Duty Support for MSQ Trials when..?

[Boblawblah]

Why not just turn this game into a single player game at this point ? what's next ? savage with "better" NPC's ? Ultimate NPC's too ? Where does it stop exactly ?

And yes, I can already predict the response "it's only for normal trials" but why stop there ?

If you're offering, then yea, I'm cool with that. People that want to be social can be social already. Do people really want to be grouped up with people that don't want to be social?

[Eorzean_username]

Why not just turn this game into a single player game at this point ? what's next ? savage with "better" NPC's ? Ultimate NPC's too ? Where does it stop exactly ?

Seems like a non-equivalence. If you don't like it, don't use it. Same way plenty of people still use Duty Finder for leveling dungeons because they just want to play with real people.

And I think it's pretty clear that Duty Support isn't even close to Savage/Ultimate capable — but even if SE has some sort of miraculous renaissance and develops the capacity to implement that, it's pretty close to "who cares". PF'ing with 7 strangers pretty much already feels like this — show up, do your own assigned role correctly, let everyone else do their own part automatically. If you mess up, wipe and silently try again. If someone else messes up, wipe and silently try again.

This idea that MMOs have to have "legally-enforced participation" is really bizarre, and seems rooted in a nostalgia-clouded past that's mostly just upset about things changing from what you're already familiar with.

For example, if you rewind the clock a bit, you'd probably be complaining and asking hyperbolic "What's next?" questions about players being able to level and quest solo, without requiring grouping up with other players to grind XP and take down quest bosses. That was certainly a common firestorm when games like WOW first began "casualizing" the open-world experience.

Then it was the introduction of queue-anywhere duty finders. "Now everything is easy and reputation doesn't matter and you don't have to talk to people!"

...And on, and on, and on.

But somehow, though, you're still here and playing in the way that personally appeals to you, despite other options being present... so either you're hopelessly addicted to MMO gameplay, even while miserable, or you still find enough value in the experience to keep paying for it, despite other people enjoying it in different ways than you.

[Zeastria]

If players can "skip everything" w/o having to que with other players..
- How are they gonna learn how to play with real players?

[Saraide]

If players can "skip everything" w/o having to que with other players..
- How are they gona learn how to play with real players?

What do you mean by learning how to play with real players?

[Eorzean_username]

If players can "skip everything" w/o having to que with other players..
- How are they gonna learn how to play with real players?

This is a legitimate concern in a vacuum, but it is years too late, and one that the developers have clearly moved past worrying about.

FFXIV had a crossroads a long time ago, where SE could have stubbornly just let group content failures gate the MSQ / storytelling, and allowed frustrated players to go elsewhere. This would have made for a more "niche" or "boutique" game, where it was understood that a combination of both heavy story interest and patience (to churn through MSQ) and some amount of gameplay competence / effort (to clear the PvE "quest gates") were expected if you wanted to participate in FFXIV.

Certainly, older MMOs had no hesitation about adopting this more "classic gamer" attitude, and while they became relatively-niche products as a result, they did have a certain dedicated audience that either learned to adapt, or segregated between the "doers" (who organized and quested / raided / etc) and the "fluffers" (for lack of a better word), who just kind of... fluffed around, in whatever content that they could access alone, or without a social network, or etc.

But FFXIV instead chose the path of "We're a game for everyone", and has since then pretty clearly decided that there's a red line — Extreme/Savage/Ultimate/Criterion — where they are "okay" with players just failing and being unable to continue. Anything outside that red line, they want "everyone" to be able to complete it relatively-easily, with "sense of completion and progression on a checklist" being the core focus, rather than "overcoming challenges".

It's not a coincidence, then, that Ex/Sav/Ult/Cri are also the content that has been carefully-segregated to have essentially zero relevant Story content gated behind it, with maybe Deep Dungeon providing a very minor outlier here.

——————————————————————————

The reason I made that digression is to clarify that we've seen, time and time again, that if SE "forces" you to group with other players to progress anything outside Ex/Sav/Ult/Cri in current-day FFXIV, then you can guarantee that said content will either be made relatively-trivial — and, especially, heavily-carryable — or, if they somehow make a mistake and release it "too hard", it will be nerfed with the thoroughness of a police beating until it is trivial/carryable.

In that sense, players basically already do "skip everything" without "learning how to play with real players" — nearly nothing in present-day Dungeons prepares you for actual party gameplay in Extreme+ content... or at least, not any more than doing it with Duty Support does (or doesn't)... and essentially all Story Trials can be completed by being dragged along by the other players, even if you have no idea what's going on.

There's Seat of Sacrifice, I guess, which remains perplexingly-unforgiving to people who can't mash buttons fast enough... but ironically, that failure state would occur just as consistently for someone running Duty Support.

[TaleraRistain]

They already addressed this.

It's a lot more difficult to program coordinated effort for 7 NPC (with 1 player character) across a 7-8 minute fight than 3 NPCs for a 2-3 minute fight.

The 2nd trial in Endwalker was a test to see if it could be done. It revealed a lot of issues they have to address.

Pretty much this. They said they were doing dungeons first and would look at 8 mans later. We also had things like Steps of Faith made into a much improved instance instead of the old trial. But Mothercrystal isn't completely braindead and groups still wipe to it so I don't think mechanics have to get completely simplified.

And as someone else mentioned in this thread, this might actually help the overgearing issue that cuts off things like the whole dialogue in the Endsinger fight.

[GaiusDrakon]

If you're offering, then yea, I'm cool with that. People that want to be social can be social already. Do people really want to be grouped up with people that don't want to be social?

Yes, because society, not just this game, doesn't need people like you who are too scared to group up with strangers who don't even say anything beyond "hi".

If you can't even fulfill the basic human biological need for social interactions, why are you even living? What are you even living for? Lmao

This game doesn't need to cater to rejects.

But FFXIV instead chose the path of "We're a game for everyone", and has since then pretty clearly decided that there's a red line — Extreme/Savage/Ultimate/Criterion — where they are "okay" with players just failing and being unable to continue. Anything outside that red line, they want "everyone" to be able to complete it relatively-easily, with "sense of completion and progression on a checklist" being the core focus, rather than "overcoming challenges".

Sadly true, because society is full of mentally fragile people who can't handle failure.

[Jeeqbit]

Trials seem to be harder for them to do. They did an experiment with the level 89 trial and didn't repeat it for the others. But I think it's a safe bet they will do trials through the 7.0 patches, because they told us their long-term plan for the next 10 years is to make it possible to play through the story solo.

[Rolder50]

Duty support is a waste of developer time, whether it be dungeons or trials.

[VelKallor]

Duty support is a waste of developer time, whether it be dungeons or trials.

I fail to see how. The benefits so far have been more than evident, so on what do you base this?