Trust And Hope: FFXIV

This morning I succumbed to peer group pressure and logged in to Final Fantasy XIV. Everyone's been talking about the latest expansion, Shadowbringers, for weeks now. It's having a similar effect on my willpower as water has on stone.

Oh, wait, no it isn't! It takes water centuries, millennia, to wear away stone. This is more like water dripping on a wedding cake someone left out in the rain.

Hang on, I'll go out and come in again.

So, obviously I haven't bought the new expansion because why would I? I didn't buy the last one or the one before that. I have a dark and troubled history with FFXIV.

I was entranced by the original trailer for the first version, way back in 2009. I applied for and was accepted into an early phase of what was to prove a rushed and hurried closed beta. There I found a game that, while appealing in many ways, was very clearly nowhere near ready.

The mood on the beta forums was volatile. Many, many testers pointed out, at length and in detail, all the things that were wrong, all which desperately needed fixing before launch. Others claimed everything was fine or if it wasn't it soon would be. Square Enix responded enigmatically or not at all.

In September 2010, after a brief open beta, Square Enix launched the game, virtually unchanged from the dry, slow, dull and, crucially, incomplete build we'd been telling them wouldn't fly. The critical response was savage. Players liked it even less.

I knew how bad it was because I'd been playing it all through beta, albeit not often and less and less as it became apparent nothing was going to change. And yet I still bought it. At least I think I did. I guess I must have, because the original CD is here on my desk as I type. Perhaps there was something magical about the world I didn't want to let go.

The same absolutely could not be said of the gameplay, which was stultifying. Square must have agreed because they extended the "free month" that came with the purchase of this subscription MMORPG, first by one more month, then two. 

By December 2010 the game, which continued to receive a mauling every time it was mentioned, (infrequently by then) seemed little improved. The subscription fee was waived indefinitely and the game effectively ran as a Free to Play title for the next two years.

While it was free, I dipped in and out. It became one of those games where I enjoyed sightseeing and hanging out but didn't feel the need to level up or really do anything beyond wander around taking screenshots. At least, I assume I took screenshots. I always take screenshots. Where they are now, though, I have no idea.

By January 2012 the game, which had finally received enough work to bring it up to minimum standard, was deemed good enough to charge money for. You needed a subscription to play, so I stopped.

As everyone knows, that wasn't the end. New director, Naoki Yoshida, had already deemed the game unsalvageable in its current form. He was deep in the process of rebuilding it from scratch, a project which took another year and a half.

In November 2012, FFXIV closed with a typically impressive trailer and an even more typical shambles in the game itself. A much lengthier alpha and beta schedule than the rushed version I'd been in followed but I chose not to subject myself to it. In retrospect that was probably a mistake since, as Giant Bomb puts it, "Unlike the original release's beta test, where nearly no feedback was taken into account, the game underwent a great many changes while in beta testing due to player feedback."

But once bitten... Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Apparently not. When the open beta arrived I played it and persuaded Mrs Bhagpuss to try it as well. And then we bought two copies when the game went live in August 2013.

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, as it was now called, was a huge improvement in many ways, not least in the gameplay itself, which had evolved from what critics once derided as "dull, tedious, and outdated" (Giant Bomb op cit) to something that might, charitably, be described as "traditional".

In fact, combat still felt quite slow by modern MMO standards but it was undeniably an improvement. The world itself was much better. Gone were the peculiar invisible walls and the extremely obvious repeated tiles and textures. In came a wealth of quirky, characterful detail.

We were on sabbatical from  Guild Wars 2, which we'd been playing for a year. GW2 was a great MMORPG but we'd maybe kinda burned out a little. There was a non-trivial chance we might have chosen Eorzea over Tyria.

We didn't. There were a number of reasons but chief among them were two hardwired requirements: a) to progress through the main questline and b) to do it by grouping in instanced dungeons. Contrast that with GW2, where even now, after seven years, three accounts and seventeen Level 80 characters, I have never finished the original Personal Story, nor felt I needed to. As for five-player dungeons, far from being required, they're all but forgotten.

In FFXIV, as far as I know, you still have to go through the same progression via the Main Story Quest unless you choose to skip it entirely. You can begin in the expansion of your choice if you prefer: that's an option.. What you can't do is play through only the parts that interest you. Neither can you play through the dungeons on your own, using some kind of "story mode", as is common in other MMORPGs.

Or, I should say, you can't yet. One of the less-heralded features of the new Shadowbringers expansion is the "Trust" system. I paid very little attention in the lead-up to the expansion, so the first I heard of it was in this post at Blessing of Kings.

It reminds me strongly of the original Guild Wars, where you could choose to play group content with a team of AI-controled NPCs rather than rely on the vagaries of pick-up groups. The mechanic is being promoted on the basis that it helps players, especially those with DPS characters, to avoid long LFG queues, something you'd imagine wouldn't be a major problem in brand-new, required content in the latest expansion for a popular game like FFXIV.

It seems like an excellent solution to a problem much more likely to exist lower down the game, that of getting new or returning players through existing content rather than encouraging them to skip it altogether. It also seems like a good way to encourage a demographic that has, until now, very probably looked at FFXIV with some suspicion to take another look.

As yet there's no word on whether the Trust system will be retro-fitted to the rest of the game but I would lay odds it will. Eventually. I have some issues with Naoki Yoshida's hyper-paternalistic approach but one thing I will give him credit for is this: he knows how to manage an MMORPG for maximum effect over its anticipated lifetime.

FFXIV is being run in the way ArenaNet claimed they would run GW2 but never have: in the expectation that it will last for many years, both holding an audience and attracting new players. Yoshida often alludes to certain changes not being appropriate or necessary yet. He seems to have a sound understanding of what existing players will put up with and for how long and what needs to be done to bring in new blood. So far it seems to be working very well.

Unfortunately from my own point of view, that means I'll haveto wait a long time before I get what I want, which is a Final Fantasy XIV largely free of top-down controls over what I do, when I do it and who I do it with. But we're getting there, slowly.

I just have to hope I live long enough to enjoy it when it comes.