how did we at a place where diablo4 is more of an mmo that FF14?

[Stormpeaks]

Not fellating the game at every step = troll

Okay. Imagine defending Square at every opportunity while you play the race that square basically tells you "we wont put in any effort, please play any other race, thanks"

That's their only defense tbh, and for them, arguing in "good faith" is basically giving up and saying "yeah okay i was wrong the game is great", its like an echo chamber of toxic positivity that these people want, it's like that one person that was telling me the game was losing players because of covid after I showed them charts, they just try and cope, and do all they can to convince themselves that the game is in good health and doing great, hell the same person even said that it was "on a steady growth path" yet the charts were proving otherwise and that the game lost about 20% of players in 2 months, and that's only for steam numbers, one can imagine how the SE version is doing if steam numbers are already like that.

[Kaurhz]

Not fellating the game at every step = troll

Okay. Imagine defending Square at every opportunity while you play the race that square basically tells you "we wont put in any effort, please play any other race, thanks"

And apparently not being unified or in agreement with your criticism = a white knight.

That is if we want to apply the same nonsensical extremes that you're attempting to present. I can assure you that working in extremes is not the big brain play you think it is.

Okay. Imagine being so upset with people disagreeing with your input that your reaction basically narrows down to "WAAAHH, WAAHH, Stohpppp whiteknighting"

[Shinkuno]

And apparently not being unified or in agreement with your criticism = a white knight.

That is if we want to apply the same nonsensical extremes that you're attempting to present. I can assure you that working in extremes is not the big brain play you think it is.

Okay. Imagine being so upset with people disagreeing with your input that your reaction basically narrows down to "WAAAHH, WAAHH, Stohpppp whiteknighting"

all i see is people deflecting critcism, rarely will someone put an actual counter argument. Here is 90% of arguments summed up:

-its always been like that!

-but wow bad!

-yoship said its okay to take a break!

[Kaurhz]

all i see is people deflecting critcism, rarely will someone put an actual counter argument. Here is 90% of arguments summed up:

-its always been like that!

-but wow bad!

-yoship said its okay to take a break!

Rarely? I highly think you're working under negativity bias in this regard. There are actually fairly reasonable counter-criticisms, that is if the criticism has anything noteworthy to provide a counter-criticism of in the first place and if it isn't underpinned by needless crying. Again, if we want to work in the same realm as extremism and poorly thought-out research then I could apply the following; 90% of criticisms offered up as of late can be summed up as thus:

[Inserts Andy Pipkin "I don't like it" meme here]

and yes, a lot of the criticisms that people have introduced have essentially been the case since Heavensward, and arguably since ARR itself. Does it negate the criticism? No. But is it anything new that people would be willing to assert it is? Nope. Simplified encounters? Sorry, this has been the case since Creator. It's hardly been exclusive to ShB and Endwalker. Same with dungeon design? Sorry but 99% of the dungeons, even those of the original ARR dungeons were corridor crawlers. Outliers are Tam-Tara and Haukke Manor off the top of my head. People routinely ignored these, even in the case of Haukke Manor, even when the additional 30 seconds of exploration could give rewards worth upwards of 100K in Gil. Just as a couple of examples from the top of my head. These are just asserting facts when people bring these up.

If people are going to respond in an abrasive tone with remarks such as "White Knight", "Shill", then people are only going to be more inclined to dismiss what you have to say, and are going to be more inclined to treat your posts in a self-same manner, honestly the number of people that seem to be unable to comprehend this is mind-boggling.

Sorry, but this whole attitude you're referring to is not really exclusive to 1-side, regardless of how much your personal feelings and bias may want to assert otherwise.

[EliaStormblade]

I really expect much from someone who undermines everything at every turn.

"I am really looking forward t--"
"Don't bother. It's just going to be shit. You're going to be disappointed."
"Why are you even here if you have no hope for the future and clearly hate it here?"
"URHMM OKAY WHITEKNIGHT??? CAN'T ACCEPT A LITTLE BIT OF CRITIQUE CAN YOU PFFT HAHA EVERYTHING JUST HAS TO BE ROSY IN YOUR WORLD"

Better off just not giving people like that the time of day.

[Jojoya]

Jojo, you should just play it and come back and tell me. The general discussion around what makes an MMO, is overall interesting - When we talk about Lobby type games, it's always been debated that the only reason they're not an MMO is because they don't have a persistent world with 'natural' player introductions. At least that's why people said Diablo, PoE, Guild Wars, PSO/2, DDO, Warframe weren't MMO?
Well D4 is an always online persistent world now. So the goalpost has to be moved then right?

I think Blizzard has a much higher standard of what an MMO is compared to other companies. But they're using the WoW tech for Diablo, and it sure as fuck feels like an MMO compared to 99% of all MMOs out there, even MORESO than some.

In Diablo 4, you're basically running through large WoW zones but they're non-linear. Really the only difference between WoW and Diablo 4 at this point is WoW can actually manage to have 100+ players on the same screen for events. Where most 'MMOs' just fail to want to do this, even XIV avoids this at all cost now. Probably because for every player you see in a group, the bandwidth requirements are increased exponentially.

Even WoW and XIV have max player count and will create new zone instances when they're hit. So I wanna know where the goalpost sits now.




Here's 1 of the 5 Regions in D4. I split up the zones to the best of my ability. Some of these have even smaller server zone/bounds that aren't super visible to me.
(You can tell it's a server line when you rubber band sometimes on a bridge or in a tunnel)

Each one of these zones holds up to 12 players. So the biggest difference is that with a WoW / XIV zone, they hold about 100 players before they need to instance the zone again - They also use a much wider area. Where D4 holds 12 in smaller areas. So it's more encapsulated. Otherwise it's roughly the same, and the instances and zones are seamless. It's just a different zone/instance structure. Honestly prefer this, because then you don't have 100 players in town dancing and emoting forever like Limsa.

And you don't pick a server, you all just exist in the massive cluster. So all of NA.

None of that convinces me it's a MMO.

Ever been on a hunt train with over 300 players in the same zone? I've conducted them (and hated almost every minute of it if I was being honest, I stick to conducting off peak hours on non-reset days now). We know the zones can hold more than that. We saw close to 500 players showing up for Chi FATEs when the expansion first came out.

Will the D4 zones expand to hold 500 players if a world boss is spawned or will they still be limited to 12 or even the 100 allowed in a region?

How would the FFXIV cities feel if there were only 12 players allowed into the same instance instead of several hundred?


You're proving the point that it's a multiplayer game, not a MMO. I understand that you're currently finding it more engaging than FFXIV but we're getting into design difference.

It sounds like you want an open world zone where you're constantly killing things. FFXIV has designed its open world zones around more focused activities that would be more difficult if the zones were packed with hostile mobs. It's a theme park with a lot of different rides. D4 is simply a killing field with the occasional commander pointing out where you need to kill next.

Trust me, I want you to find a game that you truly enjoy and are happy playing. I want the same for all players here, even the ones I frequently disagree with. That's why I'm always encouraging them to find other games to be playing when they can't do anything but complain about this one. It's not to get rid of them. It's to help them get a more positive gaming experience, and perhaps even return here with new ideas that would fit into a theme park MMORPG.

There comes a point when someone who is unhappy with the state of the game has to acknowledge that FFXIV may not be the right game for them, and that maybe the MMORPG genre in general is not the right genre for what they want. Our preferences do change over time. As an example, I used to also play a ton of Command & Conquer and Starcraft. I don't anymore. RTS is no longer a genre that interests me and the point has been driven home the few times I've tried to dust Starcraft off.

As for me playing D4, I already said I might use some of my dusty Battle.net Balance after it's been released. Even if it's not real money to me, I don't want spend it unless I'm fairly certain it's a game I have a good chance of enjoying. The original Diablo was a blast but I couldn't get into D2 and D3 was okay but then I got it for free during that one WoW promotion. I probably would have been even less impressed if I had to pay for it. I'm not one to jump on hype trains for games not yet or newly released so I'll wait for my friends that do before I commit. Maybe I've lost my interest in ARPGs just as I have RTS.

In the meantime, enjoy your adventures in Sanctuary. I wish you fortune and success. I'll be here playing the game that I still enjoy.

[R041]

...

You kinda started babbling off near the end.. Put your feelings aside for a minute. I'm not debating whether D4 is more enjoyable, because that's subjective. You kinda went on some weird rant about my personal likes and dislikes. You don't even know why I still play XIV. lol

It's an interesting conversation of what makes an MMO. And to be honest, a hunt train doesn't cut it when 95% of the rest of the game is single player. This discussion is around how D4 feels like more of an MMO consistently.

You're also exaggerating. Where's this 500 coming from? We're lucky to ever have 500 on the whole server.

Is the goalpost that each zone must have over 100 players to be considered an MMO? What size of zone? Do they all need to be standing 1 square away from each other? Is it just the game even having the capability of 100 players being able to stand next to each other? Because D4 can definitely do that. Any online game can, you lower the tick rate and disable complex computing actions. Like most games with large lobbies do.

You can't answer that, because it's not that simple. Most MMOs don't have 100 players sitting in 1 spot. And if you knew the infra, players are in their own pockets until they meet someone or something. The world isn't just engaged 24/7, your packets don't interact with Bob 10 miles down the road. It's only when it's on your screen.

So with your criteria, with all of these systems - The only thing that would make D4 an MMO, is if it had 1 single zone that held 100 players. But the rest of the game were Single Player. You see how much of a joke that criteria is?

Because that's XIV. lol

Also if you want to gate it at 100+ capable in 1 zone, no matter the zone, as long as 100 players can sit around together. Then most MMOs don't fit that criteria.

[Thurmnmurmn]

You're also exaggerating. Where's this 500 coming from? We're lucky to ever have 500 on the whole server.

So I can confirm that the jojoya is not exaggerating at all. At the beginning of the expansion the soft cap per zone was around 700. Heck even as lately as 6.3, I also conduct and we had a near 500 person train on Lamia.

No comment on everything else but I did want to comment this

[R041]

So I can confirm that the jojoya is not exaggerating at all. At the beginning of the expansion the soft cap per zone was around 700. Heck even as lately as 6.3, I also conduct and we had a near 500 person train on Lamia.

No comment on everything else but I did want to comment this

tyty - They were capping zones at 100-200, I think that was for Stormblood. So maybe this is something new. Does that mean Endwalker is more of an MMO now? lol

[Palitutu]

Is FF7 a RPG? Yes, it is. Is Skyrim a RPG? Why, yes. Is Undertale a RPG? Of course. Do those games share a lot in common? Heh.

So I am really surprised so many people here come up with those very rigid definition of what a "MMO" should be or feel like. You are trying to put MMORPG in a box, a tiny box, and anything that deviates from your definition of the term is automatically "less of a MMO" in comparison. The problem here is that that definition of a MMO is not something you can put in a tiny box. There are so many MMOs, who all do and try different things, who play differently. You cannot just say one game is more of a MMO than another game when they're in the same genre. It's like saying you think Skyrim is more of a RPG than Undertale- That's only your personal bias and opinion showing there.

FF14 differentiates itself by trying to be a MMO that can be played solo, with a focus on the story and as little FOMO as possible. And very clearly? It works. Is the formula getting stale? To be sure, and I think criticisms is very welcome to try and get the devs to shake it up. However, in a competitive market it's important for any MMO to forge its own niche, its own thing that it does better than anyone else. 14 has found its niche and is building.

Please do remember, the devs' philosophy is not to make a game that is better than WoW or GW2. It is to make a game you can play alongside WoW, GW2 or any other game that strikes your fancy. Under such an optic, it makes perfect sense why FF14 is moving more and more away from what makes WoW's success and instead focusing on what caused FF14 to find its own success in the first place. It's not trying to be WoW 2, it's trying to be its own thing. And obviously, there are players who will be unhappy with the direction the game takes. But so long as the subscription numbers keep growing... That means they are very likely doing something very right.