Do people see this game as an MMO?

[Hysorn]

It's a common thing nowadays, a lot of times too even FCs/Guilds prefer Discord over FC/guild chat and so on. But it still is very much an MMO, it puts me in group content much more often than say SWTOR for instance and it has harder content that I can pursue with other players that require communication should I feel like it too.

[Halivel]

MMO <> social interaction, simply that there are many people playing.

This.

It's also not something new - I saw a lot of untalkative people and quiet guilds even back in 2007 when I started playing MMO games. Playing MMO doesn't mean that you want to talk to strangers by default (even if it might be a part of what you enjoy), it simply means that you're playing while being surrounded by other people and maybe occasionally interact with them.

[Naria]

Maybe it is because my first MMO was FFXI but whenever I play other more chatty western MMOs I tend to get annoyed and turn off those chat channels fairly quickly. I do play MMOs to interact with people--some of us in my FC met online and have been playing games together for over a decade--and I do occasionally chime in to /shout in Limsa or Eulmore or where ever, but I've never played MMOs to constantly be bombarded with random people's random conversations. To me that isn't "social". On social media at least I can pick conversations to be around topics I am interested in. These days with everyone having different schedules and time zones a lot of chat happens in discord instead of in-game, or if we are all in game we are on VC in discord.

[Asari5]

i was in several guilds over the years in ff14. most of them were very nice and had an active ingame chat.... that being said, active doesnt mean people post something every minute the whole day long

[Shougun]

This.

It's also not something new - I saw a lot of untalkative people and quiet guilds even back in 2007 when I started playing MMO games. Playing MMO doesn't mean that you want to talk to strangers by default (even if it might be a part of what you enjoy), it simply means that you're playing while being surrounded by other people and maybe occasionally interact with them.

There is, and I think unknown / misunderstood for a long time but far less so recently, a strange but strangely large (as in it's near majority if not actually) with just a sense of just wanting to be near others, maybe listening to them, but not even having to interact. Like look at streams, there are people communicating but then look at the numbers. 5K live, etc. Clearly not everyone is talking, it's like 1/10 the audience who actively talks. I've tried to put this in words before in the past, especially long time ago when this was less popularly understood, but ... man lol. It's just a thing.

People want to have the world breath but that doesn't mean they always want to have to interact with it. There ARE of course people who want to be interacting 24/7. It's important to try as best as you can to find balance and then target the specific audience occasionally (especially if the balance may sometimes feel like a compromise).

In general I think FFXIV does this balance of audience quite well, one part of it is what I reference to the rolling mountain (dealing with difficulty / punishment / retention systems for those who play in the double digits every week, and participation curves). Not that means we can't improve or feedback for (or against it), just that I think that is part of what I really appreciate with FFXIV. Like they seem to be actively looking at ways to reduce 'punishment' systems to players to increase the value of their time (while also still using them near the end walls, where players who are willing / able to spend long hours can do so too). Just recently they talked about making leveling smoother experience for other jobs, and they have in this expansion made efforts to make secondary relics smoother. That is the game I want to play lol. I don't have teenager hours anymore, my wife isn't a 'gamer', and my job isn't a streamer - yet I can still enjoy most of FFXIV.. Amazing for me, love the value. Probably why I want to see them make a more action oriented game (maybe MMO) because I want the team that thinks like this to make other games I also want to play lol (but that isn't said out of negativity of FFXIV. I am hype for Endwalker).

[MoofiaBossVal]

I see it as a JRPG with a lite side of MMO.

[Mimilu]

I play on PC with a controller, so if I want to communicate in-game, I have to put down my controller to type. Once I'm in a fight, I can't really do that without being a liability. It's really bad when I queue into a random group and try to explain mechanics only for someone to just pull. >x>

[Katz_McKatz]

In general, if I am chatting with someone in game by typing in chat, then I am standing still and typing. I'm not moving or using skills or avoiding mechanics. That means I don't really chat much during active game content. I try and say hi at the beginning and gg at the end but that's often it. I have no idea how people manage to type in chat and continue to move and use skills.

I had been playing for approximately 3 months by the time I was told that you could hit enter during cutscenes and chat. Once I found that out, I sometimes would chat during the cutscenes in the MSQ duty roulette. I've found if you have someone in one of those MSQs that starts out chatting at the beginning then often the entire run is more chatty with others joining in.

Sometimes I'm playing with my family and we are voice chatting in discord. I expect a lot of chatting is in voice chat.
The FC I'm in has discord. We do sometimes chat by typing in game too.

[Snorky]

When the internet was still a baby the facination of being able to communicate with many people was also new especially in games. Things change people evolve and have to adapt.

[Melorie]

It's more of a JRPG with a side-multiplayer aspect of it IMO. Leveling with your friends can be a pain, you can't do the history with your friends, people get into dungeons but almost never really talk... Personally I'm very talkative and found amazing friends playing this, but I wouldn't recommend it as something to every friend. Even a lot of RP events, people just sit there and use bee knees without ever... talking. I wasn't ever able to introduce this game to any friend of mine and see them stick with it. I just made friends with people that already play the game and enjoy it. It's not my go-to multiplayer game most of the time.

It's complicated. In games such as Ragnarok Online, GW2, I felt a much bigger interaction with players than I do here - specially with the leveling process. And even when playing BDO, although that game is extremely solo experienced, people are always willing to chat in global chats and it ends up being quite social.