There are arguments to be made both for and against the group content in Final Fantasy XIV.
In my last post I talked about the second most common criticism I've seen of Final Fantasy XIV - that the open world is irrelevant - and concluded that it often is, especially during the Main Story Quest. Now, having arrived at Sastasha, the first dungeon in the MSQ, it's time to talk about the most common criticism of this game - that it's impossible to progress through the story, and therefore the game, without doing a lot of group content.
Once the MSQ has finished tying together the three separate story threads that started in Ul'dah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa it almost immediately leads to Sastasha. From here on in most of the major action in the main story will take place in one of these 4-player instances, a 4 (or 8) player trial, or a 24 player raid.
(There are a few singleplayer instances in the 1-50 MSQ that ramp up the action beyond one simple fight, but these are very much the exception to the rule.)
Before I get further into this I will say that the argument that group content is integral to MMOs is over. Twenty years ago perhaps that was true, but the genre has evolved, for good or ill, and while group content obviously exists in every game it's no longer essential to do it during the levelling experience in most games. In this sense Final Fantasy XIV is something of a throwback to that earlier era.
That a game that often plays so much like a singleplayer RPG should also commit so fully to the multiplayer aspect of the genre is kind of astonishing. I haven't played another MMO where group content is so integrated into the levelling experience. The closest comparison is probably Lord of the Rings Online, which did include several group instances in the Epic Story, but LOTRO has long since made these soloable. Even World of Warcraft, a game which has been utterly dedicated to the dungeon/raid endgame since forever, reserves that for the endgame. Before max level, even in WoW, there's nothing to compel a player into a dungeon, whereas in FFXIV the player must complete these instances as they come up in the story before they can continue the MSQ. There is no option to skip any of them.
If there's one thing more astonishing than FFXIV's decision to push its players into group content so early and so often it's that it handles it so well. Final Fantasy XIV could stand as an exemplary model of how to make group content work in MMOs, and there are several reasons why this is so.
I have ran a lot of group content in MMOs over the years, but mainly in Neverwinter as a DPS, and in City of Heroes. Neverwinter plays fast and loose with its boss mechanics and rarely requires the Holy Trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS. Likewise in City of Heroes the Trinity is almost never required. In fact the villain archetypes didn't even have access to a healing powerset for most of the game's original run, and people still argue about whether the Brute or the Mastermind is redside's tanking class.* This led to an every-man-for-himself playstyle that was thematically very fitting - supervillains have rarely been known to work well together, and the characterisation of redside teams as eight soloists who just happen to be on the same map is entirely accurate.
*The correct answer is neither/both.
With these two games as my main experience of group content in MMOs is it any wonder that I was aprehensive about going into a more traditional Trinity dungeon in this game? Thankfully, before pushing me into Sastasha, FFXIV offered up a series of tutorial quests on how to play my class in a group situation. As simple as these lessons are I appreciated seeing how these tactics are implemented in this game as opposed to others I've played. The lessons have certainly stuck, since I still open every fight with Shield Lob and utilise that same ability to reel in adds, just as taught in the Hall of Novices.
The tutorials are all short and to the point, with each focused on introducing one new mechanic and ensuring the player can handle that before moving on to the next. It's well presented and engaging, and there's some nice level appropriate rewards handed out after each stage. If a player walks into their first dungeon undergeared it's no fault of the game.
Sastasha is virtually a further tutorial in itself, and as such it isn't very hard. It's nicely done - all of the dungeons are - and doesn't take too long to complete. I'll take it as a compliment to my ability to hold aggro that the healer on this run often pulled a second group of mobs before we'd finished dealing with the first, though it's perhaps more likely that she was just moving things along having run this dungeon many many times. Like Neverwinter this game encourages high level players to be available for lower level instances via a series of random queues which offer good rewards for them. There's also a bonus to be had if there's a first time player in the group.
(The level scaling is better implemented than in Neverwinter, so while the presence of some higher level players does reduce the difficulty it doesn't remove it. It's still possible to wipe.)
As one of the Big Five of the MMO world Final Fantasy XIV has a high player population, and this comes in useful when queueing up for a dungeon, since it ensures a player shouldn't have to wait too long to get into the instance they're looking to complete. As a Tank. I'm told that the DPS queues can be longer, and that Healer wait times are even shorter than those of Tanks. I might eventually experience the DPS side of this for myself, but I doubt I'll ever sign up as a Healer - I've no affinity for that role, having spent too much time spent in City of Villains over the years perhaps.
Good tutorials, easy to use and fast moving queues and well made dungeons all contribute to how well group content works in FFXIV, but there's another factor that's at least as important as any of these, and it's something that's beyond the reach of some other MMOs. The group content works in this game in large part because of a really good playerbase. During my early dungeon runs (on my other character) I made several very basic errors, and the only reactions in party chat were a couple of politely worded (and extremely helpful) suggestions of things I could/should do differently. No cursing, no drama, no vote to kick. It's as far removed from the horror stories of LFG in other MMOs as could be.
I've taken the advice given as well, and I'm a better player for having done so.
So Final Fantasy XIV works hard to make the group experience as smooth and painless as possible, but is this all just an attempt to deal with a problem that only exists because the devs decided to include so much unavoidable group content in the MSQ? Well yes, there's a strong argument to made that it's exactly that.
There are good reasons why group content of this kind is so disliked by many MMO players. These encounters habitually use a lot of mechanics that are rarely seen in other content* and this can make for an unwelcome difficulty spike. Now personally I like hard content - a recurring theme of this blog is that levelling content is often too easy - but I like it rather less when other players are involved.
*Neverwinter does by far the best job I've seen in an MMO of incorporating the mechanics common to group encounters into one-on-one boss fights. It starts doing so as a early as the tutorial sequence and shows that there doesn't have to be multiple players on screen for an encounter to feel epic.
I'll cheerfully beat my head against challenging
content over and over when I'm in the mood to push myself, and there
are times when I've enjoyed a hard fought defeat as much as a victory,
but that's when I'm soloing. Once other players are involved I'm aware
that their experience might depend on me getting everything right
first time and every time, and that can make some boss fights
unpleasantly stressful experiences, especially if I'm new to a particular fight.
There's also the fact - and this is a hill I will die on - that group content is the worst possible way to deliver story content in an MMO. Even in a game with a playerbase as easygoing as that of FFXIV and mostly lacking the go go go mentality so prevalent elsewhere I'm not taking in the sights and sounds of an instance when running with a group - I'm completely focused on the mechanics, be it the next pull, the positioning of the mobs, what's happening with the aggro meter or the sequence of attacks the boss will use and how they need to be countered. Even the often incredible music that accompanies these battles is nothing more than noise the first time I go into one.
As for the story itself - forget it. Any wow moment or narrative twist that occurs during one of these instances has been spoiled for me ahead of time, because I'm neither so reckless nor so irresponsible as to go into a boss fight blind. I like sightseeing and I like story, but I won't risk a wipe just to indulge in this. Sastasha is easy but it's not that long before mechanics start to show up in later dungeons (and especially in trials) that will kill a player who doesn't know what's coming. So I read guides and watch walkthroughs before every one of these that I go into.
All of this may become even more of a factor as I progress into newer content. I'm only level 60 on my other character and so have only ran the older instances, which are clearly easier now than when they were new. There's only a couple that have very obviously been nerfed into the ground - Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium - but that feels like a conscious decision on the part of the developers since these form the finale of the 1-50 MSQ and are long enough already* without running the risk of team wipes.
*The reason they are so long is utterly typical of FFXIV. Both Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium feature several very long cutscenes that play out during the instance, and in order to ensure that players running them for the first time can experience the story without being urged to skip these scenes Square-Enix made these cutscenes unskippable. They also upped to rewards substantially to compensate for the increase in the time it now takes to complete them.
First time focus and nerves aside I enjoy these encounters, but I can imagine how unpleasant it might be for a player who is here mainly for the story to be tossed into a current endgame dungeon or trial and have to deal with that difficulty spike in order to get back to what they're actually interested in.
Ultimately I don't know which side of this argument I come down on. I can laud Final Fantasy XIV for its commitment to group content and the ways it finds to make it work, while simultaneously acknowledging that some players are entirely justified in finding it alienating. That it works as well as it does is due in no small part to FFXIV having a large enough playerbase to keep the queues moving, and to the fact of that playerbase being perhaps the best I've encountered in an MMO.
Would I be doing this content if I didn't have to? I can't say for sure but a glance at my MMO history suggests the answer is no, I wouldn't. At least not this early in the game, or this often. That would be a shame, because there's a lot to recommend the group content, and I couldn't ask for a better introduction to classic Trinity dungeon runs than that provided by FFXIV. It's so good I don't resent the game twisting my arm to convince me to dive into it.
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