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Naoki Yoshida: With FFXIV Solo Features Laid Out, Team Will Return To Multiplayer Focus | MMORPG.com
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Naoki Yoshida: With FFXIV Solo Features Laid Out, Team Will Return To Multiplayer Focus | MMORPG.com
At the Dawntrail Media Tour in LA, Naoki Yoshida declared that the FFXIV team is ready to pivot back to new multiplayer content with Dawntrail.
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I think he mentioned wanting to get people to communicate more, and that's a very tall order. Players seem willing to go out of their way to AVOID communicating with each other in many cases. Adventure plates were not a bad start, but they are a fairly passive mechanism. Could there be some sort of new duty that requires actual conversation? I can imagine several ways it could be done, but I'm honestly not sure how popular it would be. Then again, with the right in-game rewards, it seems players will give just about anything a shot.
There was already a myriad of multiplayer content available in the game, as that has been the vast majority of content released since the game's inception, and the last two expasions were not lacking on that either (despite giving solo players something to do, too).
This "drama" about a "lack" of multiplayer stems from some people's "ME ME ME" mentality, and being unable to deal with other playstyles also being catered to. Yes, content wasn't 100% focused towards multiplayer for a while, just as there has never been a complete focus on giving *only* extreme or ultimate content, which is a good thing in order to keep a healthy playerbase. The devs working on offering a choice, as well as building some QoL features (like the trusts, which greatly helped in order to seamlessly play the story regardless of your job's queue times), was not a bad thing, and I say this as someone that mostly plays multiplayer content. I liked what they did with the solo side of the game (despite some flaws), and I enjoyed it when I just wanted to do something alone or when I couldn't fully commit towards playing with other people.
A different thing would be to criticise the quantity of released content per se when compared to previous expansions, regardless of the focus being multiplayer or not, and that would be a valid concern. Once the expansion and the first major patches drop, we'll see if the reason really was that the team was busy working (and re-working, due to the upgrades) on content for 7.0 or if they were just slacking in that regard.
LOL, sorry not sorry for the flood of embargoed pieces. I'm pretty sure every content creator has been buzzing to get these out there, too, to be fair.
I think this was the thing most people were annoyed about regarding multiplayer content. Last time we had Bozja/Zadnor which was infinitely grindable and even included 48-man dungeons, this time we only had the Eureka Orthos and Variant/Criterion stuff which really only has so much replayability, especially if you aren't an endgame raider. Nearly everything in Endwalker had a solo usability aspect.
I agree that this time the relic was not as grindy as usual, and the content related to it was mostly quests (Hildibrand). But that's just a single thing, and it's related to the quantity of released content (no new area, like Eureka or Bozja) and not to multiplayer being neglected in favor of solo options.
Endwalker (new) content:
- Main Scenario - Solo
- Dungeons (13) - Story run, *if* using Trusts, *can* be Solo. Group the rest of the time (99.99%)
- Myths of the Realm (3 raids) - Group
- Pandæmonium (3+3 raids) - Group
- Trials (8+7) - Group
- Ultimate (5) - Group
- Variant Dungeons (3) - Group and Solo (1-4 players)
- Criterion Dungeons (3) - Group
- Beast Tribes (3) - Solo
- Island Sanctuary - Solo
- Hildibrand (relic) - Mostly Solo (quests), but Group needed to get the tomestones
- Regular events (very short and trivial, not bothering counting each of them) - Solo
- Fall Guys crossover - Group
Total released:
- Solo content: 6
- Group content: 43
- Optional: 3
- Mixed: 1
Total released (by categories):
- Solo content: 4
- Group content: 7
- Optional: 1
- Mixed: 1
As you can see, no, it's not even correct to say that nearly everything had a solo usability aspect. The vast majority of the content that has been released has been multiplayer exclusive. Even if we unfairly count them by categories, it's almost a 50/50 (still in favor of multiplayer).
Primarily so, and it should come as no surprise. MMORPGs aren't the most popular game genre. They are more beggars than choosers when it comes to population. The broader of an audience they can serve the better off they are.
Yet the genres strength is bringing so much variety of gameplay under one umbrella. It is not a problem that there is a lot of separate gameplay systems, it is a problem that they are all the same and all pitched the same way. By pitched I mean the easymode playstyle, the lack of meaningful choices, the way PvP must be either an arena or tagged and so on.