Eorzean Evening Post: Libra Eorzea Expansion Dreams .

A few weeks ago, I got completely hooked on Gameloft’s Rival Knights. It’s a pretty, although simplistic, mobile jousting game – get on your horse, throw other knights off their horses, get money, upgrade equipment, get frustrated by its F2P energy system, repeat. By now, I’ve burned out on it and I’m about to uninstall it, but it reintroduced me to mobile gaming. It’s been way too long since I used my phone for anything more than social media, Reddit and taking photos.

While the game itself wasn’t that exciting (beyond looking gorgeous), I think one of the main reasons why I got so hooked on Rival Knights was its sense of progression. It was always a bit of a rush to get a new piece of equipment, a sense of satisfaction once that piece of equipment was fully upgraded. That alone kept me going beyond the point of actually having fun.

Lately, I haven’t had much time or energy to play as much Final Fantasy XIV as I’ve wanted to. I’ve often glanced at the computer from the couch, hoping that I would have at strength to at least accomplish something in the game. Then I have resigned myself to Netflix and a few bouts of Rival Knights. Which got me thinking about MMOs and mobile apps.

 

Libra Eorzea

Since I started playing Final Fantasy XIV I’ve had the Libra Eorzea app installed on my phone, but let’s be honest – it’s quite pointless. Sure it can be fun to show off your character, if you actually have friends that care (I don’t), or randomly browse items or quests. But there’s nothing in it that actually improves the game as such. It’s a fun thing to have, nothing more.

Looking at the MMO genre in general, the whole app-thing is still untapped potential. A bunch of games have some form of companion app, but there’s so much more that could be done with them. Libra Eorzea is a shell which could have been filled with so many cool features – especially for us that don’t get to play the actual MMO as much as we’d like.
Let me get one thing out of the way first – I am in no way implying that these solutions would be easy, or even possible. I’m not demanding anything, I’m just daydreaming. It’s way too easy to forget the realities of development. We’re dealing with a game where signing up for the duty finder with a Chocobo out would take an incredible amount of work from the devs. Code is complicated and the amount of rewriting it would take to hook an app straight into the game itself would probably take more effort than it’s worth.

That said, let’s dream away for a bit.

Social

The most obvious use for a mobile app would be the social side of things – chat and mail, primarily. This is something that other games, like Rift and World of Warcraft, allow from their apps. While crashing in the couch after a busy day at work, I might still want to hang out with my Free Company or Linkshells without the bother of, you know, actually sitting in front of my keyboard. Maybe it could even inspire me to get off my lazy behind and play, being drafted for groups or simple jealousy, hearing someone brag about the latest Triple Triad card they managed to get or something.

I was never that impressed with how these things worked in the World of Warcraft-app, it never felt 100% reliable. But a well-developed social app is great for retention. If I haven’t played for a while, I feel like I’m starting to lose touch with all the people I’ve met through the game – if I could chat with them whenever, it’d help with retention. Rift did this fairly well and I used it quite a bit when I was in my old raiding guild and from time to time I ended up doing experts in game despite not actually planning to (or necessarily wanting to either, but hey…).

This is the main feature I’d like to see added to Libra Eorzea, to make it feel less like a gimmick app and into actual useful territory.

 

The Marketboard

People who know how to play the marketboard can be frustrating enough for us without any form of economic sense or clout whatsoever as it is, so perhaps giving them a mobile version wouldn’t be the best move. While that could be true, I personally did use this feature quite a bit in the World of Warcraft-app – if I’m lucky, perhaps it would even entice me to get rid of all the crap currently residing in my retainer bags that I never use anyway.

Compared to any social features, marketboard functionality in an app might just be a nice bonus and does come with a whole bunch of problems and questions that need to be answered. What impact would it have on the economy? Still, for Libra Eorzea to feel feature complete, I’d sorely miss this if it wasn’t included. As long as Square Enix don’t do a Blizzard and get into their heads that they should charge extra for it…

 

Crafting

Now we’re moving into much more complicated, but at the same time more fun, territory. Crafting on your mobile from the comfort of your couch, bed, workplace, toilet, wherever. As someone whose crafting so far is limited to a level 3 Culinarian, I’m not 100% sure how this would work – but since it would tie so heavily into progression, I know that I most certainly would take advantage of it.

In order for crafting to work in Libra Eorzea, you’d probably need the marketboard there as well – both to get new material, in case you run out, and to unload whatever stuff you craft. We’re also nearing potential technical nightmare territory. To make this work properly, you’d need to be able to craft using material kept by your retainers as well, which I doubt it an easy solution even in the game.

Fallen Earth had (has?) this functionality in their app (together with the social aspects). With crafting being such a big, deep and complex part of Final Fantasy XIV, having it in a mobile app would make sense. It would also make sense not to put it there, in order to make people log in instead, but I’m lazy. So sue me.

 

Triple Triad

Ok, so this part we’re actually supposed to get – through a different app. The Final Fantasy Portal app is supposed to give us news about Final Fantasy-products and is supposed to include a F2P version of Triple Triad which will hook into FFXIV. That’s great, even if the thought of mixing a stand-alone F2P version of the card game into what we have right now is kinda scary. I don’t trust publishers or the F2P model enough to not get paranoid and fear that certain cards that are hard to get in the MMO proper will become easily available through IAPs.

Triple Triad is basically made for mobile play without having to log in. Having to go through a separate app is slightly annoying, especially one I expect to be bloated and generally filled with crap I don’t care about. I don’t mind having a second one besides Libra Eorzea, but I’d prefer a standalone one – Hearthstone-style.

 

Extras

Of course, there’s so much more you could do with a mobile app. I liked what Trion did with Rift’s scratch cards, where you could could get some extra rewards in the form of tokens or shinies. Nothing major, just a random chance at getting some fun stuff – including during special events, where they’d add a new special scratch card during the event. I’d be nice to be able to get some bonus seals, a few Poetics here and there, but without turning the whole thing into a cash cow that will give you too much of an edge.

How about ventures? Being able to send out your retainers would be perfect for a mobile app, especially if you still need to log in to actually get the tokens anyway. It would take away some of the planning – do I have time for a quick venture or should I send my retainers out on longer hunts? – but I would not be complaining about that having to go. It could also take some stress away if you’re grinding for a certain reward and realise that you won’t have time to log in to set up a new one.

A mobile app needs to walk a thin line – you want to be able to give greater freedom to the player and increase retention, while not giving out too much so that the players won’t have to bother logging in again. I don’t feel like the stuff I’ve listed here would do the latter though. I just want some way to progress without logging in to the game proper. Do you have any thoughts and ideas you’d like to see included? Post them below!