Offline

Back in 2023, I imported and played Dragon Quest X Offline, a single player adaptation of the Japanese only MMO’s base game. I had played the free trial of the online version of Dragon Quest X… more than once despite it not being in English, and I had even played through the first expansion included in the free trial. However, DQX does a weird thing where, if you are a free trial player and don’t log in every once in a while, your character is deleted to make room for other players. Since the game will probably never be localized, I figured the Offline version would be a better way to experience the game. I would only ever use NPC party members anyway, and hey maybe I could use this as an opportunity to take my time and learn a little Japanese along the way. I had a great time with the game, and while I’ll never take advantage of it, apparently you can even upload your save upon completion to the MMO and continue the adventure online.

This got me thinking. Should Final Fantasy XIV have something similar? It’s no secret that the game’s biggest barrier to entry is the initial hump that is A Realm Reborn. It’s laying the foundation that the rest of the game will build on top of and foreshadowing events hundreds of hours later, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a slog to get through. It’s not awful, but it’s boring, often tedious, and, even after the rework, far too slow for its own good. It also comes with the stress of learning all the systems, quirks, and menus of an MMO. I’ve been trying to get a few of my friends into the game for a couple years, and each time we play they’ve been overwhelmed by all the different buttons and pop-ups. People who have been playing MMOs for a long time may forget, but it’s quite a lot to learn when you’re used to single player titles. I started playing XIV way back when because I was a Final Fantasy fan, not because I liked MMOs, and it took me from 1.0 all the way to Stormblood to really know how everything worked. 

Granted, the game has far better learning tools now than it did back then, such as the Hall of the Novice, Trusts, and Duty Support, but I think many prospective players would benefit from a zero pressure environment where they can take their time to chip away at the game, not feel like they’re holding up or hindering other players, and more easily transition from single player games to an MMO. When Dragon Quest X initially launched in 2012, a lot of die-hard fans were frustrated that this was an online-only game (it did have a separate, offline campaign included at the time but that has since been removed), and I imagine there are also a lot of people out there who would enjoy XIV but are put off by the necessity of online play. I doubt everyone who plays a hypothetical offline version of XIV would then transition to the MMO, but I do think it could have a decent enough chunk of converts that it’s worth considering.

In particular, the story is what usually gets people hooked. Once they get through A Realm Reborn, Heavensward grabs a player’s attention and then somehow they’re already finishing Endwalker with help from their Free Company. I think reworking ARR into a single-player RPG would help a lot more people make that jump and become invested in the world of Final Fantasy XIV earlier on. All of the plot beats need to stay mostly the same, but things could be abridged even further than they already have been after the rework. Instead, this adaptation could focus much more on the characters, allowing you to actually travel and fight alongside the Scions.

So, how would something like this even work? Dragon Quest X is turn-based, which makes it a lot easier to convert to a single-player game than something more action oriented like Final Fantasy XIV. Ideally, you’d want what players learn in FFXIV Offline to be directly transferable to FFXIV Online, meaning job mechanics and rotations, positionals, enemy mechanics, and so on. Something like hotbars, however, could be easily simplified, especially since most jobs only really get interesting at max level. (Boy, I sure love spamming a single button for enemy groups in the final dungeon of A Realm Reborn!) Basic combos could work like PvP and be bound to a single button while cooldown skills could be accessible through a quick menu or attached to their own buttons. 

Let’s use Machinist as an example to better explain this idea and assume we’re using a standard gamepad rather than a keyboard and mouse. Starting combat could use the same tab-targeting style as the MMO or utilize an auto-targeting system like single-player action games, but once an enemy is engaged auto-attacks will go off just like the online version. Tapping the right face button repeatedly will execute the basic combo (Split Shot > Slug Shot > Clean Shot) with an icon on the UI changing to show what the next action will be. Other attacks could be assigned to the other face buttons, like putting Drill on the top face button or Heat Shot on the left. A dodge button for quick movement to avoid AoEs would also be nice to have, so let’s say that’s always on the bottom face button. Remember, we’re trying to ease players into the game here, so this would give them a bit of leeway to learn not to stand in the orange puddles.

That does still leave all the other buttons Machinist has. An offline version wouldn’t have to include every single action, you should leave some stuff for players to discover when they graduate to the online version, but the skeleton of every job’s kit and playstyle should still be there. Cooldown actions, like Gauss Round, could easily go on the D-Pad, but I don’t think buffs like Reassemble need to be immediately accessible through a button. Actions like this could instead be used through a quick menu; holding the left trigger would bring up a radial menu and slow down time, allowing players to calmly select their next action. That could get tedious though if you need to do it constantly, so maybe buffs like Reassemble would just trigger automatically alongside actions you’d want to use them with anyway, such as Drill or Chain Saw. This method could teach players when to use these kinds of actions and why.

There is yet another elephant in the room though, and that’s the fact that, sometimes, jobs will be reworked entirely from the ground up. If that happens, the offline version would then be out of date and nothing learned here could transfer, which once again begs the question if an offline version would be worth it.

…or does it? Because, at some point hopefully far, far into the future, Final Fantasy XIV will reach the end of its life and end service. At the end of the day, Square Enix is a company and their main goal is to make a profit, so at some point the expense of maintaining these online titles will outweigh what they make from them. We’ve seen this happen time and time again, and not just with MMOs. Any title that has online features that isn’t purely a peer to peer multiplayer connection will go offline someday. While it wouldn’t be the same experience, an offline version of Final Fantasy XIV could preserve at least some aspects of the game, like the story, characters, and the gameplay.

Preservation is the biggest and best argument for offline versions or adaptations of games. Against all odds, I actually enjoyed playing 1.0 back in the day, and now it just doesn’t exist anymore. It wasn’t what I would call a good game, but even bad games deserve to be preserved, and maybe an offline version of XIV could include bits of 1.0 too. It’d certainly be helpful to cover in some fashion as the story does expect players to at least know the gist, and most just aren’t going to look up the cutscenes on YouTube or seek out more official sources of information. Regardless, the industry as a whole should be doing more to make its history available to everyone.

An offline version would keep FFXIV alive for much longer, but in the more immediate future I think it would help people feel a lot less intimidated by the game, especially if, like Dragon Quest X Offline, it allowed players to transfer their characters to the MMO after completing certain parts of the MSQ. Since I can’t read Japanese, I’m not sure exactly how it works there, but I imagine it would simply transfer MSQ progress, levels, and possibly your gear or inventory. The only problem with that last bit would be people modifying items offline, like how much gil they have, then transferring that online despite not really earning it. Of course, that’s easy enough to fix by limiting the amount of items and gil you can transfer or just giving players a specific amount of gil and a specific gear set upon transferring their character. 

But what would these hypothetical transfer points be, you a person I made up for this segue ask? I think the best times would be at the end of each expansion and their patches, since the player would be at the starting level for the next expansion. Given that this hypothetical game would take time and energy to make while the MMO is also running concurrently, it should never take a player directly to the current endgame. After all, part of the point is to get more people playing Final Fantasy XIV, not to be a total substitute. Dragon Quest X Offline seems to do something similar, with the MMO’s base game included in the… base game and the first expansion as DLC. I don’t see a reason why FFXIV Offline couldn’t follow the same formula, with expansions releasing as paid DLC every once in a while similar to how they’re added to the free trial. It’d probably be controversial asking players to pay for something that’s in the free trial, but this is still a somewhat separate game with different gameplay, even if ideally it would be close to the MMO.

Dragon Quest X also uses a chibi, top-down style as opposed to the MMO’s full 3D, and I think that would actually work really well for an offline FFXIV. AoEs and other mechanics are often easier to see from above, and it seems like most people zoom their camera out all the way in MMOs. A less intimate perspective and less realistic characters would also make asset creation a bit easier since things don’t need to be as detailed. However, Final Fantasy is often known for having cutting edge visuals; before I was really into the series, I know I bought FFXIII mostly because it was an incredibly pretty PS3 game. While FFXIV isn’t the highest poly game out there, it does still look great and people love posing and dressing up their characters. It’s often said that the endgame of the MMO is fashion, and an offline version should also convey that appeal in some way. I think either approach could work, but something closer in style to the online game would probably appeal to more people.

Now that we have a vague idea of what Final Fantasy XIV Offline would be and why it should exist, what are some reasons it shouldn’t? The most obvious is that it would be taking a lot of players away from the early game, leaving queues for dungeons, raids, and trials a bit emptier. You’d have fewer players doing a dungeon together for the first time outside of what’s current. However, early game dungeons aren’t as fun as they used to be with how leveling works. Since actions are unlocked as you level up, pretty much every job feels overly simplified in dungeons like Sastasha. For some jobs not having a proper rotation can help players feel out what each ability is for, while for others, like Black Mage, it just gets confusing when your rotation changes every 5 or so levels.

Not being online also takes a lot away from the world of Final Fantasy XIV. Even if you’re more of a solo player, seeing other people out and about across Eorzea and beyond has a lot of charm to it. Without other players, the world would naturally feel lonely. There might not be a ton of players running around La Noscea anymore, but there sure are tons just standing around in Limsa Lominsa, and they all make the world feel more alive.

This would also have to be a long-ish term project. As of writing, Dragon Quest X Offline only has the base game and first expansion and is available on last generation consoles plus PC. As gaming keeps marching on, it may become more difficult to play Final Fantasy XIV Offline. Hopefully backwards compatibility will keep games playable on the most modern hardware, but that’s never a guarantee. Square Enix could keep updating the game, but eventually that will also yield diminishing returns. That probably won’t be a problem for a long while, however, so it mostly depends on if SE thinks this would be a worthwhile endeavor. You can already pay to skip through most of the game.

Anyway, that’s all just hypothetical. Do you think Final Fantasy XIV should have an offline version? If you do or don’t, let us know. I am genuinely curious about peoples’ opinions on this, just don’t be rude. For more on all things Final Fantasy XIV, stay tuned to GamingTrend. 

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