There is no reason why I am allowed to play through other games solo through my own sheer will and can't here because "a party of 8 players is needed" to merely participate in content. If I am required to interact with others, I need that process to have streamlined logistics, I need communication to be in-game with ability for quick callouts, and I need rewards per player to recoup the frustrations involved with interacting with others of diverse playstyles, skill, and available time. I don't care if it takes years to be done, I will do fights alone if it saves me the stress from dealing with autistic tranny niggers with motor issues. There should not be a gate preventing me from content on the basis of player count. I should be able to mog a fight as a WAR with my own strategy, without nonsense like "enrage" to gatekeep my perseverence from achieving success.
The average MMORPG isn't multiplayer and are fully functional for a single person. VERY FEW MMO games strictly require multiple players to complete content. The reason is because content is designed for multiple people to challenge, but will not hold back on players who want to do it alone. As a result this would mean all someone would have to do is level more and minmax to overcome the obstacle. On a side note, Final Fantasy XIV's leveling system is fundamentally flawed because levels only gate you from content, they don't gate you from challenge. Leveling is a fucking joke.
This copout of "well it says multiplayer in the name" is bullshit from those with no experience with the genre. Games like Phantasy Star Online are completely playable alone. FLYFF, Perfect World International, Aion, RaiderZ, Shin Megami Tensei Imagine, Blade and Soul, The Secret World, Granado Espada, Elder Scrolls Online (pre-One Tamriel update) were all completely playable alone. Being able to play with others was a luxury and lots of fun team work.
The key is making multiplayer is not a focus, but a feature. Players seek out other players because the limited rewards of the solo player are multiplied and made more easily accessible when working together with others. This inspires people to WANT to seek out other players because when everyone has a common desire, they will want to do better and have a positive experience. In Final Fantasy XIV, I fucking hate other players. I mod my game to remove their disgusting visuals and messages from my sight as a result of Square Enix's machine of player-to-player resentment.
I am fatigued after years of sitting in party finder parties, dealing with constant wipes, arguing over strats, wrestling with third party programs for the basic function of communication, and then if we actually beat the run... ONE PERSON gets the loot. If someone leaves, then you sit in party finder and then spend more hours just to do it again, so parties have to guilt trip in order to remain cohesive so every person gets theirs.
Square Enix goes out of it's way to prevent players from figuring out strategies outside of what they intended, and that's annoying as it is. What exacerbates issues with the game goes beyond the game itself, it's the player community. Square Enix freely hands out bans to upset players, but never asks why people are so hostile towards each other, disregarding their feelings. Square Enix will design jobs that need rotationals, and then also design players to move around freely, and not realize that tanks can grief those jobs needing rotationals by spinning around enemies. Square Enix will design content easily completable with one tank, but force two tanks as required. Square Enix will design these massive player count duties, but refuse to provide coordination and communication methods to make quick callouts possible to large groups of players. I refuse to be fucking gaslit by claims that these things aren't fixable. Square Enix maliciously avoids mitigating player hostility and resentment by allowing systems of abuse.
It's actually infuriating that Yoshida has experience with other online games, because there is no way in hell he doesn't know how to improve Final Fantasy XIV after observing the foundational changes Zenimax made to Elder Scrolls Online. My only guess is there is a conflict in which anything requiring professional programmers on par with those from A Realm Reborn costs too much money, and instead they repeatedly hire these recent-graducate 6-month contractual scriptkiddies who can only add more on existing content. Needless to say, I have big expectations for 8.0.
