A Lived in World?

[Shougun]

Yes and no. GW2 has quality of life, in certain areas more than XIV does, but in other areas, mostly those affecting the content and gameplay, it basically tells you to suck it up.
Want a piece of ascended gear with some of the more rare affixes like Minstrel's (Toughness+Healing Power+Vitality+Concentration)? You better go out and do whatever obscure objective the game wants you to do.

It tells you to go out, explore the maps, and then rewards you for it.

But it doesn't just let you do everything while standing in Divinity's Reach all day.

I'll take that

Perhaps I was being too literal, but I was afraid people who didn't have experience with GW2 would think that you can't have QoL simply because your world is better. A great living world and QoL were not diametrically opposed, though I would take the nuance interpretation which is it may have small elements here and there.

But like if I want to do the dragon event, it's not painful to go do.. I just go do it.

GW2 is obviously more open world focused than we will probably ever be, but I still feel we have a lot to learn and could utilize without having to destroy the things that we already do well.

[Eraden]

I'll take that

Perhaps I was being too literal, but I was afraid people who didn't have experience with GW2 would think that you can't have QoL simply because your world is better. A great living world and QoL were not diametrically opposed, though I would take the nuance interpretation which is it may have small elements here and there.

But like if I want to do the dragon event, it's not painful to go do.. I just go do it.

GW2 is obviously more open world focused than we will probably ever be, but I still feel we have a lot to learn and could utilize without having to destroy the things that we already do well.

Mao likes GW2. Open World is great there and has some of the best questlines Mao ever seen. Mao ranks Skyscale questline as best ever! Mao thinkings FFXIV nots need to be exactly likes GW2 but FFXIV can maybe learn something from GW2.

[yaba_gabagool]

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.

The reason it's like this? It was easier for them to produce around that model and expect consistent sales. It's not about being innovative, it's not about caring too much about mmos and the genre in general.

They've found a safe model for income and they're going to stick with it. It's on lock and it's never going to change for the remainder of this MMO's lifetime.

FF14's most memorable trait isn't that it revolutionized mmos, or that it was even a great mmo (it's somewhat okay by most metrics - though the boss fights are quite good by industry standards). The most memorable fact about FF14 by far is that Yoshi P resurrected the game from the dumpster bin and took an unworkable game and made it profitable.

That's it.

FF14 will be forgotten to the annuals of time, nothing more than a well tuned profit model square rode off into the sunset with.

Meanwhile Everquest still brings a tear to any seasoned MMO player who wasn't raised on mobile gaming.

[Boblawblah]

Meanwhile Everquest still brings a tear to any seasoned MMO player who wasn't raised on mobile gaming.

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

[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.

[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.

[Aword3213]

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

People still play Tetris.

[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)