Hypothetical Question

[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?

[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.