Now that the game is dying can we just have bots for all content?

[Zyzden]

I would even be willing to pay extra for this feature, even if it only worked on prior expansion content. I really want to do every old fight in the game level synced but do not care to spend hundreds of hours (combined across all the content) wading through PF recruitment and slow filling parties for decade old content.

[Dorito_Burrito]

[FuturePastNow]

Can we start by replacing all forum posters with bots

[CVXIV]

Can we start by replacing all forum posters with bots

Who's to say they haven't been?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Who's to say they haven't been?

01001110 01101111 01101110 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110011 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01110100 01100010 01100001 01100111 00101110 00100000 01010111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 01101110 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01100111 01110101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110011 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01110011 01101000 00101110

[VeyaAkemi]

01001110 01101111 01101110 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110011 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01110100 01100010 01100001 01100111 00101110 00100000 01010111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 01101110 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01100111 01110101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110011 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01110011 01101000 00101110

Uh... uh... uhhhhhhhhh...

01001000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111 00101100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100101 01110011 00111111

[Amarande]

Players needing to align schedules being the hardest part is nothing new. Been the case since the game started.

The big difference is I remember PF used to be a heck of a lot more chill.

Stormblood? Watch the MTQ or Happy vid. Toss up a PF. Join a PF if you could. Didn't get much more annoying than a wall of Duty Complete Farm if you didn't manage to set aside time to clear in what, in retrospect, was an eyeblink even then but still.

Nowadays?

Just watch the video? The Hector video doesn't bring people together (despite Hector being at least as good at explaining things as MTQ, and miles better than Happy), it ends up being regarded as divisive, because half the time the strat is some kind of Discord community thing with a meme injoke name that often doesn't even intimate at the ideas behind it (which gives off a heavy vibe of "this is designed to gatekeep by forcing you to be in good standing in the right Discord circles to use PF").

Assuming you grok the strat, welp, now if you want to get anywhere with PF you are virtually forced to interact with TOS-infringing third party tools or with players that do, because if you aren't logged guess what buddy? As far as your raiding progression is concerned IT NEVER HAPPENED. PF players' inability to trust is off the charts to virtual "not okay. seriously, you're not okay" degrees and somehow this is fine (yes prog liars ya ya ... if you show this level of inability to trust people IRL your friends are gonna get concerned and tell you to go get help, and that's even if you got lied to a lot with actual IRL consequences, not merely "I couldn't progress in an MMORPG because somebody claimed they were better than they were").

And people that raise any kind of a ruckus about this, or even just aren't quick enough studies are given a very palpable aura of "we're going to put you on a dodge list" with the distinct impression that your days of using PF in the future usefully might be over as well.

The vibe is so bad that one wonders how anyone even enjoys using PF at all. No wonder it is no longer considered a valid option and we are back to "welp, if you're employed and it's not a 9-5, forget about ... really, most of the content SE offers you this xpac, actually."

Loot lockouts also need a major revamp to enable people to gain rewards at their own pace and not lose progress weekly while preventing split runs. I have a solution and could make an entire post about this if anyone's curious.

Omg so much this as well. Right now you can't even dodge PF with your friends most of the time because if they raid, they probably static, which means now you have to arrange a time to meet up with them that's after all of their static sessions for the week (and if they have a Monday raid night, not at all). Even the most friendly static can't afford to give up a loot chest so its members can see other friends on the side (probably especially these statics, because they actually need the gear with DPS checks these days; it's the hyper hardcore ones that can make sacrifices).

But heaven forfend we do away with the 2-1-0 chest system because oh noes split raids. Have to hold back those super hardcore week oners even if the majority of players suffer for it ...

I'm interested in knowing what your idea was, at least.

[Jeeqbit]

Players needing to align schedules being the hardest part is nothing new. Been the case since the game started.

[Gokki]

While i agree with the spirit, at what point do you just have FFXIV as a single player game?

Now, is that a bad thing? Debatable. Perhaps Duty Support for older content? Not sure the devs will want to spend effort on this with outdated tools.

Current content though? I don't think it's a good idea because that will just make the problem worse - "everyone" will just migrate to bots because intrinsic & competitive raiders are few and far between. It'll kill the raiding community.

What are the solutions to the issues though?

• Socially, players can decide to use Duty Finder instead of Party Finder, this will ease the effort by a huge margin but it requires for everyone to socially transition to using it, similar to how Hunt Trains transitioned from spamming shout to use PF for group-ups.
• From SE's side, Duty Finder could enable cross-datacenter connection, even if it takes a few more seconds to load.
• Loot lockouts also need a major revamp to enable people to gain rewards at their own pace and not lose progress weekly while preventing split runs. I have a solution and could make an entire post about this if anyone's curious.