Are MMOs DYING!?...or are we just expecting too much?

[Ath192]

Ngl, that thing in the youtube video looks horrible in every sense of the word. It's all smokes and dazzlings. And quite frankly, you can disagree all you want, the experience of someone who actually has business expertise is worth so much more than some guy who claims to have done things in a youtube video, and a couple of mediocre half-assed assets.

I love the copium, you wouldn't believe the absolute garbage it was producing some years back and now it's like this. And this is from someone who did that in a couple of hours alone. It will exponentially get better. But again, a lot of people can't really see the potential behind things, they just look at something and bury their head in the sand, like you.

This is light years ahead of what it was even 2-3 years ago. And in a few years time it will be light years ahead of what it is now. And yes, all studios are either already embracing it or will look into it.

[Musashidon]

the mmo genre players have shifted quite a bit and i think most mmo's haven't properly shifted with it.

this shift is what players on this forum calles second life (aka the second life reference)

tl:dr players play for more social aspect and while they can include reason like battle content/pvp they mainly play to be with friends which would be like housing, glamours and silly fun non combative side content, and content that is based on the players and not combat is more flexible and can give much more then some fights with a few rewards that is done once gotten.

people play less for battle content now then they use to before this is not to say battle content isnt a big reason to play a game but look at the biggest discussion point of this whole thread (besides ai) thats lack of content and the way old mmo's kept old and new content alive was making it long and tedious you had to do the old content which was a long grind then get to the new content which was a long grind and it was popular for the time, but this isn't what players like anymore what they like is the shiny new content and the rewards and to skedaddle on out, heck when we look at player numbers most people dont even touch side content and only play the base expansion and leave. this is a big reason we considers players and playerbase different cause the playerbase is the normal amount of stays more permenantly vs those who only play temporarily.

while there still are plenty of players who would like a long grind for a reward the shift has changed against that, as you can even see it in debates of adding something to a the cash shop vs in game cause players dont all even want to do content for certain rewards.

a lot of the truly popular games you see are games that are heavily modded and players basically entertain themselves no matter how much content they are given.

[ovIm]

I love the copium, you wouldn't believe the absolute garbage it was producing some years back and now it's like this. And this from someone who did that in a couple of hours. It will exponentially get better. But again, a lot of people can't really see the potential behind things, they just look at something and bury their head in the sand, like you.

This is light years ahead of what it was even 2-3 years ago. And in a few years time it will be light years ahead of what it is now. And yes, all studios are either already embracing it or will look into it.

Love how the coping shill for AI is using the word copium here. Let me guess, you have invested in that stuff and are now afraid to lose money?
That article you posted may claim that there was AI at work, but not to what extend. Nice try though, keep flailing, its amusing.

[Ath192]

Love how the coping shill for AI is using the word copium here. Let me guess, you have invested in that stuff and are now afraid to lose money?
That article you posted may claim that there was AI at work, but not to what extend. Nice try though, keep flailing, its amusing.

lmao so now the denial is that you don't know the extent? it doesn't matter what extent, its the fact that its there and it will only get used more and become better overtime. AI is already here. Cry me a river. There's no trying from my part, just pointing out facts and watching people lose their minds over it.

[Red-thunder]

lmao so now the denial is that you don't know the extent? it doesn't matter what extent, its the fact that its there and it will only get used more and become better overtime. AI is already here. Cry me a river. There's no trying from my part, just pointing out facts and watching people lose their minds over it.

Sure, but all it's going to do is make more assets. AI is never going to let those artists create innovative gameplay or great combat encounters. It's going to help an indie dev who is good at programming to make a decent-looking game. But IDK why you're looking at the AAA industry when their problem was never the amount of assets they have but their boring gameplay.

[Ath192]

Sure, but all it's going to do is make more assets. AI is never going to let those artists create innovative gameplay or great combat encounters. It's going to help an indie dev who is good at programming to make a decent-looking game. But IDK why you're looking at the AAA industry when their problem was never the amount of assets they have but their boring gameplay.

SE in particular is asset constrained, otherwise they wouldn’t be re-using them every expansion. So I wouldn’t say that’s it’s not a problem. And yeah I agree the gameplay can be boring in XIV, but it would be more tolerable if there was more of it, which requires…. More assets.

It won’t do anything for job design or combat mechanics, but it can help for more exploration zones and things to see and do.

Call me crazy but if dawntrail had 6 exploration zones full of new assets to collect and see we wouldn’t be seeing anywhere near the amount of complaints in this game as we are now. Even if they kept the same combat mechanics. (That being said combat absolutely needs more creativity)

So I do think it's half of the problem.

[genuine_stranger]

Sure, but all it's going to do is make more assets. AI is never going to let those artists create innovative gameplay or great combat encounters.

Yesn't.

A general-purpose AI won't be able to do that.

A specialized tool, on the other hand? It certainly could.

Of course, it would need a massive dataset.
Let’s be honest,there are only so many truly new gameplay innovations before we start remixing existing ideas.
We already do that today, lol.

The challenge would be making the AI work within and understand the limitations of your vision. Implementing that would be a literal nightmare. You’d have to define every minute detail, from player inputs to animations, enemy behavior, enemy types, and whatever else you can think of.

Once those parameters are set however? You’d be able to work within them and create encounters nobody has thought of before.

The only thing AI reasonably can’t and shouldn't handle is creative vision.
Unless you want generic slop, then you go for it.

[Auro_Seldaris]

FF14 will never have the best gameplay CBU3 can pump out. It will never have the best story that its writers can write. It will never have the best, innovative content that its designers can make. Because its core playerbase will never quit no matter how bad this game gets. What is sad is that this also means the entire MMO genre will never allow for an innovative game to succeed because the playerbase want comfort over novel experiences, over quality gameplay, and over thought-provoking stories.

Not that I disagree with you, because I largely agree on most of your points, but I want to make something clear. Part of the issue is, yes, many of the players are simply content to have this be a virtual hangout for them and their friends, and don't really care about the larger story, or gameplay, or anything, so they have very low standards and expectations. Thereby making it extremely easy for SE/CSIII to simply "phone it in" and deliver minimum viable product. However, there's another aspect to this that I don't think anyone in the community has touched on.

Ask yourself.... are you assuming that Square Enix/CSIII/Yoshida want FFXIV to be the best MMO on the market? Because that might not actually be the case. They might simply be content to be second-fiddle to WoW forever.

Quazii and Arthars have a new podcast/stream called Save Point. (Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp6ngxLlagA) In the very first episode, at around the 24:30 time stamp, they start to discuss whether or not FFXIV can have another "comeback". Arthars articulates a viewpoint that I had never really considered, but now seems rather obvious:

I think for Yoshi, he thinks that 14... I think he also kind of implied this before, he never want(ed) 14 to be the Best MMO. That is not his point.

Part of Arthar's point is that WoW has already monopolized the genre now - "sucked all the oxygen out of the room", so to speak. However it also speaks to a certain... lack of energy or creativity, or motivation among the dev team. If you can't dethrone the king, why even try? If you're not trying to BE the best, why would you even try to do any of those things you discuss?

The real problem might also be less the fact that WoW is the King of the MMOs, bot more that there's no serious contender in third place desperately trying to take another huge chunk out of FFXIV. Maybe if they had a 3rd place MMO trying to bite them in the ass, they might have to actually up their game. But believing they might desperately try to overthrow WoW is probably silly, because Yoshida and co. are perfectly content with being second-place for eternity.

[CNitsah]

I don't think it's dying in term of public. It's a niche, with a limited public, but a very dedicated public. I think the public is still there but it has reached its ceiling a long time ago.

But it's a type a game that ask for a lot of investment, and less bankable than some other online games, and a bet on the long term. Contrary to other type games, where the release is very often the peak the game, with mmo, the peak can arrive a few years after release. Most company don't have that patience.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I think some of Josh's points apply to all games lately. The "release good enough for now and fix with patches and paid DLC later" is pretty common of many games these days.

For the parasocial stuff, I see some of this behavior in single-player RPGs - with some going insane over voice actors and fictional characters they can romance in them. There was a lot of this in BG3 with certain types of players.

MMOs though are exceptionally time consuming and our patronage is typically a lot longer than any single-player game. Being invested in an MMO does drown out your time for other games, and for many people the thought of playing more than one or two MMOs max is pretty overwhelming.

I do believe the MMO general population is also aging as younger players are into different types of online experiences and they don't have the patience for slower-paced games. I see a lot more older players around than younger ones in some games - especially ESO where instead of 80% of players being in their teens and 20s it seems more are full adults 30+.