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

[Jeeqbit]

AI will reduce the cost of development of these types of games enough that someone will make a good one for those seeking challenge and gameplay, right now it costs millions but as AI advances and can produce HQ assets and such the teams developing these games will be able to get really lean to where enthusiast communities will be able to release games that fit their niche.

While true, my guess is they won't touch it because the FFXIV community does not like AI (despite not really understanding it or seeing good use cases for it unrelated to art). What I can tell you is they hired lots and lots of people for an AI department (since I was watching their recruitment) and this was shown quite a lot in the credits. How much this affects FFXIV I don't know but I don't get the sense it does or the development would be faster.

In fact, as hated as the opinion may be CBUIII should use AI to design armor sets

The issue they have is adjusting them to all races. I saw a clip that WoW has the same issue. WoW uses AI to solve this issue, while FFXIV showed in a dev panel that they have a method to automatically adjust it for races but that sometimes it still needs a bit of adjustment after that. For example, it gets a gear set and inflates it to fit Roegadyn. They did not specify if it used AI but it's suspicious.

Instead of gee... IDK, reusing the same assets over and over again with a different color.

If the recolors make you forget it's being reused, then it's alright. A lot of the time when they have retextured enemies, I've been completely unaware that they were reused for years. Often they used to be bosses that were much bigger with a different color and I didn't even notice for so long. Reusing them helps justify the development cost better, so it's common for all games to do it. They could have AI make adjustments to it perhaps, but as it stands you get issues with fingers. AI also struggles to understand the laws of physics.

stuck with the same understaffed content designers team who have to pump out fights with copy-pasted mechanics to meet their deadline.

They could probably use AI to generate a random assortment of stack, spread, in, out, etc. I could do that myself even. It would probably create some soulless raids that don't fit with the theme of the story/lore/music though.

you have two types of labor that are not substitutable: graphic/music/art design, and the programmers.

Really this. AI can save hours, days or months when programming. But to make that more effective you still need to understand programming so you can write a highly sophisticated, technical prompt to explain exactly what you want.

By this I mean writing a massive paragraph of explicit instructions with all the object interactions and some scenarios being clarified, that looks like rocket science and is hard to read back. The AI will understand it and write something that would take months to code and troubleshoot, free of nonsense like syntax errors, that does exactly what was desired.

Anyone can get it to code stuff without much programming knowledge but it's gonna catch you eventually when you don't have the technical knowledge to guide it to adjust the code how you want, or adjust it manually when it's not making the correct adjustments.

Apparently SE did make an AI version of Yoshi-P which was shockingly accurate.

Yes MMOs are dying because People have no patience anymore

There were always negative players in MMOs that would focus on the downsides, and positive players that would focus on the things they enjoy. The energy investment is similar. What kept people playing was that they had player-created content instead such as RP, house decorating, PVP, helping others clear raids for fun, etc. It's just a lot of these things are more formulaic in FFXIV, but they still exist.

[AvoSturmfaust]

There were always negative players in MMOs that would focus on the downsides, and positive players that would focus on the things they enjoy. The energy investment is similar. What kept people playing was that they had player-created content instead such as RP, house decorating, PVP, helping others clear raids for fun, etc. It's just a lot of these things are more formulaic in FFXIV, but they still exist.

True but not to such a huge amount we have in the current time, i said it now a few time i grow up with MMOs, i play MMOs for more then 15-17years now, from Final and WoW right from the start to Games like Tera, Aion, Flyff, Rappelz, Silkroad, Perfect World, Metin2, Blade and Soul etc etc etc many many more, and none of them would be a succes these days because of the negative players

In the past people gave the MMOs time to cook they know Content takes time, but in the present people wont wait anymore, they have no patience they cry because they have to wait 6 months for good content etc etc etc, if they dont get content every month with 100h they quitting a game which then leads to the downfall, people need to understand and give mmos again time to build something instead of instant leaving and quitting

[ovIm]

In the past people gave the MMOs time to cook they know Content takes time, but in the present people wont wait anymore, they have no patience they cry because they have to wait 6 months for good content etc etc etc, if they dont get content every month with 100h they quitting a game which then leads to the downfall, people need to understand and give mmos again time to build something instead of instant leaving and quitting

There may be players who are like that, sure, but the big problem FFXIV is having is that content is not long lived enough to warrant these patch times. This is an MMO, and the big substancial "spend a lot of time in it" content is scheduled to release a year after the expansion launched. Its not rocket science that if you give players fun gameplay content where they can sink their teeth in and willingly spent time in (and enjoy doing so), you will get less complaints.
Other games have solved that issue a long time ago, and even WoW seems to have gotten the hang of it with its latest expansion release. Why we don't hold CS3 accountable for a lack of engaging long term content early on is beyond me to be honest.

Dawntrail was promised to bring us new iterations of content we already know (field operations, deep dungeons, variant dungeons), and in the last half year since the expansion release, the only thing that was released that was "out of the ordinary expected content pipeline" was chaotic. Everything else either boiled down to one and done content (MSQ, Hildibrand, Role Quests) or short daily/weekly stuff to do (Pelupelu, NPC commissions, a 24 man), both with no real longevity, the same dungeon that we have played since Shadowbringers with 10 different coats of paint that gameplay wise puts the director of the game to sleep, and a couple of raids Bossfights that most interested players have cleared within a few weeks. Its not that people are not patient, usually people know and understand development of a game takes time. No one can create something as fast as it is consumed. Its that they are baffled that a studio like CS3 thinks that the drip bits of content they give us are actually good enough to warrant a 10 bucks subscription fee when other games do what they do, but better. They literally have a golden goose in their pen and chose not to do the bare minimum to keep players engaged. That's on them. Not on the perceived impatience of players.

[AvoSturmfaust]

There may be players who are like that, sure, but the big problem FFXIV is having is that content is not long lived enough to warrant these patch times. This is an MMO, and the big substancial "spend a lot of time in it" content is scheduled to release a year after the expansion launched. Its not rocket science that if you give players fun gameplay content where they can sink their teeth in and willingly spent time in (and enjoy doing so), you will get less complaints.
Other games have solved that issue a long time ago, and even WoW seems to have gotten the hang of it with its latest expansion release. Why we don't hold CS3 accountable for a lack of engaging long term content early on is beyond me to be honest.

Dawntrail was promised to bring us new iterations of content we already know (field operations, deep dungeons, variant dungeons), and in the last half year since the expansion release, the only thing that was released that was "out of the ordinary expected content pipeline" was chaotic. Everything else either boiled down to one and done content (MSQ, Hildibrand, Role Quests) or short daily/weekly stuff to do (Pelupelu, NPC commissions, a 24 man), both with no real longevity, the same dungeon that we have played since Shadowbringers with 10 different coats of paint that gameplay wise puts the director of the game to sleep, and a couple of raids Bossfights that most interested players have cleared within a few weeks. Its not that people are not patient, usually people know and understand development of a game takes time. No one can create something as fast as it is consumed. Its that they are baffled that a studio like CS3 thinks that the drip bits of content they give us are actually good enough to warrant a 10 bucks subscription fee when other games do what they do, but better. They literally have a golden goose in their pen and chose not to do the bare minimum to keep players engaged. That's on them. Not on the perceived impatience of players.

Yea in case of final its true and understandable, even i as someone which always defended final is at a point where i cant say anything good anymore, we are getting 30 min content every 4 months, while paying 10€ a month which means 40€ for 30min fun, thats not in any way something i can defend

the only thing i could say is in every expansion between x.0 and x.2 its the time with the least amount of content, it was always this way atleast since stormblood and even i wish with my heart they would change it, i dont see it happen, square is kinda "set in stone" with these dumb patch cyclen

[Arohk]

while paying 10€ a month which means 40€ for 30min fun, thats not in any way something i can defend

I looked at your Profile, you still seem to have a lot of unfinished content in the game to do, unlike me.

You don't even have all jobs leveled yet, i mean yes, if you only look at "current" content there is a big drought, but the game has more to offer than just running 4 savage bosses.

[AvoSturmfaust]

I looked at your Profile, you still seem to have a lot of unfinished content in the game to do, unlike me.

You don't even have all jobs leveled yet, i mean yes, if you only look at "current" content there is a big drought, but the game has more to offer than just running 4 savage bosses.

You are looking at one of my raid chars, with my main i have nearly everything finished, the only thing left are the solo deep dungeons, and thats something im really not interested in

[Arohk]

You are looking at one of my raid chars, with my main i have nearly everything finished, the only thing left are the solo deep dungeons, and thats something im really not interested in

fair enough.


My opinion: MMO's aren't dying, there are still a lot of people interested in this type of game, but they are neglected by the game devs or publisher.
All modern MMO's suffer from the same problem, Monetization first, game second, if the main question is how to maximize profit with all sorf of bullsh't like battle passes and cosmetics instead of just making a good game people love for a long time, then it is destined to fail.

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Existing problems are ignored for too long & always take too long to fix,
content always takes too long to make because of self generated inefficient systems.

FFXIV is at a point of stagnation,

Old content pretty much never gets updated, bad systems never get improved or modernized.

Useless new features no one asks for are implemented, while long desired ones like chat bubbles or Viera/Hrothgar hats are ignored. (which have already be done by modders)

The main content of the game is pretty much copy+paste since shadowbringers without much innovation.

I would rather see them reuse and recycle or redo old content to refresh the game than have to wait half a year for something actually new.

Edit:
FFXIV has the huge problem that is must run on PC & Console, and console is really holding back its potential imo. it is also very polished , i have very rarely encountered any sort of bugs since i play the game.