what makes an MMO fell dead

[drtasteyummy]

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:

...

Personally, I believe that blaming convenience as the root cause of the issue is wrong. While there are certainly times when people prefer not to interact with others, there is still a prevalent feeling that there is no place that emphasizes the importance of socializing. When discussing Limsa, the question should not be why people prefer to pop in and out instead of forming groups, but rather, why there is no public or global platform for communication. While it may be true that the Japanese culture does not prioritize this kind of communication, it is quite normal for Westerners. It is evident that the absence of chat bubbles in the game.

From a gameplay perspective, there is no inherent reason to form groups in the overworld, whether it be for killing or farming, having fun, or exploring. These are all aspects that one can only experience by committing to a small group, but many feel that it limits the sense of adventure and makes other players feel like mere Mario Kart ghosts. The problem is not simply that convenience hinders interaction, but rather, that the existing methods of interaction make it difficult to enjoy time with random strangers.

[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!

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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.

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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.

[Renathras]

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.

Agreed with this, I think.

I just wish retail FFXI was like the private server FFXI community.

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.

Though I don't disagree with the premise, I think there's some individual taste here. I've never liked Skyrim. I liked Oblivion okay, but the story felt too paper thin, and it was annoying that if you leveled up doing other stuff (that was actually fun) then tried to do the story, that level 1 imp you could easily defeat had you done it right away is now a pair of Daedric demi-lords with a million HP or something stupid. That...was kinda dumb. But Skyrim I could never get into. It was too dumbed down vs Oblivion to me. And all the landscape felt samey - which is saying something vs Oblivion. Where Oblivion was the same patch of woodland for 50 square miles with a little bit of snowy mountains in the north and some swampland in the south, Skyrim was just all mountains and snow, the two types of terrain I hate most in games. Ugh. I will never understand why so many people loved that game...

I do agree that FFXIV's problem is too much instancing. FFXI - modern retail FFXI - problem is that Trusts exist and so people won't party with new players to group and level. They have no reason or benefit from doing so...so no one does it. Or no one did when I tried to get into it a year or so ago.

Having seen what FFXI was like in its prime, I can understand why players would have liked it, but it sadly ISN'T that now.

I don't know who says that, I play on Asura and there's alot of people, I don't play on the private servers, retail has too many QoL for me

I tried to play it last year and everyone said "Get some Trusts and level. Once you're high level, then talk to us and we'll play with you once you're geared up and ready to do real content".

I left the game fairly quickly because it defeats the point of an old school MMO to me to do everything solo. And that seemed to be true on all three of the active servers that I tried, Asura being one of those. I also tried it on that private one that came out recently and people were a lot more active and doing stuff, so that seemed nice, but I'm not sure how much investment I want to put into private servers that could go down at any time...

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.

Also this. Outside of raiding, there's very little to do. Major patches tend to focus on raiding. Notice how we don't get the Relic "grind" or Deep Dungeon until X.Y5 patches, not in the major X.Y patches? Because it MIGHT inconvenience the raiders or something. So the only thing to do at end-game is really raid, and that's beginning to be a problem.

This used not to be the case. As recently as ShB we had Bozja, even if it was cut down from the original intent, and in SB, we had both Eureka and a Deep Dungeon with HoH.

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.

Also this.

And I think this is something endgame-exclusive players are missing. A LOT of leveling content and leveling zones are active, just with sprouts. There's not endgame stuff to do there, so omni-90s (or near enough for their tastes) aren't going to those zones or doing those things...but that doesn't mean no one else is.

[NekoMataMata]

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.

Really wish people would give this a read. It's not only really insightful but it offers a ton of ideas that can help out with the "problem" depending on whether you consider the situations they mentioned that or not.

[Rilifane]

Convenience isn't limited to flying.
I don't believe that flying is the level of "too much convenience" but there is definitely such a thing as too much convenience that can over time ruin an aspect of a game; be that class design, immersion or character progression. The more convenient something is to do, the less people will engage with each other.

For overworld content the biggest problem is the lack of rewards though.
As you said: nobody just teleports randomly into a zone to... what? Do low level fates? Count the pebbles on the floor?
Putting gear, especially savage gear, on such a pedestal was a mistake and it severly limits what kind of rewards content, especially battle content, can offer. V/C was a good example of content that could've rewarded gear equal to regular tome gear or upgrade mats but no, better make sure the content is almost dead on arrival from a lack of reward. Funnily enough, the actual raiders are rarely arguing against more avenues for acquiring entry level gear or gear that is on par with regular tomes or even upgrade mats. On the contrary, many would like to see it because it's also a good opportunity to gear alt classes while dealing with lockouts.
They could also add e.g. ilvl 615 which would be on par with either 610 or 620, depending on the substats.
Especially in a game that advertises being able to play all classes on one character there should be more different ways to acquire gear so you actually CAN play these "all classes on one character" and it would be a great way to populate the world. Two birds, one stone.
If they don't want to pressure WFR groups they can always disable it for 1-2 weeks after tier drop.

It's also not really rocket science to e.g. add zone events.
The benefit of zone events is that people gather during specific times and instead of having 10 people in a zone but at different times and in different areas, these 10 people will gather and actually see each other, engage with each other and work towards a common goal for the duration of the event. Having both would be a good thing.

And fully agree with what Remish said.
We really need better encouragement for communicating ingame. LSs/ CWLSs reach cap too quickly, no calender, no incentive to use the FC for anything but as a chat channel, fellowships are nothing but facebook walls and don't encourage any real interaction (and are thus often used to advertise a discord).

[RitsukoSonoda]

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

Nah. FFVIII was the interactive movie. You didn't even need to fight non boss enemies if you didn't want to. Given the response to that game's system I don't expect any title to get that bad ever again.

[Jkap_Goat]

Agreed with this, I think.

I just wish retail FFXI was like the private server FFXI community.





I do agree that FFXIV's problem is too much instancing. FFXI - modern retail FFXI - problem is that Trusts exist and so people won't party with new players to group and level. They have no reason or benefit from doing so...so no one does it. Or no one did when I tried to get into it a year or so ago.

Having seen what FFXI was like in its prime, I can understand why players would have liked it, but it sadly ISN'T that now.



I tried to play it last year and everyone said "Get some Trusts and level. Once you're high level, then talk to us and we'll play with you once you're geared up and ready to do real content".

I left the game fairly quickly because it defeats the point of an old school MMO to me to do everything solo. And that seemed to be true on all three of the active servers that I tried, Asura being one of those. I also tried it on that private one that came out recently and people were a lot more active and doing stuff, so that seemed nice, but I'm not sure how much investment I want to put into private servers that could go down at any time...

I think it really depends on the people you meet in FFXI, like I have met assholes and met people who won't take me because I'm a Dancer, it's just getting the right LS to meet people

also as someone told me: Get a job that you love, and get a job that will help you get into parties. So I went with WHM which helped me a lot get gear for my Dancer and Thief

trusts is an issues but I enjoy it and how different are all the trusts are and not homogenized

[RitsukoSonoda]

I think it really depends on the people you meet in FFXI, like I have met assholes and met people who won't take me because I'm a Dancer, it's just getting the right LS to meet people

also as someone told me: Get a job that you love, and get a job that will help you get into parties. So I went with WHM which helped me a lot get gear for my Dancer and Thief

trusts is an issues but I enjoy it and how different are all the trusts are and not homogenized

It really did make a difference in FFXI with who you met in game. I played it from it's Japan launch up until a bit after Moogle Kupo d'eaut. Japanese players after the global release would start appearing after time with "JP ONLY" in their search comment and speaking with a number of them it wasn't an issue of racism but a result of just having too many negative experiences with random English speaking players so they'd only play with ones that had a positive reputation among their friends. Though at least some of these negative experiences were a result of different cultures having different mind sets on how to do things or behave.

Also... if you REALLY wanted to level a job fast just to get stuff for another job. RDM and BRD were the way to go. You'd have to go anon to not get spammed by ppl asking you to join their party. And even then some would still find you while you had anon active lol.

[Chloe_Saunders]

For me, its a few things but mostly when the world itself feels dead in the open. Meaning you constantly see no reason for anyone to be there at all, or most things have no purpose to do. Another thing that makes games feel dead to me is the combat, or dungeons get to repeative, for example if your move set is always three to four buttons and the fighting requires no thought process, other than dodge a rock or dont stand in fire. Feels lazy, and takes out the excitement for me when I play a game. I'm not saying a fight has to be hard in a mmo to not be dead,but it should require you to think with some complexity same with a character or job or even class. Complexity helps a player feel engaged in a fight, and a character/class. If you remove that, we might as well be mindless zombies you know.

Maybe its just me because I am a mental ill girl/stupid but.. thats how I feel about the subject

[R041]

For me, its a few things but mostly when the world itself feels dead in the open. Meaning you constantly see no reason for anyone to be there at all, or most things have no purpose to do. Another thing that makes games feel dead to me is the combat, or dungeons get to repeative, for example if your move set is always three to four buttons and the fighting requires no thought process, other than dodge a rock or dont stand in fire. Feels lazy, and takes out the excitement for me when I play a game. I'm not saying a fight has to be hard in a mmo to not be dead,but it should require you to think with some complexity same with a character or job or even class. Complexity helps a player feel engaged in a fight, and a character/class. If you remove that, we might as well be mindless zombies you know.

Maybe its just me because I am a mental ill girl/stupid but.. thats how I feel about the subject

Yo don't put yourself down, your opinion is solid.