To clarify before I begin: This is about solo instances (i.e. Treno, Zero\\'s Domain, Lapis Manalis post-dungeon), NOT about solo duties. I am also a roleplayer, so the reasons behind this post are somewhat centered in that, but I do think the problem I have is something that even non-roleplayers can relate to pretty easily.
When I play the MSQ, I am often playing it with a group of friends and not on my own. It\\'s always nice to be able to sit in a call and share in the experience as we progress, or in my case roleplay through the story quest-by-quest. This always works pretty well for the main expansions, but the past couple expansions have presented major hurdles for us with all of the solo instances that have been introduced to advance the story.
To be clear: I like the zones themselves. Treno is beautiful and I enjoyed being able to visit the area and I think it did a lot to advance the story they want to tell. My issue isn\\'t the zones, but simply the fact that they are locked down to being solo. This hurts our experience for two major reasons:
1. As roleplayers, it quarantines us off and makes it less convenient. That sucks, but it\\'s not something we can\\'t inherently deal with. Roleplay is about using your imagination after all.
2. This is the larger issue that more people can probably relate to, and impacts number one even more in our situation, which is that we have no basis to just SEE where each others\\' progression in the MSQ is. When you\\'re sharing a space, you can run from quest to quest together, and know you\\'re on the same steps. You don\\'t have to worry about saying something to your friend that is going to spoil a reveal they haven\\'t seen yet. You entirely lose this ability in these zones, and it makes the experience isolating beyond just being alone in the zone itself. We have to be short and vague in our roleplay to not spoil anything, and detach it from the MSQ, or we have to constantly step out of the flow to ask where the other person is, stop and wait for them (or rush to catch up to them), and then try to jump back in. It just detracts from the experience, whether we are roleplaying or not.
If this is to be a norm going forward in future patches and expansions, I\\'d really like to see an evolution of how the game handles these small additional zones that we get. I\\'m not going to pretend I know game design by any means, but I do have enough sense to know what isn\\'t practical. I\\'m not really asking for these zones to have permanence like the overworld zones. That\\'s just not really practical, and I get that. I would just like something more akin ideally to Jeuno, where it allows small groups of people in the area, or honestly just a system that recognizes players are in a party (specifically a party, not an alliance) and allows them to share one of these temporarily spun up instances.
Continue reading...
When I play the MSQ, I am often playing it with a group of friends and not on my own. It\\'s always nice to be able to sit in a call and share in the experience as we progress, or in my case roleplay through the story quest-by-quest. This always works pretty well for the main expansions, but the past couple expansions have presented major hurdles for us with all of the solo instances that have been introduced to advance the story.
To be clear: I like the zones themselves. Treno is beautiful and I enjoyed being able to visit the area and I think it did a lot to advance the story they want to tell. My issue isn\\'t the zones, but simply the fact that they are locked down to being solo. This hurts our experience for two major reasons:
1. As roleplayers, it quarantines us off and makes it less convenient. That sucks, but it\\'s not something we can\\'t inherently deal with. Roleplay is about using your imagination after all.
2. This is the larger issue that more people can probably relate to, and impacts number one even more in our situation, which is that we have no basis to just SEE where each others\\' progression in the MSQ is. When you\\'re sharing a space, you can run from quest to quest together, and know you\\'re on the same steps. You don\\'t have to worry about saying something to your friend that is going to spoil a reveal they haven\\'t seen yet. You entirely lose this ability in these zones, and it makes the experience isolating beyond just being alone in the zone itself. We have to be short and vague in our roleplay to not spoil anything, and detach it from the MSQ, or we have to constantly step out of the flow to ask where the other person is, stop and wait for them (or rush to catch up to them), and then try to jump back in. It just detracts from the experience, whether we are roleplaying or not.
If this is to be a norm going forward in future patches and expansions, I\\'d really like to see an evolution of how the game handles these small additional zones that we get. I\\'m not going to pretend I know game design by any means, but I do have enough sense to know what isn\\'t practical. I\\'m not really asking for these zones to have permanence like the overworld zones. That\\'s just not really practical, and I get that. I would just like something more akin ideally to Jeuno, where it allows small groups of people in the area, or honestly just a system that recognizes players are in a party (specifically a party, not an alliance) and allows them to share one of these temporarily spun up instances.
Continue reading...