what makes an MMO fell dead

[RitsukoSonoda]

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

Right. The game may have a huge player base. However you hardly ever see people outside of designated gathering hubs because outside of DoL jobs looking for nodes, once you finish whatever quests you had in that area there's almost no reason to return.

And the game really has been stripped down of nearly every RPG mechanic which in turn eliminated build crafting because there is no actual diversity. It's just pick a job, get highest ilvl gear that boosts 1-2 specific sub stats, then press skill keys while trying not to step in poo.

IMO a number of SE's recent "failures" appear to be caused by 2 things. 1 is poor execution of an idea. The other is focusing on trying to draw in new players from other genres of games. When the 2 combine you end up with the issue of not getting the new players you wanted while your established fanbase doesn't stick around because they feel ignored. The success of this title sales wise after its ARR relaunch might have been a driving factor causing their more recent issues.

[MonteCristo]

I agree with so many points here but most of all its the lack of the game feeling alive and encouraging real group interaction especially in open zones. It rly bothers me how beautiful this game is but also how dead zones feel....there was a certain magic that ffxi had that i just have not been able to feel in xiv after playing since 1.0 beta...i want xiv to be immersive so bad but starting to feel like its not going to happen. Its the most un-mmorpg game ive ever played. Just que and barely talk to anyone and complete duties with ease...it almost feels like an single player game 90% of the time

[Atelier-Bagur]

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.

To be honest, the weird part about that point with entry level gear is that we already have it.....with the current craftable gears that you can also further augment them, yet the raiders still act as if gearing other jobs for being able to do savage content is hard? Buddy, what you're actually complaining about here is not being able to obtain multiple BiS pieces for your roles and somehow acting as if its a requirement for raiding!?

Ok I get it, you DO need BiS for Ultimates and Criterion (I think?) and Im not trying to argue that they shouldnt ease up the loot lockout and acquirement for multiple pieces. But at the same time, I cant get behind of the common argument used for it is that its a required grind? Even though the relevancy for BiS is quite short compared to most games. Its all about being the top best in the current time that it somehow matters and to me thats just a sad mentality to have here imo. Especially since like I said, BiS's relevancy is often fleeting due to this game's consistent patch cycles so in perspective its almost pointless.

[Rilifane]

snip

I don't think you get it.
Did you ever actively tried to raid on alt classes in PF?
Because the way you talk about it sounds like you didn't and you're completely missing the point and the true issue here by trying to make it into a "you all just want to feel super strong, what a sad mentality". The issue isn't that we don't have any entry level gear - the issue is that 610 won't be enough to even join parties for long.

You will be able to join even parties for the last floor in 610/ "entry gear" for a few weeks tops.
But reaching the last floor within a few weeks in PF is already quite the feat in PF and unlikely to be done on your alts. But past these first few weeks the ilvl to join will increase fairly quickly. You'll see 610 for the 1st floor but 615-620 is common for the 2nd and 3rd and you'll rarely see anything below 620 for the last floor, even if it's just getting past the door boss. People filter by ilvl after a few weeks.
"But gear doesn't mean someone is skilled!" - no, but people prefer to have an idiot in good gear over having an idiot in bad gear. It's not rocket science. And 610 is really pushing it for 3rd/ 4th floor, you need to be more than "okay" to pull that off, especially when your entire group is around that ilvl.

Until the catch up patch that introduces alli raid and upgraded crafted gear, you are extremely limited when it comes to gearing alts and can't nearly gear them fast enough to keep up with the ilvl filter in PF.
You can make your own group and set ilvl lower or set it to a point you don't reach yourself. The first unfortunately attracts a lot of people that make clearing extremely difficult to downright impossible and the latter is a dick move.
Source? Experience with PF for 4 tiers (ShB 1-3 and EW 1).
In an ideal fairy world, everyone would happily welcome people with 610 into parties for the last boss and everyone would play well enough to pull it off. But we don't live in that fairy world, people set ilvl requirements (most of them are perfectly reasonable too, not talking about 625 for Carby here) and people can't be trusted to play well enough to get a p8s clear in 610. I wouldn't even trust myself to play well enough to get a p8s clear in 610 and I consider myself a fairly good player.

Then there's the issue with needing the gear for Ultimate and more than once they made class changes that either significantly affected balance with Ultimate release or there were details people couldn't know before and both can lead to having to switch classes. Like the buff limit in TOP making DNC and SGE a really bad choice purely because they spam a lot of fluff buffs on the entire group. If someone has to, for whatever reason, switch class shortly before Ultimate releases, they're screwed because they'll be miles behind the rest of the group and have no way of catching up quickly. Full upgraded crafted isn't enough here; I had people in Ultimates that were behind in ilvl and it's a pain to keep them alive through some mechanics or even impossible depending on the patterns.
There are times when someone is on their own for a bit and you need a bit of HP to make it through that mechanic. Vit pots are on a 4,5min cooldown and can't solve it all.

But even ignornig all the logical arguments for easing the restrictions and making the gearing progression more alt-friendly - what is so bad or "sad" about enjoying having good gear? Does it affect your enjoyment of the game? Should nobody enjoy temporary things (like good gear)? Is it a morale thing here that enjoying having good gear = bad? Should you not have something just because it isn't written in the TOS that you need it?
I'm not a shiny hunter, I care so little about gear that I volunteered to get my shinies last in our static. But if others enjoy it, why not?

[Connor]

Its the most un-mmorpg game ive ever played.

I had this exact same thought whilst playing today. Job abilities in particular have been changed drastically over the years to basically remove any need to think about other people whatsoever (i.e Foe Requiem, Astrologian’s original cards, Refresh/Tactician, Virus, etc). Basically, the game’s most salient message is ‘Don’t pay attention to those other people in the dungeon and don’t you dare think about trying to help them’.

Then when they do add something that actually encourages team play they make it 120 sec cool-down meta which then completely defeats the purpose of encouraging team play. I mean, if all jobs use their buffs at the exact same time whilst going through your standard maximal dps rotation, without ever having to consider the context, then they may as well just be auto-activated passives every 120 seconds.

Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if they go 100% full-on solo mode and delete the role system entirely. Making every job ‘role agnostic’ so it’s literally impossible to be affected by other players.
Can’t have players being held back by something like job roles , that’s just stressful . They might actually to think about building a party instead of just going in and pressing the glowing buttons!

Where even are all these ‘support despisers’ SE is catering to anyway? I don’t remember seeing floods of forums posts begging them to make it so your party members are wholly irrelevant to your gameplay lol. The last complaints I saw about support was literally like 4.0 when people kept bitching about Requiem having a 1.5s cast time because ‘mUh DeEpS’ lol (does 1.5s even drop dps enough to significantly affect a parse lol?). So they nuked it out of existence then we’re like ‘let’s never do one of these again’, and eventually gave birth to the 120 sec meta. Nobody can complain about party support if it doesn’t exist, I guess lol.

I mean, if you ask me, catering a game to literal no one then wondering why players are dissatisfied is probably what kills an MMO lol. Or at the very least is going to start causing problems in future

[RitsukoSonoda]

I had this exact same thought whilst playing today. Job abilities in particular have been changed drastically over the years to basically remove any need to think about other people whatsoever (i.e Foe Requiem, Astrologian’s original cards, Refresh/Tactician, Virus, etc). Basically, the game’s most salient message is ‘Don’t pay attention to those other people in the dungeon and don’t you dare think about trying to help them’.

Then when they do add something that actually encourages team play they make it 120 sec cool-down meta which then completely defeats the purpose of encouraging team play. I mean, if all jobs use their buffs at the exact same time whilst going through your standard maximal dps rotation, without ever having to consider the context, then they may as well just be auto-activated passives every 120 seconds.

Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if they go 100% full-on solo mode and delete the role system entirely. Making every job ‘role agnostic’ so it’s literally impossible to be affected by other players.
Can’t have players being held back by something like job roles , that’s just stressful . They might actually to think about building a party instead of just going in and pressing the glowing buttons!

Where even are all these ‘support despisers’ SE is catering to anyway? I don’t remember seeing floods of forums posts begging them to make it so your party members are wholly irrelevant to your gameplay lol. The last complaints I saw about support was literally like 4.0 when people kept bitching about Requiem having a 1.5s cast time because ‘mUh DeEpS’ lol (does 1.5s even drop dps enough to significantly affect a parse lol?). So they nuked it out of existence then we’re like ‘let’s never do one of these again’, and eventually gave birth to the 120 sec meta. Nobody can complain about party support if it doesn’t exist, I guess lol.

I mean, if you ask me, catering a game to literal no one then wondering why players are dissatisfied is probably what kills an MMO lol. Or at the very least is going to start causing problems in future

TBH it's feeling like various things in the world and not just games seem to prefer if ppl don't think... Probably because thinking regularly sharpens your mind. And a sharp mind is much harder to trick or convince into believing all the bad things they've done are actually good and for their benefit. I'm really getting tired of job applicants who's degree seems to be nothing but a glorified sales receipt and diploma is a participation ribbon.

[Avoidy]

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

Bingo. Not even sure why you were so down on yourself at the end, was literally about to come in here and type exactly that.

Black Desert Online is a bad MMO run by one of the greediest shittiest companies I've ever seen. But I still have to give them credit: they didn't allow fast travel and provided lots of incentives to do things in the open world. There were also no load times and no "instanced" zones like in XIV where the area outside limsa is just 4 empty instanced areas. It was all one cohesive massive zone that everyone played in, a giant sandbox really, and every time you went out there you'd see people. People riding past on their horses. People dueling in the wild over a prime spot. People gathering logs and slaughtering sheep. People grinding mobs. People. Now don't get me wrong, BDO was shit for a lot of reasons despite doing a couple of things right, but MAN do I miss that element of it in XIV. When I go out in the open world, I'll see -- at best -- one or two new people doing their MSQ. Hell, I don't even see that anymore; Balmung's been blocking new character creation for a long time and Crystal in general was congested for months. Maybe you'll see a fate train if you're lucky but that's being really charitable. The game's got like 2-3 hubs where people hang out and beyond that they're in their houses/apartments or they're in instanced content like dungeons.

Even when this game is bustling, it feels like it isn't. This could all be fixed by implementing more reasons to do content just outside of towns and cities. At one point there was some dumb event that asked players to run fates in low leveled zones. I don't even like fates, but I'll at least give credit where it's due: those zones outside town that were usually dead, were suddenly full of people again and the world actually felt alive. Point being, they don't have to do anything crazy to achieve these results. The systems are already kind of in place. The devs just don't for some reason. And then they compound the issue by rolling out terms of service agreements that make people scared to offer advice or talk to each other in dungeons and yeah, in my roulettes I feel like I'm playing with NPCs.

[hagare]

a mount you cant use to afk in limsa

what mount can you use to afk in Limsa?

[Atelier-Bagur]

I don't think you get it.
Did you ever actively tried to raid on alt classes in PF?
Because the way you talk about it sounds like you didn't and you're completely missing the point and the true issue here by trying to make it into a "you all just want to feel super strong, what a sad mentality". The issue isn't that we don't have any entry level gear - the issue is that 610 won't be enough to even join parties for long.

You will be able to join even parties for the last floor in 610/ "entry gear" for a few weeks tops.
But reaching the last floor within a few weeks in PF is already quite the feat in PF and unlikely to be done on your alts. But past these first few weeks the ilvl to join will increase fairly quickly. You'll see 610 for the 1st floor but 615-620 is common for the 2nd and 3rd and you'll rarely see anything below 620 for the last floor, even if it's just getting past the door boss. People filter by ilvl after a few weeks.
"But gear doesn't mean someone is skilled!" - no, but people prefer to have an idiot in good gear over having an idiot in bad gear. It's not rocket science. And 610 is really pushing it for 3rd/ 4th floor, you need to be more than "okay" to pull that off, especially when your entire group is around that ilvl.

And right by the first couple of sentences you've just proved my point. The issue here are parties. PARTIES. Aka groups of people whom restrict the player base to their high standards. This is the same kind of hardcore raiding mentality that people give a lot of flak towards the WoW community and it seems the same is done in FFXIV.

Now I realize we cant fault PFs that make groups like this because anyone can do whatever the hell they want; if they want to farm they want to farm, but its also a social problem that its mostly relegated towards the community if the mentality is centered around getting fast clears. And personally it seems like the playerbase wants the dev team to babysit them to solve this problem for them rather than the community deal with their own problems and thats what I mean its sad.

Its sad that the mentality funny enough are the playerbase gatekeeping themselves rather than the game itself, and honestly this is an issue thats difficult to tackle because like I said there's reason for both sides here.

[Rilifane]

I didn't prove anything, you still don't seem to understand the reality because you stick to an idealistic belief, not realising that "your way" would gatekeeper aswell - just a different group of people and for a different reason.

I was about to type out a detailed explanation of my points but honestly, I doubt its worth it.
Because the way you worded your last post you seem to have already passed judgement that people are sad and have a toxic hardcore raider mentality and the only problem is the community and they all just want to get babysitted.
You don't seem to be willing to listen, so I'll just drop any attempts of trying to help you understand the other side.