FFXIV is a terrible coop game to play with your friends.

[Ath192]

Given MMOs are so you can play with your friends and strangers alike I feel this game does the worst job at a coop/play with friends mode ever. Not only is the MSQ a solo experience but there are even those instanced battles where you can't take anyone with you as well. Only mainstream duties are available as a cooperative experience and they only happen ever so often during hours of solo MSQ. The PVP is a solo experience too. They are scared people in VC may have an edge in PVP against others and force you to play CC alone and yet shrug it off when a ton of players cheat in PVP using mods and hacks or whatever.

This game feels like it's a solo experience for people who don't have friends but want the presence of other strangers moving around in the same game so they don't feel lonely. Even if they're not actually doing anything together.

[Heroman3003]

Yeah. The game never advertises itself as 'coop'. Its a solo story experience and then social hangout simulator AFTER youre done with the story.

[Colt47]

The story dungeons can be done with a group but I know what you mean. In WoW Classic for example, we aren't a hero or anything we are just a bloke running around in garbage armor that happens to bumble about with a bunch of other guys, so you can do stuff with people all over the place, even in the open world.

FFXIV has this habit where no one else exists but you and the scions, because the story writers don't know how to write things so that it is in reference to a group of people rather than "warrior of light" main OP protagonist. I've grown numb to the experience over the course of a decade with the game but this is a central problem to maybe the entirety of the game. Also yeah I have it as a pain point with the game and even mentioned this back ages ago in ARR days.

[Kes13a]

the trend lately, of which I am not a huge fan, is to push the game further into solo territory. I started for the mmo experience, so I am not sure how far down the path of a solo game I am willing to travel with Yoshi and crew, but we'll see.

[Jeeqbit]

Given MMOs are so you can play with your friends and strangers alike I feel this game does the worst job at a coop/play with friends mode ever. Not only is the MSQ a solo experience but there are even those instanced battles where you can't take anyone with you as well.

I agree that it's really made for a solo experience. The worst part is SE has admitted they thought a lot about it and chose to make the lore not account for other players ie. the other scions with the Echo aren't other players when they should be.

Only mainstream duties are available as a cooperative experience and they only happen ever so often during hours of solo MSQ.

It is true that the dungeons and trials can be done together and that is where SE has always advertised that you're fighting with your adventuring buddies. In reality, you're going to queue with a bunch of randoms or do it with duty support, because 7 players are not gonna do the MSQ with you.

A friend can follow you around while you click and read text and watch cutscenes, but that is a miserable and boring experience for the friend, unlike SWTOR.

Although, friends waiting for eachother to be available and get off work just to progress story is often difficult anyway tbh. The temptation to just continue alone is high.

The PVP is a solo experience too. They are scared people in VC may have an edge in PVP against others

That kinda is a problem though. The queues for coordinated PvP should be separate to group PvP because it's not really a level playing field otherwise. However this opens up the potential for coordinated win trading, so they have had to not attach reward to it.

So it's much more understandable for PvP tbh.

[Jojoya]

Given MMOs are so you can play with your friends and strangers alike I feel this game does the worst job at a coop/play with friends mode ever. Not only is the MSQ a solo experience but there are even those instanced battles where you can't take anyone with you as well. Only mainstream duties are available as a cooperative experience and they only happen ever so often during hours of solo MSQ. The PVP is a solo experience too. They are scared people in VC may have an edge in PVP against others and force you to play CC alone and yet shrug it off when a ton of players cheat in PVP using mods and hacks or whatever.

This game feels like it's a solo experience for people who don't have friends but want the presence of other strangers moving around in the same game so they don't feel lonely. Even if they're not actually doing anything together.

If you think the MSQ is a solo experience, it's because you're treating it like one. You can do most of it in a party. The only time it goes truly solo is the solo duties, and those are a small part of the overall MSQ.

I've done MSQ with friends on many occasions and will continue to do so. The one change I wish they could make is for us to stay in party together when doing solo duties but I think that's a problem with how instanced duties are programmed. Perhaps now they've created Variant dungeons with flexible group size, they can use Variant duties in place of the solo duties going forward (though I'm not going to hold my breath).

Something that does improve the experience when playing with friends is being in voice chat together. You can continue to talk when in the solo duties and you don't have to be annoyed with typing to communicate.

Real life schedule conflicts are more of a hindrance to playing with friends than the MSQ design is.

[strawberrycake]

Yoshida openly wanted this expansion to be built like this for people to have time to play FFXVI, let that settle in, a whole MMO expansion built like a single player RPG, for a games release, that you can't guarantee people can play let alone afford on the day it came out.

So all of our normal content structure bar, something like Deep Dungeons, was changed to suit this change. The idea being if the game felt more solo friendly and straight forward and easy to do, people can feel Rewarded, and not pressed for time to play FFXVI. And I can understand how In Japan, people will stay at work longer even after their time to leave has come and gone as a sign of respect, but this is also an international MMO and not all of us have an issue with Time management like people in JP do due to their dated work culture.

[Striker44]

FFXIV has this habit where no one else exists but you and the scions, because the story writers don't know how to write things so that it is in reference to a group of people rather than "warrior of light" main OP protagonist. I've grown numb to the experience over the course of a decade with the game but this is a central problem to maybe the entirety of the game. Also yeah I have it as a pain point with the game and even mentioned this back ages ago in ARR days.

Wait, what? For most of the early "half" of the MSQ at this point, the game constantly references you doing things like "gathering your fellow adventurers" (that you would know from the Adventurers' Guild) to do the party-based content. While you may be the main protagonist, the PC's of other players are directly considered your fellow adventurers. Later on, once you've become so powerful and the stakes so large that it's no longer sensible for other "common" adventurers to be joining you, it gets explained in various other ways (other WoL's from the reflections, Azem's thingamabob, etc.). Throughout the entire MSQ, the game directly acknowledges other players besides just you and the Scions...

[AnnRam]

Cool.

I like the game but I don't like the people so that's a win to me.

[Mcg55ss]

Given MMOs are so you can play with your friends and strangers alike I feel this game does the worst job at a coop/play with friends mode ever. Not only is the MSQ a solo experience but there are even those instanced battles where you can't take anyone with you as well. Only mainstream duties are available as a cooperative experience and they only happen ever so often during hours of solo MSQ. The PVP is a solo experience too. They are scared people in VC may have an edge in PVP against others and force you to play CC alone and yet shrug it off when a ton of players cheat in PVP using mods and hacks or whatever.

This game feels like it's a solo experience for people who don't have friends but want the presence of other strangers moving around in the same game so they don't feel lonely. Even if they're not actually doing anything together.

While the PVP thing I can understand for ranked, I don't understand it for casual. As for the story being a solo experience I don't get why everybody says this. Yes their parts where you have to do a solo thing in your isolated, but me, my gf and best friend all did it together. Yeah we were solo but we were still in discord with each other we discussed what happened, reacted together, we did every dungeon and trial together and experienced it as a group. It was a ton of fun and we loved every part of it especially discussing Story bits for after they happened with each other. Could there be more to make it better co-op yeah definitely but if you want to experience it with somebody you certainly can