what makes an MMO fell dead

ff14 got lots of players but at the same time it fell externally dead. why is that?
what makes an mmo lively or dead to you?:confused:

- Virtually no open world. Those 3 people farming fates and 5 gathering bots per map don't really make world feel alive
- No public chat. Even just public shitposting like in BDO is good background noise and makes everything feel more alive.

Average player just stands still in Limsa, speaking in FC/whispers/Discord, while popping in and out of duties. No reason to communicate in most duties either. Population could triple, yet game would still feel just as dead.

It will feel dead when there is nobody or barely anyone around. Creating a Liminal Space effect within the game where it gives a mix feelings of nostalgic yet eerie.

Very little incentive to interact within the open world.

This is why content such as Bozja and to a degree Eureka, has been amazing. But equally, why it has felt like a slap in the face because they have shown that they're perfectly capable of doing something actually interesting with zones if they so tried.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Very little incentive to interact within the open world.

This is why content such as Bozja and to a degree Eureka, has been amazing. But equally, why it has felt like a slap in the face because they have shown that they're perfectly capable of doing something actually interesting with zones if they so tried.

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What would you be progressing towards though? I keep saying, they should just add the bicolor gemstones to ARR, HW, and SB areas and at least keep the effort to keep updating its rewards or crap.

Otherwise the only reason Bozja and Eureka get people is because there's a progression system involved. Otherwise the endgame of that content because extremely lackluster pretty quickly. Yeah there's completing the field notes for a mount but that only gets you so far.

Usually a flight of stairs does it in but a 2-3 story fall will do the trick no matter how big the MMO.

Also, LFD killed the overworld which killed the liveliness in MMO, imo. The worst part is the convenience of the system will ensure no one will ever want it removed which means that the problem it caused will never truly go away. ;A;

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Originally Posted by Deo14

- Virtually no open world. Those 3 people farming fates and 5 gathering bots per map don't really make world feel alive
- No public chat. Even just public shitposting like in BDO is good background noise and makes everything feel more alive.

Average player just stands still in Limsa, speaking in FC/whispers/Discord, while popping in and out of duties. No reason to communicate in most duties either. Population could triple, yet game would still feel just as dead.

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ye mostly what i fell as well

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

What would you be progressing towards though? I keep saying, they should just add the bicolor gemstones to ARR, HW, and SB areas and at least keep the effort to keep updating its rewards or crap.

Otherwise the only reason Bozja and Eureka get people is because there's a progression system involved. Otherwise the endgame of that content because extremely lackluster pretty quickly. Yeah there's completing the field notes for a mount but that only gets you so far.

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a mount you cant use to afk in limsa

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

What would you be progressing towards though? I keep saying, they should just add the bicolor gemstones to ARR, HW, and SB areas and at least keep the effort to keep updating its rewards or crap.

Otherwise the only reason Bozja and Eureka get people is because there's a progression system involved. Otherwise the endgame of that content because extremely lackluster pretty quickly. Yeah there's completing the field notes for a mount but that only gets you so far.

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Well, there are definitely substantial things that they could do - If they actually had, for example, critical engagements then they could tie this in with something such as Wondrous Tales to then encourage people to go out and interact beyond just relegating it all purely to instanced dungeons or trials.

It's half a matter of having the systems in place beyond just FATEs and expanding the already existing systems, but equally having the incentive factor built in those systems. FATEs are nice but beyond a point, they do get stale, and this also pretty much expands to shared FATEs. Sure, extending them to the older expansions and the base game would be a great start.

But shared FATEs are one of those where the interaction dies pretty quickly. People were doing it in troves then once they were capped it stopped, this was something that appealed to... Not everyone. Perhaps, they could aid in this by being more aggressive with the rewards, or really... Stop being afraid of only having a few select systems for particular avenues... e.g., gearing, or even obtaining rarer items from maps.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Well, there are definitely substantial things that they could do - If they actually had, for example, critical engagements then they could tie this in with something such as Wondrous Tales to then encourage people to go out and interact beyond just relegating it all purely to instanced dungeons or trials.

It's half a matter of having the systems in place beyond just FATEs and expanding the already existing systems, but equally having the incentive factor built in those systems. FATEs are nice but beyond a point, they do get stale, and this also pretty much expands to shared FATEs. Sure, extending them to the older expansions and the base game would be a great start.

But shared FATEs are one of those where the interaction dies pretty quickly. People were doing it in troves then once they were capped it stopped, this was something that appealed to... Not everyone. Perhaps, they could aid in this by being more aggressive with the rewards, or really... Stop being afraid of only having a few select systems for particular avenues... e.g., gearing, or even obtaining rarer items from maps.

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Yeah I agree with this, although with some of these avenues like gearing they'll have to balance it somehow in order for it to not be easier than getting gear from savage raiding.

Hot take: If we didnt have housing we'd be on our death bed this year

- no dangerous open world, no reason to explore since you can just fly everywhere now

- no deep combat system, really FFXIV is just 1,2,3 button spamming makes combat extremely boring

- no support jobs, FFXI Geomancer, Corsair, are heavily support jobs but the other jobs like white mage has some support magics

- No hybrid jobs like FFXI red mage who can enfeeble, apply DoTs, Heal, they have excellent enchanting magic skills

or FFXI Dancer who can sub as a Healer using TP and Curing waltz or Tank using Fan Dance, niche situations depending on the battles

- no reason to go back to zones once you go their the first time for the storyline

- FFXIV fights are too script, bosses don't change actions, which makes it extremely boring, where as in FFXI, Bosses and Monsters don't follow a script so your always on your feet and paying attention to the monster's actions which makes the fights more engaging and fun.



FFXI is a lot of fun, can't go back to FFXIV now

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

- no dangerous open world, no reason to explore since you can just fly everywhere now

- no deep combat system, really FFXIV is just 1,2,3 button spamming makes combat extremely boring

- no support jobs, FFXI Geomancer, Corsair, are heavily support jobs but the other jobs like white mage has some support magics

- No hybrid jobs like FFXI red mage who can enfeeble, apply DoTs, Heal, they have excellent enchanting magic skills

or FFXI Dancer who can sub as a Healer using TP and Curing waltz or Tank using Fan Dance, niche situations depending on the battles

- no reason to go back to zones once you go their the first time for the storyline

- FFXIV fights are too script, bosses don't change actions, which makes it extremely boring, where as in FFXI, Bosses and Monsters don't follow a script so your always on your feet and paying attention to the monster's actions which makes the fights more engaging and fun.



FFXI is a lot of fun, can't go back to FFXIV now

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even then current FFXI isnt all that great anymore from what people say. Unless you meant playing on a private server

The game feels dead when ppl dont interact with each others...
Most speak only to their close circle of friends.. and most FCs use Discord to talk in..
People in this game is quite "closed" and not rly keen on meeting new people,
so even with a lot of players around..it feels like a solo game.

simple, when there's hardly anyone around in the main hubs, that's when a MMO is dead, FF14 is a logn way from that despite it's problems.

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

- no dangerous open world, no reason to explore since you can just fly everywhere now

- no deep combat system, really FFXIV is just 1,2,3 button spamming makes combat extremely boring

- no support jobs, FFXI Geomancer, Corsair, are heavily support jobs but the other jobs like white mage has some support magics

- No hybrid jobs like FFXI red mage who can enfeeble, apply DoTs, Heal, they have excellent enchanting magic skills

or FFXI Dancer who can sub as a Healer using TP and Curing waltz or Tank using Fan Dance, niche situations depending on the battles

- no reason to go back to zones once you go their the first time for the storyline

- FFXIV fights are too script, bosses don't change actions, which makes it extremely boring, where as in FFXI, Bosses and Monsters don't follow a script so your always on your feet and paying attention to the monster's actions which makes the fights more engaging and fun.



FFXI is a lot of fun, can't go back to FFXIV now

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Played ffxi for many years and agree with all of this and more but....unfortunately when u bring any of these points up the usual white knight response is " this isnt ffxi" "go play ffxi then"

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Originally Posted by magitekLuna

ff14 got lots of players but at the same time it fell externally dead. why is that?
what makes an mmo lively or dead to you?:confused:

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FFXIV lacks content that actually make people engage and talk with each other (most of the structured content involves merely 8 static players). The baldesion arsenal was a very convoluted attempt to this.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Usually a flight of stairs does it in but a 2-3 story fall will do the trick no matter how big the MMO.

Also, LFD killed the overworld which killed the liveliness in MMO, imo. The worst part is the convenience of the system will ensure no one will ever want it removed which means that the problem it caused will never truly go away. ;A;

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nah, LFD has nothing to do with that, Dragonflights world feels more alive than WoW has ever felt in a very long time despite LFD. The reality is FF14 feels dead in the openworld cause the open world is nothing but backdrop for the story and then abandoned when the story moves on. Theres no reason to ever go out there. No treasures to be found, no hidden questlines. Just a big empty nothing

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

even then current FFXI isnt all that great anymore from what people say. Unless you meant playing on a private server

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I don't know who says that, I play on Asura and there's alot of people, I don't play on the private servers, retail has too many QoL for me

I may be completely wrong but from what I understand it looks like there’s never anyone playing the game because 99% of the population are either afk in Limsa, hiding in housing somewhere, or crafting in a corner lol. So it constantly looks like there’s barely anyone playing lol.

I do agree that FFXIV’s content design is a major problem though, particularly in regards to how dps is the only thing that matters. They’ve taken out or minimised all the ‘RPG’ elements of the game but still expect to ship it as an rpg lol. Substats may as well not exist, no player agency in ability usage, buffs and debuffs barely exist, status ailments are mostly non-existent, jobs have very little distinctions between each others, they all have the same gameplay style. No distinctions within roles (i.e all tanks/healer/dps play the same and have equivalent abilities), I could go on lol.

I don’t think FFXIV is like, ‘dying’, but I do think the longer they keep deleting anything that even remotely resembles player agency, the more people are going to become dissatisfied. Give us support jobs, give us selfish dps jobs, choice in which abilities to use, jobs that play differently from each other, make status ailments mean something. Bring more to fights than just ‘dodge orange puddle’ and ‘deal maximum dps’

Everyone being in Limsa kills the world, the only time you see people is when they’re new, or they are in a Hunt Train

It always astonishes me when I open Gw2 - it just seems super lively in comparison with its open world.

In FFXIV it's very quiet outside of new patch drops. Even on the lively servers it feels quiet.

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Originally Posted by magitekLuna

ff14 got lots of players but at the same time it fell externally dead. why is that?
what makes an mmo lively or dead to you?:confused:

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The lack of worthwhile endgame activities.

The game needs to have something to feel like you are actively progressing your character or it just stagnates into afking in limsa.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

FFXIV lacks content that actually make people engage and talk with each other (most of the structured content involves merely 8 static players). The baldesion arsenal was a very convoluted attempt to this.

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And still is, to this day, the most fun i have ever had in XIV.

The chaotic nature of BA was what made it feel like an accomplishment.

For FFXIV.

Reasons for the game feeling dead or empty? I have a few thoughts on it.

1. Over reliance on small scale instanced content. There's very little to regularly engage players in the actual open world areas. As such they tend to be empty outside of the week or so of a patch cycle.
2. Overwhelming majority of content being extremely easy and simple. Essentially removes alot of opportunity to have people actually interact with each other resulting in many players just viewing other players in duties as NPCs. FFXI was far more social. It also had far more mechanical detail than this game.
3. Too much "fast travel" Open world games in general have been doing this lately calling it "quality of life" However it's also immersion breaking and anti-social in an MMO as it removes oppurtunities to meet new people since they're all just poofing, fizzling, bamfing, flushing, etc around the world instead of travelling it. Open world games in general also falling into a trend of instantly marking quest objective locations on your map for you the moment you flag a quest is also a contributor to this. No need to ask other players questions if the game is spoon feeding all the answers to you eliminating the need to even read or listen to the quest dialogue.
4. Structured as a single player game. The game is driven on the story line in order to access content. The main story line essentially plays out as if every other player out there doesn't exist making the majority of the game feel like a single player game that has sections where you can add extra players to make it go faster. It's not to say having single player based story campaign is bad. However forcing players to go through it kind of feeds that mind set of "I'm the hero and everyone else is just an NPC" Structuring the game more as a sandbox style then filling the world with optional stories, secrets, lore quests, world or community events in game (can be simple things even like FFXI's besieged and campaign battles). Could even be something like outbreaks of a specific monster type where it keeps track of total killed by the entire player base along with personal counts to unlock reward tiers when the event ends. You can still have an MSQ in this case but not gate things behind it instead making the MSQ an option (albiet easier) to unlock specific things by doing it but have other methods available if people really do not want to do the MSQ. The best example that immediately comes to mind is also from FFXI in the form of the Airship Pass which players got for free doing their nation's rank quests or could just be purchased from an NPC for 500,000 Gil if you refused to do the quests to get it for free.

I know a lot of us groan at getting Crystal Tower raids all the time in roulette, but the fact that I see multiple first-timers on the regular in there is an extremely positive sign regarding the health of the game. Same in leveling roulette, there's often a first-timer there too.

I decided to plow through a whole ton of Guildhests on an alt job for the completion bonus earlier today, and I did every single one with only a few minutes queue time each, or less. This was on a DPS job. This tells me the game is not just very alive, but strongly thriving.

Beyond that, any city I go to I see lots of people. The reddit is incredibly active. Even the parody "shitpost" reddit is active. FFXIV is doing well, folks.

Instead of being a MMORPG, the game turned into a cooperative VN.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

I know a lot of us groan at getting Crystal Tower raids all the time in roulette, but the fact that I see multiple first-timers on the regular in there is an extremely positive sign regarding the health of the game. Same in leveling roulette, there's often a first-timer there too.

I decided to plow through a whole ton of Guildhests on an alt job for the completion bonus earlier today, and I did every single one with only a few minutes queue time each, or less. This was on a DPS job. This tells me the game is not just very alive, but strongly thriving.

Beyond that, any city I go to I see lots of people. The reddit is incredibly active. Even the parody "shitpost" reddit is active. FFXIV is doing well, folks.

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crystal tower is required for msq, thats why you see it, and is included in the free trial, it means nothing for the health of the game really

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immersion

The best games over the years have one thing in common, immersion. Skyrim probably being the best game of the last 15 years. That game is still played by many nearly 12 years later. It still has a strong community that are still discovering secrets.

XIV's world feels kind of dead. Imo, it is due to the meat & bones of the game being instanced, compared to XI were the end game bosses were fought in the open world within a zone. XI's open world was maybe around, 70% of the game. The big baddies were all in the open world.

AV for example will spawn after The Jailer of Love is defeated in the open world. He will just appear like...."What have you done.....!!!!" & how can you forget the giant UFO in the open world (Don't walk under it.....). Campaign battles were also an open world event. Oh, there was a giant dragon mob, unrelated to the campaign that would attack players. Players would unite sometimes, to take it down to prevent further annoyance.

Even the job quest were immersive. How the BST job quest was connected to the Chocobo license quest was masterful lol.

The ship rides were immersive. Sometimes pirates would attack those poor little XI noobs.......

XIV, while a solid game, just doesn't feel immersive. Many XI players either quit or stay with XI due to this.

I've been playing on private XI servers recently, and it just does a lot right that XIV doesn't. I'm not saying it's a better game, but I do think that the dev team does need to reflect on why FFXI has such a dedicated and passionate playerbase that supports it to this day despite how antiquated and old it is. There are things that they can learn from it, is what I'm saying.

XIV is a smoother experience when it comes to pure action among other things, but misses a lot of the MMORPG appeal that makes people return to games like XI.

An MMO feels alive to me when there are many opportunities for me to interact with other players. It reminds me of when I almost stopped playing at level 30 because I felt so left behind. As someone who came from World of Warcraft, there was no player interaction in the story, no one spoke in the dungeon, no one invited me to the novice chat, and even in the cities, no one spoke, no trading channel, nothing but AFK posers everywhere.

It wasn't until I was invited to the novice channel, joined a guild, and cough chat bubbles cough that I felt much more comfortable. Ignoring the story, which obviously relies on a plot between you and NPCs and therefore doesn't make much sense to force players into, there are still very few reasons for interaction between players, despite the fact that the story takes up a huge part of the game.

There's no need for farming, there are no events where you really have to work together, and even when there are, it's not built around the fact that randoms would like to interact with other randoms, and it doesn't always have to be questing. A perfect example is the Gold Saucer, where there are so many mini games and there's never really any interaction with other players.

In FF14, you are often just herded from point A to point B, and the only real interaction is being able to see that others are probably doing the same thing as you.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

I've been playing on private XI servers recently, and it just does a lot right that XIV doesn't. I'm not saying it's a better game, but I do think that the dev team does need to reflect on why FFXI has such a dedicated and passionate playerbase that supports it to this day despite how antiquated and old it is. There are things that they can learn from it, is what I'm saying.

XIV is a smoother experience when it comes to pure action among other things, but misses a lot of the MMORPG appeal that makes people return to games like XI.

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Simply if you compare the 2. FFXI is an MMORPG targeted at RPG players. FFXIV is an MMO using the FF franchise to target non RPG players. At least that seems to be the direction FFXIV has been going. However part of me thinks FFXI would probably be competing with this game in terms of active players if it wasn't a PS2 era game and had the same quality of visuals. There's so many great older games out there that ppl don't even try simply because it isn't as "pretty" as the new stuff. I still feel like FFXVII needs to be a new MMORPG that puts RPG back into the label following FFXI's design philosophy. At the same time I feel like it should follow up with FFXVIII going back to the fantasy roots of the franchise with cartoonish visuals like we got from FFIX. Then give it the darkest story in SE history and death sequences reminiscent of happy tree friends... >.>;

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Originally Posted by drtasteyummy

An MMO feels alive to me when there are many opportunities for me to interact with other players. It reminds me of when I almost stopped playing at level 30 because I felt so left behind. As someone who came from World of Warcraft, there was no player interaction in the story, no one spoke in the dungeon, no one invited me to the novice chat, and even in the cities, no one spoke, no trading channel, nothing but AFK posers everywhere.

It wasn't until I was invited to the novice channel, joined a guild, and cough chat bubbles cough that I felt much more comfortable. Ignoring the story, which obviously relies on a plot between you and NPCs and therefore doesn't make much sense to force players into, there are still very few reasons for interaction between players, despite the fact that the story takes up a huge part of the game.

There's no need for farming, there are no events where you really have to work together, and even when there are, it's not built around the fact that randoms would like to interact with other randoms, and it doesn't always have to be questing. A perfect example is the Gold Saucer, where there are so many mini games and there's never really any interaction with other players.

In FF14, you are often just herded from point A to point B, and the only real interaction is being able to see that others are probably doing the same thing as you.

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Ill give it 2 expansions before all ultimates are canned, savages are dumbed down enough for trusts to complete them and the duty/partyfinder to be removed and the only way to do content is trusts, and everyone will be paying a monhtly subscription for a singleplayer game with social hub.

/s but kinda not, for 95% of the time you really pay a subcription for a singleplayer game

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Originally Posted by Shinkuno

Ill give it 2 expansions before all ultimates are canned, savages are dumbed down enough for trusts to complete them and the duty/partyfinder to be removed and the only way to do content is trusts, and everyone will be paying a monhtly subscription for a singleplayer game with social hub.

/s but kinda not, for 95% of the time you really pay a subcription for a singleplayer game

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I’m not even sure it qualifies as ‘single player game’ anymore lol, more like ‘interactive movie’

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

And still is, to this day, the most fun i have ever had in XIV.

The chaotic nature of BA was what made it feel like an accomplishment.

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This.

People poo poo Eureka and say it was the worst, but those instances, and especially that dungeon when they were current bought some of the most organization and interaction between random players that I have ever seen in the game. BA runs were an organizational and cooperative thing of beauty, bringing 54 players together to accomplish running though a one hit will probably kill you dungeon.

God I miss those days. Like Dixie said, best fun I ever had in FF14.


And if you want to see a game with a vibrant open world. GW2. Yeah, even after all this time, it astonishes me how many people I see in ALL the zones actually DOING stuff.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

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Agreed on all of it.
I've been of the opinion that too much convenience and quality of life hurts a game for some time now. There comes a point where it's no longer a free improvement and instead you sacrifice something else for it, in this case immersion and the world feeling alive.
The amount of fast travel through the world but also into duties paired with the story deliberate isolating you from other players outside a few dungeons/ trials and making other players appear as supporting NPCs to you being the one true hero and the fact that everything is spoonfed just leads to people quickly poofing in and out of zones to do their 5min dailies or something and then stand around in one of the cities while poofing in and out of duties.
A large chunk of materials completely lose meaning once you hit max level on a crafter so people don't have a reason to go back into earlier zones to farm mats there. Once you left a zone after the story is finished there, your only reason to return are hunt trains if you do them and fates if you want to rank up for shared fates or the occasional treasure map.

And I think there's also another problem that affects immersion negatively: the significant lack of world "clutter".
Most zones feel dead and empty not just from a lack of players but also from a lack of things that you'd normally see in a living, breathing world. And if you wouldn't to that extend, it pays off to exaggerate that aspect.
What I mean are things like

• guards, travelling merchants and caravans travelling the roads with the merchants/ caravans maybe also having things for sale that you don't get at every 08/15 merchant in the city,
• a variety of small animals running around in and outside hubs,
• a variety of mobs in each area of a zone, preferably also with interactions (e.g. a predator chasing its food on legs around, a baby animal following/ chasing a critter around for a bit when said critter is within x yards, a male animal dropping food in front of his family and the others doing a kind of eating animation etc)
• NPCs having looping banter, interaction and routes they walk, e.g. an NPC walking up to another, telling them something and to follow them, the two NPCs walk to their new destination together, talk about something there, maybe "interact" with objects and then parting ways again or an animal trying to get into the kitchen and the cook chasing it out again
• objects to interact with, can be a simple gimmick that's just for fun like a lost scroll turning you into a frog (buff, can be clicked off), items that give you a small buff , books/ letters for lore bits, small animals you can pet and that emote back
• small hubs that don't only exist for the main story

Now, overworld clutter obviously wouldn't solve the problem but it's still a very important part of a world feeling alive and immersive and would, at the very least, make it less noticable if they couldn't manage to make some zones feel alive and have players engage in them and with each other.

I think they also limited themselves with their fear of giving people several avenues to get something or adding anything of value outside of dev-approved content (e.g. savage gear).
Zone events, world bosses/ strong rare mobs, open world treasures, open world minigames, world quests/ dailies, invasions... these could all be ways to get tomes, some gear, pets, currency for buying a variety of things or even just plain old gil.
The reward system feels very sterile in many ways. You can only have this thing from this specific content, that's the dev-approved way and we'll not stray from it. No, you can't have rewards for exploring, we want you to do THIS content because it's literally the only way to get something.

Lack of player interaction.

If you're playing a multiplayer game that's sort of what you need. It doesn't matter how it's done. It could be over anything, but it needs to be there.

I don't really think it's FFXIV's fault though. People seem really picky-choosey about who they interact with these days. I feel like most people are immediately judging whether or not you offer them anything before they decide to let you into their inner circles :/ That's everywhere from simple discord channels to any other online games. Very few people just act normal and treat others like normal human beings these days, it's all about them.

Personally, I think SE made a game that players want and we hate ourselves for liking it.

Some people noted that people stand around Limsa and just pop in/out of duties. Should we go back to having to travel to the duty entrance instead? No more flying mounts. Limited teleports; maybe just 1 for all expansions and then you have to take a ship or some other timesink to get where you want to go?

How about queueing for duties themselves? What we have now is convenient. Click a button and SE's servers do the job for you of matching you up with other players to complete it. The people we are matched with might as well be NPCs at times. 99% of instances go like this:

- enter instance
- people type / o/ o7 or nothing at all
- clear it
- people type gg or nothing at all

Would we prefer to make our own groups for all content, not just high-end content? Stand around Lima shouting "LF 2 DPS and heals for expert... meet me at the entrance to the dungeon!"

In nearly every MMO I played prior to FFXIV, forming a group to gain experience was a chore. Sometimes you might only have 1 hour which means you might as well not login. It takes that long to get people together and get to where you have to go. However, this chore was also community forming. The people on your friends' list were invaluable. These were people that didn't let you down. It was a big deal to make friend with people, since they'd come to you first for a group.

It was like skipping the queue.

But we got what we have now because this is what players wanted. And in many ways it works. I don't have 3-6 hours anymore to sit down at my computer and play a game. With just 20 minutes, I can login, run a dungeon and logout. In other games, it would take 20 minutes just to get to the dungeon, not counting getting a party together and actually running it.

Hot take: But I think the combination of Twitter, Reddit, and especially Discord is why the game feels anti-social. It's because all of the social activity is off the game not within it. Linkshells have been gradually killed off due to size limitations. Discord bots and third-party tools™ have made the need for even hunting linkshells irrelevant. World visiting and Data Center travel has effectively killed off in-game FC chats. Until they update DC travel to allow you to engage with Linkshells and FC chat across the DCs, these will likely continue to remain dead. Discord has allowed people to partake in socializing even when offline. Play other games, and even voice chat together. Then there's Twitter and Reddit where everyone wants to be some kind of content creator these days. Then those creators make their own discord communities, and we have dramatic community wars all the time. Even Gposing on Twitter has turned into a popularity contest at times. Then we have the Role Players, Erotic Role Players, Raiders, Hardcore Gamers, Casual Gamers always at odds with each other especially with what should be on the party finder. Housing becoming another wrench in the scoup of things. Nobody wants to be in a house-less FC, and these days nobody wants to be in an FC at all unless they own it. There's just really no solution to any of this... the evolution of technology is creating the illusion that in-game chat is dead.

It won't solve the problem but some things that SE could do to make the game feel more socially alive is:

-Allow FC and Linkshell chats across worlds and data centers.

-Give more incentives into being in an FC. Instead of giving rewards through meaningless FC ranks, attach them to member size. 10 members gives you another FC action, 20 members expands the chest size, 30 members increases the slots for furniture that can be placed, 40 members upgrades the FC buffs to tier 3, 50 members gives an extra exp buff when playing with other FC members. These are just suggestions, we could get really creative with this. Obviously this would also encourage more blind inviting but the FC leaders would have to be active to maintain this member count or they would lose their buffs.

-Increase the cross world linkshell capacities from 64 to 500. Maybe even 1000 if really possible.

-Delete Fellowships as is and redesign it into a better model. The concept isn't bad but there is way to much spam and the lack of communication between members being locked to weird forums posts isn't good. There needs to be a link-shell like chat and a calendar.

-Speaking of Calendars, FCs and Linkshells also need an in-game Calendar feature. And no, not the stupid companion app. There is no incentive to using the companion app when we have discord.

-Make FC rooms cheaper. 300k is a bit high these days for something that locks you into your FC and isn't any better than an apartment. Or alternatively increase the furniture limit from apartments. Regardless, something needs to be done to make these more desirable. There is virtually no real reason to have one.

-Add FC birthdays, for example the FC get's unlimited FC buff usage on it's anniversary day. By extension allow Member anniversary where the in-game chat prompts when you have been with an FC for a year.

-Allow visitors to Eternal Bonding from other worlds and data centers.





As for being silent in dungeons, there's just nothing that can really be done about that. People want to do their roulettes then get on with their lives. And FATES are just kind of a dead thing that's only ever made relevant through relics. These have imo, never made the world feel alive and become dead once more with each new expansion. Same goes for hunts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wissp

This.

People poo poo Eureka and say it was the worst, but those instances, and especially that dungeon when they were current bought some of the most organization and interaction between random players that I have ever seen in the game. BA runs were an organizational and cooperative thing of beauty, bringing 54 players together to accomplish running though a one hit will probably kill you dungeon.

God I miss those days. Like Dixie said, best fun I ever had in FF14.


And if you want to see a game with a vibrant open world. GW2. Yeah, even after all this time, it astonishes me how many people I see in ALL the zones actually DOING stuff.

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It work in gw2 so well because you never over gear any zone. You don't lose skills doing lowe level content. In FF14 it's pain to do any thing under level 60. In 7.0.it be anything under 70.