A Lived in World?

[yaba_gabagool]

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

88k active subscribers with a game that should have no reason to be alive today.

Setting the standard all MMOs after you continue to follow, with 20 years of no real innovation beyond it.

Even with all this tech, people are still going back to retro mmos because they had something modern mmos dont.

Good design and creative vision.

Today is just about which content model gets your company paid.

Them's the sad facts.

[CamuiKushi]

I'm more sad there's no reason to revisit areas than them being empty. Whenever I join a hunt train I'm like "damn, I forgot how nice this area was". The intrinsic and extrinsic value in exploration after being done with an expansion just isn't there for me, though.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm more sad there's no reason to revisit areas than them being empty. Whenever I join a hunt train I'm like "damn, I forgot how nice this area was". The intrinsic and extrinsic value in exploration after being done with an expansion just isn't there for me, though.

I mean, the hunt train is a reason to revisit it though.

[Ath192]

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.

You just said it here. This is what needs work, server stability and netcode. I agree on the activities, but population count matters to me at least. I just wish players wouldn't treat the netcode and server stability issues as fact of life and that's why they have to cut corners and split instances. Instead of cutting corners and finding ways around server instability they should be spending that time working on fixing the instability itself so server can hold everyone without splitting them.

If there is one hope is them trying the cloud. But it strikes me more that they are looking into it merely because of expansion release population booms. I pray they are looking to wield it to solve the issues mentioned above.


Also Limsa is not an exception, people used to clump in Mor Dhona, Idylshire, Rhalgers Reach and to a lesser extent Eulmore and Radz. I think in part due to the fact you couldn't summon mounts anymore in end game areas and people liked showing those off.

Of course when the population drops off a cliff only the biggest hubs survive but nonetheless there is plenty of evidence populated areas attract more people to them.

[Shurrikhan]

Also Limsa is not an exception, people used to clump in Mor Dhona, Idylshire, Rhalgers Reach and to a lesser extent Eulmore and Radz.

Yes, when they had unique advantages relative to other places to hang-out. In Limsa, that's the placement of the Market Board. In zones necessary to buy/upgrade tome/raid gear when that gear was relevant, it was because that was the only place at which to buy/upgrade tome/raid gear. About as many would go to a less convenient capital city specifically to avoid the crowds as to see the emote trains or what the latest bot-drawn word of the day was in the Limsa aether plaza.

If there is one hope is them trying the cloud. But it strikes me more that they are looking into it merely because of expansion release population booms. I pray they are looking to wield it to solve the issues mentioned above.

Sadly, I, too, expect that's all there is to it. But hey, would love to be wrong and for that to be just a first step in taking more seriously their player's experiences in regard to latency, etc.

[Jojoya]

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.

I disagree. FFXIV isn't trying to push players into the end game lobby unlike some other MMOs. It gives you the lobby as an option but you're not forced to opt into it.

It's the player who chooses to turn it into a lobby game, probably because they've been conditioned by the other MMOs that are designed around an end game lobby.

The gear treadmill is mostly optional, "mostly" because you're still going to need to meet ilvl requirements on at least one job to continue MSQ. It's up to you whether you're going to step on that gear treadmill for 20 minutes a week to get the bare minimum or 40 hours a week to gear every single job as good as possible.

I spend relatively little time on roulettes and the like, preferring to opt for doing things in the open world because I enjoy that more. I end up with a mix of crafted and tomestone gear, which is more than sufficient for the content I do.

The game won't be forgotten. The Shadowbringers story will cement it in history if nothing else just as Everquest will be there as the first popular MMO even when the game play itself is forgotten because the only people left are those who were raised on mobile gaming.

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

Evidently all 88k of them compared to a gaming community of several hundred million. No game is really that big of a juggernaut when you consider just how many people are into online gaming, and especially not a MMORPG. It's always been a niche appeal compared to some of the other genres.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree. FFXIV isn't trying to push players into the end game lobby unlike some other MMOs. It gives you the lobby as an option but you're not forced to opt into it.

It's the player who chooses to turn it into a lobby game, probably because they've been conditioned by the other MMOs that are designed around an end game lobby.

???

I'm struggling to think of any actual MMO that's more lobby-based than XIV.

Lost Ark, maybe? WoW certainly isn't. GW2 isn't. Blade and Soul isn't. Black Desert Online? Far from it. ESO? Nope. Aion? No.

Until you start getting into games that essentially do not have an open world and don't usually even define themselves as MMORPGs but rather just team action games, the likes of Vermintide or Vindictus... XIV is definitely one of the more, or even most, "lobby"-centric.

[OgruMogru]

I disagree. FFXIV isn't trying to push players into the end game lobby unlike some other MMOs. It gives you the lobby as an option but you're not forced to opt into it.

It's the player who chooses to turn it into a lobby game, probably because they've been conditioned by the other MMOs that are designed around an end game lobby.

The gear treadmill is mostly optional, "mostly" because you're still going to need to meet ilvl requirements on at least one job to continue MSQ. It's up to you whether you're going to step on that gear treadmill for 20 minutes a week to get the bare minimum or 40 hours a week to gear every single job as good as possible.

I spend relatively little time on roulettes and the like, preferring to opt for doing things in the open world because I enjoy that more. I end up with a mix of crafted and tomestone gear, which is more than sufficient for the content I do.

The game won't be forgotten. The Shadowbringers story will cement it in history if nothing else just as Everquest will be there as the first popular MMO even when the game play itself is forgotten because the only people left are those who were raised on mobile gaming.



Evidently all 88k of them compared to a gaming community of several hundred million. No game is really that big of a juggernaut when you consider just how many people are into online gaming, and especially not a MMORPG. It's always been a niche appeal compared to some of the other genres.

I can quit every game I play before the final boss but that doesn't mean the game isn't funneling/directing me towards them. Same applies to 14 the game very clearly pushes you in that direction, it just doesn't punish you for stopping before the finish line. There's nothing BUT lobbys but you'll never see it if you just hang out in the hallway x)

[Jojoya]

I can quit every game I play before the final boss but that doesn't mean the game isn't funneling/directing me towards them. Same applies to 14 the game very clearly pushes you in that direction, it just doesn't punish you for stopping before the finish line. There's nothing BUT lobbys but you'll never see it if you just hang out in the hallway x)

Lobbies are all you will see when you choose to only sit in one.

I know the lobbies are there but I rarely choose to enter them. That's why it's not a lobby game to me. I'll usually dash in when a new raid is released to see the story but I spend the bulk of my time doing content not gated by a lobby. Other than the trials and CT, there's no need to enter a lobby to complete the MSQ now that we have Duty Support. The only time anyone has to enter a lobby outside of that is if they want the reward that is exclusive to the lobby content.

The game has no finish line. The game only has a construction barrier with a sign that reads "New expansion coming in the future" and occasionally we get glimpses of the construction before it's completed and we get to enter.

[Avoidy]

88k active subscribers with a game that should have no reason to be alive today.

Setting the standard all MMOs after you continue to follow, with 20 years of no real innovation beyond it.

Even with all this tech, people are still going back to retro mmos because they had something modern mmos dont.

Good design and creative vision.

Today is just about which content model gets your company paid.

Them's the sad facts.

In an era where cash shop mounts bring in more revenue than an actual game, I feel like companies are being rewarded for the worst garbage and learning all the "wrong" lessons. I put wrong in quotations because from a business perspective whatever earns revenue for the least amount of work is great for them, but it's terrible for the players. I'll be surprised if we get an MMO going forward that's anything but a paint by numbers dumpster fire or a mobile game autoplay style thing ported to PC last-minute to get money from mmo-addicted oldies afraid of smartphones (like me, haha).

So yeah I agree with you, it's not looking good going forward. Really not looking good at all. We kinda see it in XIV too, where there are more frequent updates to the cash shop than there are to the actual game. Every month like clockwork there's a new cash shop rollout but for actual gameplay content we have to wait 4 to 4 and a half months. Diehard fans will always see this and be like "it's one team doing cash shop stuff and one team doing the gameplay stuff" but that's beside the point. Why is the team making the cash shop stuff able to churn out something every month while the gameplay dudes can't even toss us a moogle tome event? Hell, we can't even get uncapped tomes lmao. This game gets straight up neglected for like a third of the year until it's time, once a month, to roll out a new mount -- and the only excuse I hear is that the people selling us a mount are part of a different dev team. It's gross watching people defend this sort of thing. It's like these people don't know that you can like the game and admit that they could do a better job of tiding us over between patches, it's okay.