Future proofing and community funneling

[Jeeqbit]

Most content is future proofed.

But the future proofing is in the sense of very few people will be doing it. Because content is FOMO. That's how gamers play games, and SE can't change it.

Now, let's say they made every single piece of content require you to return and do it once per week. We'd have a colossal list of weeklies to do by now, and it wouldn't be fun to still be doing the same content 10 years later.

You just have to accept that either you're here for the FOMO and the associated memories it creates doing it with other players, or you're just subscribing and playing catchup and having whatever limited experience you can scrape up from it. Usually content is still enjoyable solo due to all the cutscenes anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

Most content is future proofed.

But the future proofing is in the sense of very few people will be doing it. Because content is FOMO. That's how gamers play games, and SE can't change it.

This is like saying that every limited time event is always accessible because anyone who wants it will get it in the brief time its accessible. Calling such "future-proofing" is not in keeping with how sensible language works outside of mental gymnastic Olympics.

And no, that's not particularly, let alone universally, how gamers play games, either. Putting aside the obvious fact that I can pick up any old SP game and go through it at my own pace, there's still lively activity through older content in many other MMOs via different incentive structures.

Now, let's say they made every single piece of content require you to return and do it once per week. We'd have a colossal list of weeklies to do by now, and it wouldn't be fun to still be doing the same content 10 years later.

This is comedically fallacious. Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

You just have to accept that either you're here for the FOMO and the associated memories it creates doing it with other players, or you're just subscribing and playing catchup and having whatever limited experience you can scrape up from it..

No, that's not "required"; it's simply the bare and wasteful minimum of an ever-expanding experience that doesn't care about retaining accessibility or enjoyability for new players nor about making better long-term use of the development time put into each iteration of the game.
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EDIT:
Moreover, in no way would making a piece of content more playable, such as by making it variably scaled to a lower minimum player count, remove any of the enjoyment to be had 'specifically from' playing the content at its peak. You can lower the barrier of entry to be more appropriate for the player counts likely to tackle it at that time without losing any of the entertainment potential the content itself had. And you can introduce reward structures and funnels by which to increase the player count available to a given piece of content without sacrificing the enjoyability of that content; that is precisely what the likes of Wonderous Tails and roulettes already seek to do, for good reason. And more within the same vein would not be a waste for the game.

It's that bare minimum you here treat as an inevitability that would be wasteful; we've already moved past it intentionally and would benefit from similar featural and system-based improvements alongside whatever other tweaks may increase content accessibility and enjoyability even for later times and lesser population counts.

[Jeeqbit]

This is like saying that every limited time event is always accessible

No it's not, because it's still available. It's just that it will be a quieter experience because the community has stopped doing it. Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO. SE knows this, and designs the patches accordingly.

Putting aside the obvious fact that I can pick up any old SP game and go through it at my own pace

You can, but it's FOMO in the sense that while you're playing it at your own pace, everyone else probably isn't playing it. Similarly this is the case in FFXIV. If you do Ishgard Restoration 6 years later, probably most others aren't doing it and the "fun" crowd that was there no longer is.

there's still lively activity through older content in many other MMOs via different incentive structures.

There is, but it's specific content, such as a starting open world area. You are talking about making 12 years worth of content and zones still getting bustling with hundreds of players no matter which content you pickup. This just isn't how people play computer games. Games (or game DLC) get old, and people move onto the next, regardless of how good they are, leaving it as a "ghost town".

Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

My point is that you need to give people a reason to go back to any of this 12+ year old content. Otherwise, why would they, when they did it already? You also can't necessarily make a roulette for a Field Operation or Cosmic Exploration. They're just not gonna be crowded eventually. As for needing others, it depends on the content type, since some are actually designed at their core for multiple players, but most things in this game end up being soloable, including Savage, dungeons, DD, variants and relics.

it's simply the bare and wasteful minimum of an ever-expanding experience that doesn't care about retaining accessibility or enjoyability for new players

Again most things can be done by players in the future still. I was just saying that it's mostly going to be a quiet experience (ie. 1-8 players) because players did the day1 rush thing that they do with all games.

There are mechanics you can build into the content to make up for the lack of PC's taking part in the content

Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic. Unless you'd be happy with 144 NPCs pretending to be players.

there are incentives that can be added in to make people go back, etc...

Like weeklies the way mogpendium is doing it? But again, it will still feel like a "ghost town" when you go back for whatever made you go back. Because the FOMO has gone.

[frostmagemari]

No it's not, because it's still available. It's just that it will be a quieter experience because the community has stopped doing it. Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO. SE knows this, and designs the patches accordingly.

I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player. I love this game as much as any other player, i've played since 1.0, played the beta and have played since. That doesn't mean that SQEX is doing the right moves across the board. All of their competitors are actually starting to improve themselves, they have to too.

Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic. Unless you'd be happy with 144 NPCs pretending to be players.

You're right, it won't; but by actually having plans for the future of your content, you can alleviate issues.
A few examples...
Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)
Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.
Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance
Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people
Give REGULAR incentives to go back and do content on a regular basis instead of it being a possible weekly part of the mogpendium
- And not make it 15 poetics. If WoW can make the trading post work, so can SQEX. Make something like that, but you gain it by doing content that is from past patches/expansions. Swap out the rewards every month so people can get something new. Maybe have one less store outfit and put it on the post. (And don't slap them on the store after you cycle them, put them back in a month or two later)
And maybe most simple.. stop making so many instances that fracture the people who are trying to play with the content. There were SIX people on the moon last night, and two instances were created, shunting three into each.

And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

[Jeeqbit]

I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player.

I'm not saying they can do nothing wrong. I am just explaining why SE is doing it. I'm not saying if they're right or wrong to do it. But it seems like a logical thing for game developers to chase - trend chasing, and optimizing everything.

Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.

That would have been desirable for Cosmic Exploration. But for the most part, things like FATEs and NMs are affected by how many people fought it the last time and CEs scale directly based on participants, to the point I can solo most of them.

In terms of future proofing they tend to add The Echo to almost everything as well as making nerfs over time. This is the case for relics and field operations, trials, extremes, savage and gear improvements help dungeons get solo'd if they can't be solo'd like variant/DD can. They add the Unrestricted setting to duty finder for that reason. Not to mention that they're even progressively rolling out Duty Support to dungeons now as well.

Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance

Really this is kinda the same thing as just rescaling CEs and FATEs which already happens, and precedent shows they add the Echo to the content when it gets old and give you loads of ways to increase your power. Personally, I've never had trouble getting through field operations solo, even going back to Eureka, and it's been heavily improved since then too.

They are going to see if they can improve FATE scaling, I believe, but for now if you're fighting one solo you can pull it then reset to help reset the scaling on it. It's been working for me so far in OC.

Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people

In terms of "normal mode" content, that's already the case. It was theoretically possible to solo Delubrum Reginae as soon as they dropped the 24 player requirement. I heard Dalriada got duo'd shortly after release. CLL's main hurdles were significantly nerfed once it's popularity reduced, such as the prisoners becoming more optional.

The difference is really when you're talking about high-difficulty content, which currently seems to include BA, DRS and FT. They obviously don't want to make it too easy since that defeats the point. But technically the boss HP scales based on the number of people participating.

In any case, they said they are re-evaluating scaling difficulty and time investment and that the change to Deep Dungeons is an actual mindset shift about content generally, although they still believe there should be a bit of content that is firmly "hardcore" or firmly "casual". They just want to make the majority of it more scalable so it can be enjoyed by the whole playerbase like Deep Dungeons rather than there being a split.

And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

I'm not personally against NPCs for all content. But a lot of players don't see them as valid or would still view it as a ghost town with them there.

[PaulusHamsteru]

I see... A "SQEX can do no wrong" player. I love this game as much as any other player, i've played since 1.0, played the beta and have played since. That doesn't mean that SQEX is doing the right moves across the board. All of their competitors are actually starting to improve themselves, they have to too.


You're right, it won't; but by actually having plans for the future of your content, you can alleviate issues.
A few examples...
Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)
Allow contributions you make to events in these areas to impact the completion based on how many people are participating.
Allow for zone wide buffs that increase your battle power based on how many people are in the instance
Allow for the dungeon content that is accessible in these areas to be completed with lower numbers of people
Give REGULAR incentives to go back and do content on a regular basis instead of it being a possible weekly part of the mogpendium
- And not make it 15 poetics. If WoW can make the trading post work, so can SQEX. Make something like that, but you gain it by doing content that is from past patches/expansions. Swap out the rewards every month so people can get something new. Maybe have one less store outfit and put it on the post. (And don't slap them on the store after you cycle them, put them back in a month or two later)
And maybe most simple.. stop making so many instances that fracture the people who are trying to play with the content. There were SIX people on the moon last night, and two instances were created, shunting three into each.

And you know what, yes. Getting assistance from NPC fill-ins WOULD be preferable. As the content ramps down, allow for zone appropriate NPC companions or at least our g'dyam chocobo to assist us.

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

[Shurrikhan]

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

Tbf, he sees it as offering counterpoints to offset forum feedback he sees as being gravitated (so, more than is just one's own natural opinion / is merely logical) towards negativity. I suspect this is simply one moment of discourse he shouldn't have bothered trying to counter at all, instead jumping straight to probing for more constructive details.

And admittedly, I probably should have done the same; sadly, absolutist straw-manning greatly increases the chance of its responses, too, being at least more polarized or even bordering on fallacy, in turn.

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Food for thought: some 99.9% of my posts are critical of the game and yet I'll still be called an apologist for noting in what ways suggestions are self-satisfiedly addressing symptoms rather than the problems beneath them or even for mathing out how a given suggestion would work to show that it'd be no better than what we have (without in any way saying what we have is good).

[Jeeqbit]

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

[frostmagemari]

I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

"Achieved your goal"?
By that you mean that i haven't changed my stance at all and that i simply expanded on what my position was to try and combat your bad faith interpretations so you don't poison the well?
Then sure, i guess.

[Shurrikhan]

Because that is how gamers play games. They login, do new DLC, then leave. Just watch any friend/user list on Steam, Discord. A new game or its DLC releases, they play it for maybe a week, then they move on. Games are just FOMO.

:: "Why health care? People just die. They get born, hang for a bit, and then poof. Life is just transient. Accept it, stop asking for any extended access, and move on."

More directly:

Gamers shifting from game to new game can be a statistical trend without remotely precluding value from extended lifespan of games. By your logic here, there'd be no value in Steam holding onto games and spending the server costs to hold the data for them or allow their downloads past their on-release prime. There'd be no value in the likes of Good Old Games or certainly zero use of torrents for, say, emulatable copies of old console games (the old FF games among them). There'd be no players of the original CoD: Modern Warfare from the moment the original MW2 came out, let alone the MW remake. There'd be none still playing Starcraft in this day and age. And yet, evidence to the contrary abounds.

People don't solely play games when they are maximally popular. They play games also when something about the (idea of the) game appeals to them enough to acquire and play it. For a great many people, the game's broader popularity is damn near irrelevant. And it's generally worthwhile to tweak content or infrastructure, therefore, to be run even past something's heyday, or, where already runnable, to give it the occasional impetus for a bit more player count.

If you do Ishgard Restoration 6 years later, probably most others aren't doing it and the "fun" crowd that was there no longer is.

That in itself is fine --as long as it's still there and usable despite its later-day player counts instead of, say, facing requirements of 24 crafters soon into the experience-- especially so long as its development time is fruitfully reused later.

You are talking about making 12 years worth of content and zones still getting bustling with hundreds of players no matter which content you pickup.

You're really doubling down on the strawmen...

No. It is impossible to make each and every piece of content "bustle" with "hundreds of players" each in a game as expansive and in decline as XIV. Scaling tweaks to make old content more enjoyable and accessible and incentive structures to make it more worth the rare revisit as new blood reach said content, on the other hand, is very doable.

Making it so content can be run without needing a party of friends and/or a queue of 20+ minutes even when fed by roulettes... does not require making each and every piece of content to ever exist mandatory to complete weekly.

My point is that you need to give people a reason to go back to any of this 12+ year old content. Otherwise, why would they, when they did it already?

...So, exactly what the OP and others were asking for in terms of allowing for the incentives to be more lastingly worthwhile/compatible... which you then treated as purely a waste?

You also can't necessarily make a roulette for a Field Operation or Cosmic Exploration.

Why would player-funneling or -contiguity necessarily have to be via a roulette? That's one example of player-funneling that we already have. The OP is asking for more -- more than just what features or implementations thereof that we already have for tempering the decline in player count and, just as importantly, its more quantized impact on how that content can be played.

Again most things can be done by players in the future still. I was just saying that it's mostly going to be a quiet experience (ie. 1-8 players) because players did the day1 rush thing that they do with all games.

The post specifically refers to areas that presently require 24+ players. A significant portion of gameplay hours available to what would otherwise appeal to players completing things at their own pace, which becomes increasingly important --especially if one wants to feel like they're not always merely in "pre-game" until current content-- as the game gets more and more expanded (the exploratory missions of Eureka, Bozja, OC prominent among them), is currently bottlenecked by those requirements.

It would require first allowing such content to be done with 1-8 players before your response could be pertinent to the thread. Otherwise, the content indeed becomes effectively impossible to complete after a certain point. The less tempered the decline, the sooner its development hours become impossible to leverage beyond that Day 1 / Week 1 rush.

most things in this game end up being soloable, including Savage, dungeons, DD, variants and relics.

...Soloing level 60 Savage dungeons as a level 100 is not content in any meaningful sense of the word: it's a visual progression with glamour drops. A cutscene with rewards, given a bit of "walk here, then there" prior would about as equally count as content. Nor is soloing a DD remotely the same experience as playing through it in a party; there's a reason the first gets leaderboards.

Yes, but it won't replicate 144 people in Eureka or 72 people in Occult or Cosmic.

No one's asked for it fully replicate that. Only one person has even asked for NPC fill-ins at all, with others just considering it "better than nothing".

But there's a difference between, on one side, the vibe of the content changing as it goes from a FATE/CE train rush to a single Full Party moving together through a zone and grabbing what nearby FATEs they can survive while leveling together, or even the maximum level among players and mobs, both, being reduced to broaden the portion of players each little group can play with and/or mob-kill experience increasing to build that experience more around self-paced play now that the FOMO waves have paced anyways... and, on the other, the end of said content being essentially impossible with fewer than 24 players at a time where most are level 120 (or 100 with 20 "Merit Ranks" or what have you) and that content sees barely a dozen players at a time.

Just as there's a difference between players being "forced to re-do each and every bit of past content weekly" and a rotating schedule of bonus rewards to funnel the community in ways that'd allow for newer players to see enough activity in past content to engage with it and for veterans to enjoyably revisit what different content forms may appeal to them more than just what's visible at max level.