Not enough activity

As a recruiter I notice there's less and less overall activity on the game. Where I used to see 10 people online 3 years ago, there's 3 online today.

Every time it's the same... a patch is released with end game content and story... players get busy doing that and 2 weeks later they have completed it and are tired of it after which they don't sub again for 2 months till they get more end game or story content... it's sad that this seems to be the only thing people still seem to care about once they finish most things in the game.

Yoshi P said to not sub every month but it's rediculous that if you love social interraction, you have to skip 3-4 months of sub just to have a few weeks of serious social activity simply because people don't stick around.

I think telling people to skip subs is a terrible way to do it. I think a new method should be implemented to keep people invested in the game even if there is currently no storyline or end game content to do. And I believe this can be done by adding an in game mini game mode that can also be used through party and or duty finder where you can team up with other players (or the team you happen to be in) to do something silly.

A few examples would be:

- The floor is lava
- Hide & seek
- Riddle event
- FC vs FC pvp (this could get it's separate ranking)
- etc... every 1-3 patches they could add a new mini game.

It would be nice if you were given a few rule choices for each game and the ability to donate prizes people could win if they came out as the winner. This would promote random people acting silly together. People like me wouldn't mind funding prizes because I enjoy having people around. At the very least the game needs more reasons for people to flock to the game and I think we can easily do that with small adjustments.

This is all stuff that you can do in game right now with the affordances granted within the play space. I've been to deathroll competitions, glamour competitions, walking tours, etc. It just requires self-organisation of the community.

This would keep it limited to your own community which means you won't always find enough people. It would be helpful if the game provided some pre-made mini games with a limited choice of rules so it's easier and more inviting to do something fun with randoms without having to make an effort.

There is a reason why frontline pvp is always packed... it's also somewhat a mini game but through duty finder, easy, random, fun.
I'm sure the same success can be had when they make other games that people used to do IRL and enjoyed, to be easy accessible in game.

It's hard to find likeminded people... lets take pvp, not everyone likes it but simply because there's a premade duty finder option, there's always enough people.

It's more a matter of bringing people together to do something they may enjoy with a group.
And finding a group in 1 community isn't always easy... I've hosted custom games but it usually only fetches 4 people in 1 FC where it would be way more fun with 8+ people.

Just imagine a "the floor is lava" game where you are forced to do it mounted and falling means you have to sit on the bench and have to wait for that round to end :p
I've done jumping riddles mounted during a competition (shirogane for example) and it's very fun, especially if there's a prize to win XD

I usually just wander through housing wards and enter peoples houses to see how they've designed the interior.
It's interesting to see how creative people can be, also a relatively low effort activity I suppose.

The only other thing to note is that sometimes I've walked into houses with people all stacked on top of each other sometimes on random bits of furniture, and it becomes a bit awkward.

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

I usually just wander through housing wards and enter peoples houses to see how they've designed the interior.
It's interesting to see how creative people can be, also a relatively low effort activity I suppose.

The only other thing to note is that sometimes I've walked into houses with people all stacked on top of each other sometimes on random bits of furniture, and it becomes a bit awkward.

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Congrats my friend, you've stumbled upon ERP in progress xD

Once I ran into people playing some sort of TTRPG in-game, they were at the Ruby Sea, do /dice in chat, and then move accordingly, I watched them from a decent distance for a minute or two, and went on my way, I was mostly confused why they were doing the rolls on /say instead of on a party or FC chat.

I could play hide and seek without the devs adding it to the game. The issue with that is that I'm not 5 years old.

How about we get some meaningful content with replay value instead of 1 dungeon that's near identical to every other dungeon with no reason to do it more than once, a single Hildebrand quest and custom deliveries/beast tribes that tell me to go away once my 30 second gameplay allowance has been used up?

Nontent is not the answer. People would do these things once and then never touch them again. We already have things like jumping puzzles, triple triad and duelling at Wolves Den Pier but you've forgotten that they exist because they're boring after 30 seconds.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I could play hide and seek without the devs adding it to the game. The issue with that is that I'm not 5 years old.

How about we get some meaningful content with replay value instead of 1 dungeon that's near identical to every other dungeon with no reason to do it more than once, a single Hildebrand quest and custom deliveries/beast tribes that tell me to go away once my 30 second gameplay allowance has been used up?

Nontent is not the answer. People would do these things once and then never touch them again. We already have things like triple triad and duelling at Wolves Den Pier but you've forgotten that they exist because they're boring after 30 seconds.

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Tell that to the vast amount of players who manage to cause drama like a 5y old in the game almost on a daily basis xD
Regardless to say either SE isn't putting out meaningful content or there's just too much 5y olds that need 5y content seeing as I'm not seeing much people log in, meaning they don't have anything meaningful to do :p

And besides, we both know you can't do hide and seek with minors that won't cry when they lose xD
Even then the game doesn't allow 5y olds so that reasoning is kinda off... there's no such thing as 5y content in truth.

The question is, do you like to just hang out with friends? Or do you consider yourself "too good" to humiliate yourself by acting silly with a couple of friends xD

We did hide and seek a couple of months ago, was fun because we had custom rules. But while you can arrange stuff like that on your own, it's quite impossible to bring enough people up to speed about it so some in game support would help a lot.

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Originally Posted by SXTC

Tell that to the vast amount of players who manage to cause drama like a 5y old in the game almost on a daily basis xD
Regardless to say either SE isn't putting out meaningful content or there's just too much 5y olds that need 5y content seeing as I'm not seeing much people log in, meaning they don't have anything meaningful to do :p

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Yes, you're absolutely correct. My whole friends list is offline more often than not these days. If little minigames like this were the answer, everyone would be at the Gold Saucer instead of playing other games though.

We need meaningful content that gives players long term goals, not minigames, IMO.

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Originally Posted by SXTC

As a recruiter I notice there's less and less overall activity on the game. Where I used to see 10 people online 3 years ago, there's 3 online today.

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Anecdotal, tbh. I see lots of people online and it's because of the type of people I put on my friends list:

• RPers.
• Hunters, who enjoy hunting all year long.
• Collectors, who find lots of content to do due to being engulfed in grinds that casual players ignore.
• People who actually enjoy raiding and do it for months on end, as opposed to just raidlogging the latest raids.

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Every time it's the same... a patch is released with end game content and story... players get busy doing that and 2 weeks later they have completed it and are tired of it after which they don't sub again for 2 months

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Always been that way because the core patch content (MSQ, alliance raid, normal content) is designed for the casual gamer that plays DLC for a few days after release then moves onto the next game that had a DLC release, which is how most people play games from what I've observed on Steam.

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you have to skip 3-4 months of sub just to have a few weeks of serious social activity simply because people don't stick around.

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Still anecdotal because I find social activity year round. You are looking in the wrong places for it.

You will not find much social interaction from casual players who quit 3 days after a patch release. You'll find it from the more hardcore crowd that nolife the game year-round - hunters, collectors, RPers, MINE communities, those sorts. It has always been that way.

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- The floor is lava
- Hide & seek
- Riddle event
- FC vs FC pvp (this could get it's separate ranking)
- etc... every 1-3 patches they could add a new mini game.

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Those are good ideas and the sad thing is they've done fun things like this with the All Saint's Wake and Valentione's events, yet it doesn't occur to them to do anything like it outside those events.

They would solve a lot of problems if the Moogle Treasure Trove came earlier in the patch with increased variety of rewards, and had a longer cycle behind it.

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Originally Posted by SXTC

Yoshi P said to not sub every month

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That's actually the way. People who can't let go of the game (any game) and expect it to be entertaining all the time forever are always going to be disappointed, because that's an unrealistic expectation. Is FFXIV perfect? No. Could it be better? Certainly. But no game will ever exist that can be fun forever and ever.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

They would solve a lot of problems if the Moogle Treasure Trove came earlier in the patch with increased variety of rewards, and had a longer cycle behind it.

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Something like Moogle Treasure Trove but with new, unique rewards is actually a really good idea. Moogle Treasure Trove is cool but I generally have everything that you can get from it and there's no point in engaging with it beyond grabbing a few of the treasure maps with guaranteed portals.

It would be good if it was running all the time, to avoid preying on FOMO, and they could just switch the activities associated with it around every month or so to keep it fresh, and add a few new rewards every patch.

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

That's actually the way. People who can't let go of the game (any game) and expect it to be entertaining all the time forever are always going to be disappointed, because that's an unrealistic expectation. Is FFXIV perfect? No. Could it be better? Certainly. But no game will ever exist that can be fun forever and ever.

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I don't think anyone expects infinite content. The problem is that right now, most people are done with a new patch in a couple of days and then stuck waiting for the next patch for 4 months. Worse yet, they drip feed each patch so that x.1, x.15 and x.16 are spread just far enough apart that you need to pay for 2 months to play each wafer-thin slice of content.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't think anyone expects infinite content. The problem is that right now, most people are done with a new patch in a couple of days and then stuck waiting for the next patch for 4 months. Worse yet, they drip feed each patch so that x.1, x.15 and x.16 are spread just far enough apart that you need to pay for 2 months to play each wafer-thin slice of content.

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You don't have to play the content as soon as it's released, you can wait a few months and do it all at once.

"As a recruiter" So... you're one of those people who unleash an essay of text in shout chat? You need people to do that?

If the seasonal events went from minimal effort to medium effort it would partially fill the gaps.

I have a lot of alts, and every FC I'm in on multiple servers is basically dead these days. We're lucky to have 4-5 people on together at any time of day.

It's blatantly obvious people have nothing to do in the game right now. But we also know nothing is going to change to put out content faster.

sounds like gold saucer update suggestion.
which is not bad thing.

What's ironic is that final fantasy eleven has a FC vs FC PVP variant. It would be pretty cool if they were to add something similar to this game to those that enjoy it.

how do you play floor is lava? hide and seek was always fun with the FC but now a days it seems some of my fc has shut themselves off from the main group.
But still curious of ideas :D

Queue up Rival Wings.

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Originally Posted by Krokov

What's ironic is that final fantasy eleven has a FC vs FC PVP variant. It would be pretty cool if they were to add something similar to this game to those that enjoy it.

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PVP is beyond dead in FFXI. Most people don't even know it exists, never mind actually engage with it.

to me, the only exclusive thing to MMO is high end PvE (you can find better pvp elsewhere, you can find better scenario elsewhere, you can find better "easy pve" elsewhere)

I do my savage/ultimate prog and then I unsub, im fine with it

FFXIV have been less a MMO and moved towards a single-base game with hubs to wait for queues.

Can't wait to see Trials/raids to be completed with only NPCS.

From the Developer side nothing will come, while you are interested enough in giving ideas none of them will work with their tick based server in mind where your ass hair can be the cause of touching lava and be out which would make playing anything frustrating as is. "puzzles" in the game are not really known to be hard or use a lot of brain for that matter and FC vs FC pvp-.. good luck finding a second FC with enough members online at a time, which you yourself described is getting nearly impossible because nobody plays the game anymore

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Originally Posted by Teno

Queue up Rival Wings.

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Game is so dead that even this is hard to pop now.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

PVP is beyond dead in FFXI. Most people don't even know it exists, never mind actually engage with it.

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Aye I was simply saying that they had a function where you could do a FC vs FC Rumble if you will.