Need to address the Eureka in the room.

[Alucard135]

MMO ≠ grouping. When people conflate MMOs with grouping, this is less an accurate reflection of what an MMO is and more a statement about someone's preferred way of playing an MMO. There's nothing wrong with this preference, of course, unless that person thinks that because they exclusively enjoy group content, then everyone else should be forced into grouping whether they enjoy it or not. Unfortunately, this is usually the case when someone is advancing some form of the "because it's an MMO" argument.

For me, the hallmark of overworld/open world content is that it can be enjoyed by an extremely diverse range of players; whereas, to my mind at least, instanced content is conducive to more narrowly-focused content that appeals to smaller subsets of the community. Now I guess whether Eureka is overworld content could be debated (though I think if it's not, then perhaps it should have been), but it certainly does not do a good job of catering to a diverse range of players—if that intention was even remotely present during its development.

When I used the word group, it was to denote interaction between players to fulfill a certain goal (be it a common goal they aim for or against each other as in PVP), hence the multiplayer term. Since the interaction is done by a massive number of players, it becomes an MMO. Can you call a game an MMO if you have millions of players that play at the same time but with very small to no interaction between them? Take dark souls for example. You have thousands of players online, but you only interact with a couple of them from time to time or even solo your way through it. Can we call it an MMO? There are tons of mobile games that have thousands of players playing at the same time. But you only interact with one or two at a time (like farmville).

Eureka was designed to be a group content. Meaning you'll need a certain number of people to do certain activities there. If Eureka was designed to also accommodate solo play, you will kill the group play side. The open world that you say is enjoyed by extremely diverse range of players is a perfect example of that. It's a barren land in some zones now (imagine Zalera....inside joke for Aether DC). You rarely see group activities going on in the open world maps unless it's a hunt or a fate like Ixion. Why? because there's really no need to have any groups in order to do any content in the open world. You can easily solo 90% of the contents there. What's the point of a massive world in an MMO if it's empty and almost everyone is just doing instanced duties.

[purgatori]

What's the point of a massive world in an MMO if it's empty and almost everyone is just doing instanced duties.

Well, that's certainly a broader definition of 'group' than I am accustomed to. And if one were to equate that definition with what it means for a game to be an MMO, then I have less issue with that, as I feel it encompasses both those players who do like to be in traditional groups, as well as those who like to work towards a common goal with other players, but not necessarily be in a party with them.

However, I also don't think an MMO would suddenly not become an MMO if it also had a large amount of content wherein there was very minimal interaction with other players. And while I don't think that Dark Souls could be construed as being an MMO, I think that if it were simply more 'massive,' it could potentially be made into one. To me, even interacting with an economy that is affected by other players counts as being a 'multiplayer' activity, so I really have no issue with the MMO definition so long as some minimal amount of multiplayer interaction is required of the players therein. Of course that's just my take on it: the primary appeal of an MMO has always been the 'Massive' part of that particular initialism, and also that the 'RPG' part is typically implied even when omitted from being printed in said initialism. For me, multiplayer counts for very little, and what keeps me coming back is that the content that my character can progress through is always being expanded. I really don't like it when I get to the point of having done all the things there are to do in games like Dragon's Dogma or Fallout: New Vegas; if those games were updated with new story content year after year, I doubt that I would bother with MMOs at all, to be honest.

I agree with you that there's no point to the open world if nobody is there participating in it, but I have serious doubts that this is because '90% of the contents' are soloable. I have only to point to the ever-populous zones of ESO, which are also at least 90% soloable. But what ESO's zones have over FFXIV's are a wealth of side-story/quest content, rewarding loot, and activities that remain relevant even at endgame. If I could progress towards a relic weapon by grinding FATEs/mobs in open world zones, and then joining up every now and then to take on a variety of world bosses, I would; but grouping for challenge logs is absolutely tedious, and not my idea of fun. The group play side could still be preserved---especially considering your definition of what it means to group---in that the bosses would still require player cooperation, but players would not have to organise and maintain groups just to engage in activities that should be relatively trivial for a solo player to engage in (as they were in the old school MMOs I used to play).

[Alucard135]

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Now that I think about it, that's actually right. Instead of players spamming the open world quests, fates and levequests to level up, it became an instanced duty farm all over. Whenever I would level up an alt in another MMO, the most rewarding thing to do was to grab a bunch of quests and do them simultaneously. But here, for DPS, it's just spamming PotD and HoH. A friend of mine decided to grind level all his classes to 70 and all he did was PotD and HoH for days. If leveling other jobs was more profitable in the open world, it would populate it. I think SE has realized that the game became so heavily dependent on 4-8 man instanced duties when they designed Eureka and created BLU (yes, I know Eureka isn't everyone's cup of tea lol). The trust system can be a good start for a more challenging open world experience also if it was rewarding enough to keep players in the open world (time to kill Minfilia).

[Reynhart]

Whenever I would level up an alt in another MMO, the most rewarding thing to do was to grab a bunch of quests and do them simultaneously.

The thing is that, in most MMO, leveling an alt means leveling a different character, thus, going back to 0 and having all quests available again. For FFXIV to do that, it would have to multiply its quest amount by an absurd number...or create the New Game+ mode.

[Alucard135]

The thing is that, in most MMO, leveling an alt means leveling a different character, thus, going back to 0 and having all quests available again. For FFXIV to do that, it would have to multiply its quest amount by an absurd number...or create the New Game+ mode.

Oh yeah, I forgot about new game+ feature they announced. If it retains the EXP I might get encouraged to level up more characters lol.

[Kalise]

Oh yeah, I forgot about new game+ feature they announced. If it retains the EXP I might get encouraged to level up more characters lol.

Though, the issue with this is, it doesn't actually help promote filling the open world. Given how much of the MSQ involves you going into your own solo duties for notable fights as well as actually needing you to go through actual duties (Often with DF if not Squadron capable... Or, these days, just run the duty unsync'd and hand the quest in on your low level class )

That and you know... When people hit that point in the ARR MSQ where it's just Minfilia calling you back to the Walking Sands 4000000 times to give you crappy errands many people will be like "Oh right yeah, this exists... I forgot I repressed the memories of this..." and give up with NG+...

Really, FATEs and Leves are FFXIV's version of "Spam quests in a location" for overworld leveling... The former just got outgrown by the rewards from duties for an exp:time ratio and the latter were kind of lame to begin with and then ditched altogether in SB (Also, solo orientated too)

At best, maybe they could allow sidequests to be re-doable on alternate classes? That way you could level using the sidequests and FATEs within a zone (Provided of course, their rewards made relevant for the time they require).

[Kalise]

You have thousands of players online, but you only interact with a couple of them from time to time or even solo your way through it. Can we call it an MMO?

Technically, you have games like Global Agenda that called themselves "MMO's" because it literally had a bunch of people standing around in a city-like "HUB" before queuing into small instances with 5-10 players.

That was their entire content. They still were called "MMO" because of the afking with a bunch of people around aspect

You rarely see group activities going on in the open world maps unless it's a hunt or a fate like Ixion. Why? because there's really no need to have any groups in order to do any content in the open world. You can easily solo 90% of the contents there.

No, that's not the reason why there's no group activities going on in the open world.

The reason why there's no group activities going on in the open world is because there's no rewards that are relevant in the open world outside Hunts and Ixion.

Literally, it's better for every single thing you can possibly get from the open world, to just spam duties while standing around in a city (Much like in Global Agenda )

If you take a look at the past of FFXIV, back when duty spamming was less rewarding, what happened? You'd see tons of people FATE Training for experience in the open world.

Why? Was it because the FATEs where not soloable at the time? No, it was because the rewards of grinding FATEs for experience was better than farming duties and teaming up with others made the farming more efficient.

THAT'S the issue at hand with content. For some reason, SE has been keeping Roulettes and Duty spam as the most effective way of earning experience, gear, tomes, seals and whatever else. I can only imagine because of their arbitrary decision to shoehorn duties into the MSQ so that people need to complete them somehow and thus need people to be queueing into roulettes to populate them (Such as the MSQ 8 mans)

As such it means that the overworld has no notable rewards, so there's no reason for anyone to actually group up to farm stuff.

Like, BLU created a reason for people to group in the overworld so you saw a bunch of BLU leveling parties because farming in a party > farming solo.

For everything else, it's pure crap.

Hopefully with the trust system, they'll be able to shift some focus away from Duty spam without affecting people trying to get through the duties for the MSQ. So they can put more emphasis onto overworld content, thus get more people farming FATEs or chaining enemies for experience (You know, exactly what Eureka is made out of)

[Laphael]

Open world activities

You can see the main problem with more activities in the open world at the beginning of every addon.
They had to make 3 instances per "open world zone" for SB to carry the burden of many players being there.
When Ixion spawned and everyone portet there, the servers just crashed. Thats why we have instanced Eureka with a limit of 144 players.

Would it be nice to have more activities in the open world? Yes, but we have to be realistic.

[Kalise]

You can see the main problem with more activities in the open world at the beginning of every addon.
They had to make 3 instances per "open world zone" for SB to carry the burden of many players being there.
When Ixion spawned and everyone portet there, the servers just crashed. Thats why we have instanced Eureka with a limit of 144 players.

Would it be nice to have more activities in the open world? Yes, but we have to be realistic.

Step 1) Open World Zone Instances
Step 2) Player Limit on Open World Instances
Step 3) ???????
Step 4) PROFIT

Just being realistic here >.>

Yes, you devalue things like Ixion spawns and Hunts because you no longer enable thousands of players to all leave their preferred AFK City to all jump in on a spawn, but to be honest the way that things like S Ranks and Ixion spawn are not particularly well implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, you'd open up the possibilities of you know, actually creating open worlds that matter, by having FATEs, chains, A Rank and B Rank hunts, Raid FATEs and the like actually being valued. Without having to shove all this actually worthwhile open world stuff into a separate Eureka zone while leaving the actual open world to rot when it's only ever used by people doing MSQ or gathering (Outside an S Rank/Ixion spawn when everyone flocks to the same place and crashes servers >.>)

[Physic]

Step 1) Open World Zone Instances
Step 2) Player Limit on Open World Instances
Step 3) ???????
Step 4) PROFIT

Just being realistic here >.>

Yes, you devalue things like Ixion spawns and Hunts because you no longer enable thousands of players to all leave their preferred AFK City to all jump in on a spawn, but to be honest the way that things like S Ranks and Ixion spawn are not particularly well implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, you'd open up the possibilities of you know, actually creating open worlds that matter, by having FATEs, chains, A Rank and B Rank hunts, Raid FATEs and the like actually being valued. Without having to shove all this actually worthwhile open world stuff into a separate Eureka zone while leaving the actual open world to rot when it's only ever used by people doing MSQ or gathering (Outside an S Rank/Ixion spawn when everyone flocks to the same place and crashes servers >.>)

server based open world content will fail due to different server populations/time zones and interests. Open world needs to be like mega server/cross world.