Future proofing and community funneling

Playing the game after expansion feels... not bad, but perpetually empty. If you're not part of the rush to get things done, you'll never have a chance to do it; Places like the moon and occult crescent are becoming ghost towns. Previous areas of those nature already are, but doing anything in them requires a massive amount of people.
You (the developers) need to make plans for when this content isn't new.

Along those lines, stop making fifteen different end-of-expansion islands. There is no reason why the moon and occult crescent couldn't be the same island and having an integrated story. All this separation does is splinter the people playing into tiny subsets instead of being immersed in a world with people.

It's not hard to fix, but the people making this game need to burn the instruction manual they follow every expansion (and post expansion)

Thank you for coming to my rant.

All of this stuff should just exist in the regular open-world. That way those zones would serve a purpose beyond the MSQ, much more efficient use of dev resources.

Or that, yeah.
I acknowledge that expansion islands are a thing in every mmo; but with how little our zones are utilized as is, there would definitely be room to plop these things down in a zone and build into it.

IDK how it is nowadays, but funny how Bozja and Eureka were fairly well populated in busy hours back in Endwalker.

They just dropped the ball with OC when it comes to shelf life. IDK what happened, since they had a great foundation to follow up. I'd understand if OC was a completely fresh and innovative feature, and the trial is not successful, but it's not the case.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

IDK how it is nowadays, but funny how Bozja and Eureka were fairly well populated in busy hours back in Endwalker.

They just dropped the ball with OC when it comes to shelf life. IDK what happened, since they had a great foundation to follow up. I'd understand if OC was a completely fresh and innovative feature, and the trial is not successful, but it's not the case.

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I think the biggest thing is they need to build a fun game feature, then build stuff around it.
When the only reason to do the content is to get to the end for the sake of getting to the end... then it'll drop off quick as soon as people get what they want.
They don't need eternal grinds or gameplay loops.. just something <fun>; and that doesn't come from reading from the same manual everytime they make an end-game area.

Most content is future proofed.

But the future proofing is in the sense of very few people will be doing it. Because content is FOMO. That's how gamers play games, and SE can't change it.

Now, let's say they made every single piece of content require you to return and do it once per week. We'd have a colossal list of weeklies to do by now, and it wouldn't be fun to still be doing the same content 10 years later.

You just have to accept that either you're here for the FOMO and the associated memories it creates doing it with other players, or you're just subscribing and playing catchup and having whatever limited experience you can scrape up from it. Usually content is still enjoyable solo due to all the cutscenes anyway.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Most content is future proofed.

But the future proofing is in the sense of very few people will be doing it. Because content is FOMO. That's how gamers play games, and SE can't change it.

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This is like saying that every limited time event is always accessible because anyone who wants it will get it in the brief time its accessible. Calling such "future-proofing" is not in keeping with how sensible language works outside of mental gymnastic Olympics.

And no, that's not particularly, let alone universally, how gamers play games, either. Putting aside the obvious fact that I can pick up any old SP game and go through it at my own pace, there's still lively activity through older content in many other MMOs via different incentive structures.

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Now, let's say they made every single piece of content require you to return and do it once per week. We'd have a colossal list of weeklies to do by now, and it wouldn't be fun to still be doing the same content 10 years later.

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This is comedically fallacious. Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

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You just have to accept that either you're here for the FOMO and the associated memories it creates doing it with other players, or you're just subscribing and playing catchup and having whatever limited experience you can scrape up from it..

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No, that's not "required"; it's simply the bare and wasteful minimum of an ever-expanding experience that doesn't care about retaining accessibility or enjoyability for new players nor about making better long-term use of the development time put into each iteration of the game.
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EDIT:
Moreover, in no way would making a piece of content more playable, such as by making it variably scaled to a lower minimum player count, remove any of the enjoyment to be had 'specifically from' playing the content at its peak. You can lower the barrier of entry to be more appropriate for the player counts likely to tackle it at that time without losing any of the entertainment potential the content itself had. And you can introduce reward structures and funnels by which to increase the player count available to a given piece of content without sacrificing the enjoyability of that content; that is precisely what the likes of Wonderous Tails and roulettes already seek to do, for good reason. And more within the same vein would not be a waste for the game.

It's that bare minimum you here treat as an inevitability that would be wasteful; we've already moved past it intentionally and would benefit from similar featural and system-based improvements alongside whatever other tweaks may increase content accessibility and enjoyability even for later times and lesser population counts.

I tell ya.. a real pet peeve of mine with this community is when they make up situations to back up their arguments; they make up these weird specific scenarios that only could ever exist in the argument they're creating.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Now, let's say they made every single piece of content require you to return and do it once per week. We'd have a colossal list of weeklies to do by now, and it wouldn't be fun to still be doing the same content 10 years later.

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If i made up strawmen arguments, i could win arguments too.
There is a difference between whatever make believe thing you created and making actual future proof content that doesn't become obsolete in four months because the rush is over.
There are mechanics you can build into the content to make up for the lack of PC's taking part in the content, there are incentives that can be added in to make people go back, etc...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This is like saying that every limited time event is always accessible

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No it's not, because it's still available. It's just that it will be a quieter experience because the community has stopped doing it. Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO. SE knows this, and designs the patches accordingly.

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Putting aside the obvious fact that I can pick up any old SP game and go through it at my own pace

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You can, but it's FOMO in the sense that while you're playing it at your own pace, everyone else probably isn't playing it. Similarly this is the case in FFXIV. If you do Ishgard Restoration 6 years later, probably most others aren't doing it and the "fun" crowd that was there no longer is.

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there's still lively activity through older content in many other MMOs via different incentive structures.

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There is, but it's specific content, such as a starting open world area. You are talking about making 12 years worth of content and zones still getting bustling with hundreds of players no matter which content you pickup. This just isn't how people play computer games. Games (or game DLC) get old, and people move onto the next, regardless of how good they are, leaving it as a "ghost town".

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Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

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My point is that you need to give people a reason to go back to any of this 12+ year old content. Otherwise, why would they, when they did it already? You also can't necessarily make a roulette for a Field Operation or Cosmic Exploration. They're just not gonna be crowded eventually. As for needing others, it depends on the content type, since some are actually designed at their core for multiple players, but most things in this game end up being soloable, including Savage, dungeons, DD, variants and relics.

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it's simply the bare and wasteful minimum of an ever-expanding experience that doesn't care about retaining accessibility or enjoyability for new players

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Again most things can be done by players in the future still. I was just saying that it's mostly going to be a quiet experience (ie. 1-8 players) because players did the day1 rush thing that they do with all games.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

There are mechanics you can build into the content to make up for the lack of PC's taking part in the content

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Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic. Unless you'd be happy with 144 NPCs pretending to be players.

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there are incentives that can be added in to make people go back, etc...

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Like weeklies the way mogpendium is doing it? But again, it will still feel like a "ghost town" when you go back for whatever made you go back. Because the FOMO has gone.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

No it's not, because it's still available. It's just that it will be a quieter experience because the community has stopped doing it. Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO. SE knows this, and designs the patches accordingly.

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I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player. I love this game as much as any other player, i've played since 1.0, played the beta and have played since. That doesn't mean that SQEX is doing the right moves across the board. All of their competitors are actually starting to improve themselves, they have to too.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic. Unless you'd be happy with 144 NPCs pretending to be players.

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You're right, it won't; but by actually having plans for the future of your content, you can alleviate issues.
A few examples...
Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)
Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.
Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance
Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people
Give REGULAR incentives to go back and do content on a regular basis instead of it being a possible weekly part of the mogpendium
- And not make it 15 poetics. If WoW can make the trading post work, so can SQEX. Make something like that, but you gain it by doing content that is from past patches/expansions. Swap out the rewards every month so people can get something new. Maybe have one less store outfit and put it on the post. (And don't slap them on the store after you cycle them, put them back in a month or two later)
And maybe most simple.. stop making so many instances that fracture the people who are trying to play with the content. There were SIX people on the moon last night, and two instances were created, shunting three into each.

And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player.

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I'm not saying they can do nothing wrong. I am just explaining why SE is doing it. I'm not saying if they're right or wrong to do it. But it seems like a logical thing for game developers to chase - trend chasing, and optimizing everything.

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Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.

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That would have been desirable for Cosmic Exploration. But for the most part, things like FATEs and NMs are affected by how many people fought it the last time and CEs scale directly based on participants, to the point I can solo most of them.

In terms of future proofing they tend to add The Echo to almost everything as well as making nerfs over time. This is the case for relics and field operations, trials, extremes, savage and gear improvements help dungeons get solo'd if they can't be solo'd like variant/DD can. They add the Unrestricted setting to duty finder for that reason. Not to mention that they're even progressively rolling out Duty Support to dungeons now as well.

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Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance

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Really this is kinda the same thing as just rescaling CEs and FATEs which already happens, and precedent shows they add the Echo to the content when it gets old and give you loads of ways to increase your power. Personally, I've never had trouble getting through field operations solo, even going back to Eureka, and it's been heavily improved since then too.

They are going to see if they can improve FATE scaling, I believe, but for now if you're fighting one solo you can pull it then reset to help reset the scaling on it. It's been working for me so far in OC.

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Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people

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In terms of "normal mode" content, that's already the case. It was theoretically possible to solo Delubrum Reginae as soon as they dropped the 24 player requirement. I heard Dalriada got duo'd shortly after release. CLL's main hurdles were significantly nerfed once it's popularity reduced, such as the prisoners becoming more optional.

The difference is really when you're talking about high-difficulty content, which currently seems to include BA, DRS and FT. They obviously don't want to make it too easy since that defeats the point. But technically the boss HP scales based on the number of people participating.

In any case, they said they are re-evaluating scaling difficulty and time investment and that the change to Deep Dungeons is an actual mindset shift about content generally, although they still believe there should be a bit of content that is firmly "hardcore" or firmly "casual". They just want to make the majority of it more scalable so it can be enjoyed by the whole playerbase like Deep Dungeons rather than there being a split.

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And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

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I'm not personally against NPCs for all content. But a lot of players don't see them as valid or would still view it as a ghost town with them there.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO.

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:: "Why health care? People just die. They get born, hang for a bit, and then poof. Life is just transient. Accept it, stop asking for any extended access, and move on."

More directly:

Gamers shifting from game to new game can be a statistical trend without remotely precluding value from extended lifespan of games. By your logic here, there'd be no value in Steam holding onto games and spending the server costs to hold the data for them or allow their downloads past their on-release prime. There'd be no value in the likes of Good Old Games or certainly zero use of torrents for, say, emulatable copies of old console games (the old FF games among them). There'd be no players of the original CoD: Modern Warfare from the moment the original MW2 came out, let alone the MW remake. There'd be none still playing Starcraft in this day and age. And yet, evidence to the contrary abounds.

People don't solely play games when they are maximally popular. They play games also when something about the (idea of the) game appeals to them enough to acquire and play it. For a great many people, the game's broader popularity is damn near irrelevant. And it's generally worthwhile to tweak content or infrastructure, therefore, to be run even past something's heyday, or, where already runnable, to give it the occasional impetus for a bit more player count.

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If you do Ishgard Restoration 6 years later, probably most others aren't doing it and the "fun" crowd that was there no longer is.

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That in itself is fine --as long as it's still there and usable despite its later-day player counts instead of, say, facing requirements of 24 crafters soon into the experience-- especially so long as its development time is fruitfully reused later.

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You are talking about making 12 years worth of content and zones still getting bustling with hundreds of players no matter which content you pickup.

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You're really doubling down on the strawmen...

No. It is impossible to make each and every piece of content "bustle" with "hundreds of players" each in a game as expansive and in decline as XIV. Scaling tweaks to make old content more enjoyable and accessible and incentive structures to make it more worth the rare revisit as new blood reach said content, on the other hand, is very doable.

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Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

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My point is that you need to give people a reason to go back to any of this 12+ year old content. Otherwise, why would they, when they did it already?

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...So, exactly what the OP and others were asking for in terms of allowing for the incentives to be more lastingly worthwhile/compatible... which you then treated as purely a waste?

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You also can't necessarily make a roulette for a Field Operation or Cosmic Exploration.

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Why would player-funneling or -contiguity necessarily have to be via a roulette? That's one example of player-funneling that we already have. The OP is asking for more -- more than just what features or implementations thereof that we already have for tempering the decline in player count and, just as importantly, its more quantized impact on how that content can be played.

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Again most things can be done by players in the future still. I was just saying that it's mostly going to be a quiet experience (ie. 1-8 players) because players did the day1 rush thing that they do with all games.

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The post specifically refers to areas that presently require 24+ players. A significant portion of gameplay hours available to what would otherwise appeal to players completing things at their own pace, which becomes increasingly important --especially if one wants to feel like they're not always merely in "pre-game" until current content-- as the game gets more and more expanded (the exploratory missions of Eureka, Bozja, OC prominent among them), is currently bottlenecked by those requirements.

It would require first allowing such content to be done with 1-8 players before your response could be pertinent to the thread. Otherwise, the content indeed becomes effectively impossible to complete after a certain point. The less tempered the decline, the sooner its development hours become impossible to leverage beyond that Day 1 / Week 1 rush.

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most things in this game end up being soloable, including Savage, dungeons, DD, variants and relics.

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...Soloing level 60 Savage dungeons as a level 100 is not content in any meaningful sense of the word: it's a visual progression with glamour drops. A cutscene with rewards, given a bit of "walk here, then there" prior would about as equally count as content. Nor is soloing a DD remotely the same experience as playing through it in a party; there's a reason the first gets leaderboards.

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Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic.

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No one's asked for it fully replicate that. Only one person has even asked for NPC fill-ins at all, with others just considering it "better than nothing".

But there's a difference between, on one side, the vibe of the content changing as it goes from a FATE/CE train rush to a single Full Party moving together through a zone and grabbing what nearby FATEs they can survive while leveling together, or even the maximum level among players and mobs, both, being reduced to broaden the portion of players each little group can play with and/or mob-kill experience increasing to build that experience more around self-paced play now that the FOMO waves have paced anyways... and, on the other, the end of said content being essentially impossible with fewer than 24 players at a time where most are level 120 (or 100 with 20 "Merit Ranks" or what have you) and that content sees barely a dozen players at a time.

Just as there's a difference between players being "forced to re-do each and every bit of past content weekly" and a rotating schedule of bonus rewards to funnel the community in ways that'd allow for newer players to see enough activity in past content to engage with it and for veterans to enjoyably revisit what different content forms may appeal to them more than just what's visible at max level.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And it's generally worthwhile to tweak content or infrastructure, therefore, to be run even past something's heyday

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I agree. I was referring specifically to the "it's a ghost town" part of the post. It will always be that after the original FOMO. I'm not saying the content shouldn't be made playable after that (and it is made playable after that, most of the time, it's just not as fun as when there's lots of others doing it ie. the unsync feature, gear allowing you to destroy old content, nerfs/echo buffs).

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It is impossible to make each and every piece of content "bustle" with "hundreds of players" each in a game as expansive and in decline as XIV. Scaling tweaks to make old content more enjoyable and accessible and incentive structures to make it more worth the rare revisit as new blood reach said content, on the other hand, is very doable.

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I was referring to the "it's a ghost town" part of the post. I'm not disputing the scaling thing and they often do scale/nerf/etc.

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...So, exactly what the OP and others were asking for in terms of allowing for the incentives to be more lastingly worthwhile/compatible... which you then treated as purely a waste?

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It's a waste because it won't reverse that it's a "ghost town", which is what the OP mentioned as a problem multiple times.

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The post specifically refers to areas that presently require 24+ players.

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The only content in the game that requires that many after the initial FOMO that I can think of is high-end raids such as BA, DRS, FT and Chaotic. None of which are required for their respective stories or relics. They're also still done via discords.

If we're talking of the rest of field operations or places like the Firmament and Cosmic, I can do everything in these solo (except possibly CLL and Dalriada, haven't tried these after the changes). Realistically a few others will probably help out eventually if I hang out in the areas too.

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No one's asked for it fully replicate that. Only one person has even asked for NPC fill-ins

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It sorta came across that way with the complaints centering around it being empty and a ghost town.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I agree. I was referring specifically to the "it's a ghost town" part of the post.

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Right, but that's a perception based on the presentation of the content. When content was built specifically to house 40+ players (i.e., lacked the depth or attention to be appealing at lower player counts) and now holds 4, it will feel like a ghost town, because the systems, pacing, etc., feel disjointed from how it can now actually be played. (Or, put less kindly, it was unpolished content that simply pushed enough players into it with transient rewards and FOMO to gloss over its comparative shortfalls.)

But compare those "ghost towns" to how, say... South Shroud FATEs on ARR release feel compared to how they are now. Yes, they're very different. Back then, you had to scramble to tag enough mobs to get credit for enough kills to earn Gold, even when in a full party and there nearly from the start. Now, those FATEs are chill little encounter you stumble upon solo or when leveling a new alt with a friend new to the game. But the point is that they work in both cases. They're different, but neither necessarily feels disjointed (if anything, very high populations fit those FATEs less).

Now consider Occult Crescent when down to just a small group of people per instance. By just re-theming the expedition a little bit, e.g....

• greater mob kill EXP, small-scale spawned events (possibly even having those partly replace auto-spawned FATEs or having those alongside limiting FATE spawns to populated regions or those near enough in level), greater emphasis on the gradual collection of field notes, etc., so that the zone doesn't feel particularly empty even when it's just a single party moving through it / there's no FATE train to follow, and/or
• NPCs move around the camp and keeping individually busy instead of standing still constantly at attention to facilitate a hoard of adventurers coming through, and/or
• those NPCs more obviously being non-combatants or even merchants just here to supply the archeologists in the main town and you, yourself, who are uniquely chartered for this, and/or
• allowance to hire mercenaries or bring over your squadron, or occasional NPC forays that you could join up with and support.

...you end up with something that still feels fine even when played in a more isolated manner (e.g., when not wanting to be bounced from region to region following FATEs / CEs) and therefore also when the area is contains a lower population. A good half of that would be improvements in optionality or zone liveliness for even when the content is new while also future-proofing the region for when it's no longer in its rush period. And what little would be of minimal use then (e.g., the vibe of the base NPCs) would be of very little cost in better matching with that later time and its population sizes.

Tl;dr: Generally speaking, so long as some decent rewards remain, better-designed content lasts longer and at greater ranges of player-count; wanting the content to last longer... often just means designing it better in the first place, with a smidgen of taking some small time if needed to adjust it later to fit its new circumstances. Occult Crescent and other at-your-pace content side-content could benefit from that immensely.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's a waste because it won't reverse that it's a "ghost town", which is what the OP mentioned as a problem multiple times.

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So because it won't <perfectly> solve a problem, it's a waste of time?
I'm sorry if this sounds crass, but that is the absolute worst way to look at any situation and at best you're engaging with the argument in bad faith.

You're right, all of the things i mentioned won't make them as populated as they were when they were being zerg-rushed by content fiends; but they would be enough to keep these places alive.

One of the biggest things that stops people from ever interacting with old content is the fact that no one does it because no one else is doing it. If you gave some incentives for people to actually be there and do things, you will have more people join in and do things.

I think the point that “future proofing amounts go basically being able to do it solo” is a relevant point that is not the right way to approach future proofing especially since as they have most clearly shown with OC that they aren’t willing to leave content with its old incentives intact to encourage people to do it later

Old “evergreen” content should be actively encouraged by the system (say something like a CE roulette for Bozja or even a permanent mogpedium analogue for content like DD floors or eureka NM’s)

Evergreening content shouldn’t amount to “okay now you can solo it”

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

[...]Xbox launch didn't help, Dawntrail launch didn't help, none of the major content patches since than have helped. In fact Cosmic Exploration made things WORSE because we had a bunch of our gatherers and crafters mass-leave when they got tired of the constant project failures, which in turn upped our marketboard prices across the board.

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Personally I think one of the bigger factor to your issue is the fact that DC travel was added without ensuring region-wide DF/PF works. Then there are also little things like gathering ephemeral/legendary nodes, retainer, etc can only be done in your home world. You can't just have one without the other. People will just leave their home to do activities in more active hubs.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And no, that's not particularly, let alone universally, how gamers play games, either. Putting aside the obvious fact that I can pick up any old SP game and go through it at my own pace, there's still lively activity through older content in many other MMOs via different incentive structures.

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FOMO is absolutely a thing in even single-player games, in the social media age. Just because you don't feel it (and I don't either) it doesn't mean that it's not a big thing. Like, Baldur's Gate III and Elden Ring didn't get as big as they did just because they were good games. But because everyone and their mother was playing it. Animal Cross: New Horizons, too. (Although I suppose that game does have a community aspect.)

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

FOMO is absolutely a thing in even single-player games, in the social media age. Just because you don't feel it (and I don't either) it doesn't mean that it's not a big thing.

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I didn't say FOMO wasn't a thing. It's just far from the 100% and unavoidable core of gaming that it was being treated -- let alone a warrant for any further future-proofing to be 'inherently wasteful' or the like.

It's not universal. Nor is it, alone, what makes gaming what it is.

Accordingly, just like some multiplayer games that have had their server support pulled have later allowed for P2P play, at least, it's worth making dead content that would otherwise require, say, 24+ players require less so that they can still be done --and ideally, even to hold future content to a slightly higher standard of design/optionality such that it wouldn't require hordes of players to make it enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player. I love this game as much as any other player, i've played since 1.0, played the beta and have played since. That doesn't mean that SQEX is doing the right moves across the board. All of their competitors are actually starting to improve themselves, they have to too.


You're right, it won't; but by actually having plans for the future of your content, you can alleviate issues.
A few examples...
Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)
Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.
Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance
Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people
Give REGULAR incentives to go back and do content on a regular basis instead of it being a possible weekly part of the mogpendium
- And not make it 15 poetics. If WoW can make the trading post work, so can SQEX. Make something like that, but you gain it by doing content that is from past patches/expansions. Swap out the rewards every month so people can get something new. Maybe have one less store outfit and put it on the post. (And don't slap them on the store after you cycle them, put them back in a month or two later)
And maybe most simple.. stop making so many instances that fracture the people who are trying to play with the content. There were SIX people on the moon last night, and two instances were created, shunting three into each.

And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

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Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

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Originally Posted by PaulusHamsteru

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

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Tbf, he sees it as offering counterpoints to offset forum feedback he sees as being gravitated (so, more than is just one's own natural opinion / is merely logical) towards negativity. I suspect this is simply one moment of discourse he shouldn't have bothered trying to counter at all, instead jumping straight to probing for more constructive details.

And admittedly, I probably should have done the same; sadly, absolutist straw-manning greatly increases the chance of its responses, too, being at least more polarized or even bordering on fallacy, in turn.

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Food for thought: some 99.9% of my posts are critical of the game and yet I'll still be called an apologist for noting in what ways suggestions are self-satisfiedly addressing symptoms rather than the problems beneath them or even for mathing out how a given suggestion would work to show that it'd be no better than what we have (without in any way saying what we have is good).

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Originally Posted by PaulusHamsteru

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

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I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

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"Achieved your goal"?
By that you mean that i haven't changed my stance at all and that i simply expanded on what my position was to try and combat your bad faith interpretations so you don't poison the well?
Then sure, i guess.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

All of this stuff should just exist in the regular open-world. That way those zones would serve a purpose beyond the MSQ, much more efficient use of dev resources.

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I'm really into this idea. I'd like to see it happen once so we can test it out.
Being able to funnel those resources used in OC, CE, etc. straight into making the overworld itself a place to do many things in, make it feel lived in and detailed would be amazing imo. I think you'd bump into a lot more players that way too, since many of us are scattered in different corners of the world, each doing our thing in a secluded instance.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

It doesn't help that we weren't "seeded" like Crystal was with pre-populated worlds, so Dynamis was left to fend for its self day 1 without any established players or community, and sure enough, being made to grow from nothing ended up with the data center being good for nothing, not that there was any niche left we could have grown into. Raiding, PVP, and RP were already claimed, what was even left for us to become? We were pretty much set up for failure and being here feels like its been a punishment. Hell, our first four worlds weren't even half-full yet when they dumped another four on us, which only really served to scatter people around even more, and did nothing to improve queue times anyway because why in the hell would anyone start on Dynamis at that point when Aether still had worlds open at the time?

Locking us down again wouldn't help either, as people would just transfer out or re-roll (just like they did last time), and even region-wide DF/PF feels like it would be pointless for us because most people would still want to be on a "preferred" hub for raiding/PVP/RP instead of on a dead-ass data center. I mean, the OCE data center can be visited by anyone, but nobody in NA/EU/JP really wants to go there it seems. At best, Dynamis queues would start popping more, but the social element would still be non-existent as nobody talks in duty/party finder anyway (and for good reason), so I might as well still be playing with mute NPCs anyway.

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Dynamis's "role" is being the DC you server transfer to in order to easily get a house. That's it. Just make sure you've earned your gil on your original DC first, since Dynamis's economy is absolutely dead. Everything else, you're better off on one of the other DCs. It could have worked it it came out before DC travel, but at this point? I'd like to see SE address what their plans are to try to fix it.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)

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Maybe that’s convenient for some, but it limits the storytelling potential… if they made a future “all-in-one” zone like that in the future, with some kind of good enough story reason why all that stuff was being combined together, that’s one thing. And I’d be open to something like that, but I guarantee you if they ever do it, people will see it as a reduction in the amount of content. “They smooshed it all together, we can’t even get separate zones anymore!” lol

But for already existing content, they’re very different things and that’s why they’re separate. We’ve literally got space exploration and the exploration of a specific mysterious island in a Bermuda Triangle kind of story, why wouldn’t those be two different zones? Also remember old Diadem? lol There’s a reason they redid it.

I think my only real criticism is their use of the term “lifestyle content” to describe Cosmic. No, it’s crafter/gatherer content. I’m sure something gets lost in the translation, but Island Sanctuary felt more like “lifestyle content” to me: casual content where you can use any class and progress at your own pace, a little light decorating, etc. I could go off on a whole essay of how IS could’ve been better (ie: letting friends help you gather on your island, the ability to have one of each animal and trade them with friends, etc.), but even though it was heavy on gathering, and crafting to a lesser extent (mostly workshop spreadsheet), it didn’t require an actual crafter or gatherer class to be maxed and/or well-geared with an arsenal of macros.

Overall I think it’s a good thing to have more content options, with multiple stories being told. One of the nice things about this game is that pretty much all old content can be done whenever you reach it. It may not be as crowded as it was on release, but everything seems to attract their niche crowds of people who love it and will keep doing it. You might miss out on Cosmic upgrade fates if you’re not there at the beginning, but you can still go in and work towards your achievements and/or rewards, and you still get a story out of it. With some further improvements (trust me I’ve got plenty of complaints!), I’m sure even OC will eventually have the longevity of Eureka and Bozja, which are still popular to this day despite their age.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Maybe that’s convenient for some, but it limits the storytelling potential… if they made a future “all-in-one” zone like that in the future, with some kind of good enough story reason why all that stuff was being combined together, that’s one thing. And I’d be open to something like that, but I guarantee you if they ever do it, people will see it as a reduction in the amount of content. “They smooshed it all together, we can’t even get separate zones anymore!” lol

But for already existing content, they’re very different things and that’s why they’re separate. We’ve literally got space exploration and the exploration of a specific mysterious island in a Bermuda Triangle kind of story, why wouldn’t those be two different zones? Also remember old Diadem? lol There’s a reason they redid it.

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Obviously, i am only talking about future stuff. I realize they can't retroactively change that stuff. As for people complaining, they do already... they just complain that they run out of things to do in the zone after the first week.
That being said, i would much rather have had the current content go as such...
- The Crafting gathering content leads us to the occult crescent island. We build up the town and do our own scouting of the island. They could have done much of the same minigames with re flavoured skins to be something we'd have on the ground.
- The combat content kicks in because us knocking stuff about on the island starts to wake stuff up and suddenly there's monsters on the island.
- The next crafting/gathering content is about us fortifying the main base on the island and then build up little outposts that maintain an aetheryte for us to teleport around the island easier as minigames or start fixing bridges/cave-ins (blah blah blah).
- If there is more battle content, open parts of the crescent that weren't accessible before, so it's the same island but it's story expands out without shunting people into a totally new zone and cutting everyone off from each other; similar as to how Bozja was.
You could have one strong story going through it all. You would need both types of jobs to get the FULL story on a single character, but that's more of a plus than a minus when it comes to story content.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Overall I think it’s a good thing to have more content options, with multiple stories being told. One of the nice things about this game is that pretty much all old content can be done whenever you reach it. It may not be as crowded as it was on release, but everything seems to attract their niche crowds of people who love it and will keep doing it. You might miss out on Cosmic upgrade fates if you’re not there at the beginning, but you can still go in and work towards your achievements and/or rewards, and you still get a story out of it. With some further improvements (trust me I’ve got plenty of complaints!), I’m sure even OC will eventually have the longevity of Eureka and Bozja, which are still popular to this day despite their age.

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I'd rather have fewer and tighter knit stories than twenty stories that all go no where because there's not enough time invested in them to do anything with it.
And the "niche crowds" is the problem. There aren't really "niche crowds", there's empty spaces where people don't take part in the activity because when they go to the zone, there's no one there and they can't do a single thing there without taking 5x as long because you're trying to do it solo. You might get some traction with some discord groups, but if the devs actually did a good job on future-proofing their content and giving a zone multiple purposes for those content styles to converge, the game might actually feel like an MMO again.