Why casual players don't 'just leave'

[Kohashi]

Aksually.. Genshin is not an MMO

other that that, the reason why MMOs are "dying is because"

1. Trends change
2. MMOs are not profitable enough to make them compared with other genres (takes over 10 years of development). They prefer to milk the cows/whales while doing gacha games that they can push at a much fast pace or re-skin/ re-use a lot of the existing assets.
3. It's much easier to "train" a young person to become a regular spender than somebody who grew up with old-style MMOs that only had skins as a form of monetization.

Every single MMO that attempted to implement pay-to-win, gacha, or heavy monetization into its model simply died out really fast.

[AnnRam]

You're right, we're being cruelly denied a process that was slow and tedious.

Old MMORPGs weren't made for "busy-casual people". All they want now its quick and accesible dopamine.

[hydralus]

Aksually.. Genshin is not an MMO

other that that, the reason why MMOs are "dying is because"

1. Trends change
2. MMOs are not profitable enough to make them compared with other genres (takes over 10 years of development). They prefer to milk the cows/whales while doing gacha games that they can push at a much fast pace or re-skin/ re-use a lot of the existing assets.
3. It's much easier to "train" a young person to become a regular spender than somebody who grew up with old-style MMOs that only had skins as a form of monetization.

Every single MMO that attempted to implement pay-to-win, gacha, or heavy monetization into its model simply died out really fast.

Which is funny because SE has failed in most of their attempts to monetize mobile games.

Also D&DOnline introduced pay to win when it moved to a free to play model and it's kept it going for over a decade.

[Colt47]

Old MMORPGs weren't made for "busy-casual people". All they want now its quick and accesible dopamine.

As much as the industry has tried to go this direction with quick rewards and then a meat grinder end game, it's starting to fall apart as a good strategy because there's only so many times it can be done. The games that are gaining in popularity have more exploration and ironically, have more in common with the 1.0 version of FFXIV. Also, as someone who has played and watched the evolution of FFXIV I feel the choice in direction was far too conservative and trying to play it safe. For example, the overworld zones are well designed in the MSQ, but they lack exploration and passion that zones in classic WoW had. Also, my own feeling is that developers forget that content does get stale after a while and that doesn't mean the content is bad. Yeah people got tired of fates but fates were good content. People grow tired of old raids and old dungeons as well and that doesn't mean they are bad content. If anything, the main futility that I see happening with MMOs is constantly having to depend more on non-gameplay elements to keep people playing a game that they otherwise would have put down and been done with for a while.

Examples of this content in FFXIV:

MSQ
Savage Raiding
Ultimate fights evolving to have added special stories that can only be accessed by raid
Limited time rewards for PvP
Limited time rewards for special hardmode fights (Unreal, WoD Chaotic)
Community driven obligatory play (Have to attend specific nights like a game night out over long periods to do savage)
Weekly lockouts
Weekly tome limits
Weekly drop allotment (Alliance Raids)

... I'd list holiday events but it seems like they threw the towel in on those and now we just get quests that get done in under an hour.

So basically people are kind of coerced into playing the game constantly even in FFXIV, which WAS one of the better MMOs about it until Endwalker becoming the Ultimate / Savage super focus mega palooza that has now continued to be pushed in that direction, and they are slow as molasses to actually dig their way out of it. Going hard into the raiding is one of the biggest mistakes FFXIV ever made and will likely turn the game into the same cesspool that WoW turned into, mostly because even with a catch up allowance via patch cycle.

Main problem with the raid focus is that it makes higher item level a much stronger incentive than any other type of reward. The time and energy needed to get the higher level of gear is intense and requires organized play to achieve, leaving less time to do other things in the game besides raiding. And since those raiders have to play longer to achieve their goal, it creates a false impression that the player base likes raiding over everything else and strangles out the other kinds of possible content like exploration, crafting, gathering, mini-games, etc. So it sort of is like a creeper vine that grows on a tree and strangles it to death.

[Tyintheron]

Old MMORPGs weren't made for "busy-casual people". All they want now its quick and accesible dopamine.

I think it's more accurate to say that people got tired of mechanics that were designed specifically to waste their time in what is nominally supposed to be an entertainment product.

How far back should we rewind things in terms of the genre's accessibility? When you die you lose XP and can de-level, like in "the old days"? Can you imagine what that would do to a raid team?

On-line games need to evolve. One of the primary reasons WoW became "the popular MMO" of the time was because it was less player-hostile than the MMOs it was competing against. And now it's having a resurgence in popularity is because there's been a strong push to sand away all the more time-wasting, player-hostile elements people have complained about for years.

But they still have Mythic raids.

There's no reason they can't provide challenges and rewards for people who want a tougher time-heavy challenge, and challenges and rewards for people who can't or don't want to commit to that amount of their time being required. It doesn't need to be either/or.

[Kohashi]

Which is funny because SE has failed in most of their attempts to monetize mobile games.

Also D&DOnline introduced pay to win when it moved to a free to play model and it's kept it going for over a decade.

Who?

well, there are MMOs that are following a pay-to-win model that are still around but not very successful or with a healthy player base. Some of them actually have a lot of potential if they re-design some of the cash grabs.

SE's failure to monetize well: I didn't play any of their mobile games, so I cannot really say much about it. Gacha will fade out soon especially since some countries already started putting restrictions and laws to regulate some of the predatory tactics they use with 0 shame.

[hydralus]

Who?

well, there are MMOs that are following a pay-to-win model that are still around but not very successful or with a healthy player base. Some of them actually have a lot of potential if they re-design some of the cash grabs.

D&DOnline is an old MMORPG which was one of my favorites for many years. Sadly, it had to redesign because it was dying from the subscription model due to a lack of interest and going pay to win has been keeping it alive, much like what happened with Champions Online which is also a game that was subscription-based but incorporated free to play/pay to win elements so they could keep going. Are they massively successful? Obviously not, but they've yet to die out.

[Hycinthus]

I play multiple games and MMOs now so I rotate between FFXIV and others. That's why I'm still subscribed.

[sindriiisgaming]

snip

I don't feel like the genre is dead whatsoever, just it lacks any real innovation. For a time in shb 14s popularity jumped to uncontrollable levels due to mass exodus from wow. The game was filled with new players looking for a more laid back experience. Infact it was in this maelstrom of new players I met my irl partner of 3 years now. But the game is now suffering for several reasons

- the wow players would inevitably return home to wow.
This is just how ppl are they will always go to comfort.
- The content and or game was just not challenging enough.
Not for a wow player for sure. And as a desperate ploy to keep wow players hooked, yoship has catered solely to them the last 3 years. Which has led to an ever widening gap between casual and hardcore players.
- The content cycle is as dry as the sagoli desert.
The lack of new or high quality content has led to widespread dissatisfaction among the players, causing infighting and anti-criticism gatekeeping, there are just too many confirmed cases of this resulting in players walking away from a rapidly shifting toxic hardcore and toxic casual community. Non toxic spaces in ff are now harder to find than reasonable food bills.

As a result of all these things and more, ff is crumbling to its compettor wow, And with yoship radio silence on many large scale problems such as cheating in fru or player dissatisfaction leading to a massive upturn in modding and even xenosys vex making mod recommendations in his tier lists. Dwindiling msq quality and low quality content. The community will continue to trickle away until those QOL are addressed.

[Sigma5]

Because the casuals are having fun, and the vets are just perpetually seething over them, and keeping their subs for virtual houses. The rewards system is super easy to solve too, just make a moogle type event global and 24/7 like daily's and with more grinding options and that's it, literally.