's run. It is also an aid should you be unlucky to find yourself at a time in the day when your queue times are looking really bad.

But it is no replacement even for a mediocre group.

However, your last analogy is incredibly flawed. If I were to treat it with equivalency:

Sharing pictures: I have a whole screenshot folder of stuff. I've shared screenshots of parts of the story I enjoyed. Moments I thought were fun to screenshot and talk about. This would be like me sharing photos of my vacation, or my pets and so on.
Sharing stuff on forums: we do it here, I share things on these forums none of you have participated in with me, I talk story with people in my FC and theorycraft and talk speculation and lore. It's a very social kind of bonding over something that's experienced individually.

The stuff I share about my pets or on vacation on Facebook (I'm not hip enough for Instagram) the people I'm sharing them with weren't there to experience it with me.

Even then, there's a lot of activities in real life we do solo.

So it's an equivalency that doesn't illustrated there's any kind of contradiction in having single player experiences within an MMO. Nothing about being massively multiplayer requires that every single aspect of the game is, nor is it bad design that it isn't.