Fixing Player engagement DEV pls consider

[ItMe]

Yeah, I think in page 2 or 3 I mentioned

Lol sorry you've been having to repeat yourself so much.
It's been difficult following along in this thread.

When do people speak to one another in DF other than say hello or ty for the party? You're joking right? Many time they say nothing at all.

Lol yeah, I have a macro that says hi and that's about all the talking I do 95% of the time.

[Caurcas]

It is called Part Finder.
Make a party with your requirements .
Not sure how long it would take to fill.

In duty finder you get what you get , roll with it or leave.

By not trying to clear the content you've queued for in duty finder in the most quick and efficient manner possible you are wasting the time of 3/7/23 other players. This is at best griefing, and at worst social parasitism.

[linayar]

By not trying to clear the content you've queued for in duty finder in the most quick and efficient manner possible you are wasting the time of 3/7/23 other players. This is at best griefing, and at worst social parasitism.

"Griefing" is intentional harassment or provocation of another player. There is a difference between that (or an alleged case of "social parasitism") and simply not trying to clear a queued content "in the most quick and efficient manner possible."

[kaynide]

By not trying to clear the content you've queued for in duty finder in the most quick and efficient manner possible you are wasting the time of 3/7/23 other players. This is at best griefing, and at worst social parasitism.

I would love to report Thancred and Alisaie for sub optimal play. Like they don’t even try to dodge mechanics sometimes. And don’t get me started on Alisaie wasting limit breaks...

/s

[Dzian]

When do people speak to one another in DF other than say hello or ty for the party? You're joking right? Many time they say nothing at all.

The existence of the duty finder would suggest that less communication is preferable.

You cant communicate in this game. The abc mentality prevents it. If your communicating then your not doing dps. And you will be slammed for it.

The other reason people don't communicate is because you finish whatever duty your in and you'll almost never see the same players again. It's why the social aspect of modern mmos has deteriorated so much..

Not the game and raid design... That should be guiding, encouraging and challenging us to do better.

The reality is the game and devs do everything possible to make the game brain dead easy.. msq quests that were all ready braindead easy now have even easier difficulty options..

The whole game should be encouring players and challenging them to do better. "Raise the players up" not "bring the content down"

This is where most of the games problems lie. Players run through all this brain dead easy stuff that's almost impossible to fail. Then decide to go and try sone ex / Savage level content. Get smacked in the face with a huge reality check and a ton of attitude for wasting everyone else's time.

If the game actually had a learning curve, thought and raised players up. They'd be much more prepared. that end game stuff.

But the games attitude is one of handouts and making everything brain dead easy.. with easy modes, massive Ievel overpowering, huge echo buffs and even unsync.

[DPZ2]

You cant communicate in this game. The abc mentality prevents it. If your communicating then your not doing dps. And you will be slammed for it.

The other reason people don't communicate is because you finish whatever duty your in and you'll almost never see the same players again. It's why the social aspect of modern mmos has deteriorated so much..

If the game were solely instance after instance after instance, your point might be valid.

Every modern MMO has other mechanisms for socializing that do not involve a dungeon instance. In WoW you have guilds, in FFXIV you have Free Companies. If you desire social interaction, the chat window is the means to that end, and so is your headset if you join an FC/guild with a Discord server.

I have enjoyed in-game banter in FFXIV for over six years now, and do not feel it necessary to force socialization from random players who join in the same dungeon instances. That doesn't mean I have never had an interesting conversation with someone in an instance ... I tend to get chatty in the MSQ roulette, for example. I also realize that English is not necessarily the first language of players who I meet in an instance.

I've played MMOs long enough to know that dungeon instances are the last place for any meaningful socialization to occur. The days before dungeon finders was certainly one where some amount of socialization was necessary to even run an instance, but it wasn't a requirement.

If you want to point fingers at the primary reason you might remember earlier MMOs with more fondness (from a social viewpoint), blame the lack of Internet forums and websites that lay out everything for you, rather than the game itself.

[Caurcas]

I would love to report Thancred and Alisaie for sub optimal play. Like they don’t even try to dodge mechanics sometimes. And don’t get me started on Alisaie wasting limit breaks...

/s

Trust are for those who can't. Duty Finder is for those who can.

[Saidosha]

I find myself reminded of Campaign in FFXI where EXP/Note rewards corresponded to categories of actions you acted in, culminating in individual caps that added together over an ideal tag refresh rate of every 15 minutes for longer battles. With how the job/subjob system work, min/maxing this system also encouraged people to play jobs outside of their common style and wound up creating a group of players mad the Campaigners could level and "not know their job" because they dared work around the Campaign meta. To see this sort of toxicity manifest in XIV with some kind of individual performance system, especially with factors outside of the player's control, is something I don't find particularly far-fetched.

Pragmatically, I'm not a believer that just making things harder and/or forcing more people to be savage-tier raiders is not the actual solution to prolonging interest. MMO statistics don't lie here in the assertion that hardcore content is the rarest cleared and often overlooked by the majority. And it's not so much because some people don't want to see or try, but that the expectations snowball into something they either can't routinely participate in (for example, if you can't form a static due to a fluctuating schedule) or force unfun farming for preparation (consumables or other expensive goods). If the solution was as simple as a ballbusting MMO bringing in the big bucks because players were in this nebulous definition of engaged, it would've happened by now.

I'm more inclined to say XIV has a lot of content outside of the instanced sphere that does not go far enough. Something like the Ishgard Restoration served as a temporary exception to this for crafters, but if we're being honest about the game's economy, a significant amount of it is a diseased, festering corpse that could be rejuvenated if players had reason to make things outside of leves that could actually positively impact their server (and not be undercut by RMT/bot influence). Yet, I'd argue this same "close, but not far enough..." extends to FATEs, a general lack of weekly/daily quests, a better randomized dungeon system, expand housing to the creation of (collaborative) villages over this hamfisted inadequate system, or even greater gear/wardrobe customization. None of these may appeal to the raider sorts that feel compelled to flaunt their greatness over others while seeking further affirmation through yet more coded systems, but they're all still things a greater majority enjoys and craves. Of course, there's also the untapped potential of player-generated content where people could make the back-breaking encounters they crave. But the reality is they'd have to be solely for bragging rights and not unique rewards, which makes the idea DOA for some challenge-seekers. Which is another way of saying some players have unreasonable expectations and are impossible to please.