From MMORPG to SRPG?!

[Yuella]

For now, but they already keep in mind to do the same stuff for raids etc.

They have not

[ReynTime]

People who loathe the idea of paying a sub to play a solo game aren't going to change their minds anyway.
Trusts will be useful yes, but not in the way they think... It will help new players who want a MMORPG but want to catch up at their own pace.
The DQ team had the correct idea with using DQX Offline for people who just wanted a single player experience. What they do with XI and XIV isn't it... Moreover even when content is solo'able in XIV, the experience is nowhere near the same as a single player jRPG due all the design decisions applied because it's a MMORPG that wants to keep players subbed and still "respect your time".

Also the acronym "SRPG" doesn't mean what you think it does. SRPG is a sub-genre of RPGs called "Strategy RPG".

[Liam_Harper]

It's not a waste of development time when they bring more paying customers into the game.

In WoW you could reach max level solo, there wasn't a long list of mandatory story dungeons and trials. In ff14 there is and you have to group with other players. This doesn't appeal to the type of player who just wants to enjoy an RPG storyline, then mostly RP and mess about with glamour and housing as their endgame. FF14 actually has a considerable number of players in that category.

It really doesn't affect the rest of us, they'll enjoy the story and do their own thing and contribute to financing the game, keeping it running for the foreseeable future. The rest of us can group and do combat based content.

Also for those who are actually worried that Trusts will kill off roulettes and dungeons, if that ever happened it would be entirely on the playerbase. If running dungeons alone is preferable to grouping with people, then there's something wrong with general player behavior and it would be a bad idea for any developer to try and force players to continue playing in the more toxic environment. The fact that we need to push people to group with others is a sign we should behave better instead, whether it's the toxic casual "you don't pay my sub" and putting in no effort, or the toxic elite harassing a player over small mistakes, or rescuing tanks into mobs to go faster, leaving sprouts behind in cutscenes, blaming healers when you got one-shot or any of the other common DF issues.
If we want this to be multiplayer, then we need to make it a game where multiplayer activity and interaction is actually fun.

[KageTokage]

My only real concern about this is the potential for the RMT abuse and additional strain on the instance servers if they switch over to having four separate bots running trust parties vs. one full party of bots in their own instance.

[Illmaeran]

Think of all the GC loot boxes you'll get by taking all the treasure chests for yourself! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3


I believe the expansion to the trust system is going to be a good thing for the game in the long term. They're not going to be doing away with group content, and those of us who want to do stuff with actual living people will continue to be able to do so. I look forward to these as a way to level alt jobs at my own pace, without the pressure of worrying if I'm pissing off other players by being too slow.

Giving people the mechanism to 100% solo MSQ content can only benefit the whole player base and CBU3. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a substantial number of people interested in FFXIV as a game, but aren't excited about forced interaction. Playing a game like this solo but seeing lots of people going about their business has a charm of its own and gives the world a lived-in feel. I know I appreciate that when I'm the only one in my FC on.

[Acelyn]

I agree with op

For the first time in years I let my sub drop, the game is to aimed at bringing in players who won't stick around, just finish the story and bounce, there's more than a dozen other normal final fantasy games so why force this one to be like those, the best part of the game is playing with others, you don't know if you'll group with players who know their s**t and cruise through something or a group that's in low level gear and spamming one attack, single pulling enemies, that's the fun of it

If you don't like mmorpgs then it's not the game for you, I suck at CoD but I'm not mad at it begging for it to change or cater to me.

Honestly why are you paying a subscription fee to play by yourself? Feels like a slap in the face to all of the players that have let this game get this big, I've watched as less and less content comes, blue mages I ignored, but this last news just snatched the wind from my sails, when you remember that these devs are constantly harping how theyre short on manpower you know that the ones who are waiting for true content will be screwed.

I don't mind dropping the game, endwalker was a phenomenal end to the story for me.

[DPZ2]

My interpretation of the Live Letter:

"There are a number of [Japanese] gamers out there who've bought every single Final Fantasy game but haven't played Final Fantasy XI or XIV because they don't like the MMO experience. It would be nice to enable those gamers to enjoy the stories in our MMOs by providing them with the ability to run through them with minimal requirements for 'group' encounters. At the same time, many players who experienced Trusts in Shadow Bringers appear to have enjoyed that experience and have actually requested that it be extended to earlier gaming content; enough to make it worthwhile to do so, thus allowing both those who enjoy MMOs and those who've only played single-player JRPGs to experience the game without worries about major 'group' encounters. Hopefully those who prefer single games will enjoy their MMO experience and continue with it. At the least, they'll have played the game through and had a good time doing so."