A player named Marael said the following:
"The game plays like a single player RPG. Honestly, I don't even know why it's online at all in the first place. This might be contributing to the silence. There's very few things in the entire game that actually require communication with other players of any kind. Coil, CT, that's about it, right? If the game consists largely of single player content, or content where all you have to do is memorize a boss' script to succeed, a lot of people aren't all that motivated to speak. Again, it's a single player RPG put online for whatever unfathomable reason, and it seems that a good chunk of the community just seems to disregard the fact that there even IS a community at all. When you have to go out of your way to do something, and it's not required to get the job done, sadly, not many people are going to do it."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sentences highlighted in red are the statements I would like you to focus on. How accurate (how true is it to your actual experience) are those statements to you or your experience thus far with this game. I bought FFXIV about 6 days ago and while I am thankful to be apart of a very sociable free company filled with veteran and helpful players (One Hit Knock Out - OHKO for short) , the path that the game provides for me (which I must follow) to be able to get to the point where my veteran free company friends are at (end game) is very very single-player focused. If I were to answer my own question, I would say that those statements really hit home - in other words, they ring "very true" to me.
I definitely have my reasons (and I need some time to think about how to word those reasons so that they are coherent - so forgive me if I have to keep editing a bunch of times).
Reasons:
1. To progress (keep in mind I am only level 26 at the moment) through the dungeons, you must follow the quests centered around the "story line".
2. (Had it and now I can't remember... it will come back to me haha).
3. No open world PvP in this game (although I am kind of nervous about saying this because I understand that there are people who wouldn't even touch this game if open world pvp was included). I put it here because seeing another player (enemy let's say) should theoretically remind me and enforce the idea that I am not the only player in the world playing the game. There is more to it than just interacting and completing objectives with NPCS.
What are your reasons for your point of view? Let's have a civil discussion (we have the weekend - so no rush!).
Purpose for this discussion/thread:
I'd like to take the reasons presented by various players in this discussion and try to figure out non-obvious methods of being able to bring more players together and make this feel like an MMO.
(of course, this hints that I feel it is a bit lacking in the "let's go do this together" aspect of the game - currently the side of the fence that I am on).