Hypothetical Question

[Xeronia]

I would say if my closet friends stopped playing I would probably just do the patch content and leave to go spend time with my friends wherever they went. There is one friend in particular that if he ever fully quit I would be right behind him as he is one of the few who keeps things running in these content lulls.

I say this because I legitimately no longer feel the quality of the game would be able to keep me around for long if I didn't have friends to enjoy it with. My favorite class got mutilated on the chopping black to the point my pet is just here to look cute. I had a ton of misgivings about all of Endwalker's story that I personally do not think will see much improvement in DT. There is also I have no clue when the content I would be looking forward too in DT is set to arrive Overall should all my friends just vanish there is little reason for me to stick around aside from keeping my house in game

[Sotaris]

If everyone I know up and left I’d probably just go back playing FF11 or wow.

[Merrigan]

I would definitly stay. I don't really care if they're in the game or not - if they're my friends, then we have already another way of contacting each other so no nostalgia, and I'm the versatile type in a MMORPG. I'm always ready for a chat, like meeting random people but never seek for a deeper relationship. The friendship I found were surprises more than everything else, and my first reflex were to detach them from the game.

[LianaThorne]

Follow-up question for the people who responded that they'll just socialize with random people:

Hypothetically speaking, if Yoshi-P announced that the expansion after Dawntrail would fully remove all social aspects of the game and turn it into a mainly single-player experience (For example, they remove housing to stop venue activity because they get tired of hearing about the NSFW side of things, they incorporate trusts/duty support into everything (dungeons to ultimates) because they get tired of hearing people complain about bad players, pvp gets turned into you vs. bots because they get tired of hearing people complain about pre-forms, etc.). Duty support in particular takes off because it's quicker on queues + people don't have to feel so anxious about performance in front of others.

The root of this question is similar to my original, but I would like to take the ability to socialize easily out of the equation. What if there actually wasn't a way to fill that void easily? Is the content of the game enough to keep you playing and subscribed still?

[Ilisidi]

I'm not particularly interested in answering your shifting goal posts till you get the answer you want.

[LianaThorne]

I'm not particularly interested in answering your shifting goal posts till you get the answer you want.

I'm not shifting goal posts, just curious where the defining line is for people who are okay with minimal socialization. I feel it's rather common to ask multiple questions when exploring new ideas or perspectives or conducting surveys.

From what I can see there are three groups forming:
A. Yes I'd quit
B. No I'd stay because I can socialize with randoms
C. No, the game is enough for me.

I'm curious if socialization was removed, would the game be enough for those people to stay or would they quit.

It's perfectly fine if people find the game to be enough, it's perfectly fine if they need socialization to stay, it's perfectly fine if they want to quit. I'm just bored and curious and asking a follow up question to dive deeper into the mindset. No one is also obligated to answer me if they don't want to as well lol. As I said from the start, there are no right or wrong answers.

[Reinha]

Follow-up question for the people who responded that they'll just socialize with random people:

Hypothetically speaking, if Yoshi-P announced that the expansion after Dawntrail would fully remove all social aspects of the game and turn it into a mainly single-player experience (For example, they remove housing to stop venue activity because they get tired of hearing about the NSFW side of things, they incorporate trusts/duty support into everything (dungeons to ultimates) because they get tired of hearing people complain about bad players, pvp gets turned into you vs. bots because they get tired of hearing people complain about pre-forms, etc.). Duty support in particular takes off because it's quicker on queues + people don't have to feel so anxious about performance in front of others.

The root of this question is similar to my original, but I would like to take the ability to socialize easily out of the equation. What if there actually wasn't a way to fill that void easily? Is the content of the game enough to keep you playing and subscribed still?

Half the content in this game is social by its nature. If you remove the social aspect then the content itself would be different or missing, similar to how if you remove the interviewer from an interview it becomes a questionnaire and is no longer an interview. You wouldn't just be removing socialization, you'd be removing player driven content and strategies since they can't be replicated by AI. House designing would be gone, hunt trains would be gone, raiding with different strats would be gone, pvp would be gone and many external guides and resources would be gone.

Of course I wouldn't play a game that removed half of its content and things I've worked towards for years. In regards to socializing, I already don't say anything beyond "lfg", "hi" and "gg" on most days, so if you only took away the ability to greet and thank people I'd still keep playing.

[Jojoya]

Follow-up question for the people who responded that they'll just socialize with random people:

Hypothetically speaking, if Yoshi-P announced that the expansion after Dawntrail would fully remove all social aspects of the game and turn it into a mainly single-player experience (For example, they remove housing to stop venue activity because they get tired of hearing about the NSFW side of things, they incorporate trusts/duty support into everything (dungeons to ultimates) because they get tired of hearing people complain about bad players, pvp gets turned into you vs. bots because they get tired of hearing people complain about pre-forms, etc.). Duty support in particular takes off because it's quicker on queues + people don't have to feel so anxious about performance in front of others.

The root of this question is similar to my original, but I would like to take the ability to socialize easily out of the equation. What if there actually wasn't a way to fill that void easily? Is the content of the game enough to keep you playing and subscribed still?

That's somewhat of a pointless question because removing those things changes the game from a MMORPG to a single player game. While the game is designed to be solo player friendly, it's still a MMORPG.

MMORPGs come with a level of compromise the player needs to accept because the game has to appeal to a largish audience for the long term. Single player games only have to appeal long enough for someone to buy, install and play for a couple of hours. MMORPGs have to keep hundreds of thousands of server-client communications every second in mind, single player games don't.

FFXIV would quickly fail as a single player game. Much of the game design assumes there will be some sort of social interaction occurring. Take that interaction out of the equation and a lot of the design becomes nonsensical, especially when it comes to the loot systems.

[Jeeqbit]

If there was no way to interact with others and it was a completely single player game that didn't even involve connecting to the internet, I would likely still play it for the stories and challenges, but I might take extended breaks between patches.

The reason players change that is because, for example, if you do a raid it relies on other players to do well and you can be there weeks or months waiting for them to catch up. Whereas if it's a single player game, a real gamer is probably just gonna beat it quickly even if it was ultimate difficulty, because the cooperation with and scheduling with other players is part of the difficulty. You can do everything right, but 7 other people need to as well and that does drag it out.

As for grinds, one of the motivations for collecting things and completing things is that it is a social experience. In part, it gives you a reason to do content that otherwise has no purpose to keep doing. It takes you into content with other players and you see them doing what you're doing, so you're effectively doing it together. You can also show the things you have that they don't. You can show raid weapons in Limsa, or mounts at hunt trains. So without the social element, part of the reason to collect things is reduced and may reduce down to just what interests or appeals to me or satisfies me as being enough collected. That itself may cause me to take a break from the game between patches.

The other benefit of social interaction is that spawning S ranks, conducting trains, participating in trains, going to FATEs or farming them, doing maps is a common thing to fill the timeframe between patches. It involves sharing information with eachother and playing with eachother on a large scale. If none of that was possible, the communities that exist around it would be diminished or not as social because of it being solo-oriented.

[Carin-Eri]

I'd play anyway.

I mean, in all honesty I'm really not much of a socialite IRL. Which isn't to say I don't have some great friends in-game - I do, and enjoy their company a great deal. But their absence wouldn't put me off playing the game.