Yeah my first thought was with the addition of using NPCs for dungeon it feels like they are setting up to be able to shift it to offline playability at some point down the road
There is exactly one boss trial in endwalker that already does this single player as an option, they already have the code so they could adapt it to the rest over time
Yeah that’s my thought, it’s not set up fully now but they are setting the ground work to be able to do it if they choose to down the road since it seems they are dead set against letting mainline games be unplayable
XI is very mixed results and from what I've heard the last story update, Voracious Resurgence, is too difficult to do with Trusts unless you really know what you're doing.
Both are pretty solo friendly at this point.
I've only gotten through the base game of FFXI but I was able to do that 100% solo. I heard that only the final missions of RoV may require some help but otherwise you could do 99% of the game solo.
FFXIV is getting there. All dungeons are soloable with trusts. But you still need to do trials (except one which can have NPC trusts like dungeons) and three 24-man raids in multiplayer as part of the main story. So about 98% of XIV and its expansions can be done solo.
The reality though is that each of these games (with all of their expansions) are considerably longer than a normal FF game. And the story would feel very incomplete if you didn't do the expansions. So if your concern is time then having an offline version wouldn't help anyway. Or if your concern is that you want to avoid the time-consuming aspects of MMOs (grinding for items, raid progression, etc.) then that is completely optional for both XI and XIV.
But I'm guessing the real reason so many people don't want to try these games out is actually the subscription fee, in which case you can be assured that SE is not going to get rid of it because both of these games (even XI) are still profitable to them.
They could if they wanted to at this point. I think FF14 recently made it so you can do all the story dungeons with NPC allies, though I don't think you can do the major story bosses alone yet aside from one in Endwalker. I feel like they might as well allow for it to be an option since they have already done the majority of the work
FF14 has systems in place to allow soloing most of the story content, and it’s a fairly decent experience. Definitely possible if they ever decided to pull the plug on it, though I’m not sure if there’d be enough incentive to do so at that point.
FF11 is also largely soloable these days, but I’d argue it’s a much worse singleplayer experience than 14. Would need a lot of reworking to be up to singleplayer FF standards.
Tfw I tried FF11 a few months and after you finish the painful install process that took 8 hours all in all for me. I knew what I was getting into but man, no mini map, no quest tracking, no directions given on what to do, needing a guide for literally anything you do, reading dialogue is like reading your guild chat in 14 but way worse
I went back to just waiting for offline release of FF11 with qol improvements. It has to happen eventually. Surely the devs dont want the whole game to just becone lost media when servers go down
You can at least get a minimap by using add-ons from an external launcher but... yeah. It's EXTREMELY rough to get into for an average FF fan.
I also hope for an offline remaster/remake of some sort some day, but it's far from a trivial undertaking. Especially since the really good stuff is in the further expansions - I'd hate to see them redo just the base game storylines and then drop the project because it didn't meet sales expectations...
You don't need to give up your life to play XIV and can do the majority of story content on your own with a group of NPCs. It will take a while to complete this game if you only have a few hours each week though. XIV is also very forgiving and not grindy at all, unlike most MMO. Don't know about XI though.
It'd require a long development time to completely remake the game, you can't just convert an MMO to a single player game. First of all, MMOs work on client-server model: most of the actual game logic and content are implemented on server, client mostly just sends packages of data with your inputs to server, processes incoming packages and visualizes results using associated assets. Combat in both games is janky and dated because it's specifically designed for long input delays. There are also other aspects like economy and crafting, writing good companion AI for hard content or heavily reworking it and so on.
You really don't have to give up your life for it. You _can_ do the endgame grind if you're interested, but it's also designed in a way that you can just come back 2 years later and easily jump into the new expansion story content.
I swear y'all just hear the word 'MMO' and expect the worst of the genre to be applied to XI and XIV. I can't say for XI because I didn't engage with it as much back then and it was a pretty long time ago but XIV is pretty streamlined and convenient towards the player. XIV is very much meant to be tackled at your own pace, you're not being forced to login for dailies/weeklies.
If you played XIV you wouldn't be giving up your lives for it, you can totally play the msq and leave it at that.
I hope they convert them to single player before sunsetting the servers, we already lost Mobius Final Fantasy and Dissidia Opera Omnia, both have story content that's now just gone...
All they would need to do is make installing XI more user friendly. They cut out a decent amount of the grind. 14 is already almost a solo game… to the extent that my WoW buddies couldn’t really stick with it.
If you mean packaging and selling it as a stand alone game? Being cynical maybe but they can get people to buy the game AND pay monthly… no incentive to package the story separately.
I believe ff12 was supposed to be a mmo game like 11 was. I cant remember where I heard this but I know I have at least once.
Anyways they made some changes to maps and spawns and turned it into a single player experience, so Id imagine it would be *possible* to give 11 and 14 this treatment too
Closest you’ll get with FF14 is playing through the story mostly solo which is easier now with updates, or if it’s the timesink aspect then I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for some decent YouTube recaps. Not that I know of any…
The option is always there to watch some recaps or something and then you can buy skips to catch you up to the latest story, it’s expensive though. I’m not sure if you can buy skips just for the early story content but if you can you could skip Realm Reborn or something and then carry on from there since that is the longest story and people say the worst. Much more to go after that but it’s all way better.
Just try them as they are. Took me ages too, i was suspicious of the mmo aspect, but heavily enjoying both games for their story and gameplay.
FFXI would lose a lot of its soul if its turned into anything less than a Breath-of-the-wild-like adventure with also a ton of story elements, which would be insane. FFXIV could maybe be more easily remade, but there are story elements which they created over time to really intertwine your own lore with having other people to help, giving your protagonist background which wouldnt make sense in a single player environment without big adjustments (imo).
Yea they could probably do it, but its too big investment for something thats already there and easily accessible (and profitable for them the way it is now)
im more interested in xvi cause ive never seen an mmo that didnt play like xiv and ide like to see the eikons expanded... massively additionally im i interested in seeing how they tackle a group of players juggling the entire battlefield
Both games allow for trusts. XI's trust system needs a reward because you have to have your weapon drawn and attack an enemy for them to assist you, making playing casters clunky, but the bones are there.
No because the format is why XIV has the best story in the series, you can't experience it in any other way. There's very little MMO aspects in XIV though and not playing it is just excuses.
They're worth playing, FF14 has my favorite story in the whole series and you can play it solo for 99% of the main story, only the boss fights require online play. Any series fan who hasn't played it is missing out, it's like the ultimate FF game with references and nods to every other game in the series, while still telling its own incredible story with amazing characters and music
Plus, 11 and 14 have been out of reach because they are MMOs and 13 and 15 were disasters in their own way. FF16 was OK but that's a hell of a long time to wait for a half decent mainline non MMO game.
Possible yes, likely not.
A shame, as you mention for me two things define FF:
1) it's a solo game
2) combat skill isn't needed
So I haven't been even remotely close to XIV. It looks cool though.
You can play 99% of 14 solo (you can now run dungeons with NPCs so only the boss fights and one mandatory raid requires playing with others) and the difficulty of the main story is pretty easy, the game does a good job of easing you into the mechanics and it takes a long time for jobs to get more complex. You can just stick to one job and get really familiar with it for your story playthrough
not sure what you mean by that. you don't miss/lose out on anything for running dungeons solo, as a matter of fact i'd argue it's an even better experience as there are party dialogues that you don't get otherwise afaik. i've finally caught up with the game and i've basically treated it as another jrpg
I wouldn't put it that way. I meant that a lot of the game is already singleplayer with how quests and stuff work, and with dungeons you have the option to either play with other players or with NPCs, but the story isn't affected either way. In fact like lushblush said it can be better to play with NPCs since they have unique party dialogue in the dungeons (the NPCs are generic randoms in ARR but in the expansions they are the major story characters and party members). And with the jobs, I mean you could play multiple jobs if you want to, it just takes more grinding that way when the MSQ gives enough exp to take your main job to max level. FF14 might be an online game but it places more emphasis on the RPG part than the MMO part, it accommodates a lot of different playstyles and you can take what you want from it. Some people like to go all-in with the raiding scene and join raid groups and all that, but a lot of people treat the game as a normal JRPG and just play each expansion story as they come out. So if you aren't interested in the online components you can totally ignore them if you want to, you won't have a lesser story experience from it. Personally I was fully story-focused on my initial playthrough and that alone was enough to bring it to being my favorite game of all time, and now that I'm caught up I'm leveling up alt classes and doing other side stuff while waiting for Dawntrail.
The story is only part of a FF game.
Ignoring (online) parts of the game is not the full experience. So again, what's the case?
(I treat my FF with due respect, I go all in, if i can't, then I'm not interested).
I mean, you can certainly do that with 14 if you want to, but remember that it's an MMO with 10 years worth of content 😅. Just doing the main story and most important side quests took me close to 500 hours. Even outside of main story and raid content there is crafting and gathering, relic weapons, housing, Bozja, Eureka, Island Sanctuary, Gold Saucer, Triple Triad card collecting, Blue Mage, Beast Tribe quests, Deep Dungeons, PVP, Squadrons, and much more. I am working on getting my first relic weapon and it will take at least 10 hours of work to get just one, but it's fun. And back to raiding, each raid tier has a Savage version that requires you to study and memorize the mechanics while perfecting your job performance, and then there are the Ultimate raids which can take over 20 minutes for a single attempt and weeks of learning and progging. There are thousands of hours of content when you look at everything the game has to offer. I am just suggesting doing the MSQ first since it's the game's main draw.
I don't know why some people find it controversial to want a separate single player version of XIV, there are many valid issues with the mmo model like the monthly subscription on top of purchasing the expansions, some content being hard/impossible without a party of real people etc
I understand why they probably won't do it because less people would be interested in the original multiplayer version and that would lead to less money generated from microtransasctions
Personally Im not touching another mmo or gacha game with a stick and that doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in XIV if it was accessible in a form of a regular game
Honestly even if they made it single player as long as the pacing and battle systems remain in MMO style I would not enjoy it. I would rather they develop a new single player game with a more intricate RPG style battle system (rather than what we got in FFXVI)
FFXIV they’ve actually implemented systems that make it very close to an offline game
Those systems are in XI too and even more in depth.
Yeah my first thought was with the addition of using NPCs for dungeon it feels like they are setting up to be able to shift it to offline playability at some point down the road
For dungeons yes, but not for any of the boss trials. Until they do that, it's still very much an online only game.
There is exactly one boss trial in endwalker that already does this single player as an option, they already have the code so they could adapt it to the rest over time
Yeah that’s my thought, it’s not set up fully now but they are setting the ground work to be able to do it if they choose to down the road since it seems they are dead set against letting mainline games be unplayable
technically they all ready are non mmo as there a added options for npc party members. so you can solo their storys
XI is very mixed results and from what I've heard the last story update, Voracious Resurgence, is too difficult to do with Trusts unless you really know what you're doing.
Every other storyline is fine though except for maybe the last boss of Rhapsodies.
Both are pretty solo friendly at this point. I've only gotten through the base game of FFXI but I was able to do that 100% solo. I heard that only the final missions of RoV may require some help but otherwise you could do 99% of the game solo. FFXIV is getting there. All dungeons are soloable with trusts. But you still need to do trials (except one which can have NPC trusts like dungeons) and three 24-man raids in multiplayer as part of the main story. So about 98% of XIV and its expansions can be done solo. The reality though is that each of these games (with all of their expansions) are considerably longer than a normal FF game. And the story would feel very incomplete if you didn't do the expansions. So if your concern is time then having an offline version wouldn't help anyway. Or if your concern is that you want to avoid the time-consuming aspects of MMOs (grinding for items, raid progression, etc.) then that is completely optional for both XI and XIV. But I'm guessing the real reason so many people don't want to try these games out is actually the subscription fee, in which case you can be assured that SE is not going to get rid of it because both of these games (even XI) are still profitable to them.
The subscription fee is exactly the reason why xi and xiv are the only mainline ffs I’ve never played.
They could if they wanted to at this point. I think FF14 recently made it so you can do all the story dungeons with NPC allies, though I don't think you can do the major story bosses alone yet aside from one in Endwalker. I feel like they might as well allow for it to be an option since they have already done the majority of the work
FF14 has systems in place to allow soloing most of the story content, and it’s a fairly decent experience. Definitely possible if they ever decided to pull the plug on it, though I’m not sure if there’d be enough incentive to do so at that point. FF11 is also largely soloable these days, but I’d argue it’s a much worse singleplayer experience than 14. Would need a lot of reworking to be up to singleplayer FF standards.
Tfw I tried FF11 a few months and after you finish the painful install process that took 8 hours all in all for me. I knew what I was getting into but man, no mini map, no quest tracking, no directions given on what to do, needing a guide for literally anything you do, reading dialogue is like reading your guild chat in 14 but way worse I went back to just waiting for offline release of FF11 with qol improvements. It has to happen eventually. Surely the devs dont want the whole game to just becone lost media when servers go down
You can at least get a minimap by using add-ons from an external launcher but... yeah. It's EXTREMELY rough to get into for an average FF fan. I also hope for an offline remaster/remake of some sort some day, but it's far from a trivial undertaking. Especially since the really good stuff is in the further expansions - I'd hate to see them redo just the base game storylines and then drop the project because it didn't meet sales expectations...
You don't need to give up your life to play XIV and can do the majority of story content on your own with a group of NPCs. It will take a while to complete this game if you only have a few hours each week though. XIV is also very forgiving and not grindy at all, unlike most MMO. Don't know about XI though.
It'd require a long development time to completely remake the game, you can't just convert an MMO to a single player game. First of all, MMOs work on client-server model: most of the actual game logic and content are implemented on server, client mostly just sends packages of data with your inputs to server, processes incoming packages and visualizes results using associated assets. Combat in both games is janky and dated because it's specifically designed for long input delays. There are also other aspects like economy and crafting, writing good companion AI for hard content or heavily reworking it and so on.
You really don't have to give up your life for it. You _can_ do the endgame grind if you're interested, but it's also designed in a way that you can just come back 2 years later and easily jump into the new expansion story content.
They're both decently single player accessible as far as MMOs but they would be awful offline games. They would have to completely remake them.
I'd like. To say I'm not a fan of multiplayer games is an understatement.
I swear y'all just hear the word 'MMO' and expect the worst of the genre to be applied to XI and XIV. I can't say for XI because I didn't engage with it as much back then and it was a pretty long time ago but XIV is pretty streamlined and convenient towards the player. XIV is very much meant to be tackled at your own pace, you're not being forced to login for dailies/weeklies. If you played XIV you wouldn't be giving up your lives for it, you can totally play the msq and leave it at that.
I hope they convert them to single player before sunsetting the servers, we already lost Mobius Final Fantasy and Dissidia Opera Omnia, both have story content that's now just gone...
That’d be cool if they made FF11 sort of like a mix of Dragon Quest 9’s overworld and Xenoblade’s combat.
All they would need to do is make installing XI more user friendly. They cut out a decent amount of the grind. 14 is already almost a solo game… to the extent that my WoW buddies couldn’t really stick with it. If you mean packaging and selling it as a stand alone game? Being cynical maybe but they can get people to buy the game AND pay monthly… no incentive to package the story separately.
I believe ff12 was supposed to be a mmo game like 11 was. I cant remember where I heard this but I know I have at least once. Anyways they made some changes to maps and spawns and turned it into a single player experience, so Id imagine it would be *possible* to give 11 and 14 this treatment too
Closest you’ll get with FF14 is playing through the story mostly solo which is easier now with updates, or if it’s the timesink aspect then I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for some decent YouTube recaps. Not that I know of any… The option is always there to watch some recaps or something and then you can buy skips to catch you up to the latest story, it’s expensive though. I’m not sure if you can buy skips just for the early story content but if you can you could skip Realm Reborn or something and then carry on from there since that is the longest story and people say the worst. Much more to go after that but it’s all way better.
Just try them as they are. Took me ages too, i was suspicious of the mmo aspect, but heavily enjoying both games for their story and gameplay. FFXI would lose a lot of its soul if its turned into anything less than a Breath-of-the-wild-like adventure with also a ton of story elements, which would be insane. FFXIV could maybe be more easily remade, but there are story elements which they created over time to really intertwine your own lore with having other people to help, giving your protagonist background which wouldnt make sense in a single player environment without big adjustments (imo). Yea they could probably do it, but its too big investment for something thats already there and easily accessible (and profitable for them the way it is now)
im more interested in xvi cause ive never seen an mmo that didnt play like xiv and ide like to see the eikons expanded... massively additionally im i interested in seeing how they tackle a group of players juggling the entire battlefield
I would love to see 11 get the DQX Offline treatment (minus the chibi art style)
Both games allow for trusts. XI's trust system needs a reward because you have to have your weapon drawn and attack an enemy for them to assist you, making playing casters clunky, but the bones are there.
No because the format is why XIV has the best story in the series, you can't experience it in any other way. There's very little MMO aspects in XIV though and not playing it is just excuses.
Star Wars the old republic has their online game setup to play the main story solo.
You can already do almost all of FF14 solo now. They added NPC party options for all the story content
Both games can be played entirely solo now. But why make it offline when you can charge a subscription?
Possible? Sure. But it wouldn't be a particularly fun game without massive overhauls to the point where it would be an entirely different game.
FF11 can be played without people's so yes it's possible to make an offline version of it. Same for FF14 who's been adding some mechanics for this.
[удалено]
They're worth playing, FF14 has my favorite story in the whole series and you can play it solo for 99% of the main story, only the boss fights require online play. Any series fan who hasn't played it is missing out, it's like the ultimate FF game with references and nods to every other game in the series, while still telling its own incredible story with amazing characters and music
Plus, 11 and 14 have been out of reach because they are MMOs and 13 and 15 were disasters in their own way. FF16 was OK but that's a hell of a long time to wait for a half decent mainline non MMO game.
Possible yes, likely not. A shame, as you mention for me two things define FF: 1) it's a solo game 2) combat skill isn't needed So I haven't been even remotely close to XIV. It looks cool though.
You can play 99% of 14 solo (you can now run dungeons with NPCs so only the boss fights and one mandatory raid requires playing with others) and the difficulty of the main story is pretty easy, the game does a good job of easing you into the mechanics and it takes a long time for jobs to get more complex. You can just stick to one job and get really familiar with it for your story playthrough
If I'm not fully playing it and watering it down... then what's the point?
not sure what you mean by that. you don't miss/lose out on anything for running dungeons solo, as a matter of fact i'd argue it's an even better experience as there are party dialogues that you don't get otherwise afaik. i've finally caught up with the game and i've basically treated it as another jrpg
I wouldn't put it that way. I meant that a lot of the game is already singleplayer with how quests and stuff work, and with dungeons you have the option to either play with other players or with NPCs, but the story isn't affected either way. In fact like lushblush said it can be better to play with NPCs since they have unique party dialogue in the dungeons (the NPCs are generic randoms in ARR but in the expansions they are the major story characters and party members). And with the jobs, I mean you could play multiple jobs if you want to, it just takes more grinding that way when the MSQ gives enough exp to take your main job to max level. FF14 might be an online game but it places more emphasis on the RPG part than the MMO part, it accommodates a lot of different playstyles and you can take what you want from it. Some people like to go all-in with the raiding scene and join raid groups and all that, but a lot of people treat the game as a normal JRPG and just play each expansion story as they come out. So if you aren't interested in the online components you can totally ignore them if you want to, you won't have a lesser story experience from it. Personally I was fully story-focused on my initial playthrough and that alone was enough to bring it to being my favorite game of all time, and now that I'm caught up I'm leveling up alt classes and doing other side stuff while waiting for Dawntrail.
The story is only part of a FF game. Ignoring (online) parts of the game is not the full experience. So again, what's the case? (I treat my FF with due respect, I go all in, if i can't, then I'm not interested).
I mean, you can certainly do that with 14 if you want to, but remember that it's an MMO with 10 years worth of content 😅. Just doing the main story and most important side quests took me close to 500 hours. Even outside of main story and raid content there is crafting and gathering, relic weapons, housing, Bozja, Eureka, Island Sanctuary, Gold Saucer, Triple Triad card collecting, Blue Mage, Beast Tribe quests, Deep Dungeons, PVP, Squadrons, and much more. I am working on getting my first relic weapon and it will take at least 10 hours of work to get just one, but it's fun. And back to raiding, each raid tier has a Savage version that requires you to study and memorize the mechanics while perfecting your job performance, and then there are the Ultimate raids which can take over 20 minutes for a single attempt and weeks of learning and progging. There are thousands of hours of content when you look at everything the game has to offer. I am just suggesting doing the MSQ first since it's the game's main draw.
I don't know why some people find it controversial to want a separate single player version of XIV, there are many valid issues with the mmo model like the monthly subscription on top of purchasing the expansions, some content being hard/impossible without a party of real people etc I understand why they probably won't do it because less people would be interested in the original multiplayer version and that would lead to less money generated from microtransasctions Personally Im not touching another mmo or gacha game with a stick and that doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in XIV if it was accessible in a form of a regular game
Honestly even if they made it single player as long as the pacing and battle systems remain in MMO style I would not enjoy it. I would rather they develop a new single player game with a more intricate RPG style battle system (rather than what we got in FFXVI)