what makes an MMO fell dead

[drtasteyummy]

An MMO feels alive to me when there are many opportunities for me to interact with other players. It reminds me of when I almost stopped playing at level 30 because I felt so left behind. As someone who came from World of Warcraft, there was no player interaction in the story, no one spoke in the dungeon, no one invited me to the novice chat, and even in the cities, no one spoke, no trading channel, nothing but AFK posers everywhere.

It wasn't until I was invited to the novice channel, joined a guild, and cough chat bubbles cough that I felt much more comfortable. Ignoring the story, which obviously relies on a plot between you and NPCs and therefore doesn't make much sense to force players into, there are still very few reasons for interaction between players, despite the fact that the story takes up a huge part of the game.

There's no need for farming, there are no events where you really have to work together, and even when there are, it's not built around the fact that randoms would like to interact with other randoms, and it doesn't always have to be questing. A perfect example is the Gold Saucer, where there are so many mini games and there's never really any interaction with other players.

In FF14, you are often just herded from point A to point B, and the only real interaction is being able to see that others are probably doing the same thing as you.

[RitsukoSonoda]

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.

Simply if you compare the 2. FFXI is an MMORPG targeted at RPG players. FFXIV is an MMO using the FF franchise to target non RPG players. At least that seems to be the direction FFXIV has been going. However part of me thinks FFXI would probably be competing with this game in terms of active players if it wasn't a PS2 era game and had the same quality of visuals. There's so many great older games out there that ppl don't even try simply because it isn't as "pretty" as the new stuff. I still feel like FFXVII needs to be a new MMORPG that puts RPG back into the label following FFXI's design philosophy. At the same time I feel like it should follow up with FFXVIII going back to the fantasy roots of the franchise with cartoonish visuals like we got from FFIX. Then give it the darkest story in SE history and death sequences reminiscent of happy tree friends... >.>;

[Shinkuno]

An MMO feels alive to me when there are many opportunities for me to interact with other players. It reminds me of when I almost stopped playing at level 30 because I felt so left behind. As someone who came from World of Warcraft, there was no player interaction in the story, no one spoke in the dungeon, no one invited me to the novice chat, and even in the cities, no one spoke, no trading channel, nothing but AFK posers everywhere.

It wasn't until I was invited to the novice channel, joined a guild, and cough chat bubbles cough that I felt much more comfortable. Ignoring the story, which obviously relies on a plot between you and NPCs and therefore doesn't make much sense to force players into, there are still very few reasons for interaction between players, despite the fact that the story takes up a huge part of the game.

There's no need for farming, there are no events where you really have to work together, and even when there are, it's not built around the fact that randoms would like to interact with other randoms, and it doesn't always have to be questing. A perfect example is the Gold Saucer, where there are so many mini games and there's never really any interaction with other players.

In FF14, you are often just herded from point A to point B, and the only real interaction is being able to see that others are probably doing the same thing as you.

Ill give it 2 expansions before all ultimates are canned, savages are dumbed down enough for trusts to complete them and the duty/partyfinder to be removed and the only way to do content is trusts, and everyone will be paying a monhtly subscription for a singleplayer game with social hub.

/s but kinda not, for 95% of the time you really pay a subcription for a singleplayer game

[Connor]

Ill give it 2 expansions before all ultimates are canned, savages are dumbed down enough for trusts to complete them and the duty/partyfinder to be removed and the only way to do content is trusts, and everyone will be paying a monhtly subscription for a singleplayer game with social hub.

/s but kinda not, for 95% of the time you really pay a subcription for a singleplayer game

I’m not even sure it qualifies as ‘single player game’ anymore lol, more like ‘interactive movie’

[Wissp]

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.

This.

People poo poo Eureka and say it was the worst, but those instances, and especially that dungeon when they were current bought some of the most organization and interaction between random players that I have ever seen in the game. BA runs were an organizational and cooperative thing of beauty, bringing 54 players together to accomplish running though a one hit will probably kill you dungeon.

God I miss those days. Like Dixie said, best fun I ever had in FF14.


And if you want to see a game with a vibrant open world. GW2. Yeah, even after all this time, it astonishes me how many people I see in ALL the zones actually DOING stuff.

[Rilifane]

snip

Agreed on all of it.
I've been of the opinion that too much convenience and quality of life hurts a game for some time now. There comes a point where it's no longer a free improvement and instead you sacrifice something else for it, in this case immersion and the world feeling alive.
The amount of fast travel through the world but also into duties paired with the story deliberate isolating you from other players outside a few dungeons/ trials and making other players appear as supporting NPCs to you being the one true hero and the fact that everything is spoonfed just leads to people quickly poofing in and out of zones to do their 5min dailies or something and then stand around in one of the cities while poofing in and out of duties.
A large chunk of materials completely lose meaning once you hit max level on a crafter so people don't have a reason to go back into earlier zones to farm mats there. Once you left a zone after the story is finished there, your only reason to return are hunt trains if you do them and fates if you want to rank up for shared fates or the occasional treasure map.

And I think there's also another problem that affects immersion negatively: the significant lack of world "clutter".
Most zones feel dead and empty not just from a lack of players but also from a lack of things that you'd normally see in a living, breathing world. And if you wouldn't to that extend, it pays off to exaggerate that aspect.
What I mean are things like

• guards, travelling merchants and caravans travelling the roads with the merchants/ caravans maybe also having things for sale that you don't get at every 08/15 merchant in the city,
• a variety of small animals running around in and outside hubs,
• a variety of mobs in each area of a zone, preferably also with interactions (e.g. a predator chasing its food on legs around, a baby animal following/ chasing a critter around for a bit when said critter is within x yards, a male animal dropping food in front of his family and the others doing a kind of eating animation etc)
• NPCs having looping banter, interaction and routes they walk, e.g. an NPC walking up to another, telling them something and to follow them, the two NPCs walk to their new destination together, talk about something there, maybe "interact" with objects and then parting ways again or an animal trying to get into the kitchen and the cook chasing it out again
• objects to interact with, can be a simple gimmick that's just for fun like a lost scroll turning you into a frog (buff, can be clicked off), items that give you a small buff , books/ letters for lore bits, small animals you can pet and that emote back
• small hubs that don't only exist for the main story

Now, overworld clutter obviously wouldn't solve the problem but it's still a very important part of a world feeling alive and immersive and would, at the very least, make it less noticable if they couldn't manage to make some zones feel alive and have players engage in them and with each other.

I think they also limited themselves with their fear of giving people several avenues to get something or adding anything of value outside of dev-approved content (e.g. savage gear).
Zone events, world bosses/ strong rare mobs, open world treasures, open world minigames, world quests/ dailies, invasions... these could all be ways to get tomes, some gear, pets, currency for buying a variety of things or even just plain old gil.
The reward system feels very sterile in many ways. You can only have this thing from this specific content, that's the dev-approved way and we'll not stray from it. No, you can't have rewards for exploring, we want you to do THIS content because it's literally the only way to get something.

[NekoMataMata]

Lack of player interaction.

If you're playing a multiplayer game that's sort of what you need. It doesn't matter how it's done. It could be over anything, but it needs to be there.

I don't really think it's FFXIV's fault though. People seem really picky-choosey about who they interact with these days. I feel like most people are immediately judging whether or not you offer them anything before they decide to let you into their inner circles :/ That's everywhere from simple discord channels to any other online games. Very few people just act normal and treat others like normal human beings these days, it's all about them.

[dspguy]

Personally, I think SE made a game that players want and we hate ourselves for liking it.

Some people noted that people stand around Limsa and just pop in/out of duties. Should we go back to having to travel to the duty entrance instead? No more flying mounts. Limited teleports; maybe just 1 for all expansions and then you have to take a ship or some other timesink to get where you want to go?

How about queueing for duties themselves? What we have now is convenient. Click a button and SE's servers do the job for you of matching you up with other players to complete it. The people we are matched with might as well be NPCs at times. 99% of instances go like this:

- enter instance
- people type / o/ o7 or nothing at all
- clear it
- people type gg or nothing at all

Would we prefer to make our own groups for all content, not just high-end content? Stand around Lima shouting "LF 2 DPS and heals for expert... meet me at the entrance to the dungeon!"

In nearly every MMO I played prior to FFXIV, forming a group to gain experience was a chore. Sometimes you might only have 1 hour which means you might as well not login. It takes that long to get people together and get to where you have to go. However, this chore was also community forming. The people on your friends' list were invaluable. These were people that didn't let you down. It was a big deal to make friend with people, since they'd come to you first for a group.

It was like skipping the queue.

But we got what we have now because this is what players wanted. And in many ways it works. I don't have 3-6 hours anymore to sit down at my computer and play a game. With just 20 minutes, I can login, run a dungeon and logout. In other games, it would take 20 minutes just to get to the dungeon, not counting getting a party together and actually running it.

[Remish]

Hot take: But I think the combination of Twitter, Reddit, and especially Discord is why the game feels anti-social. It's because all of the social activity is off the game not within it. Linkshells have been gradually killed off due to size limitations. Discord bots and third-party tools™ have made the need for even hunting linkshells irrelevant. World visiting and Data Center travel has effectively killed off in-game FC chats. Until they update DC travel to allow you to engage with Linkshells and FC chat across the DCs, these will likely continue to remain dead. Discord has allowed people to partake in socializing even when offline. Play other games, and even voice chat together. Then there's Twitter and Reddit where everyone wants to be some kind of content creator these days. Then those creators make their own discord communities, and we have dramatic community wars all the time. Even Gposing on Twitter has turned into a popularity contest at times. Then we have the Role Players, Erotic Role Players, Raiders, Hardcore Gamers, Casual Gamers always at odds with each other especially with what should be on the party finder. Housing becoming another wrench in the scoup of things. Nobody wants to be in a house-less FC, and these days nobody wants to be in an FC at all unless they own it. There's just really no solution to any of this... the evolution of technology is creating the illusion that in-game chat is dead.

It won't solve the problem but some things that SE could do to make the game feel more socially alive is:

-Allow FC and Linkshell chats across worlds and data centers.

-Give more incentives into being in an FC. Instead of giving rewards through meaningless FC ranks, attach them to member size. 10 members gives you another FC action, 20 members expands the chest size, 30 members increases the slots for furniture that can be placed, 40 members upgrades the FC buffs to tier 3, 50 members gives an extra exp buff when playing with other FC members. These are just suggestions, we could get really creative with this. Obviously this would also encourage more blind inviting but the FC leaders would have to be active to maintain this member count or they would lose their buffs.

-Increase the cross world linkshell capacities from 64 to 500. Maybe even 1000 if really possible.

-Delete Fellowships as is and redesign it into a better model. The concept isn't bad but there is way to much spam and the lack of communication between members being locked to weird forums posts isn't good. There needs to be a link-shell like chat and a calendar.

-Speaking of Calendars, FCs and Linkshells also need an in-game Calendar feature. And no, not the stupid companion app. There is no incentive to using the companion app when we have discord.

-Make FC rooms cheaper. 300k is a bit high these days for something that locks you into your FC and isn't any better than an apartment. Or alternatively increase the furniture limit from apartments. Regardless, something needs to be done to make these more desirable. There is virtually no real reason to have one.

-Add FC birthdays, for example the FC get's unlimited FC buff usage on it's anniversary day. By extension allow Member anniversary where the in-game chat prompts when you have been with an FC for a year.

-Allow visitors to Eternal Bonding from other worlds and data centers.





As for being silent in dungeons, there's just nothing that can really be done about that. People want to do their roulettes then get on with their lives. And FATES are just kind of a dead thing that's only ever made relevant through relics. These have imo, never made the world feel alive and become dead once more with each new expansion. Same goes for hunts.

[magitekLuna]

This.

People poo poo Eureka and say it was the worst, but those instances, and especially that dungeon when they were current bought some of the most organization and interaction between random players that I have ever seen in the game. BA runs were an organizational and cooperative thing of beauty, bringing 54 players together to accomplish running though a one hit will probably kill you dungeon.

God I miss those days. Like Dixie said, best fun I ever had in FF14.


And if you want to see a game with a vibrant open world. GW2. Yeah, even after all this time, it astonishes me how many people I see in ALL the zones actually DOING stuff.

It work in gw2 so well because you never over gear any zone. You don't lose skills doing lowe level content. In FF14 it's pain to do any thing under level 60. In 7.0.it be anything under 70.