A Lived in World?

[Absurdity]

By design.

They've traded a more lively and active 'world' for higher convenience.

Pretty much this. You could see a more gradual progression of it in WoW from 2004 to 2011, the more quality of life (which is basically just convenience) features they implemented the emptier the world became.

But it's also how activities are set up, outside of hunt trains, fate groups and treasure maps every group activity is instanced and you can easily queue up for it from anywhere in the world which usually ends up being from the comfort and convenience of a major city/player hub.

[Shougun]

Not sure I buy the whole QoL thing since GW2 is the counter example and is also quite high on QoL. Particularly if you include the teleports you can get from the cash shop. Id normally say it's unfair to include them BUT GW2 is a one time purchase unlike the sub to play FFXIV.

Which we already have those teleports in a way, and goes back around to my point that I don't buy that you can either have QoL or an interesting living world BECAUSE GW2 did both

[Boblawblah]

GW2's entire shtick is the open world. The vast majority of players spend most of their time in the open world, and the game is designed to facilitate that. Have you ever seen the dungeons GW2 has? They're dead. Like, completely dead. Getting into instanced group content in GW2 is so inconvenient, you'd almost think they did it on purpose. So people spend their time in the OW, and the game rewards them for that. And by reward, I mean it gives them a bunch of trash that people sell to make gold, to do what they actually want to do.

So you have an open world that is always populated, but let's not pretend it doesn't come at the cost of other things.

[Absurdity]

Not sure I buy the whole QoL thing since GW2 is the counter example and is also quite high on QoL. Particularly if you include the teleports you can get from the cash shop. Id normally say it's unfair to include them BUT GW2 is a one time purchase unlike the sub to play FFXIV.

Which we already have those teleports in a way, and goes back around to my point that I don't buy that you can either have QoL or an interesting living world BECAUSE GW2 did both

Yes and no. GW2 has quality of life, in certain areas more than XIV does, but in other areas, mostly those affecting the content and gameplay, it basically tells you to suck it up.
Want a piece of ascended gear with some of the more rare affixes like Minstrel's (Toughness+Healing Power+Vitality+Concentration)? You better go out and do whatever obscure objective the game wants you to do.

It tells you to go out, explore the maps, and then rewards you for it.

But it doesn't just let you do everything while standing in Divinity's Reach all day.

XIV's quality of life features on the other hand often invalidate it's own content. Moogle tomes being the best example, they allow you to buy primal mounts, orchestrion rolls from treasure maps, minions, even gear, without ever touching the content these originally came from. Why would I bother farming ShB extremes when I'll just be able to buy the mounts next year by spamming Praetorium a few times?

[Shougun]

Yes and no. GW2 has quality of life, in certain areas more than XIV does, but in other areas, mostly those affecting the content and gameplay, it basically tells you to suck it up.
Want a piece of ascended gear with some of the more rare affixes like Minstrel's (Toughness+Healing Power+Vitality+Concentration)? You better go out and do whatever obscure objective the game wants you to do.

It tells you to go out, explore the maps, and then rewards you for it.

But it doesn't just let you do everything while standing in Divinity's Reach all day.

I'll take that

Perhaps I was being too literal, but I was afraid people who didn't have experience with GW2 would think that you can't have QoL simply because your world is better. A great living world and QoL were not diametrically opposed, though I would take the nuance interpretation which is it may have small elements here and there.

But like if I want to do the dragon event, it's not painful to go do.. I just go do it.

GW2 is obviously more open world focused than we will probably ever be, but I still feel we have a lot to learn and could utilize without having to destroy the things that we already do well.

[Eraden]

I'll take that

Perhaps I was being too literal, but I was afraid people who didn't have experience with GW2 would think that you can't have QoL simply because your world is better. A great living world and QoL were not diametrically opposed, though I would take the nuance interpretation which is it may have small elements here and there.

But like if I want to do the dragon event, it's not painful to go do.. I just go do it.

GW2 is obviously more open world focused than we will probably ever be, but I still feel we have a lot to learn and could utilize without having to destroy the things that we already do well.

Mao likes GW2. Open World is great there and has some of the best questlines Mao ever seen. Mao ranks Skyscale questline as best ever! Mao thinkings FFXIV nots need to be exactly likes GW2 but FFXIV can maybe learn something from GW2.

[Ath192]

No matter how many players there are in the zone, if you don't see them, they're not going to make the zone feel livelier. A mere 40 players are still often plenty to make an XIV-size zone feel lively simply depending on their distribution.

As you start pushing beyond those points of diminishing returns, latency and lost access to competing desired FATEs, etc., turns more players off to staying in that zone than it increases their desire to be in it, at least until you start giving players a hell of a lot more reason to hang out in those zones and/or do something new about said latency.

I disagree, especially because we see the opposite happen already. Limsa is always packed with people and that seems to attract more despite the lag. When a Zone is dead noone wants to visit it.

Fates already increase their HP in response to speed farming so they have their mechanism to mitigate the issue you described. At the end of the day I think rather than working on removing people they should work on finding a way to optimize having all those people in an area.

Just preference really, but this is a thread about making the world more lively and I do think my suggestion would improve that aspect and splitting instances would work against it. No matter what they are putting works towards it so I'd rather it go to keeping us together.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree, especially because we see the opposite happen already. Limsa is always packed with people and that seems to attract more despite the lag.

I feel that one's more an outlier, with the reason mostly being what attracted people there in the first place (not merely that it got people by chance and then the people were the primary attractor for more).

Fates already increase their HP in response to speed farming so they have their mechanism to mitigate the issue you described.

It does not at all mitigate the issue I'm describing. It's not even relevant to it.

FATEs HP scaling is based on the number of people involved at the previous FATE killed. When you have too many people for everyone to participate in the same FATE train (unable to get enough Enmity for kill-credit / turn-ins for item-credit), that procedure is what can so quickly make it jank.

Just preference really, but this is a thread about making the world more lively and I do think my suggestion would improve that aspect and splitting instances would work against it. No matter what they are putting works towards it so I'd rather it go to keeping us together.

I'm against automatic splitting, except where players have opted into it, but given how laggy filled unsplit instances get, I don't mind that instances are an option.

Again, my $0.02 is just that liveliness has at least as much to do with distribution of people and the zone activities among which they may be distributed than merely the population count. Trying to salvage a lack of worthwhile activities beyond FATE-currency/rep farms (however far one may extend their extrinsic rewards) with just more population wouldn't do much, all while being pretty badly affected by this game's netcode/server-stability issues.

[yaba_gabagool]

FF14 is a lobby mmo. they used to care about the world, but now it's just a means to get you into the end game lobby, and put you on the gear treadmill of non-choice, and run you through content.

The reason it's like this? It was easier for them to produce around that model and expect consistent sales. It's not about being innovative, it's not about caring too much about mmos and the genre in general.

They've found a safe model for income and they're going to stick with it. It's on lock and it's never going to change for the remainder of this MMO's lifetime.

FF14's most memorable trait isn't that it revolutionized mmos, or that it was even a great mmo (it's somewhat okay by most metrics - though the boss fights are quite good by industry standards). The most memorable fact about FF14 by far is that Yoshi P resurrected the game from the dumpster bin and took an unworkable game and made it profitable.

That's it.

FF14 will be forgotten to the annuals of time, nothing more than a well tuned profit model square rode off into the sunset with.

Meanwhile Everquest still brings a tear to any seasoned MMO player who wasn't raised on mobile gaming.

[Boblawblah]

Meanwhile Everquest still brings a tear to any seasoned MMO player who wasn't raised on mobile gaming.

And all those seasoned MMO players are currently playing Everquest I'm sure.