Trust should go up to trails

[linayar]

You miss out on a lot by avoiding group content in WoW. You miss out on story content, big chunks of faction reputation that would otherwise take a long time to farm, the ability to get to a certain level of faction standing because it requires dungeon completion and even being able to unlock certain races. And those races are not hidden. The first thing you see when you make a character is a lot of races that you cannot access.

So yea while you can get to max lvl in WoW without entering a single dungeon by avoiding group content you are depriving yourself of a lot, especially in end-game if you continue to avoid group content because most content at that point is aimed at groups. Going back to the whole "mmos encourage teamplay" thing.



This is because people still do them to get minions and mounts. Doing that has been a thing in WoW for over a decade. Before the lvl squish people could solo them easily but since then it's often impossible. Finding groups for that content isn't easy and even if you do if that ultra rare mount drops you end up competing with others for the loot. Before the lvl squish you could do it on your own without worrying about someone else taking the super rare loot. The lvl squish removed a popular activity players had been already doing solo for over a decade. This is why they complain.

EDIT: and when I say super rare I meant SUPER rare. You can do some raids weekly for several years and never see a mount drop.

Of course you can miss a lot by not grouping, but it depends on the player whether that's important for them. The game itself doesn't encourage teamplay either way. And the fact that it's a thing to go back and solo old content means you don't have to miss out on much unless you want to experience the difficulty at release or you want that group experience.

I see a lot of players, myself included, that enjoy the environment of a living space, and the opportunity for team play, in a massive large sprawling world, while also taking advantage of many classical sRPG features and situations.



I think a lot of hardercore MULTIPLAYER OR DIE people have extreme difficulty seeing that as something one might do, but it is indeed a thing lol. Also that balance does happen to also work well for those who are not particularly skilled (balance it so a really good player can do it, also means a few not so great, for whatever reason, players could do it).

On another note I also don't, on a purpose driven level, think it's important to enforce the same approach for every player. If you can get hard core players, medium core, casual, big group, and small, all get to enjoy the content, or at least 'most' of most of those groups.. That's honestly a huge win to me. I see no real great purpose to locking off stuff because 'that's the way it was'. Only for ultimate where literally the purpose of it is simply to "be the best in a group" do I pause and think "eh, maybe leave it alone and let it die if no one can do it". Particularly for myself I enjoy the group play, but sometimes given time constraints being able to do stuff solo is an absolute godsend (even if it's delayed far down the mountain).

In general I think FFXIV does this very well, and I've seen Yoshida describe it as a sort of mountain curve. (I sometimes refer to it as a rolling mountain). It's why I was hoping they find a good solution if their new level curve is going to indeed make unsync not as strong (like just making sure blue mage can still do it). WoW has (had-ish) this in some elements due to their insane powercreep, but I think FFXIV actually has attempted to facilitate the rolling mountain in more thoughtful and purposeful ways.

I think the key is that MMORPG is a multiplayer game, which means there should be content that rewards playing with other people, whether cooperatively or competitively. But how far to take that multiplayer aspect can be different from one game to another, and whether or not that leads to increased socializing is also another matter. I do think having required multiplayer content (or at least content that simulates multiplayer content like TRUST) during leveling and endgame (like FFXIV) is preferable for me.

[Penthea]

Of course you can miss a lot by not grouping, but it depends on the player whether that's important for them. The game itself doesn't encourage teamplay either way. And the fact that it's a thing to go back and solo old content means you don't have to miss out on much unless you want to experience the difficulty at release or you want that group experience.

You misunderstand. Those raids people used to solo are not lvling content at all. They were the endgame of previous expansions. They're not going back to solo group content they skipped in the lvling experience because it's not content used for or intended to be for xp gain. It never was. There aren't even roulettes you can use to do these old raids. They are completely irrelevant when it comes to xp gain. It's just like how savage and ex difficulty content in FFXIV isn't used to gain xp.

I agree it's up to a person what they do but the point is in WoW you will get to a stage in which your options are very slim if you want to continue to play solo at max lvl. The devs clearly want players to team up otherwise they wouldn't lock so much content behind teamplay. That Blizzard didn't even make sure that a popular solo activity would survive the lvl squish just shows how much they value solo play. Which clearly isn't a lot.

While FFXIV does force you to team up in order to lvl up your first combat class the truth is the single player experience in this game is given much more thought than in WoW.

• Their version of other factions to get reputation with (beast tribes in FFXIV) is often very barebones in story and have less cosmetic rewards than FFXIV. This has recently improved but it's still not on FFXIV's level. However some require group content to complete the questlines.
  
• The crafting and gathering can be done solo like in FFXIV but it can hardly be called content at all. You gather the materials with one button and craft them with one button. There are no crafting and gathering classes and almost no quests for them which means no story, no rotations, no gear and literally no brain needed. FFXIV has a separate character progression system for crafting and gathering, WoW does not.
  
• Class quests are something they had in Legion but it has been abandoned in the latest expansion and most of the expansions had little to no class quests.
  
• It is very rare for WoW to introduce max lvl story content that isn't somehow connected to gearing up for endgame, whereas this is common in FFXIV.
  
• Trusts don't even vaguely exist.
  
• Their version of the Gold Saucer is only available to attend during specific times of the month and the games there aren't as sophisticated as they are in FFXIV.
  
• The only form of housing is barely even considered to be housing because it's a garrison that has very little customisation. You don't even get your own bed. It has also received almost no updates since the expansion that introduced it, which was several years ago.
  
• You can't even solo old raids anymore to get glam, mounts and minions.

This isn't to say WoW has no consistent solo content that isn't all about character combat, it does have pet battles and archaeology, and I personally miss the pet battles a lot, but it's still not comparable to the solo content FFXIV offers.

I'm not trying to say WoW is bad. What I'm saying is that by focusing only on combat class xp gain and making WoW seem like the better game for solo players, it means ignoring that FFXIV has a wealth of content for solo players that is entirely absent in WoW.

A strong reason why I left WoW behind in favour of this game is because of the huge amount of engaging solo content in FFXIV.

So yea while WoW does let you get to max lvl with zero group content, the solo content it has in general is very lacking when compared to FFXIV.

[linayar]

You misunderstand. Those raids people used to solo are not lvling content at all. They were the endgame of previous expansions. They're not going back to solo group content they skipped in the lvling experience because it's not content used for or intended to be for xp gain. It never was. There aren't even roulettes you can use to do these old raids. They are completely irrelevant when it comes to xp gain. It's just like how savage and ex difficulty content in FFXIV isn't used to gain xp...

I understand all of that, but it doesn't change what I said because...

...So yea while WoW does let you get to max lvl with zero group content, the solo content it has in general is very lacking when compared to FFXIV.

... I wasn't really comparing the two games. My point is simply to use an example of a popular MMORPG to show how "mmos" don't necessarily have to encourage teamplay anymore. It doesn't mean that the game doesn't have group content, but if you want to play it solo, you can very well do so.

With that said, I will say something about this part:

[*]It is very rare for WoW to introduce max lvl story content that isn't somehow connected to gearing up for endgame, whereas this is common in FFXIV.

I would disagree with that statement.

Max level story content includes:

Max-level MSQ - includes mandatory dungeons and trials, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up (outside of TRUST) until you can solo them in future expansions.

Alliance raid story quest - includes mandatory raids, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up, even just to enter the instances in future expansions.

Trial series story quest - includes mandatory trials, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up until you can solo them in future expansions.

Regular raid story quest - includes mandatory raids, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up until you can solo them in future expansions.

Relic weapon story quest - may or may not require gearing, but definitely encourages grouping up for at least parts of them.

Those are, I think, the main max level story quests in FFXIV. Other side max level story quests may or may not require grouping up or gearing.

With WoW, it's important to note that dungeons and raids are not always required to continue the story. Or they may be required at the beginning, but then become optional later in the same expansion. So the only gearing required for endgame for story purposes is to deal with the scaling done to the open world enemies or specific quest-related enemies.

[Penthea]

... I wasn't really comparing the two games.

Really? You were the one who brought up WoW. Unless there's a different game that is the supposed most popular mmo on the market you're referring to that I don't know about.

I would disagree with that statement.

Max level story content includes:

Max-level MSQ - includes mandatory dungeons and trials, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up (outside of TRUST) until you can solo them in future expansions.

Alliance raid story quest - includes mandatory raids, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up, even just to enter the instances in future expansions.

Trial series story quest - includes mandatory trials, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up until you can solo them in future expansions.

Regular raid story quest - includes mandatory raids, requires gearing up for endgame and grouping up until you can solo them in future expansions.

Relic weapon story quest - may or may not require gearing, but definitely encourages grouping up for at least parts of them.

I didn't say that FFXIV doesn't have a lot of max lvl quests tied to pve progression I said that unlike WoW FFXIV frequently give max lvl quests that are not tied to it. WoW rarely gives max lvl quest content that isn't tied to pve progression. Don't confuse "frequently gives quests unattached to max lvl pve progression" for "gives mostly only quests unattached to max lvl pve progression" because they are not the same thing. I didn't say what you think I said.

Hildibrand, the quests that are chained to role quests, Doman Enclave and the Scholasticate quest line to name some examples of max lvl quests that are not attached to pve progression. WoW very rarely offers quests like this, FFXIV has in every expansion.

EDIT: just want to add in case anyone is confused, I support Trusts being expanded to msq trials, I just don't think it's going to happen soon. I think we would sooner see the Trusts being expanded to the rest of the 4 man content first considering it already works fine for 4 man content and there are significantly more of those to do than trials. And well we have no idea if SE even fancy the idea of adding Trusts to anything above 4 man, maybe we will see some comment about it in May.

[linayar]

Really? You were the one who brought up WoW. Unless there's a different game that is the supposed most popular mmo on the market you're referring to that I don't know about.

I did brought up that game, but you didn't quote the explanation:

... I wasn't really comparing the two games. My point is simply to use an example of a popular MMORPG to show how "mmos" don't necessarily have to encourage teamplay anymore.

I was using WoW as a response to your statement, not to compare it to FFXIV.

WoW rarely gives max lvl quest content that isn't tied to pve progression.

In one sense, fair enough. But I think that's more because WoW has more of a focus than FFXIV. But, I think that focus is more one-sided. I was casually playing WoW at endgame without doing much of the PVE progression. Just like in FFXIV, how much you need to progress depends on the kind of content that you want to do. But WoW didn't really have much of a MSQ until recently, and the MSQ in FFXIV at least requires you to progress to the point of being able to enter the last required group content in the expansion.

Anyways, this is more of a tangent to the teamplay discussion.

And yes, glad to see more support for TRUST. Although I do see the point of making trials easier to accommodate TRUST, but I think that normal trials aren't really for farming anyway, outside of being run in a roulette, and it wouldn't impact extreme versions. And it also depends on the AI technology, which should improve over time.

[Penthea]

In one sense, fair enough. But I think that's more because WoW has more of a focus than FFXIV.

I think it's more correct to say that both games do not focus on the same things. WoW famously pushes their high-end pve content as a major feature while FFXIV pushes their story content as a major feature. Both are valid. Neither type of content is better or worse than the other, it's about what a player personally prefers. There are players who enjoy both types of focuses and do play both games, they're just attracted to them for different reasons. Variety is nice to have. (and I'm quite disappointed that I still don't enjoy the direction WoW is going in because I'd love to have another mmo I enjoy to play on the side, I was looking forward to New World launching but that has been postponed D': )

And yes, glad to see more support for TRUST. Although I do see the point of making trials easier to accommodate TRUST, but I think that normal trials aren't really for farming anyway, outside of being run in a roulette, and it wouldn't impact extreme versions. And it also depends on the AI technology, which should improve over time.

I think the ai would have to be more sophisticated for trials for the simple fact that trials typically have mechanics that are more complex than dungeons and mistakes are less forgiving. Dunno about you but I have seen Trust npcs mess up mechanics by standing in telegraphs due to pathing issues. I think they would have to fix that first before expanding Trusts to bigger parties than 4 man.

And like I said there are significantly more 4 man msq instances than msq trials, so just for covering a lot of content it would make sense for SE to prioritise 4 man content first.

I actually quite enjoy Trusts when I want to do a dungeon but I'm in a super chill mood or I'm just curious to see what little bits of lore are hidden in them. I just wish the required xp gains on the npcs to lvl up wasn't so ludicrously high. But I suppose it might be like that because SE don't want players to rely on Trusts too much? It is possible that this is the intention considering they still haven't addressed that and it's the end of the expansion now. But players only need to complete msq content once to progress so it's not a huge issue and they're always available when you have a newly unlocked msq dungeon, and there are other avenues for xp when lvling up other classes.

[linayar]

I'd love to have another mmo I enjoy to play on the side, I was looking forward to New World launching but that has been postponed D':[/I] )

This has been a sad year for me as I finally decided to quit both WoW and SWTOR (and I was playing the latter only for story, but unlike in FFXIV, there is no reason to gear up or to team up, so there was nothing for me to do in between story patches, which are also not as predictable as FFXIV).

I don't really like PVP-focused MMORPG, which I think New World was supposed to be, though I also heard they backtracked a bit on that. Ashes of Creation also seems to be like that. PSO2 NGS might be worth a try, or this SoLO game I've been hearing about, though Gameforge, so ugh.

I think the ai would have to be more sophisticated for trials for the simple fact that trials typically have mechanics that are more complex than dungeons and mistakes are less forgiving. Dunno about you but I have seen Trust npcs mess up mechanics by standing in telegraphs due to pathing issues. I think they would have to fix that first before expanding Trusts to bigger parties than 4 man.

And like I said there are significantly more 4 man msq instances than msq trials, so just for covering a lot of content it would make sense for SE to prioritise 4 man content first.

I actually quite enjoy Trusts when I want to do a dungeon but I'm in a super chill mood or I'm just curious to see what little bits of lore are hidden in them. I just wish the required xp gains on the npcs to lvl up wasn't so ludicrously high. But I suppose it might be like that because SE don't want players to rely on Trusts too much? It is possible that this is the intention considering they still haven't addressed that and it's the end of the expansion now. But players only need to complete msq content once to progress so it's not a huge issue and they're always available when you have a newly unlocked msq dungeon, and there are other avenues for xp when lvling up other classes.

How do you feel about the TRUST experience in the Bozja intro quest? I think that was a good start.