what makes an MMO fell dead

[Jirah]

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

[xxmiamorecadenza]

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.

[DixieBellOCE]

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?

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.

[DixieBellOCE]

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.

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.

[RitsukoSonoda]

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.

[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.

[AnnRam]

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

[Shinkuno]

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.

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

[MonsutaMan]

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.

[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.