what makes an MMO fell dead

[Renathras]

Yeah I agree with this, although with some of these avenues like gearing they'll have to balance it somehow in order for it to not be easier than getting gear from savage raiding.

I think part of the problem is being terrified of people being able to quickly get ENTRY LEVEL gear, which is just weird. Like the base tome gear - before you upgrade it - is 10 ilevels lower than the upgraded versions, which are equal (I think?) to the Savage versions. So why are we limited to 450 tomes per week which equates to roughly 1 piece of gear a week? What if you could buy a piece for 500 or 1000 Bicolor Gemstones? Considering how many FATEs that would be, this would hardly be game breaking.

"Because raiders will feel pressure to-"

I DO NOT CARE.

Raiders feel pressure to do every bloody thing a game allows for, and it's on them whether they choose to engage in that or not. MANY raid groups AREN'T that hardcore and don't require that, so join one of those. Let other people have their chill grinds that take a lot longer to do but allow them to progress. Or hell, make it a different gear set that is 5 ilevels lower for GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT REASON so the raiders can still feel like special snowflakes, I guess? Just something for gearing to not suck as bad as it does and let people have TANGIBLE progression they can make on their characters outside of raid instances. MMOs need to stop bowing to the whims of, at most, around 40% of the playerbase - if that - making decisions that are bad for the game to appease people that will literally never be happy anyway.

"But only raiders NEED that gear!"

And literally no one ever has been convinced of anything ever by that argument. People want to progress their character. Mount and minion and such farming is one way, gearing is the other. And it's not like it would be gamebreaking to have more ways than "highly capped tomes per week" to achieve ENTRY level gear. Hell, people can buy the crafted versions if they have the money and it's the same ilevel, so it's not like raiders are pressured by that - they often are the biggest buyers!

.

I don't think FFXIV feels dead, since I tend to see people a lot. It's more that the open world is kind of empty, which is true in almost every MMO these days since so much content is instanced. I'm with the people saying that FATEs should give more rewards and they should be CURRENT rewards (you can already somewhat do this with Hunt currency, so why not Bicolor gems? More spamable but slower rate of collection). And also Exploration Zone content (Eureka/Bozja) is some of the best and most fun stuff in the game because of how people will talk, work together, form pick up groups on the fly, and so on. If they could port that concept into the general open world, it'd be amazing.

.

EDIT:

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?

"no more flying mounts"?

Why is this relevant? I've seen this complaint across MMOs (though mainly WoW), but it's never made sense to me. Flying is fun, gives additional perspectives, screenshot opportunities, and still requires travel time (especially if we go the Burning Crusade route where your first flying mount is slower, +60% speed, vs your ground mount +100%, meaning it's better if you're trying to avoid fights or traveling over obstructions but the ground mount is better for straight line distances with fewer or lower level enemies). It's such a weird fixation that almost exclusively originated from PvPers wanting to gank people in the open world and upset that they weren't allowed to who tried to piggyback on "the open world is dead" issue by attacking one of their pet peeves, people being able to avoid being their gank targets.

We have to travel to Deep Dungeons and it's not terribly convenient while still evoking a travel time and destination. And flying didn't have to be removed for that at all. Eureka/Bozja also require traveling to their entry points.

I do agree that LFD killed a lot of the open world of MMOs, but what it really did was expose open worlds that weren't developed for general content and that players were having to fill with their own. Eureka isn't dead because there's actually things to do in it that lead to tangible progression. Western Thanalan is dead because there's nothing to do there that leads to tangible progression. There's no reputation grind, no currency grind, no high level gathering nodes, no Bicolor gems from the Fates, even the Hunt Marks there don't give current currency other than some token amount of Astronomy. There's nothing to gain by doing the content...so no one does the content.

You log in and spend 20 minutes in a dungeon, because you are making SOME tangible progress for your character by doing so.

You don't log in, teleport to Western Thanalan, and grind mobs or FATEs there because there's no tangible benefit to you for doing so.

Flying or teleports or the rest aren't the impediment. It's that there's VERY little to do outside of instanced content in FFXIV that actually progresses your character. The only thing I can think of offhand is Hunt Trains, or if you're after VERY specific things, farming some mobs (leather/food mats like meat or eggs - which you can buy with Bicolor gems anyway), trying to get an old Relic (ARR) for glam (which isn't exactly "progress" but still something people do sometimes), or trying to get Bicolor gems to buy mats or those hyper rare mount tokens, which is such a grind most people don't bother. Some few people use them to level some Jobs, but it's one of the most inefficient methods possible - Bozja is more efficient for 81-90, and probably now Orthos as well - but it is a pretty chill way (it's how I leveled some of my DPS Jobs).

Don't get me wrong, the Bicolor gem addition was brilliant and they REALLY need to flex that a bit more, imo. It should be like Hunt currency where you can get gear and mats and stuff with it, and since there's a lot to get with Bicolor gems, people will have a reason to farm them. But it's just a starting point, and one that already needs to be expanded into gearing where it currently is not.

When there are actual rewards that people see as tangible and important to them, THEN people will do open world stuff. It also helps when the open world systems allow for it, like Eureka/Bozja allowing party formation.

When there aren't, people don't.

It's as simple as that.

Convenience and flying are irrelevant.