Rant about game population and general dissatisfaction with the game

[Desolate Eden]

I feel like every type of content I was excited to reach, once reached was a complete and utter let down due to a small player base. Alexander was absolutely dead I had to run it unsynched as were the Heavensward alliance raids, now I finished stormblood, Omega is dead, took me 70 minutes as a tank to get alphascape 1 queue pop, now done with Omega, savage alphascapes are basically non existent in duty finder and there's less than a handful of parties to join in party finder.

How can there only be a max of 28 parties in party finder across the ENTIRE data centre? Max I saw was 50 and that was shocking to me because it's the most I've ever seen and that's not even a lot considering all the servers within a data centre, the player base feels so tiny it's actually frustrating.

I was hoping I would reach Omega and could start farming savage raids for ilvl 400 gear and all I was faced with was another dead duty.

How old is this game? And yet the most alive content I see is ARR duties with the roulette.

I feel like I invested all this time with no pay off.

Imagine paying for a game and game time but then being artificially barricaded from content because of a lack of player base, I got to a really interesting moment in Omega and couldn't wait to see what happened next, but what;d you know I had to wait almost 2 hours to find out because of the lack of players queing it

Nobody does fates, the world feels empty and barren, even Kugane is more dead than La Nosca, literally feels like ARR content is where 90% of the players are despite 2 whole expansions and a 3rd one coming up soon.

Best way to get highest ilvl gear was tomestones in ARR, same thing in HW, same thing in SB, probably gonna be the same thing in Shadowbringers.

Let's not forget the stupid weekly cap to make you spend more time farming out gear just to make you play more.

The lack of creativity and effort is disgraceful and now with the new data centre being added which will result in less servers across each one, the total player pool will be reduced making these problems even bigger. If you don't play the game and new content exactly on release, you will have absolutely no incentive to try aim for any cool and exciting stuff like omega or alliance raids or anything remotely intriguing because it will be dead within 3-5 months. No incentive to do it once you're done and the lack of a healthy population means there isn't enough new players constantly joining the game to keep the older content alive.

Raids suffer this the most because they are not a part of a roulette unlike alliance raids so the wait times are disgustingly bad.

For a game that relies heavily on a player base to do fun content which is mainly dungeons, raids, trials etc, it's not good when there isnt a player base to keep it alive.

Make the game free to play with a premium account option to bring in new players because it's dying.

[Elenoe]

hmm, I never had problem to get anywhere and was surprised that even old dungs I needed were pretty easy to find.

I can't comment "farming parties" for "alphascape savage" in "duty finder". To me it's insane enough to even think there is anyone who would actualy volunteer for that.

Other then that that's how tiered games work. Only last tier content is actually played. And considering it's half a year since last tier even that is already done by pretty much anyone capable doing it and no reason to do like Alpha 1-3 ever again. At least that's how it is for months in my FC.

Luckily I've got my nice gear in Eureka which is fun now when it's completed (and the weapon is better then Omega's so happy with how it is). And soon even Eureka will be unobtainable because everyone who wanted it already have everything.

Next expansion is near. So you will have the chance to catch the first wave :)

[RopeDrink]

It's a sad day when older content not having as much participation as new content is lauded as 'lack of creativity'. It'd be like walking into BFA (WoW) and complaining that the Barren's don't have as many players roaming around as it used to in Vanilla. If you want that type of thing, head over to Black Desert - a game that is central to what we here call 'over-world' as opposed to instanced content with its own progression tiers, which has a natural habit of rendering older content moot.

La Noscea obviously has more people as it is the most accessible/convenient town. It is not a reflection on Kugane or Rhalgars (which is always busy as a quest HUB - but not as convenient as a literal business HUB where the market board, retainer bells etc are literally right next to the Aetherite, with the Grand Company being one floor above them).

It is no different in other games. Even in WoW you will see an immense amount of people hanging around in Orgrimmar/Stormwid despite the presence of BFA HUBs with the most relevant vendors/services.

Make the game free to play with a premium account option to bring in new players because it's dying.

I love how everyone tries to paint everything as 'dying' based on petty reflexes. The game is not dying just because people are playing the most recent/relevant content above older content. Furthermore, you can get the F2P suggestion out of your head as they have themselves said they would rather let the game die rather than ever employ an F2P model - and as one of the most successful sub-MMO's behind WoW right now, they have no reason to ever consider it unless a catastrophe happens, especially with WoW/BFA's own popularity waning once again and causing migration.

Best way to get highest ilvl gear was tomestones in ARR, same thing in HW, same thing in SB, probably gonna be the same thing in Shadowbringers.

And?

For a game that relies heavily on a player base to do fun content which is mainly dungeons, raids, trials etc, it's not good when there isnt a player base to keep it alive.

See above. Give me one reason why people would do Legion content in WoW other than transmogs or story?

You also don't seem to ever mention party finder. You know, the system where like-minded people can manually compose teams to snipe content of their choosing. A lot of people would use that when it comes to out-dated content, just like transmog farmers in WoW might use party-finder to make mog-teams for content one step backwards (things earlier than that are soloable).

-----

I get that it can feel a bit bitter missing out on older content - but now that you have caught up you can experience future content in the way you couldn't for older stuff. Let's see how 'dying' this game is when you're queuing for relevant content and/or when the next expansion hits your monitor.

Until then, party finder.

[CMDR Erik Alan]

Everything you're crying about isn't due to a declining population, that's a moronic statement.
You're coming in at the tail end of the expansion and you sound like someone who's been playing catchup for awhile which sounds like you're fairly newish to the game or simply don't know how things work.

[Lord Doober De La Goober MXI]

Guess I'll count myself lucky then since, I've yet to really experience any of this.

not bragging though, but even now takes me like 1-10 mins as a tank to get into raids or older content, not sure what time you're queueing up for that it'll takes 70 mins as an TANK for an alphascape 1 normal....(and half the time i'm getting most of the normal O1-12 in normal Raid DF)

also you don't want to queue for savages in DF....no one wants a pug for that....make your own PF if you want it done.

[Illyasviel09]

-- In my experience as a tank, i've never had to wait that much for anything in Duty Finder, not even for the Crystal Tower raid. Take into consideration that you may not be playing at peak times. I play on Brynhildr and there's always people in all city states and the outside. I can confirm it because i'm levelling all other classes at the same time, so i'm literally running around the whole Eorzea



-- "How can there only be a max of 28 parties in party finder across the ENTIRE data centre? "

Because:
a) MANY (and i really mean many) people prefer to wait for someone else to create a party and just join rather than doing it themselves.

b) Party Finder, most of the time, is used for things that cannot be PuGged, or to farm something. You don't need it for most of the dungeons, trials, and normal raids (including 24 man duties)



-- "Best way to get highest ilvl gear was tomestones in ARR, same thing in HW, same thing in SB, probably gonna be the same thing in Shadowbringers.

Let's not forget the stupid weekly cap to make you spend more time farming out gear just to make you play more."

Personally, this is not a bad thing. Tomestone gear is the second best gear (after Savage Raid gear) when the new tomes are released, then it can be upgraded to be as good as the Savage Raid gear with drops only available at those raids. After the next patch, non savage raiders can upgrade it with the weekly drop from the 24 man raids.

Weekly caps help to avoid a big disparity between the people who play 20 hrs a day and the ones who play like 2 or 3hrs a day (mainly tomestones) and of course, it's also a way to make things last longer. For Gear drops, it helps to distribute the new stuff to more people.



-- "Raids suffer this the most because they are not a part of a roulette unlike alliance raids so the wait times are disgustingly bad."

Emm... There IS a "Normal Raid" (8 man) roulette actually; since 4.3



-- "Make the game free to play with a premium account option to bring in new players because it's dying. "

Yeah... no.

[Desolate Eden]

The game is definitely dying and whoever says it isn't is delusional. What is this "new content" that you keep talking about that everyone seems to be doing? Because in my statement I said most people seem to be doing ARR content and constantly trying to do new stuff seems to take forever in my case. What is the new content then? Omega gives the strongest gear currently, by that logic it should be the most relevant and busiest duty for end game players. But because it's a savage raid and a lot of players are casual, it isn't, instead people run rouletletes for tomestone gear and roulletes usually throw you into ARR content, especially main story, always gives you preatorium or the other one, castrum whatever.

The problem with tomestones grinding is that it's boring and lacks creativity. This is the entire priogression system of every expansion and the base game. You start at base level, grind to max level via main story, you get all the gear you need via main story quests, you can basically ignore dungeon loot unless you want to use it for glamour then once max level, you farm tomestones till you have best gear and you rinse and repeat that.

There is absolutely zero way to customise your build, zero way to make it unique, everyone does the same thing to get the same thing every single time. This is not something to praise or shrug off, it's stale and lacks creativity. An MMO should have a complex or at least a non linear upgrade path, is that so much to ask?

Have you tried joining a queue for pvp? Takes about 30-45 minutes to find a match in an instance that doesn't enforce roles. For argument's sake in case any of you say PVP is not popular, finding a handful of players in a "non dead" game should not be an issue. If I try to queue omega sigmascape 1, regardless of whether or not it's peak time, I should be able to find 7 other players if the game is not dead, we are talking about 7 players in an MMO, this isn't league of legends or call of duty with a lobby of 10 to 12 players, I can't find 7 players in the space of 70 minutes regardless of the time of day? On the most recent raid in the game?

And if you're gonna tell me Eureka is the most recent content to do, it's lame and the gear has no value besides cosmetics because it's worse than tomestone and raid gear so it's basically obsolete not to mention how awful of a design it is.

I'm not the first to make these arguments, the world is big and full of nothing to do, there's literally no point even doing the side quests scattered around .the world because it's faster to level via deep dungeon or roulettes or challenge logs, besides the side quests that unlock content, the rest is obsolete.

If the game was not dead, you would be getting instant or near instant queue pops as tank or healer in any stormblood content, but try quieing directly for a stormblood raid or anything and you'll be waiting up to an hour.

The only reason roulette queue times are fast is because they pull the little group of players on the data centre together and throw you into the most popular dungeons people are queing for, aka, daily rouletes for tomestones or exp, so if you queue for an alliance raid roulete you have a 1/3 chance of getting a stormblood raid because god forbid you want to queue directly for it, you might as well watch a movie while you wait because of how long it takes.

You have to be blind or wearing fanboy glasses to not see a decline in playerbase. I'm in the top FC on my server and I get about 12-15 people most online at the same time out of like 500 members.

Let's be real and not defend a dying game. I poured plenty of hours into it and I enjoyed my time, but I would like it to not die and improve, but with its current state, it's definitely not doing well and won't be doing well any time soon.

[Oberon]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

The game is definitely dying and whoever says it isn't is delusional.

"I can't find a party for outdated content, thus the game must be dying."

[Desolate Eden]

Originally posted by The Mayor of Murder Town:

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

The game is definitely dying and whoever says it isn't is delusional.

"I can't find a party for outdated content, thus the game must be dying."

Can't find the party for the most recent content, regardless of how outdated it is, it's still the most recent. The fact I can find a party faster for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ main story roulete in preatorium to get tomestones or an alliance raid from ARR than the most recent ♥♥♥♥ in the game is pathetic. If anything SB and HW content should be alive a hundred times more than ARR content which is years old. But it's the complete opposite.

[Oberon]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

Originally posted by The Mayor of Murder Town:

"I can't find a party for outdated content, thus the game must be dying."

Can't find the party for the most recent content, regardless of how outdated it is, it's still the most recent. The fact I can find a party faster for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ main story roulete in preatorium to get tomestones or an alliance raid from ARR than the most recent ♥♥♥♥ in the game is pathetic. If anything SB and HW content should be alive a hundred times more than ARR content which is years old. But it's the complete opposite.

Did you try making a party in party finder, or did you just look for one and give up?

[Desolate Eden]

Originally posted by The Mayor of Murder Town:

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

Can't find the party for the most recent content, regardless of how outdated it is, it's still the most recent. The fact I can find a party faster for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ main story roulete in preatorium to get tomestones or an alliance raid from ARR than the most recent ♥♥♥♥ in the game is pathetic. If anything SB and HW content should be alive a hundred times more than ARR content which is years old. But it's the complete opposite.

Did you try making a party in party finder, or did you just look for one and give up?

Yup, I've been in a party finder with some random dude for like half an hour before people started joining, we got a team in the end but it took too long, you can find 100 players in a game of PUBG in a matter of seconds and that has no more than 1 mill players, less now as it's died out, but I have to wait up to an hour for a team of 8 people in party finder or wait even longer in duty finder because people are snowflakes and won't do pugs because they're impatient.

[Illyasviel09]

"If the game was not dead, you would be getting instant or near instant queue pops as tank or healer in any stormblood content, but try quieing directly for a stormblood raid or anything and you'll be waiting up to an hour. "

Well, i always get instant queue for all Stormblood duties as a tank. The only real waiting time is when i try to play something at 3:00 AM, or when i use Duty Finder as a DPS

[CMDR Erik Alan]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

The game is definitely dying and whoever says it isn't is delusional. What is this "new content" that you keep talking about that everyone seems to be doing? Because in my statement I said most people seem to be doing ARR content and constantly trying to do new stuff seems to take forever in my case. What is the new content then? Omega gives the strongest gear currently, by that logic it should be the most relevant and busiest duty for end game players. But because it's a savage raid and a lot of players are casual, it isn't, instead people run rouletletes for tomestone gear and roulletes usually throw you into ARR content, especially main story, always gives you preatorium or the other one, castrum whatever.

The problem with tomestones grinding is that it's boring and lacks creativity. This is the entire priogression system of every expansion and the base game. You start at base level, grind to max level via main story, you get all the gear you need via main story quests, you can basically ignore dungeon loot unless you want to use it for glamour then once max level, you farm tomestones till you have best gear and you rinse and repeat that.

There is absolutely zero way to customise your build, zero way to make it unique, everyone does the same thing to get the same thing every single time. This is not something to praise or shrug off, it's stale and lacks creativity. An MMO should have a complex or at least a non linear upgrade path, is that so much to ask?

Have you tried joining a queue for pvp? Takes about 30-45 minutes to find a match in an instance that doesn't enforce roles. For argument's sake in case any of you say PVP is not popular, finding a handful of players in a "non dead" game should not be an issue. If I try to queue omega sigmascape 1, regardless of whether or not it's peak time, I should be able to find 7 other players if the game is not dead, we are talking about 7 players in an MMO, this isn't league of legends or call of duty with a lobby of 10 to 12 players, I can't find 7 players in the space of 70 minutes regardless of the time of day? On the most recent raid in the game?

And if you're gonna tell me Eureka is the most recent content to do, it's lame and the gear has no value besides cosmetics because it's worse than tomestone and raid gear so it's basically obsolete not to mention how awful of a design it is.

I'm not the first to make these arguments, the world is big and full of nothing to do, there's literally no point even doing the side quests scattered around .the world because it's faster to level via deep dungeon or roulettes or challenge logs, besides the side quests that unlock content, the rest is obsolete.

If the game was not dead, you would be getting instant or near instant queue pops as tank or healer in any stormblood content, but try quieing directly for a stormblood raid or anything and you'll be waiting up to an hour.

The only reason roulette queue times are fast is because they pull the little group of players on the data centre together and throw you into the most popular dungeons people are queing for, aka, daily rouletes for tomestones or exp, so if you queue for an alliance raid roulete you have a 1/3 chance of getting a stormblood raid because god forbid you want to queue directly for it, you might as well watch a movie while you wait because of how long it takes.

You have to be blind or wearing fanboy glasses to not see a decline in playerbase. I'm in the top FC on my server and I get about 12-15 people most online at the same time out of like 500 members.

Let's be real and not defend a dying game. I poured plenty of hours into it and I enjoyed my time, but I would like it to not die and improve, but with its current state, it's definitely not doing well and won't be doing well any time soon.

Games dying!

*SE regularly puts out content*

Games dying!

*SE regularly updates game*

Games dying!

*SE steady pushing out expansions*

Games dying!

*SE regularly balancing PvP*

Games dying!

*SE currently has ranked PvP championships*

Games dying!

*Massive influx of players from other MMOs*

Games dying!

*More developer feedback than any MMO on market*

Games dying!

*OP fails to realize that his inability to find a party has more to do with him, the specific instance he is trying to do and his datacenter than it does players in game*

Games dying!

*OP fails to realize that expansion is almost over and raiders have either completed said content and no longer interested in what he wants to do or new/casual players aren't there yet*

Games dying!

*OP continues to compare game to other games with no relevance to one another*

Games dying!

*Lacking any substantive proof of anything, proceeds to call anyone who disagrees with him fanboy*

Games dying!

*OP doesn't realize that the game isn't there to cater to him*

Games dying!

*OP has no argument. OP is a whiny nancy boy who won't show his in-game hours*

Games dying!

*OP should go away*

[Ruse]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

I feel like every type of content I was excited to reach, once reached was a complete and utter let down due to a small player base. Alexander was absolutely dead I had to run it unsynched as were the Heavensward alliance raids, now I finished stormblood, Omega is dead, took me 70 minutes as a tank to get alphascape 1 queue pop, now done with Omega, savage alphascapes are basically non existent in duty finder and there's less than a handful of parties to join in party finder.

How can there only be a max of 28 parties in party finder across the ENTIRE data centre? Max I saw was 50 and that was shocking to me because it's the most I've ever seen and that's not even a lot considering all the servers within a data centre, the player base feels so tiny it's actually frustrating.

A) You're talking about old content. No one wants to run it at gear caps anymore. Just like WoW and other MMOs.

B) I don't believe you. I can get delta/sigma/alpha runs as DPS in five minutes. Sometimes I have to wait 30 but no more.

[Desolate Eden]

Originally posted by Theresa Barkskin:

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

I feel like every type of content I was excited to reach, once reached was a complete and utter let down due to a small player base. Alexander was absolutely dead I had to run it unsynched as were the Heavensward alliance raids, now I finished stormblood, Omega is dead, took me 70 minutes as a tank to get alphascape 1 queue pop, now done with Omega, savage alphascapes are basically non existent in duty finder and there's less than a handful of parties to join in party finder.

How can there only be a max of 28 parties in party finder across the ENTIRE data centre? Max I saw was 50 and that was shocking to me because it's the most I've ever seen and that's not even a lot considering all the servers within a data centre, the player base feels so tiny it's actually frustrating.

A) You're talking about old content. No one wants to run it at gear caps anymore. Just like WoW and other MMOs.

B) I don't believe you. I can get delta/sigma/alpha runs as DPS in five minutes. Sometimes I have to wait 30 but no more.

https://gyazo.com/4dd05413995c9553e083c2c8d06e4df2

I took a screencap cause I thought it was ridicilous and wanted to show my friend so there you go, proof.

[CMDR Erik Alan]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

Originally posted by Theresa Barkskin:

A) You're talking about old content. No one wants to run it at gear caps anymore. Just like WoW and other MMOs.

B) I don't believe you. I can get delta/sigma/alpha runs as DPS in five minutes. Sometimes I have to wait 30 but no more.

https://gyazo.com/4dd05413995c9553e083c2c8d06e4df2

I took a screencap cause I thought it was ridicilous and wanted to show my friend so there you go, proof.

Okay? Proof of a long queue.
You realize that a) people raiding are already finished with that content, b) your region and datacenter matters a lot when it comes to raid content and c) time of day?

Anyone can take a picture of a long queue time...

Edit: Just took a 2nd look at your pic.
You're not even doing raid content right now, you're looking for story content which people have mostly finished with and those who haven't are the new and returning players getting ready for the next expansion.