the future of the game and of DUNGEONS

[aveyond-dreams]

That core audience veers away from overly grindy and predatory games, not to mention the kind of communities games like WoW are associated with? lost ark want to talk to you then. the number 1 mmo launch in history. adn the hole game is one long rind. as for WOW players being bad ff14 players are not as ncoe as they make the self.

If you think that mainline FF players have been taken in by Lost Ark you are extremely mistaken. Those players are off playing other single player games, while awaiting the arrival of games like Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, FFXVI, etc. The people who are playing Lost Ark are *mmo* players like the WoW crowd and some FFXIV players who (temporarily) will tolerate its design structure until they realize how good they have it over here and bounce back to their main game.

you got a point but why i never see this people just ask. just say "i am new and can we slow as i want to see more of the dungeon". as i find more and more new players are as good as bots as they never communicates at all. so as i see it the more they push it to being a solo game the more people will not take part in end game. as it now force them to talk to people. but what i can for the love of me get is why play an MMO when you wan tot play solo. there so much better story in solo rpg.

Having played through the entirety of the msq and most mainline titles I can confidently say that Shadowbringers is a better written expansion than a significant chunk of older FF games, with Emet-Selch being the best antagonist of the entire series. Of course these players want to experience this story, it's what they come to the series for. What they don't come to FF for is to grind through endgame, and that is perfectly ok if they decide to not do that at the end of their msq journey.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It is great they are opening up the gates to people who want to solo things. It's more money for FFXIV because currently the people who want to solo things are not playing. Allowing them to experience a great Final Fantasy game without the forced grouping is a good thing for us and them. Besides, maybe the solo only people they will find out that they like playing with others and that MMOs are pretty cool.
My friend who has only played solo for a majority of the game due to anxiety has finally come out of her shell and is queuing for dungeons by herself instead of waiting for me to unsync her through early game dungeons. She went from a solo-only player to someone who now plays with random people and loves it.

Also, I couldn't give less of a shit that we're getting less dungeons. They are the most boring content in the game bar none. I remember back in HW when we had a lot of dungeons, and half of them were dull and uninspired. I do not know why people want to go back to the days of having absolutely pointless drivel like Neverreap or Hullbreaker Isle. I will take the new type of dungeon "Criterion" plus more alliance raids like DR/CLL/Dalriada/DRS, revamped PvP, crafting and gathering content, deep dungeon, exploration zones, housing updates, QoL changes, and another ultimate over mass amounts of mediocre quality regular dungeons any day.

Ah yes more money for ff14 which in all actuality seems to be shoveled into their other projects based on the downgrade in content we’ve seen since ShB lol

[SamsaraTrickstar]

If you think that mainline FF players have been taken in by Lost Ark you are extremely mistaken. Those players are off playing other single player games, while awaiting the arrival of games like Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, FFXVI, etc. The people who are playing Lost Ark are *mmo* players like the WoW crowd and some FFXIV players who (temporarily) will tolerate its design structure until they realize how good they have it over here and bounce back to their main game.



Having played through the entirety of the msq and most mainline titles I can confidently say that Shadowbringers is a better written expansion than a significant chunk of older FF games, with Emet-Selch being the best antagonist of the entire series. Of course these players want to experience this story, it's what they come to the series for. What they don't come to FF for is to grind through endgame, and that is perfectly ok if they decide to not do that at the end of their msq journey.

Shadowbringers whiting was top notch. but then end walker was not even close. Shadowbringers story worked as there was things we did not know. but after end walker even Shadowbringers have big holes now.
as for lost ark i don't say ff14 lose players to lost ark i say no mmo before launched in over 1m players and what's more don't start lose players in mass after 2 weeks.

Ah yes more money for ff14 which in all actuality seems to be shoveled into their other projects based on the downgrade in content we’ve seen since ShB lol

sadly but we see it from 3.0. thy just push it slow. less dungeons, most players take it. then even less. people are ok. then new races that are not as finished as the old one. peopole hate it but take it. now we at a point the cut dungeons over all outside leveling and first 2 of the x.0 patch and each patch be 2 weeks longer. next thing be even less dungeons , i see them cut the expert one over all, and each patch be 5 months (not its 4). this be on top of one more race tht got limits to what it van wear and hair it can use(female hrothgar). but people forget that older cuts so the take the new.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Ah yes more money for ff14 which in all actuality seems to be shoveled into their other projects based on the downgrade in content we’ve seen since ShB lol

sadly but we see it from 3.0. thy just push it slow. less dungeons, most players take it. then even less. people are ok. then new races that are not as finished as the old one. peopole hate it but take it. now we at a point the cut dungeons over all outside leveling and first 2 of the x.0 patch and each patch be 2 weeks longer. next thing be even less dungeons , i see them cut the expert one over all, and each patch be 5 months (not its 4). this be on top of one more race tht got limits to what it van wear and hair it can use(female hrothgar). but people forget that older cuts so the take the new.

[Raoabolic]

I felt like the 89 trial was really enjoyable and my experience thus far is that Trusts are better at running it than actual players in Duty Finder. Most fights in FFXIV are telegraphed well and have clear visual tells as to what mechanic is coming up next, so I don't think the game would suffer much. Being able to take on a huge fight like that with my entire party was one of the main highlights of this expansion's msq, and I would hate to see that be discontinued.

It's almost like the system was made to learn the fight at your own pace so you can run it competently with actual people when it comes up in your trial roulette.

[Kaurhz]

I don't think a 2 week additional time between content is really significant, especially if it is going to allow them to do the necessary checks and ensure the content is up to par, or to ensure that the content is fully developed, especially when you factor in that they're finally delving into variable difficulty dungeons, which is a great start. I'd rather a fully flushed out product than one that was rushed off the shelves because people don't really have a sufficient amount of patience to tolerate a 2 week delay in patches.

Nor do I think it is necessarily a bad idea for the game to work on elements of solo-play. Ultimately the game is a theme-park and should accommodate for as many players as possible. If it comes at a significant cost to the multiplayer aspect then that's something else entirely, but just simply redesigning their normal story encounters so they can accommodate trusts, I don't think is really a bad middle-ground. Personally, and especially when I compare the trials of this expansion at a story level to each previous expansion, I feel they've done a better job mechanically this turn around than previous. - Don't see why the fuss here.. If you want to play with other people then you may do so. Similarly, if you wish to play alone then now you're having that chance to do so. It allows players to take their time through dungeons or trials and take in the aesthetics, learn the basics of the game at a much more competent level, or even look at all the optional dialogues in the dungeons. Quite literally a no-loss situation.

Overall, it's a good direction, provided they don't take liberties with extensive delays, or provided that solo content play doesn't come at significant compromise to the multiplayer component of the game. Allowing trusts in story-based content barely even scratches the surface.

[TaleraRistain]

They're not turning it into a solo MMO. They're retroactively applying the aspects they already have with Trusts in ShB and EW to make all MSQ content 4-man content (dungeons and trials) useable with Trusts going back to the ARR. They aren't doing anything with 8-man yet so those will remain group-required.

They are doing this because when they look at the overall Final Fantasy audience, they find that players interested in Final Fantasy avoid their online MMO style games. They don't want gamers to do this. They want the people interested in solo RPGs to come experience the story here. So they are making that possible. But they're not making changes outside the base story. There's still plenty of optional group content that will be available for those who like the MMO grouping part of things. It won't be *everything* like other MMOs but that's always been the style of XIV. There is something for everyone here and they're really leaning into that idea more. I see this only as a good thing.

The people who are solo only are not going to mean less people in end game. Those people aren't even playing the game at all right now. If anything, enjoying the base solo experience could make them interested in branching out and lead to more interest in end game.

The patch schedule delay isn't that much. It's going from 3.5 months to 4 months. It's 2 extra weeks.

We don't know a lot about the Criterion dungeons except they'll be dungeons where the difficulty scales with number of players. I'm very interested to see where they go with this. It feels similar to POTD where it probably won't have strict role requirements but we're also getting an actual deep dungeon experience, too.

They even addressed the "getting less content" issue last night. There's a particular comparison slide that was very interesting for that.

[Kes13a]

i get all this its just dont cut it. why make an mmo in to a solo game for people that hate mmo's? we dont need more bot like people that we got now in the game. doing solo DF is really fun killing when most people don't care to even say a welcome. try to let people get in to the MMO part. and the fact the the game as an mmo getting more and more players show that people do not fear that scary mmo.
Given how strained the team has been since (the last time the take a big brake). i get it and in the same time dont care as it not my problem . just get more people to the team. you get the cash. this way people can take brakes more often. we know that some of he team work on thing in the free time for free. so how pushed to the lenites they are really?
we need to stop use covid as a reason it not relevant the past half a year at last and in the gaming industry was never.

you actually dont get it. adding more people will not solve your problem with adding TWO WEEKS to a release schedule. adding more people actually tends to slow things down. maybe if you are digging a ditch or doing a barn raising adding more people will indeed help speed things up. things that require trained people, actually take far longer since you have to train the people up, teach them the systems, make sure they know how things are done. the list goes on

so, no, you dont get it, in software more people does not equate to faster, quite the inverse in fact.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

you actually dont get it. adding more people will not solve your problem with adding TWO WEEKS to a release schedule. adding more people actually tends to slow things down. maybe if you are digging a ditch or doing a barn raising adding more people will indeed help speed things up. things that require trained people, actually take far longer since you have to train the people up, teach them the systems, make sure they know how things are done. the list goes on

so, no, you don't get it, in software more people does not equate to faster, quite the inverse in fact.

no add more people over time make things faster. yes the next 2 patches take the extra time but then the next 2 be on time and have more things in them. i know this from my work. i did train people (15 of them) and i know how this works. but if you take the extra 2 weeks as a given now (3 + month in the over all expansion time) next time it be 5 month a patch (its 4 now and we started at 3 +-). 1 thing lots f peopel forget or never know is that the dev team love to slowly cut things.

[Jeeqbit]

The story is being made soloable because a lot of people say that they have played all of the FF games except 11 and 14. They have not played them because they don't want to play with other people.

For the people claiming there is less content now than there used to be, SE very much disagrees.



All of this extra content needs to be checked by the same 1 person (Yoshi-P) who was checking it when there was less content. There is no longer enough time for him to check all the content and he wants to avoid his team burning out from the increased amount of work they do now.