Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
I don't see the point of "game plays itself" games unless you're getting some specific enjoyment out of seeing the numbers go up, or whatever it is that they actually do. I'd be happy if a game played the grindy parts itself – in FFXIV terms, if I could set my character to automatically rack up hours of EXP in Bozja so I could come in to play the story and do each FATE once instead of ten times each, but not for it to clear the whole thing from start to finish so I never do anything with it. (Although even then I wouldn't mind start-to-finish for alts... but it's a bit different for something like FFXIV where you have essentially a set of different games bundled up alongside the main game. I wouldn't independently choose to play a Bozja-type game and then not actually play it.)
If there's one thing I've seen some mobile games do right, it's passive resource generation to basically offset the need to grind. The closest XIV has to this is retainers, but short of a rather lucky find, I'd argue they're not really worth the effort to maintain and cycle even if you could technically argue they're "free" if you give 'em hand-me-down gear early on.

Part of my own desire for a more meaningful open world is the option to assign your character a task when you're offline. You'll basically get tagged as a temporary NPC, but still be out in the world doing things relative to what you chose. And when you come back, a little EXP and loot to show for it. Pragmatically, it's not much different than rested EXP, but it would help to give the world a bit more life knowing you won't be doing something like FATEs alone at off-peak hours if other assigned players showed up to assist.