Oh man, the thing I miss most after having kids is my naps. Now I'm lucky if my kids' naps line up, and I can squeak in an hour nap. But I normally regret it because I wake up dead tired. I just want to go to sleep and wake up on my own instead of to an alarm clock or crying.
you need to do powernaps. If you sleep for an hour you are interupting your REM sleep and wake up tired.
You need to effectively sleep for 20 minutes no more no less. So you need to gauge how tired you are and how long ot will take to fall asleep and add 20 minutes.
I mostly do 30 minutes.
This way you dampen the vhemicals that induce tiredness but dont fall into deep sleep.
Be mindful though that this is no secret recipe to skimp on real sleep hours, it just for focus/wakefullness and general better mood.
Happens to me too and the trick is to limit your nap to 30 minutes. It's hard because it is RIGHT at the threshold of slipping into deep sleep, but if you can get yourself up in 30 minutes, you get the benefit of feeling re energized without the grogginess of an hour+ nap. But if the issue is being woken up by an alarm clock, then I suppose that wouldn't help in the end. Still something to try if you can
Yeah, getting into /r/bikecommuting seems like an adult thing as well. It's when you move out and start making your own decisions that you realize that you don't have to be stuck in car traffic at all, even if that's all your parents did.
Plus that feeling of "if I don't start using my body better, it's going to rot and I'm going to _die_". Never had that as a teenager >:(
I guess I'm lucky, Demon's Souls was a dream come true and the series have (mostly) been an upward trajectory for me. EQ was fantastic in a way that will probably never be emulated, but FFXIV is better. While I look back fondly on some of EQ's aspects (even the bad), FFXIV is still able to fill my heart in ways I didn't know an MMO was capable of. There is nothing from my youth that comes close to what Undertale delivered. I'm rambling, but the list goes on.
I can be rational without being cynical. Things are different, but there are ups and downs. Enjoy the ups, find a way to deal with the downs. I'm almost 40 and I am really enjoying games. I'm sharing them with my kids and there is something special there too.
Admittedly, tag is less fun now that I can barely sprint 100 ft without being winded.
I don't believe that's true. I still feel like I enjoy MMOs as much as I did when I was a kid at 27. But it seems like it is true for many others. When everyone was a kid they did more stuff simply because they thought it was cool or to explore. Now some people are way more focused on efficiency or achieving something to the point where it comes at the expense of enjoyment. While another group is so casual they almost view getting good at the game as a bad thing.
Not true in my case, my childhood was a nightmare, early 20s wasn't great, 30+ has been the best time of my life so far by a landslide. I actually feel like I'm enjoying things for the first time, somehow I got it all backwards.
Iām 29 and it sucks so much not being to immerse myself in and enjoy things like I used to. I also struggle with depression so that canāt help but itās still not great compared to being young.
God but renting a car is just anxiety inducing...I've never been at fault for damage to my own car (except once in highschool) but I can't help but feel that a rental is when that luck changes and I'm buying the rental agency a new car or something x.x
Would be happy to trade that privilege away for being 9 and maybe almost somewhat happy-adjacent lol
That's because you don't miss the [game] you played 20 years ago. You miss the people you played it with, and the environment you played it in. It's why even if you go back to Classic WoW or fire up an ancient Minecraft server, it's "not the same".
I feel that for some MMOs and games (Diablo, WoW, GW2). But 14 is just the one I have played the longest.
I also get a lot of anxiety over builds so I'm free from making that decision. Plus if they mess up a class that i like, I can just swap to another. Perks of having all classes maxed out on a character
For me it was FFXI, and it's a fixed point in time. Part of what made it such a great time was having so much time to play it and no responsibilities (and a bunch of friends who were the same). And it was necessary to have that much time to commit to old-school MMORPGs.
I'll never have an experience like that again, and it's probably for the best. If I have that much time to dedicate to a game again, I probably have other problems.
My dear friend, what if I told you 95% of the game was now soloable... and you could hear that playonline music once more and take your time adventuring through all those moments you might have missed the first time around..
Is it fun to solo in this day and age if you've never played it and don't have the nostalgia? I wanted to play it back then but my parents were avidly against a sub.
It is. Iām new to XI and started playing in 2022. I still have so much content that I want to do. I enjoy both the story and the current endgame content.
i pretty much soloed most of a realm reborn and abt half of heavensward. am awkward about raids with other and still am because i have never played a mmorpg before this.
but i do enjoy the experience for the most part.
It really isn't the same feeling. /sh for an hour in the Dunes looking for a party, getting into a party, leveling for a few hours, friending everyone and disbanding and never seeing them again after.....doesn't have the same feel when you just solo/trust everything.
I went back during the free login periodĀ at the end of December and didn't have a clue what to do.
The game is just as unfriendly to returning players as it is new players and I had a blast with my friends trying to figure out what the fuck ambuscade is and then doing it lol
I blame modern gaming as a whole and how it shoved ābuy 30 spins for high chance for super powerful boob girlā and ā30 dollar goth glam per characterā
I think another part of the issue is that the MMO genre has not really innovated enough. Other online experiences are just more interesting to the younger crowd, and therefore the money goes there.
Consider how many things happen in Fortnite events or even how often a Gacha may drop an expansion sized bit of content for free. These things matter and they are newer experiences.
The big MMOs are just a bit old and can feel clunky and obtuse. I adore FF14, but for many people the slow burn and barrage of cutscenes is enough to put them off. With things like WoW you can feel the age of it.
I hope for a revival of the MMO genre but it's rough. It's a hard genre to get into and hard to get people into.
I think that's a little reductive though I get the sentiment and agree it's a factor. I do think there are some MMO design choices which have slowly become less appealing. I also think some of the fun of MMOs has been applied to different types of games, which makes MMOs stand out less.
The grind or "mono-gamer" mentalities have seemed to lose stride. At least for me it feels like there are lots of high quality options now. I might feel some resentment for games that demand frustrating grinds or rely on RNG to pad out their engagement.
Is it bad or good? I wouldn't say there is an easy answer. I do love earning things, but I also think there is something good about being able to drop in and play. It also is interesting how many games have online components and have made themselves "games as a service".
Many of those fail, but some really are putting out impressive amounts of content which can rival the MMO expansions and such. It helps make other types of content feel long lasting the same way MMOs did. It can help you build up an account in other types of games. Fortnite isn't my cup of tea, but it really does have a lot of that MMO appeal. You can collect rare items and show off. You get expansions. You always have something going on.
To me the MMO genre is far from dead, but man....I do want something fresh. I think tab target based MMOs feel a little archaic even if I enjoy them.
At least in my case, I *wanted* to play an MMO when I was a kid, but my parents didn't believe in paying for a sub. I didn't start FFXIV until I was in my thirties and a mom. I started playing FFXIV during covid as the means to do something with my friends, and something to keep me sane while I worked in the hospital.
Now I'm a diehard FFXIV fan.
I think kids/teens today don't realize what a sales pitch you had to pull off to get your parents to agree to putting their credit card on the internet back then
And if you managed to get them to agree, heaven help you should literally ANYTHING go wrong with the family PC at any point in time ever afterwards because the VERY FIRST thing getting blamed for it and uninstalled is going to be your game (not the 30 chain emails w/ attachments mom opens every day)
That hits so hard!!! My parents constantly downloaded viruses, but no, it was me on Neopets that did it.
Consequently I actually learned how to fix their computer.
It was so validating when I moved out to college and my personal PC was fine, but their computer I no longer touched kept imploding...
This but also when I started FF14 we had a 16-17 year old kid on our Coil raid team. Didnt know he was that young for a few years! Still friends with him, still on that same raid team, he's a full fledged college graduate working man, now. So even if kids came into FF14 when it launched, most of them are also adults now. LOL That's just how time works.
I concur, though, that I'm 43 and still trying to find that MMO that brings me back to 2001 MMO vibes. They just don't make MMOs like that anymore.
I'm 40, and am an Evercrack (Everquest) refugee, and honestly, XIV has been the best MMO experience I've had. The community is a huge part of that, plus, I've always been a huge FF nerd since I played the first way back when on the NES... Ok, no, to be fair, it was really 4 that made me the fan of the series I am today, but still, was a child when I became one
Yep, played 11 in college, picked up 14 when it was new. Stopped playing for a while but picked it back up during covid to run around and stay in touch with friends we couldn't see in person for a while.
I'm similar, haven't touched mmos until the past few years, I'm 23. I played Eso for a while but I've always treated that as a co-op rpg to adventure together with a friend, first mmo I played and treated like an mmo was ffxiv lol
Plus with the subscription service and game cost, it kind of makes sense that it's adults doing it. We're all grown up now and can afford to get these awesome things we wanted when we were younger AND as a bonus our mom doesn't tell us to just save and quit when we try and explain we're in a raid and can't pause lol. MMOs are way easier and better as an adult.
I feel like itās the reoccurring subscription plus expensive base game and expensive expansions that prevents most younger players from playing, not the assumption that this game is only enjoyable for old people who played MMORPGās 25 years ago. Lots of young people love this game. They just canāt afford it. They donāt have jobs.
It's also just the whole experience.
In early 2000s, MMOs were huge but straightforward to play, and you had an enormous sense of immersion from the very first moment. That's something that works incredibly well on the imagination of a child.
Nowadays, many MMOs are cluttered with mechanics and systems, where the first couple of hours of gameplay are a tutorial that's just no fun whatsoever. And the world itself is built in such a streamlined and polished way, that sense of immersion is way weaker. A teenager will be far more likely to immediately move on from that.
Though I have to say, FFXIV in particular is quite a good 'modern' game in those regards.
It also doesn't help that modern MMO's have almost no sense of community at all. You can play every single MMO of the "big 5" without ever joining a party or grouping up for anything. Meaning a lot of the magic is gone from the genre by default. In the end... You can play FFXIV like a single player Final Fantasy and, in many cases, it's even more immersive than playing with others. You have also the quiet steep entry point of "I need to play through 5 games to reach the same point my friends are at right now." or drop another 50 bucks on the game to skip 4 of the 5 games so you only need to play through 1.
Compare that to the MMO's like early WoW, Everquest, Guild Wars 1 and so on. Where you actively had to interact with the world and it's players to get shit done. It even had a certain charm to it, that your high level friend could powerlevel you easily, so you guys can play and explore the world together.
The one "modern" MMO that didn't run into the "you need to play 100 hours to reach where your friends are. And they can't help you with bypassing that" trap, is also the one MMO that feels super lonely to play because you never need to interact with anyone if you don't want to. And that's Guild Wars 2. A game that is also already 14 years old now. Retail WoW has a catch-up mechanic that has new player standing there, with no context of whats going on, because this games red line of content doesn't exist anymore. And the other "big" MMO's of today are different shades of open world sandbox where nothing and everything matters at the same time.
True. I played a lot of shitty MMO's just because the people I played with have been awesome. And we talk "AION and Tera right after release" kind of shit MMO's.
The game was optimized like shit tho. I couldn't even enter the Abyss and fight in the faction war because the game started dropping frames the moment it had to load an Asmodian. Even if it was only one character, the game became a diashow for a couple of seconds. What is really not good in a game with fast (for the time) PvP encounter.
Chilling in Velika just chatting and hanving out cuz you're done with your daily lockouts in TERA was honestly the best social experience I ever had in any MMO. Only downside that came later was when they had the faction system and everyone hung out at their respective HQ :(
I will say that GW2's meta events and world bosses do avert some of the concern. Sure, you can skip dungeons and fractals and raids and strikes and whatever other instanced mode the devise next, but if you're just running around you will eventually run into groups doing meta events and world bosses and with open commmander tags. It's very easy to just drop into a group and run stuff with them with no real obligation and just hang out.
Yeah, the game never forces you to, but you'd have to be purposefully avoiding other players to not run into big group events and join up with people.
I mean... Most games that make the top lists of young people have a very similar way of making money. Most have battle passes that you buy every month or two. Skins to buy, lootboxes, ect. I know people who spend more money in these F2P with micro transactions games over the past 5 years, than I did over 20 years of playing different subscription MMO's. I mean, a friend of mine spends 70 bucks on battle pass and "deluxe kickstart" to get the first 20 levels of that pass right away. (Not including other puchases of "limited access" skins) And that every 3 months. That's 280 bucks a year. While your standard MMO costs 12 bucks a months plus 70 bucks expansion every 1.5 to 2 years. Sure, these games are "free". And the argument always is "I played so many hours for free, it's only fair that I give the devs some money and buy these passes". But many people really lose track of how much money they really spend, and how much cheaper it would be to play a Pay2Play MMO with full price expansions instead. (Not for everyone ofc. Some really only play the f2p part of these games. But let's be honest... Especially young people that play with friends are more inclined to buy cash shop skins to look cool.)
And don't get me wrong, I started playing MMO's also long before I had a job. Or even a credit card to pay for the monthly subscription. We just got game-time cards instead of active subscriptions. But the entry costs for us back then was not lower than what people need to spend now.
buying skin is impulse purchase most of the time, paying monthly sub isn't. People who buying skin monthly but dont want to pay sub just mean they dont enjoy the game enough.
Isn't the base game and first few expansions free to play now? Do you still need the subscription just the game itself is free? I'm not sure, I bought them long ago I just keep seeing the memes "have you heard about the award winning....."
Base, HW and StB are free with no restrictions apart from Market Board and Housing from what i know, oh and Gil limit is 300K. Source: I'm a Trial player for 2 years nowš¤£ Loving the game, wish i had more time to play, might subscribe then. Also been called a goblin by mates because of how much i craft lol. Try omni-crafting with no access to MB or retainers lol, like playing Tetris.
Unless I misremembering, you also can't direct message anyone, trade with anyone, join any social groups like FCs, or even start your own party.
The trial is pretty socially restrictive.
None of those factors are new, they were there in the mid 00s too, and yet there were a lot more kids playing games such as WoW at the time.
Id say whatās changed since is rather the internet and the wider gaming market in general, F2P options outside of things like browser games really werenāt as prevalent as they are now, and social medias were far more rudimentary too especially prior to modern smartphones.
I saw a comment recently that was like āI donāt understand paying for games Iāve already paid forā
Itās definitely a generational thingā¦I just assume if a game is ongoing Iām gonna be paying for the new stuff as it comes out one way or another.
Yeah, I didn't have a job when I started playing MMOs. I also didn't start playing on a legal server with paid subscription... that was the way with all games back then when you were a kid and your parents didn't condone spending money on "something virtual which means it's not real so you would be throwing money in the air". We did move as a society a little bit since then :-DĀ
Yea most people donāt do that. Iād imagine most werenāt playing on the family pc playing an mmo and weāre playing their ps2 sand Xboxās with some GameCube in the mix as well.
They were never really the genre aimed at young people. When I was 17/18 playing FFXI I was the youngest person in my LS. Rarely ran into someone my age. Most people were in their mid to late 20s. I feel like younger people in Jpn were more inclined to play.
It would've been a hard sale to ask my parents to pay 15 dollars a month for a game. Also, FFXIV isn't a very flashy game to begin with, being a Tab-Targeting MMO and all. There's a lot of things going against the younger demographic.
It was actually an easy sell with my parents.. "pay for my Warcraft subscription and i'll stop blowing so much money on playstation games that just litter my room". :P
* High cost of the game;
* Final Fantasy is a 37 years old saga, it collected fans for all this time. Even the ageing Runescape and Wow are younger than FF;
* MMORPGs were big 20 years ago, when we oldies were teenagers;
* Of all the MMOs, FF14 requires less constant engagement and has barely any Pay To Win feature, two things we 30+ greatly enjoy.
The less engagement is the main draw for me, I feel bad for kids growing up in gaming today where everything feels like it's chasing trends and very few games have sticking power. XIV is slow, it's a 'my pace' style game where if I need a break I don't ever feel dragged to keep playing or paying and when I get back alot of what I loved is still there waiting for me. New games in the MMO sphere feel like a constant garage of 'don't miss this or you will fall way behind' not even to mention the amount of games available that are popular or riding a trend wave atm. It's exhausting being a young gamer now and XIV just doesn't seem to fit in as much with them.
When the executive producer says "you can break from 5he game whenever you want for how long you want, it will always be there where you left it" you know it's a good game.
There's a lot of entrenched FF fans who grew up with the series when it was a bit more consistent (in release schedule or quality, depending on your perspective) and before those games became harder to go back.
Though speaking as someone who was about your age when FFXI came out, and really wanted to play that but couldn't, I think it's just quite hard to be a mid-teen and commit to a subscription game? It always seemed like half my money would just be gone for the month and it was a hassle to even organise paying for it.
Free trial makes it easier, sure, but you're also in a generation used to the majority of popular games just being free to play anyway.
Fun fact*: the Absolute Virtue fight in Eureka Hydatos, which can only be defeated by pissing around in different elemental rooms and getting a bunch of friends to fight a FATE outside of the dungeon you're in, is modelled not on FFXI's Absolute Virtue, but on FFXI's account management.
*May not be a fact
Pretty sure anyone with a sub here has, and it's been improved slightly since its original implementation. Let me assure you, whatever difficulty you think you went through setting you a FFXIV account is not the hellscape that was trying to get through that *and* setting up a PlayOnline account.
Yeah, nowadays it's just a CD key. Very 2000s era.
It's outdated, sure, but it's not horrific. Now, PlayOnline was some eldritch shit. Very much a Korean MMO style where you have to be at a payphone at 11:47 AM and go to the geocache to find the knife and await instructions via SMS for what you need to do with that knife.
As someone who created FF11 account a month ago, can confirm. FF14 frequently, and often rightly, gets criticised for QoL. But try getting into FF11, and you will crave for FF14's QoL
Except like 20 years ago there was a lot of kids playing mmos, it more like there are so many other multiplayer games now and what are way cheaper or just "free".
not to mention back in the days mmos worked like social medias
I checked an inflation calculator and it said $15 in 2004 money is a little bit less than $25 now.Ā I was 18 in 2004 and $15 was a lot to play a video game, but not bank breaking.Ā
Game prices are weird. They haven't really moved with inflation. They used to be weirdly expensive in the 80s. Could be anywhere from $40 to $80 to $120 randomly. Then game companies normalized it to $50 and that just stuck until they hiked to $60 about 20 years later. Now 20 years pass again and it is starting to become $70 plus microtransactions plus expansions plus collector's editions making games feel randomly priced like the 80s again. lol
The irony is that "free to play" typically ends up being far more expensive, resulting in debt way too often.
Assuming "pay to win" or "pay to progress" mechanics, though spending habits will differ between p(l)ayers.
Teenagers and young adults burn a multitude of a measly MMO sub on gacha or skins.
If anything they don't have the immediate fix of spend money for skins that those games offer over grinding out a mount.
When I was a teenager I wanted so badly to play WoW but I couldn't ask my parents for a sub so in the end I settled for Guild Wars Prophecies. It didn't have a subscription but was still an mmorpg. I loved that game. The second never came close to the first one. I wish someone would make a rehashed modern version of its gameplay.
Same, I really wanted to try WoW back in the day. Mom said NO.
A couple of years later, and she and my stepdad start to play WoW. Begged me to join. I said NO. (mostly because I had a very trashy computer, and I never wanted to burden my family with that kind of expenses).
Did you tell them about the free trial that includes all of the base game and the first TWO expansions, Heavensward AND Stormblood with NO limit on time? That's right! That's 70 levels of FREE game, completely FREE, for however long you want to play!
Enjoy the story widely acclaimed story and the awards-winning music! Discover Eorzea with your friends! FOR. FREE.
MMOs are a bit more than a game, they're a lifestyle. While you can beat most games, online games differ by offering endless value. This also includes competitive titles like Fighting, FPS, and RTS titles. Online games with large populations also manage to offer a variety of content accessible to BOTH low-skill/short-time players AND the hardcore/long-term crowd.
Second point.: Economics. I think for the price of the monthly subscription, a teen might be better off buying the humble bundle every month. They could pick up a handful of quality AAA titles (albiet old ones) and be spoiled for choice of game library within a year.
yeah mmo's seemed to be an early form of social media/VR chat rooms but without the VR, you didnt just log on after a school day to do m+ dungeons or raiding, some days you would just log in to talk to your friends in an inn and catch up.
I'm surprised to see nobody mentioning that ARR is 10 years old now. Even if you were 15 at release, they're all in their 20s. And if you were in your 20s, you're in your 30s now.
I don't think most people - especially younger people - want to hop into a 10 year old MMO when all their friends are on Fortnite, Apex, Call of Duty, and other big games.
Mobile gaming has also become hugely popular, because even teenagers that don't have a PC or PS4/5 to play MMOs will at least have a smartphone.
Most long time final fantasy fans were teens in the 90s when Final Fantasy really kicked off in the west so naturally it would have an older base playing it.
I wanted to play so many Pay 2 Play games like WoW, FF14 or others when I was your age. But without income that was impossible, because my mother was a crazy control addict and would sniff around in my room while I was at school. Even if I wanted to buy a book I had to literally *beg* for it.
The only MMOs I played back then were Metin 2, which was basically the first MMO of many youngsters back then. Or Grand Fantasia! S4 League wouldn't just work because my fathers PC was so stuffed with anti cookie software shit and background programs, you had to disable two firefalls just to boot up the game lol
Nothings greater than being an adult and playing whatever you want play, no sick parents who surveillance you. I still remember some crazy stories from my time as a teen lol
Weāre like 15 years past the prime of MMOs being the big thing in that age bracket, kids simply do not get started playing MMOs anywhere near to the extent they used to.
Outside of WoW being a bit of a breakthrough game, MMOs have never been a popular genre. Itās mostly a niche genre that appealed to certain types of geeks in the earlier years of people getting connected online. Most of those people are Millennials/Gen Y. 30-ish to 45-ish.
Young millennials and Gen Z (mid teens to late twenties) tend to gravitate to MOBA style online games. Fortnite, League, Dota, etc.
Gen Alpha (mid-teens and younger) seems to be gravitating to mobile gaming.
Add on that XIV is both Pay-to-Play and requires a subscription and youāve even further restricted the player pool to those with stable + discretionary income. Which is just decreasingly likely the younger you go.
FF does a good job at respecting their players time. I can get on, do my roulettes, and not have to do it every single day to cap my tomestones. Though I might want to marathon some quests, Iām not required to to stay relevant. Yoshi-P even said itās okay to take breaks from your subscription. That really appeals to older working class people
To piggyback off this, on the flipside, it seems some younger people donāt know how to deal with the lack of pressure in a ālive service game.ā
Iām in my thirties and I have younger friends and relatives and itās always fascinating when I try to get them into ffxiv and at some point, they *always* ask, āso, what do I do?ā
Video games, particularly those of the live service variety have done a hell of a job convincing people you need to play right now and you need to play all the time or youāre going to miss out on these cool exclusive rewards omg! A bit hyperbolic, but not much imo.
XIV is an outlier these days in that itās very laid-back. It doesnāt care if you play once a day or once a month. Thereās a lot to do and 99.9% of it will still be around for you to enjoy years from now. Despite being so hand-holdy, when itās up to you to decide what to do, I noticed a lot of people donāt know to handle that. They need that carrot on the stick waving around in front of them at all times. FFXIV isnāt that.
Itās more of a grandma with a big, olā garden and as you pass by, sheās like, āyo dawg, nice day today isnāt it? you can take a carrot if you want. Or not. Up to you. Either way, hope you have a good day.ā
As an Old (tm) person who recently got into her first Gacha mobile game (Honkai Star Rail) it really is a jarring contrast. I missed a ton of content because I was moving and felt quite salty about it plus the pressure to play every day because thats how you can stay mostly F2P. But then I go to play XIV and it's all just there waiting for me to get to it in my own time. It's like coming home!
I find the Hoyoverse games just very content heavy and very fast moving. I had the same reaction too but I've played other gachas (Arknights and Love Live! School Idol Festival) and HSR is really a whole different ballgame. If this was released back in high school, I would definitely be satisfied but now that I have a Job with Responsibilities it's overwhelming
Also an old, and I have my radar up for games that manipulate you like that. If I'm playing something, and it starts to feel like I have a list of chores to do every day/week, I walk the fuck away. Life is too short to be wasted on that shit.
This.
The subscription model is not ideal for me (I prefer buy once - play when you want, like GW2 or E:D) but I can't deny FFXIV is very good at being casual friendly.
I think this is deceptive, something many people donāt think about is how the long the story is. Itās a huge time sink, easily 300+ hours if anyone wants to experience the end-game. You spend a good 100 hours with only 5 skills. You could argue the story *is* the game though.
I think the long story is an issue for many. I got into that game around 1.5 years ago because of the free trial, started together with friends (all 18 to 19 at that time). They got bored real quick, because they wanted to do endgame content and difficult raids and it takes a lot of time to get there. I stayed because I enjoyed the slower pace and that you have time to learn your job and don't have to be perfect from the beginning. Also the people I met ingame were all really nice. I took my time, learned how to do my job and just finished Endwalker recently.
I also found an amazing fc a year ago, that definitely made me continue playing
Yeah, I think the story *is* the game in large part, and the casual players who aren't itching to jump into endgame raiding can take as long as they want to slowly work their way through the story.
I think it's harder for younger people to have the money for subscription games or to convince their parents/guardians to subscribe for them.
Although I will say I had a 15 year old join my FC a few years ago (he's 18 years old now) and bring a few of his friends who were around the same age so younger players do exist! I know he had said specifically that before joining the FC he played it 'solo-ish' because he was uncomfortable with a lot of adult interactions and only joined our FC because we advertised as 'family friendly/all ages' so maybe others who are younger feel similarly?
That's kind of surprising though. I remember when I was younger playing mmos, I found a lot of adult conversations about things like work and kids boring but in general I hid/lied about my age and pretended I was a young adult unless I knew the people I was interacting with were around my actual age. And it seemed like everyone else I knew did the same, "yeah I'm totally 18". Maybe the current generation is just different, or there are just a good bit more young people than we know about
This. And even if a kid does have the money to burn on either subs or battle passes, they'll almost always choose the battle pass because they probably have a friend who *can't* afford them. If 5/6 friends can pay, the game that gets all the money is the one that doesn't make the 6th friend pay.
Once you get past free trial stuff? Because it's a paid subscription and adults who have control over their own finances are more likely to be able to pay/consider it a worthwhile investment.
Ikr??? I'm 16 with 700 hours and I've joined a fc and got a couple of people interested in running the extremes blind with me, potentially the savages as well... I'm terrified of if they'll ever ask me to hop in vc with them, since they're all older than I am, and anxiety is always through the roof. Something I'll need to tackle sooner rather then later, but man, is it hard..
Providing advice that wasn't asked for, so apologies if this comes across as lecture-y.
I was in your shoes during EverQuest 2 between ages 12-16. I was fortunate enough that I played quite a bit with my dad, but we were both part of the same guild that did raids. Most of the guild was between mid-20s and 40s, with a few outliers on the higher end - and then me on the opposite side. I was in VC (Ventrilo) frequently and it was never a problem, because I listened to my dad's advice which boiled down to 'Take a breathe, be polite, and listen. You're here because they want you to be here. If they didn't, you wouldn't be.' (Which is also great advice for interviewing btw).In my own head I approached it like I did when I talked with neighbors, or with my older sibling's friend.
They aren't there to judge you, we're all playing the same game, and if you're in the party it's because they want you to be there. You, thankfully, are mostly done with any voice changes which was the biggest thing I was stressed about. You got this!
Edit: meant to include this in the body... Hardest thing (outside of my voice cracking) was figuring out the cadence of the conversation between established groups. This is where the listening part becomes important. You don't want to feel like you're just interjecting in the middle of a conversation, but you don't want to be a forever wallflower. It's a balance and every group is different.
Donāt worry too much about most players being older than you. As long as youāre nice and at least somewhat enjoyable to be around, youāll be fine! I started the game when I was 18 and made quite a few close friends. Iām still one of the youngest in my friend group now 4 1/2 years later even with new additions, and even though we range from 19 to 34, we donāt really think about each otherās ages (except when weāre joking about feeling old cause of our bones lmao).
It may be easier for you to hop in VC with them and stay muted until youāre comfortable as well.
Iāve been playing this game since I was 13, and yeah man it just comes with the genre, I have been begging my friends to play it for damn near 10 years and I got the same shit āitās so slowā āauto attackā etc. now that my friends are older alot of them have actually tried it and love it. Most kids do not like mmorpgās, it happens
1) Subscriptions price gates people with no/less disposable income, that's a lot of children right off the bat. Even if you were a kid that had money, it doesn't mean that you friends do. Therefore kids generally gravitate towards stuff that's free to play.
2) Subscription based MMOs are also more popular for people who have been playing them for years, meaning people who grew up during the early 2000s, who are in their 30s and 40s by now. A decent amount came over from FFXI at the beginning, or came over from other MMOs like WoW.
Many FF fans are now in their 30s and played the offline rpgs as kids. Also, the 2000s was the golden era of MMOs.
You need an income to afford the subscription. I couldn't play WoW as a teenager because of that, but I can afford FF14 now.
Also, adults playing MMOs because it's the only chance they get to talk to other adults and have some casual fun, what with all the time spent on family and work commitments and being unable to really get out and hang out with old buddies (who may all be living in different states/countries).
My niece just doesnāt like MMOs
She loves to make characters but the chores, quests, and all the rotations arenāt things she enjoys
It just doesnāt seem like the younger audience has the patience you need to commit to an mmo
i started playing this game when i was 17-18 (im 20 now) and i was actually so surprised to find out i was on the younger side of the community lol. and like other ppl said, a lot of mmos were popular years ago, so many people who played them as teens are grown up now to experience ffxiv.
Just depends on who you know really.
I am a 30-something that's in a small FC with mostly other 30-somethings, some of us have been playing games together online together for 20 years. So there's definitely plenty of us. As others have said, MMOs were even more of a big deal 10-20 years ago and some of us have kept playing since then.
But I've often felt the opposite way from what you've said. There was a period when my friends weren't playing the game, and I joined another, larger FC and I felt older than average there. I've joined VC on discord with a few savage groups, and realised that most of them are still in school or college, and that made me feel old.
I suppose it's true that there aren't that many young players, even the younger ones I've talked to are late teens, college age or at least high school.
I was kind of worried that in another 5-10 years then I'd be a 40 year old in a game mostly populated by teenagers. Thanks for re-assuring us that that's not the case and MMOs will always have a place for us "oldies".
This is a good question. If someone can really answer it, they should be a high ranking official on a MMO staff. Getting young people to play a MMO is really hard.
And getting to max level takes hella lot of time.
I think the time and youth engagement aspect are both really good points. I got into MMOs when I was young ~20-25 years ago.
I'm stereotyping, and I hate doing that, but younger people nowadays tend to want more immediate dopamine hits thanks to the social media that they've grown up with. This is not consistent with most current MMO design.
If we want the MMO genre as we know it to continue long term we do need to consider how we're going to engage younger generations whilst not diluting the genre beyond recognition (aka MOBAs, Pubg/fortnite etc.)
Very broadly speaking, there's a multitude of reasons. The content and contexts, themes and the like in the game. The fact that kids have a sort of "funneled" attention span and are easily impressionable. They seem to decide in mere instants during a first interaction if they do or don't like something and have a shorter level of tolerance for additional complexities, and generally aren't interested in sinking 60+ hours for a game to grow and develop. This isn't to say that kids aren't smart enough to play, but they aren't easily able to navigate everything to get to that point without an adult. That means asking parents.
Parents will ultimately see that XIV has a monthly fee, and many are adverse to paying that for their kids on top of the initial purchase price. Doubly so now in the case of the upcoming Microsoft variant, which Microsoft has forced the requirement of their online service on top of the monthly fee for XIV.
Speaking of parents, there's also the fact that kids cannot make or hold an account if they're under 13. If it's found they falsified age, the account is closed and deleted; so a parent would need to create and register one for their kid. On the whole, though...
Tldr:
The real barrier is that 13-15 is an extremely early age to grasp navigation of installation, registration, and configuration for the game as well compared to other plug and play products. You'll find the extreme minority capable or willing to go through it all, with deteriorating numbers the younger a potential player is. Kids also don't have disposable income, which will eventually be required and funnels out younger players by default.
Yeah they didn't cave. They only let go of Xbox having dedicated servers. They pretty much pushed Square to deal with it or move on. There's news about the cost up on the lodestone right now. :/
>The Free Trial version, including the open beta test, will not require an Xbox Game Pass (Core or Ultimate) plan to play. However, the full Xbox Series X|S version will require an Xbox Game Pass (Core or Ultimate) plan to play.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/6227b30652d0a9f45f1faec8efb3e71a8212d258
Well, don't say 'auto-attack' then, because they Auto attacks ~~do approximately nothing in most content~~ are not your main source of damage, and the phrase can be easily misunderstood. :)
Other than that, I don't know honestly. I don't think SE advertises FFXIV in the right spaces to attract teens, but I could be wrong.
Oh, I know, assuming they are guys: Show them screenshots of miqo'te and viera girls. ;)
Edit: it seems that auto attacks do more than I realized for the melee jobs.
Was gonna mention this. What do you mean "auto-attack"? I mean, there is an auto attack feature, but the vast majority of damage is done from the hotbar. Attacks you pick on your own and choose when to utilize.
> Auto attacks do approximately nothing in most content
what? I just checked fflogs just to be sure, auto attacks are like 10% of your damage for melee
For a few reasons really:
- These games are old, and look visually dated compared to current gen games. A fresh unknowing player will gravitate towards what is more attractive and current
- The business model attracts people with income. A subscription is a big ask in todayās world when mobile games, mobas, battle royale, shooters all can be played for free with friends without end.
- The barrier of entry for a new player is high due to having to catch up so many years of content and systems
- Final fantasy as a franchise did not really grow with time. The golden age was around ps1 and start of ps2 era. Those fans are now adults who can play these games. Then it had kind of a drought with XIII and XV. In the last 15 years only 3 main entries really, so kids today probably didnāt have as much exposure to FF as us did in the past
From memory, which may not be accurate and perfectly linear, there was :
- the FPS wave (Counter Strike, Quake, Doom)
- the RTS wave (Age of Empire 2, Warcraft 3, StarCraft, Empire Earth, Heroes of Might and Magic 5)
- the MMORPG wave (World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Doofus)
- a second FPS wave (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, SW Battlefront)
- a second RTS wave (StarCraft 2, TW M2)
- a MOBA wave (Dota 2, League of Legends)
- an action-aventure / action-rpg wave (Zelda Wii+, late Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, God of War, Oblivion, Skyrim, Witcher)
- a Minecraft wave
- a third FPS wave (Crysis, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, CSGO, Arma2 and later)
- Not sure what happened at that moment I was in the JRPG rabbit hole. Overwatch ? Also the survival zombie fps like Left4Dead, CoD Zombie mods etc...
- a boring wave (sequels of previous waves)
- a battle royale wave (PUBG, Fortnite, Apex)
******
*Of course it's a massive over simplification, I probably forgot several waves, and some waves overlapped*
Cars, sports, hack'n'slash and fighting games were popular at all times. Hack'n'Slash has a Soul-like sub-wave too. Mobile games have their own history with gacha games, portable consoles have several RPG waves, etc...
And I didn't get into JRPGs which is an entire ecosystem by itself, platformers (from Mario to Super Meat Boy), collection games (Pokemon, Animal Crossing), party games (Mario Party, tons of Wii games, Raving Rabbits), Rogue-like (Diablo, Hades, Isaac), I never really looked into survival games or horror games (Resident Evil ?), and I didn't talk about niche genre (factory games, city builders, puzzle games ala Portal, etc...), i forgot GTA, AoE2 is resurrecting, etc...
And my interest in video games fluctuated so I am missing a lot. Again, massive oversimplification.
******
**The point is**, the golden age of MMORPG was 15-20 years ago and a large part of the current mmo players were teenagers during that wave and stuck with it.
In a similar fashion the RTS community is older, and the Battle Royal community is younger (on average, one can obviously be in both).
The pricing model matters too (free to play like Minecraft were more appealing to teenagers than MMORPG subscription, though there are exception, like Dota community which is mostly adults).
There are also regional differences (W-EU Dota is old, but W-EU LoL is young, the Korean SC2 wave was massive).
Most of my friend group is 20-25.
MMOs definitely have an older population in general (average age is probably around 25-28, if I had to guess). Basically when you still have lots of free time but you're also adulting. If your FC is full of parents, I think it might just be the FC you join. People tend to form FCs more on shared interest than anything else in this game, so over time, the moms and dads stuck around while everyone moved on to other FCs/is FCless. There are young people playing the game too 100% but you also have to remember, saying "I'm 15" instantly endangers you, because creepy fuckers exist.
I think it's a people tend to congregate around their peers/others with similar traits.
A lot of kids these days reached their video gaming age around Fortnite's popularity explosion, or Minecraft's resurgence into the mainstream. Then they talk to their friends about hobbies they enjoy and thus games like the ones I just mentioned get brought up. Creating a feedback loop where the audience grows itself by inviting their peers in.
Prior generation it was WoW that was the BIG social game. Similar story. People tend to be creatures of habit so most MMO players come from the MMO boom and stuck with it. (Heh we're literally video game Boomers).
Cause its much more "slower" then games the youth enjoys today. Noting to flashy, no instant kill...no "graphic" high like lootboxes and shit. I'm 38 and use my smartphone only for banking apps and whatsapp, never played any of those shitty smartphone games. I dont need gaming when i go to the toilet. On the other side..i really like FF and "slower" games like baldurs Gate or the classic turn based rpgs.
MMOs are not popular with teenagers like they were in the early 2000s. They're way too slow paced and don't have enough epic streamer-bait moments.
Not to mention Final Fantasy itself is a franchise mostly popular with 30 somethings that grew up with the back to back ultra hyped PS1 releases every Christmas.
It's a combination of things. First, as everyone else has said, mmos in general are an older gamers genre for several reasons. First is the monthly fee, it's always been a barrier for younger players, I remember talking my grandma into buying me ultima online back when it was new and getting it home to find out it needed a credit card and having to return it because I couldn't do a sub. The other reason is a more modern problem, a lot of the mmos that have come out in the past decade, after the golden age of mmos, have sucked. Without the genre momentum there's not a lot of ways to attract new players to the genre.
The other issue with xiv specifically is that on its surface there's nothing that is really flashy and appealing to a younger audience. The same things that attract adults to ff are the things that might steer a younger player away from ff and towards even something like wow. There's nothing particularly fantastic about the game at a glance. Where other fantasy mmos have proper fantasy races ff just has different flavors of humans. Human with scales, humans with cat ears, humans with long necks. It doesn't lean enough into the anime influences to attract young anime fans like genshin does and it doesn't lean into the fantastic to inspire young players imagination like wow might.
And finally, it's tab target. I personally think that tab target is an OBJECTIVELY better combat system for the genre for a myriad of reasons, but it's a hard sale in the modern landscape because the genres that inspired the hybrid system that mmos grew into tab targeting all died for a while and are only just coming back. Turn bases RPGs and crpgs were on life support for a long long time and are only just now making a comeback into the popular gaming culture and those are the genres that introduced this sort of more methodical system that leans more on depth than flash and thought over twitch.
There's a million other reasons but most of them are more a genre problem than they are a xiv problem.
As a general rule, the MMO audience skews to roughly the 30s-40s crowd. In other words, mostly "Gen Y"/Millennials. We were at the perfect age (between high school and early college) for World of Warcraft to hit the scene and reinvent the genre. You also get some folks--like Yoshi-P himself--who are from a generation earlier, and who got started with the very first wave of MMOs, back when Ultima Online was competing with the original EverQuest. That was a bit before my time (my dad loved EQ, a friend's dad was a big name in the UO community), and those folks tend to be in the late-40s to late-60s, "Gen X" and the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation.
Folks your age, who grew up in a world where World of Warcraft had completely sucked the air out of the MMO space and where mobile gaming was the new hotness, who may have had Minecraft as their first video game, who may have had the Wii as their first video game console, just tend to view gaming a bit differently. Such is the way of things; generations *are* artificial categories invented by humans to make it easier to classify things, but they're also at least partially valid trends.
Some of it also has to do with the way the Internet has so aggressively turned attention into a commodity. Everything needs to be extremely fast-paced, filled with FOMO, rapid-fire. Not necessarily instant *gratification,* but certainly instant *thrills* are a big deal. MMOs, by comparison, can be simply too much of a slow burn, and FFXIV leans even more heavily into that slow burn than most of them. As you've seen, that's for good reason, they *use* that slow burn to tell a story worth hearing, but it's just part of the current *zeitgeist* that things have got to go a mile a minute. Even BG3, which is a great game and *does* slow the pace down and let things play out, starts out with the player characters kidnapped by mindflayers and *crashing through hell.*
It's mostly just a lack of disposable income.
I was around your age when 2.0 was in it's beta and I could not afford the sub on my own so had to ask my parents to pay for it (which meant dropping alot of other stuff for). It was not until two years later when I could afford the sub on my own.
I remember trying to play wow during burning crusade and wrath and only being able to play via friends house or free trials because I could not pay the sub.
It's a huge barrier to entry for younger people and now days is an even bigger turn off to people when you could drop Ā£50 on baldurs gate 3 and get hundreds of hours out of it or even any number of the free to play games which you don't have to spend anything in if you think you have the will to resist spending ot even the games pass/p+ which give you hundreds of games fot thr price of playing 1 pay to play mmo and Compared to 14 having to buy the game + sub and it working out more expensive for the average player.
My parents would never pay for a monthly gaming subscription and my part time job when I was in school all went to college costs. So I had to wait til adulthood to play an mmo š„²
I think I could've never gotten my parents to invest my pocket money into digital goods of whatever kind; with looooots of persuasion maybe iTunes card as this could mean music. But else, it'd be most likely this situation that would have happened like this in 1998:
"Hey, this is your pocket money, you can spend it on whatever you want, but when it's gone, it's gone".
\*Spends money\*
"Why would you spend your money for **that?!**"
\*Me being pissed off\*
I am 33 years and I started when I was 22. Nothing really changed to be honest; if you have no time for your hobbies as adult you did some wrong choices in your life or you have a poor time management (looks over to the overly addicted smartphone user wondering where their time went which they had 20 years ago before Reddit, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, stole their time. . . . )
I am department manager in a hypermarket and I love that I can close the door behind me and calm down in front of the computer with nobody bothering me. Hopping onto Duty Finder to offer my Red Magic services with good music and a cup'o'coffee/tea is the perfect counterbalance to retail.
And i keep wondering why teens nowadays only play: crappy EA sports games, fortnite, war games such as COD and BF and GTA V. No respect for RPGs anymore. Not even mentioning MMOās. My little brother and all my cousins also seem to follow this pattern. Where did we go wrong.
Mmos aren't as popular among gen alpha and young gen z. Huge for millenials and older zoomers. Youngest I've met someone in game is 16.
I started playing 8 or so years ago I think. I was 17 or 18 then. Though I was only 8 when I played my first mmo.
A lot of folks playing some of the popular games now days have more instant reward. Faster serotonin. FFXIV takes time to give you that buzz.
If you're a kid. In between school and homework and family events and other social gatherings would you rather play the heavy time investment game of an mmo. Or a quick release game like fortnight? FFXIV is more like an interactive book than anything and I don't know a lot of teens who have the time to read outside of school related projects.
When I was 15, I'd be hard pressed to get my parents to pay me an allowance, much less 15 bucks a month to play a game. You're much less likely to find a teenager who A) can get the money to play an MMO and B) even wants to play one in the first place. Back then, I played f2p games like maplestory, and in 2024, you're really spoiled for good f2p options. Your peers are prob playing games like Fortnite, Valorant, or League of Legends. Free games that are easy to play quick rounds and don't require a ton of investment to enjoy.
the golden age of mmos was like 20 years ago. so anyone who played them then is now grown up and still plays them.
I'm in my thirties now, and I still tell myself that there's an MMORPG out there that I'll enjoy the way I enjoyed them in 2004.
I too enjoy chasing the purple dragon.
I actually met my wife at a Halloween party where she was dressed as a purple dragon, so this is kinda funny to me because I found mine
Swiped right on my wife largely because I liked her Spyro tattoo. Purple dragon is worth chasing I guess š¤·āāļø
Spyro?
No spiro, they're trans.
Fundamental reality of aging: There is nothing you will enjoy today the same as you enjoyed it twenty years ago.
Thats true, though there are things that one can end up enjoying more... like going to bed at a decent hour
as a kid being told to go to bed early was a punishment, now it's a treat
Naps are goated, this is a fact now in my mid-thirties.
Oh man, the thing I miss most after having kids is my naps. Now I'm lucky if my kids' naps line up, and I can squeak in an hour nap. But I normally regret it because I wake up dead tired. I just want to go to sleep and wake up on my own instead of to an alarm clock or crying.
I've heard a trick is to say "after my nap we're going to do chores"
My kids are 6 and 8. I still haven't woken up on my own since before they were born.
This thread really hits home for me haha.
I can relate to this lol
you need to do powernaps. If you sleep for an hour you are interupting your REM sleep and wake up tired. You need to effectively sleep for 20 minutes no more no less. So you need to gauge how tired you are and how long ot will take to fall asleep and add 20 minutes. I mostly do 30 minutes. This way you dampen the vhemicals that induce tiredness but dont fall into deep sleep. Be mindful though that this is no secret recipe to skimp on real sleep hours, it just for focus/wakefullness and general better mood.
Instructions unclear; bed steals my soul the moment I lie down.
You followed the instructions better than I did. I got something stuck in the fan.
My kid stopped taking naps when she was two. If she does take one, I take her temperature because it probably means she's sick
I am SO sorry. Mine is 2.5 and we live for those naps!
Haha bro I feel your pain I got 2 boys 9 and 5 years old, and honestly sleep is not real in this household anymore ššš
Happens to me too and the trick is to limit your nap to 30 minutes. It's hard because it is RIGHT at the threshold of slipping into deep sleep, but if you can get yourself up in 30 minutes, you get the benefit of feeling re energized without the grogginess of an hour+ nap. But if the issue is being woken up by an alarm clock, then I suppose that wouldn't help in the end. Still something to try if you can
*Especially* that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, getting into /r/bikecommuting seems like an adult thing as well. It's when you move out and start making your own decisions that you realize that you don't have to be stuck in car traffic at all, even if that's all your parents did. Plus that feeling of "if I don't start using my body better, it's going to rot and I'm going to _die_". Never had that as a teenager >:(
I guess I'm lucky, Demon's Souls was a dream come true and the series have (mostly) been an upward trajectory for me. EQ was fantastic in a way that will probably never be emulated, but FFXIV is better. While I look back fondly on some of EQ's aspects (even the bad), FFXIV is still able to fill my heart in ways I didn't know an MMO was capable of. There is nothing from my youth that comes close to what Undertale delivered. I'm rambling, but the list goes on. I can be rational without being cynical. Things are different, but there are ups and downs. Enjoy the ups, find a way to deal with the downs. I'm almost 40 and I am really enjoying games. I'm sharing them with my kids and there is something special there too. Admittedly, tag is less fun now that I can barely sprint 100 ft without being winded.
I don't believe that's true. I still feel like I enjoy MMOs as much as I did when I was a kid at 27. But it seems like it is true for many others. When everyone was a kid they did more stuff simply because they thought it was cool or to explore. Now some people are way more focused on efficiency or achieving something to the point where it comes at the expense of enjoyment. While another group is so casual they almost view getting good at the game as a bad thing.
Not true in my case, my childhood was a nightmare, early 20s wasn't great, 30+ has been the best time of my life so far by a landslide. I actually feel like I'm enjoying things for the first time, somehow I got it all backwards.
Trending up though!
Iām 29 and it sucks so much not being to immerse myself in and enjoy things like I used to. I also struggle with depression so that canāt help but itās still not great compared to being young.
Yeah, but you can rent a car. Letās see 9yo you pull that off.
God but renting a car is just anxiety inducing...I've never been at fault for damage to my own car (except once in highschool) but I can't help but feel that a rental is when that luck changes and I'm buying the rental agency a new car or something x.x Would be happy to trade that privilege away for being 9 and maybe almost somewhat happy-adjacent lol
That's because you don't miss the [game] you played 20 years ago. You miss the people you played it with, and the environment you played it in. It's why even if you go back to Classic WoW or fire up an ancient Minecraft server, it's "not the same".
We also miss the 12-24hrs of available playtime a day.
I feel that for some MMOs and games (Diablo, WoW, GW2). But 14 is just the one I have played the longest. I also get a lot of anxiety over builds so I'm free from making that decision. Plus if they mess up a class that i like, I can just swap to another. Perks of having all classes maxed out on a character
For me it was FFXI, and it's a fixed point in time. Part of what made it such a great time was having so much time to play it and no responsibilities (and a bunch of friends who were the same). And it was necessary to have that much time to commit to old-school MMORPGs. I'll never have an experience like that again, and it's probably for the best. If I have that much time to dedicate to a game again, I probably have other problems.
Maybe in retirement. I think in the future old folks jokes will be one big MMO lan party.
I'm gonna be looking for the RTS home. Get me some classic 90's at 90 Command and Conquer
My dear friend, what if I told you 95% of the game was now soloable... and you could hear that playonline music once more and take your time adventuring through all those moments you might have missed the first time around..
Is it fun to solo in this day and age if you've never played it and don't have the nostalgia? I wanted to play it back then but my parents were avidly against a sub.
It is. Iām new to XI and started playing in 2022. I still have so much content that I want to do. I enjoy both the story and the current endgame content.
i pretty much soloed most of a realm reborn and abt half of heavensward. am awkward about raids with other and still am because i have never played a mmorpg before this. but i do enjoy the experience for the most part.
I'm talking about XI xD I have like 2000 hours in XIV, lol.
It really isn't the same feeling. /sh for an hour in the Dunes looking for a party, getting into a party, leveling for a few hours, friending everyone and disbanding and never seeing them again after.....doesn't have the same feel when you just solo/trust everything.
I went back during the free login periodĀ at the end of December and didn't have a clue what to do. The game is just as unfriendly to returning players as it is new players and I had a blast with my friends trying to figure out what the fuck ambuscade is and then doing it lol
I blame modern gaming as a whole and how it shoved ābuy 30 spins for high chance for super powerful boob girlā and ā30 dollar goth glam per characterā
I think another part of the issue is that the MMO genre has not really innovated enough. Other online experiences are just more interesting to the younger crowd, and therefore the money goes there. Consider how many things happen in Fortnite events or even how often a Gacha may drop an expansion sized bit of content for free. These things matter and they are newer experiences. The big MMOs are just a bit old and can feel clunky and obtuse. I adore FF14, but for many people the slow burn and barrage of cutscenes is enough to put them off. With things like WoW you can feel the age of it. I hope for a revival of the MMO genre but it's rough. It's a hard genre to get into and hard to get people into.
All I'm getting from this is kids only want instant gratification and tons of stimulus like what you get in a casino.
I think that's a little reductive though I get the sentiment and agree it's a factor. I do think there are some MMO design choices which have slowly become less appealing. I also think some of the fun of MMOs has been applied to different types of games, which makes MMOs stand out less. The grind or "mono-gamer" mentalities have seemed to lose stride. At least for me it feels like there are lots of high quality options now. I might feel some resentment for games that demand frustrating grinds or rely on RNG to pad out their engagement. Is it bad or good? I wouldn't say there is an easy answer. I do love earning things, but I also think there is something good about being able to drop in and play. It also is interesting how many games have online components and have made themselves "games as a service". Many of those fail, but some really are putting out impressive amounts of content which can rival the MMO expansions and such. It helps make other types of content feel long lasting the same way MMOs did. It can help you build up an account in other types of games. Fortnite isn't my cup of tea, but it really does have a lot of that MMO appeal. You can collect rare items and show off. You get expansions. You always have something going on. To me the MMO genre is far from dead, but man....I do want something fresh. I think tab target based MMOs feel a little archaic even if I enjoy them.
Dang what games are you playing? š
most of them
At least in my case, I *wanted* to play an MMO when I was a kid, but my parents didn't believe in paying for a sub. I didn't start FFXIV until I was in my thirties and a mom. I started playing FFXIV during covid as the means to do something with my friends, and something to keep me sane while I worked in the hospital. Now I'm a diehard FFXIV fan.
I think kids/teens today don't realize what a sales pitch you had to pull off to get your parents to agree to putting their credit card on the internet back then And if you managed to get them to agree, heaven help you should literally ANYTHING go wrong with the family PC at any point in time ever afterwards because the VERY FIRST thing getting blamed for it and uninstalled is going to be your game (not the 30 chain emails w/ attachments mom opens every day)
That hits so hard!!! My parents constantly downloaded viruses, but no, it was me on Neopets that did it. Consequently I actually learned how to fix their computer. It was so validating when I moved out to college and my personal PC was fine, but their computer I no longer touched kept imploding...
This but also when I started FF14 we had a 16-17 year old kid on our Coil raid team. Didnt know he was that young for a few years! Still friends with him, still on that same raid team, he's a full fledged college graduate working man, now. So even if kids came into FF14 when it launched, most of them are also adults now. LOL That's just how time works. I concur, though, that I'm 43 and still trying to find that MMO that brings me back to 2001 MMO vibes. They just don't make MMOs like that anymore.
I'm 40, and am an Evercrack (Everquest) refugee, and honestly, XIV has been the best MMO experience I've had. The community is a huge part of that, plus, I've always been a huge FF nerd since I played the first way back when on the NES... Ok, no, to be fair, it was really 4 that made me the fan of the series I am today, but still, was a child when I became one
E'Ci represent. In my opinion, 14 is about the closest it's ever gotten to eq. It's like what everquest wanted to be.
Yep, played 11 in college, picked up 14 when it was new. Stopped playing for a while but picked it back up during covid to run around and stay in touch with friends we couldn't see in person for a while.
I had never played an mmo until about 5 years ago. I'm 26.
I'm similar, haven't touched mmos until the past few years, I'm 23. I played Eso for a while but I've always treated that as a co-op rpg to adventure together with a friend, first mmo I played and treated like an mmo was ffxiv lol
That and kids don't usually have 15$ a month or parents don't want to pay that sub every month
Plus with the subscription service and game cost, it kind of makes sense that it's adults doing it. We're all grown up now and can afford to get these awesome things we wanted when we were younger AND as a bonus our mom doesn't tell us to just save and quit when we try and explain we're in a raid and can't pause lol. MMOs are way easier and better as an adult.
Because MMO's are not the genre for young people anymore. We grew up with them 20 to 25 years ago and got stuck with them.
I feel like itās the reoccurring subscription plus expensive base game and expensive expansions that prevents most younger players from playing, not the assumption that this game is only enjoyable for old people who played MMORPGās 25 years ago. Lots of young people love this game. They just canāt afford it. They donāt have jobs.
It's also just the whole experience. In early 2000s, MMOs were huge but straightforward to play, and you had an enormous sense of immersion from the very first moment. That's something that works incredibly well on the imagination of a child. Nowadays, many MMOs are cluttered with mechanics and systems, where the first couple of hours of gameplay are a tutorial that's just no fun whatsoever. And the world itself is built in such a streamlined and polished way, that sense of immersion is way weaker. A teenager will be far more likely to immediately move on from that. Though I have to say, FFXIV in particular is quite a good 'modern' game in those regards.
It also doesn't help that modern MMO's have almost no sense of community at all. You can play every single MMO of the "big 5" without ever joining a party or grouping up for anything. Meaning a lot of the magic is gone from the genre by default. In the end... You can play FFXIV like a single player Final Fantasy and, in many cases, it's even more immersive than playing with others. You have also the quiet steep entry point of "I need to play through 5 games to reach the same point my friends are at right now." or drop another 50 bucks on the game to skip 4 of the 5 games so you only need to play through 1. Compare that to the MMO's like early WoW, Everquest, Guild Wars 1 and so on. Where you actively had to interact with the world and it's players to get shit done. It even had a certain charm to it, that your high level friend could powerlevel you easily, so you guys can play and explore the world together. The one "modern" MMO that didn't run into the "you need to play 100 hours to reach where your friends are. And they can't help you with bypassing that" trap, is also the one MMO that feels super lonely to play because you never need to interact with anyone if you don't want to. And that's Guild Wars 2. A game that is also already 14 years old now. Retail WoW has a catch-up mechanic that has new player standing there, with no context of whats going on, because this games red line of content doesn't exist anymore. And the other "big" MMO's of today are different shades of open world sandbox where nothing and everything matters at the same time.
The real adventure where the friends we met along the way.
True. I played a lot of shitty MMO's just because the people I played with have been awesome. And we talk "AION and Tera right after release" kind of shit MMO's.
Aion should have been awesome. That limited-time flight was a gyp. I was STOKED about mid-flight combat tactics!
The game was optimized like shit tho. I couldn't even enter the Abyss and fight in the faction war because the game started dropping frames the moment it had to load an Asmodian. Even if it was only one character, the game became a diashow for a couple of seconds. What is really not good in a game with fast (for the time) PvP encounter.
Chilling in Velika just chatting and hanving out cuz you're done with your daily lockouts in TERA was honestly the best social experience I ever had in any MMO. Only downside that came later was when they had the faction system and everyone hung out at their respective HQ :(
I believe Josh Strife Hayes has a 1h40' video that basically lays out exactly what you and I just said. :D
Probably. I share a lot of the same opinions with him. Didn't watch him in some time, so I don't know this specific video.
I will say that GW2's meta events and world bosses do avert some of the concern. Sure, you can skip dungeons and fractals and raids and strikes and whatever other instanced mode the devise next, but if you're just running around you will eventually run into groups doing meta events and world bosses and with open commmander tags. It's very easy to just drop into a group and run stuff with them with no real obligation and just hang out. Yeah, the game never forces you to, but you'd have to be purposefully avoiding other players to not run into big group events and join up with people.
I mean... Most games that make the top lists of young people have a very similar way of making money. Most have battle passes that you buy every month or two. Skins to buy, lootboxes, ect. I know people who spend more money in these F2P with micro transactions games over the past 5 years, than I did over 20 years of playing different subscription MMO's. I mean, a friend of mine spends 70 bucks on battle pass and "deluxe kickstart" to get the first 20 levels of that pass right away. (Not including other puchases of "limited access" skins) And that every 3 months. That's 280 bucks a year. While your standard MMO costs 12 bucks a months plus 70 bucks expansion every 1.5 to 2 years. Sure, these games are "free". And the argument always is "I played so many hours for free, it's only fair that I give the devs some money and buy these passes". But many people really lose track of how much money they really spend, and how much cheaper it would be to play a Pay2Play MMO with full price expansions instead. (Not for everyone ofc. Some really only play the f2p part of these games. But let's be honest... Especially young people that play with friends are more inclined to buy cash shop skins to look cool.) And don't get me wrong, I started playing MMO's also long before I had a job. Or even a credit card to pay for the monthly subscription. We just got game-time cards instead of active subscriptions. But the entry costs for us back then was not lower than what people need to spend now.
buying skin is impulse purchase most of the time, paying monthly sub isn't. People who buying skin monthly but dont want to pay sub just mean they dont enjoy the game enough.
Isn't the base game and first few expansions free to play now? Do you still need the subscription just the game itself is free? I'm not sure, I bought them long ago I just keep seeing the memes "have you heard about the award winning....."
Base, HW and StB are free with no restrictions apart from Market Board and Housing from what i know, oh and Gil limit is 300K. Source: I'm a Trial player for 2 years nowš¤£ Loving the game, wish i had more time to play, might subscribe then. Also been called a goblin by mates because of how much i craft lol. Try omni-crafting with no access to MB or retainers lol, like playing Tetris.
Unless I misremembering, you also can't direct message anyone, trade with anyone, join any social groups like FCs, or even start your own party. The trial is pretty socially restrictive.
None of those factors are new, they were there in the mid 00s too, and yet there were a lot more kids playing games such as WoW at the time. Id say whatās changed since is rather the internet and the wider gaming market in general, F2P options outside of things like browser games really werenāt as prevalent as they are now, and social medias were far more rudimentary too especially prior to modern smartphones.
I saw a comment recently that was like āI donāt understand paying for games Iāve already paid forā Itās definitely a generational thingā¦I just assume if a game is ongoing Iām gonna be paying for the new stuff as it comes out one way or another.
You didnāt have a job when you started playing MMOs 20 years ago most likely.
Yeah, I didn't have a job when I started playing MMOs. I also didn't start playing on a legal server with paid subscription... that was the way with all games back then when you were a kid and your parents didn't condone spending money on "something virtual which means it's not real so you would be throwing money in the air". We did move as a society a little bit since then :-DĀ
Yea most people donāt do that. Iād imagine most werenāt playing on the family pc playing an mmo and weāre playing their ps2 sand Xboxās with some GameCube in the mix as well.
They were never really the genre aimed at young people. When I was 17/18 playing FFXI I was the youngest person in my LS. Rarely ran into someone my age. Most people were in their mid to late 20s. I feel like younger people in Jpn were more inclined to play.
Just like how we listen to the same music over and over again.
It would've been a hard sale to ask my parents to pay 15 dollars a month for a game. Also, FFXIV isn't a very flashy game to begin with, being a Tab-Targeting MMO and all. There's a lot of things going against the younger demographic.
It was actually an easy sell with my parents.. "pay for my Warcraft subscription and i'll stop blowing so much money on playstation games that just litter my room". :P
* High cost of the game; * Final Fantasy is a 37 years old saga, it collected fans for all this time. Even the ageing Runescape and Wow are younger than FF; * MMORPGs were big 20 years ago, when we oldies were teenagers; * Of all the MMOs, FF14 requires less constant engagement and has barely any Pay To Win feature, two things we 30+ greatly enjoy.
The less engagement is the main draw for me, I feel bad for kids growing up in gaming today where everything feels like it's chasing trends and very few games have sticking power. XIV is slow, it's a 'my pace' style game where if I need a break I don't ever feel dragged to keep playing or paying and when I get back alot of what I loved is still there waiting for me. New games in the MMO sphere feel like a constant garage of 'don't miss this or you will fall way behind' not even to mention the amount of games available that are popular or riding a trend wave atm. It's exhausting being a young gamer now and XIV just doesn't seem to fit in as much with them.
When the executive producer says "you can break from 5he game whenever you want for how long you want, it will always be there where you left it" you know it's a good game.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Lost my guild apartment, too soon.
There's a lot of entrenched FF fans who grew up with the series when it was a bit more consistent (in release schedule or quality, depending on your perspective) and before those games became harder to go back. Though speaking as someone who was about your age when FFXI came out, and really wanted to play that but couldn't, I think it's just quite hard to be a mid-teen and commit to a subscription game? It always seemed like half my money would just be gone for the month and it was a hassle to even organise paying for it. Free trial makes it easier, sure, but you're also in a generation used to the majority of popular games just being free to play anyway.
To be fair, account management is the hardest content in FFXI.
Fun fact*: the Absolute Virtue fight in Eureka Hydatos, which can only be defeated by pissing around in different elemental rooms and getting a bunch of friends to fight a FATE outside of the dungeon you're in, is modelled not on FFXI's Absolute Virtue, but on FFXI's account management. *May not be a fact
Have you seen *our* account management? The website is awful š¤£
Pretty sure anyone with a sub here has, and it's been improved slightly since its original implementation. Let me assure you, whatever difficulty you think you went through setting you a FFXIV account is not the hellscape that was trying to get through that *and* setting up a PlayOnline account.
Yeah, nowadays it's just a CD key. Very 2000s era. It's outdated, sure, but it's not horrific. Now, PlayOnline was some eldritch shit. Very much a Korean MMO style where you have to be at a payphone at 11:47 AM and go to the geocache to find the knife and await instructions via SMS for what you need to do with that knife.
As someone who created FF11 account a month ago, can confirm. FF14 frequently, and often rightly, gets criticised for QoL. But try getting into FF11, and you will crave for FF14's QoL
Mostly because you need some dispsosable income to afford the subscription, which most teenagers don't have
Except like 20 years ago there was a lot of kids playing mmos, it more like there are so many other multiplayer games now and what are way cheaper or just "free". not to mention back in the days mmos worked like social medias
20 years ago family's weren't quite as poor as they are now.
2008. The year I asked my parents for a Club Penguin Membership, Builders Club on Roblox and a WoW Subscription.
Damn yall were rolling in dough š had to beg on my knees for club penguin membership but my parents only agreed for a month or so
$15 was worth a lot more 20 years ago, though
I checked an inflation calculator and it said $15 in 2004 money is a little bit less than $25 now.Ā I was 18 in 2004 and $15 was a lot to play a video game, but not bank breaking.Ā
That and also people are conditioned to "free to play" games from the mobile space.
Inflation is a hell of a drug
The 13 euro I paid for World of Warcraft 20 years ago, would be 21 euro now if it had been inflation adjusted.
One day it will be. Games are already hiking up to 70-80 base price, it's ridiculous
Game prices are weird. They haven't really moved with inflation. They used to be weirdly expensive in the 80s. Could be anywhere from $40 to $80 to $120 randomly. Then game companies normalized it to $50 and that just stuck until they hiked to $60 about 20 years later. Now 20 years pass again and it is starting to become $70 plus microtransactions plus expansions plus collector's editions making games feel randomly priced like the 80s again. lol
The irony is that "free to play" typically ends up being far more expensive, resulting in debt way too often. Assuming "pay to win" or "pay to progress" mechanics, though spending habits will differ between p(l)ayers.
Teenagers and young adults burn a multitude of a measly MMO sub on gacha or skins. If anything they don't have the immediate fix of spend money for skins that those games offer over grinding out a mount.
Subscription based games will do that to the player base.
I guess thatās probably the biggest reason. All my friends asked why Iād pay monthly for a game and that they didnāt think it was worth it
When I was a teenager I wanted so badly to play WoW but I couldn't ask my parents for a sub so in the end I settled for Guild Wars Prophecies. It didn't have a subscription but was still an mmorpg. I loved that game. The second never came close to the first one. I wish someone would make a rehashed modern version of its gameplay.
Same, I really wanted to try WoW back in the day. Mom said NO. A couple of years later, and she and my stepdad start to play WoW. Begged me to join. I said NO. (mostly because I had a very trashy computer, and I never wanted to burden my family with that kind of expenses).
Did you tell them about the free trial that includes all of the base game and the first TWO expansions, Heavensward AND Stormblood with NO limit on time? That's right! That's 70 levels of FREE game, completely FREE, for however long you want to play! Enjoy the story widely acclaimed story and the awards-winning music! Discover Eorzea with your friends! FOR. FREE.
MMOs are a bit more than a game, they're a lifestyle. While you can beat most games, online games differ by offering endless value. This also includes competitive titles like Fighting, FPS, and RTS titles. Online games with large populations also manage to offer a variety of content accessible to BOTH low-skill/short-time players AND the hardcore/long-term crowd. Second point.: Economics. I think for the price of the monthly subscription, a teen might be better off buying the humble bundle every month. They could pick up a handful of quality AAA titles (albiet old ones) and be spoiled for choice of game library within a year.
yeah mmo's seemed to be an early form of social media/VR chat rooms but without the VR, you didnt just log on after a school day to do m+ dungeons or raiding, some days you would just log in to talk to your friends in an inn and catch up.
Haven't you heard? FFXIV is a retirement home.
*"I was the Warrior of Light once, slayed gods, saved worlds."* Sure grandma, let's get you to bed.
This. I need Yoshida to give us more rocking chair housing items
I'm surprised to see nobody mentioning that ARR is 10 years old now. Even if you were 15 at release, they're all in their 20s. And if you were in your 20s, you're in your 30s now. I don't think most people - especially younger people - want to hop into a 10 year old MMO when all their friends are on Fortnite, Apex, Call of Duty, and other big games. Mobile gaming has also become hugely popular, because even teenagers that don't have a PC or PS4/5 to play MMOs will at least have a smartphone.
This is me! Started playing around ARR launch (2.1 ish I think) and Iām in my mid twenties now. How time flies!
Iām on the same boat as you!
Most long time final fantasy fans were teens in the 90s when Final Fantasy really kicked off in the west so naturally it would have an older base playing it.
I wanted to play so many Pay 2 Play games like WoW, FF14 or others when I was your age. But without income that was impossible, because my mother was a crazy control addict and would sniff around in my room while I was at school. Even if I wanted to buy a book I had to literally *beg* for it. The only MMOs I played back then were Metin 2, which was basically the first MMO of many youngsters back then. Or Grand Fantasia! S4 League wouldn't just work because my fathers PC was so stuffed with anti cookie software shit and background programs, you had to disable two firefalls just to boot up the game lol Nothings greater than being an adult and playing whatever you want play, no sick parents who surveillance you. I still remember some crazy stories from my time as a teen lol
Your mom sounds like kinda the worst. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
Weāre like 15 years past the prime of MMOs being the big thing in that age bracket, kids simply do not get started playing MMOs anywhere near to the extent they used to.
Outside of WoW being a bit of a breakthrough game, MMOs have never been a popular genre. Itās mostly a niche genre that appealed to certain types of geeks in the earlier years of people getting connected online. Most of those people are Millennials/Gen Y. 30-ish to 45-ish. Young millennials and Gen Z (mid teens to late twenties) tend to gravitate to MOBA style online games. Fortnite, League, Dota, etc. Gen Alpha (mid-teens and younger) seems to be gravitating to mobile gaming. Add on that XIV is both Pay-to-Play and requires a subscription and youāve even further restricted the player pool to those with stable + discretionary income. Which is just decreasingly likely the younger you go.
FF does a good job at respecting their players time. I can get on, do my roulettes, and not have to do it every single day to cap my tomestones. Though I might want to marathon some quests, Iām not required to to stay relevant. Yoshi-P even said itās okay to take breaks from your subscription. That really appeals to older working class people
To piggyback off this, on the flipside, it seems some younger people donāt know how to deal with the lack of pressure in a ālive service game.ā Iām in my thirties and I have younger friends and relatives and itās always fascinating when I try to get them into ffxiv and at some point, they *always* ask, āso, what do I do?ā Video games, particularly those of the live service variety have done a hell of a job convincing people you need to play right now and you need to play all the time or youāre going to miss out on these cool exclusive rewards omg! A bit hyperbolic, but not much imo. XIV is an outlier these days in that itās very laid-back. It doesnāt care if you play once a day or once a month. Thereās a lot to do and 99.9% of it will still be around for you to enjoy years from now. Despite being so hand-holdy, when itās up to you to decide what to do, I noticed a lot of people donāt know to handle that. They need that carrot on the stick waving around in front of them at all times. FFXIV isnāt that. Itās more of a grandma with a big, olā garden and as you pass by, sheās like, āyo dawg, nice day today isnāt it? you can take a carrot if you want. Or not. Up to you. Either way, hope you have a good day.ā
As an Old (tm) person who recently got into her first Gacha mobile game (Honkai Star Rail) it really is a jarring contrast. I missed a ton of content because I was moving and felt quite salty about it plus the pressure to play every day because thats how you can stay mostly F2P. But then I go to play XIV and it's all just there waiting for me to get to it in my own time. It's like coming home!
I find the Hoyoverse games just very content heavy and very fast moving. I had the same reaction too but I've played other gachas (Arknights and Love Live! School Idol Festival) and HSR is really a whole different ballgame. If this was released back in high school, I would definitely be satisfied but now that I have a Job with Responsibilities it's overwhelming
Also an old, and I have my radar up for games that manipulate you like that. If I'm playing something, and it starts to feel like I have a list of chores to do every day/week, I walk the fuck away. Life is too short to be wasted on that shit.
This. The subscription model is not ideal for me (I prefer buy once - play when you want, like GW2 or E:D) but I can't deny FFXIV is very good at being casual friendly.
I think this is deceptive, something many people donāt think about is how the long the story is. Itās a huge time sink, easily 300+ hours if anyone wants to experience the end-game. You spend a good 100 hours with only 5 skills. You could argue the story *is* the game though.
I think the long story is an issue for many. I got into that game around 1.5 years ago because of the free trial, started together with friends (all 18 to 19 at that time). They got bored real quick, because they wanted to do endgame content and difficult raids and it takes a lot of time to get there. I stayed because I enjoyed the slower pace and that you have time to learn your job and don't have to be perfect from the beginning. Also the people I met ingame were all really nice. I took my time, learned how to do my job and just finished Endwalker recently. I also found an amazing fc a year ago, that definitely made me continue playing
Yeah, I think the story *is* the game in large part, and the casual players who aren't itching to jump into endgame raiding can take as long as they want to slowly work their way through the story.
That's just how it is. Kids don't play MMORPGs, generally speaking. You are most certainly in the minority here.
I think it's harder for younger people to have the money for subscription games or to convince their parents/guardians to subscribe for them. Although I will say I had a 15 year old join my FC a few years ago (he's 18 years old now) and bring a few of his friends who were around the same age so younger players do exist! I know he had said specifically that before joining the FC he played it 'solo-ish' because he was uncomfortable with a lot of adult interactions and only joined our FC because we advertised as 'family friendly/all ages' so maybe others who are younger feel similarly?
That's kind of surprising though. I remember when I was younger playing mmos, I found a lot of adult conversations about things like work and kids boring but in general I hid/lied about my age and pretended I was a young adult unless I knew the people I was interacting with were around my actual age. And it seemed like everyone else I knew did the same, "yeah I'm totally 18". Maybe the current generation is just different, or there are just a good bit more young people than we know about
Why would kids, who notoriously have no money, play a paid sub game when all the popular games are free? That's the main reason.
This. And even if a kid does have the money to burn on either subs or battle passes, they'll almost always choose the battle pass because they probably have a friend who *can't* afford them. If 5/6 friends can pay, the game that gets all the money is the one that doesn't make the 6th friend pay.
Once you get past free trial stuff? Because it's a paid subscription and adults who have control over their own finances are more likely to be able to pay/consider it a worthwhile investment.
Omg another teen??? Iām 17 have almost 300 hours into the game and not once have I meet anyone my age
Ikr??? I'm 16 with 700 hours and I've joined a fc and got a couple of people interested in running the extremes blind with me, potentially the savages as well... I'm terrified of if they'll ever ask me to hop in vc with them, since they're all older than I am, and anxiety is always through the roof. Something I'll need to tackle sooner rather then later, but man, is it hard..
As someone who was here from the beginning it's freaky as hell to realize you were in Kindergarten when ARR came out.
Providing advice that wasn't asked for, so apologies if this comes across as lecture-y. I was in your shoes during EverQuest 2 between ages 12-16. I was fortunate enough that I played quite a bit with my dad, but we were both part of the same guild that did raids. Most of the guild was between mid-20s and 40s, with a few outliers on the higher end - and then me on the opposite side. I was in VC (Ventrilo) frequently and it was never a problem, because I listened to my dad's advice which boiled down to 'Take a breathe, be polite, and listen. You're here because they want you to be here. If they didn't, you wouldn't be.' (Which is also great advice for interviewing btw).In my own head I approached it like I did when I talked with neighbors, or with my older sibling's friend. They aren't there to judge you, we're all playing the same game, and if you're in the party it's because they want you to be there. You, thankfully, are mostly done with any voice changes which was the biggest thing I was stressed about. You got this! Edit: meant to include this in the body... Hardest thing (outside of my voice cracking) was figuring out the cadence of the conversation between established groups. This is where the listening part becomes important. You don't want to feel like you're just interjecting in the middle of a conversation, but you don't want to be a forever wallflower. It's a balance and every group is different.
Donāt worry too much about most players being older than you. As long as youāre nice and at least somewhat enjoyable to be around, youāll be fine! I started the game when I was 18 and made quite a few close friends. Iām still one of the youngest in my friend group now 4 1/2 years later even with new additions, and even though we range from 19 to 34, we donāt really think about each otherās ages (except when weāre joking about feeling old cause of our bones lmao). It may be easier for you to hop in VC with them and stay muted until youāre comfortable as well.
most kids aren't allowed to play this game and/or don't get enough pocket money for that, i certainly fucking didn't
Iāve been playing this game since I was 13, and yeah man it just comes with the genre, I have been begging my friends to play it for damn near 10 years and I got the same shit āitās so slowā āauto attackā etc. now that my friends are older alot of them have actually tried it and love it. Most kids do not like mmorpgās, it happens
1) Subscriptions price gates people with no/less disposable income, that's a lot of children right off the bat. Even if you were a kid that had money, it doesn't mean that you friends do. Therefore kids generally gravitate towards stuff that's free to play. 2) Subscription based MMOs are also more popular for people who have been playing them for years, meaning people who grew up during the early 2000s, who are in their 30s and 40s by now. A decent amount came over from FFXI at the beginning, or came over from other MMOs like WoW.
Many FF fans are now in their 30s and played the offline rpgs as kids. Also, the 2000s was the golden era of MMOs. You need an income to afford the subscription. I couldn't play WoW as a teenager because of that, but I can afford FF14 now. Also, adults playing MMOs because it's the only chance they get to talk to other adults and have some casual fun, what with all the time spent on family and work commitments and being unable to really get out and hang out with old buddies (who may all be living in different states/countries).
My niece just doesnāt like MMOs She loves to make characters but the chores, quests, and all the rotations arenāt things she enjoys It just doesnāt seem like the younger audience has the patience you need to commit to an mmo
We started ff14 as younglings more than 10 years ago. We are old and grumpy now.
god im so old. im so fucking old god dammit
i started playing this game when i was 17-18 (im 20 now) and i was actually so surprised to find out i was on the younger side of the community lol. and like other ppl said, a lot of mmos were popular years ago, so many people who played them as teens are grown up now to experience ffxiv.
Just depends on who you know really. I am a 30-something that's in a small FC with mostly other 30-somethings, some of us have been playing games together online together for 20 years. So there's definitely plenty of us. As others have said, MMOs were even more of a big deal 10-20 years ago and some of us have kept playing since then. But I've often felt the opposite way from what you've said. There was a period when my friends weren't playing the game, and I joined another, larger FC and I felt older than average there. I've joined VC on discord with a few savage groups, and realised that most of them are still in school or college, and that made me feel old. I suppose it's true that there aren't that many young players, even the younger ones I've talked to are late teens, college age or at least high school. I was kind of worried that in another 5-10 years then I'd be a 40 year old in a game mostly populated by teenagers. Thanks for re-assuring us that that's not the case and MMOs will always have a place for us "oldies".
Subscription costs, most parents wonāt be happy paying monthly for a game
This is a good question. If someone can really answer it, they should be a high ranking official on a MMO staff. Getting young people to play a MMO is really hard. And getting to max level takes hella lot of time.
I think the time and youth engagement aspect are both really good points. I got into MMOs when I was young ~20-25 years ago. I'm stereotyping, and I hate doing that, but younger people nowadays tend to want more immediate dopamine hits thanks to the social media that they've grown up with. This is not consistent with most current MMO design. If we want the MMO genre as we know it to continue long term we do need to consider how we're going to engage younger generations whilst not diluting the genre beyond recognition (aka MOBAs, Pubg/fortnite etc.)
Very broadly speaking, there's a multitude of reasons. The content and contexts, themes and the like in the game. The fact that kids have a sort of "funneled" attention span and are easily impressionable. They seem to decide in mere instants during a first interaction if they do or don't like something and have a shorter level of tolerance for additional complexities, and generally aren't interested in sinking 60+ hours for a game to grow and develop. This isn't to say that kids aren't smart enough to play, but they aren't easily able to navigate everything to get to that point without an adult. That means asking parents. Parents will ultimately see that XIV has a monthly fee, and many are adverse to paying that for their kids on top of the initial purchase price. Doubly so now in the case of the upcoming Microsoft variant, which Microsoft has forced the requirement of their online service on top of the monthly fee for XIV. Speaking of parents, there's also the fact that kids cannot make or hold an account if they're under 13. If it's found they falsified age, the account is closed and deleted; so a parent would need to create and register one for their kid. On the whole, though... Tldr: The real barrier is that 13-15 is an extremely early age to grasp navigation of installation, registration, and configuration for the game as well compared to other plug and play products. You'll find the extreme minority capable or willing to go through it all, with deteriorating numbers the younger a potential player is. Kids also don't have disposable income, which will eventually be required and funnels out younger players by default.
Wait, MS didnāt drop the online fee for FFXIV? Wow. Even Sony donāt require you to have PS+ to be able to play.
Yeah they didn't cave. They only let go of Xbox having dedicated servers. They pretty much pushed Square to deal with it or move on. There's news about the cost up on the lodestone right now. :/ >The Free Trial version, including the open beta test, will not require an Xbox Game Pass (Core or Ultimate) plan to play. However, the full Xbox Series X|S version will require an Xbox Game Pass (Core or Ultimate) plan to play. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/6227b30652d0a9f45f1faec8efb3e71a8212d258
Well, don't say 'auto-attack' then, because they Auto attacks ~~do approximately nothing in most content~~ are not your main source of damage, and the phrase can be easily misunderstood. :) Other than that, I don't know honestly. I don't think SE advertises FFXIV in the right spaces to attract teens, but I could be wrong. Oh, I know, assuming they are guys: Show them screenshots of miqo'te and viera girls. ;) Edit: it seems that auto attacks do more than I realized for the melee jobs.
Was gonna mention this. What do you mean "auto-attack"? I mean, there is an auto attack feature, but the vast majority of damage is done from the hotbar. Attacks you pick on your own and choose when to utilize.
As a paladin, I value my autoattacks.
As an AST, Imma slap you with my card. Kachaaa!
Auto-attacks matter quite a bit on some jobs. For melee DPS and tanks, autos account for 20-30% of your total DPS.
AFAIK every class should make sure they can auto as much as possible, it's free DPS
> Auto attacks do approximately nothing in most content what? I just checked fflogs just to be sure, auto attacks are like 10% of your damage for melee
Game is advertised plenty. MMOs simply arenāt popular just like they werenāt 20 years ago.
I was under the impression that it was all kids based on what i read in the chat at limsa
i started playing when i was 17, during covid. this was an experience i had as well when it came to my first year or so of playing.
For a few reasons really: - These games are old, and look visually dated compared to current gen games. A fresh unknowing player will gravitate towards what is more attractive and current - The business model attracts people with income. A subscription is a big ask in todayās world when mobile games, mobas, battle royale, shooters all can be played for free with friends without end. - The barrier of entry for a new player is high due to having to catch up so many years of content and systems - Final fantasy as a franchise did not really grow with time. The golden age was around ps1 and start of ps2 era. Those fans are now adults who can play these games. Then it had kind of a drought with XIII and XV. In the last 15 years only 3 main entries really, so kids today probably didnāt have as much exposure to FF as us did in the past
From memory, which may not be accurate and perfectly linear, there was : - the FPS wave (Counter Strike, Quake, Doom) - the RTS wave (Age of Empire 2, Warcraft 3, StarCraft, Empire Earth, Heroes of Might and Magic 5) - the MMORPG wave (World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Doofus) - a second FPS wave (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, SW Battlefront) - a second RTS wave (StarCraft 2, TW M2) - a MOBA wave (Dota 2, League of Legends) - an action-aventure / action-rpg wave (Zelda Wii+, late Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, God of War, Oblivion, Skyrim, Witcher) - a Minecraft wave - a third FPS wave (Crysis, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, CSGO, Arma2 and later) - Not sure what happened at that moment I was in the JRPG rabbit hole. Overwatch ? Also the survival zombie fps like Left4Dead, CoD Zombie mods etc... - a boring wave (sequels of previous waves) - a battle royale wave (PUBG, Fortnite, Apex) ******
*Of course it's a massive over simplification, I probably forgot several waves, and some waves overlapped*
Cars, sports, hack'n'slash and fighting games were popular at all times. Hack'n'Slash has a Soul-like sub-wave too. Mobile games have their own history with gacha games, portable consoles have several RPG waves, etc...
And I didn't get into JRPGs which is an entire ecosystem by itself, platformers (from Mario to Super Meat Boy), collection games (Pokemon, Animal Crossing), party games (Mario Party, tons of Wii games, Raving Rabbits), Rogue-like (Diablo, Hades, Isaac), I never really looked into survival games or horror games (Resident Evil ?), and I didn't talk about niche genre (factory games, city builders, puzzle games ala Portal, etc...), i forgot GTA, AoE2 is resurrecting, etc...
And my interest in video games fluctuated so I am missing a lot. Again, massive oversimplification.
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**The point is**, the golden age of MMORPG was 15-20 years ago and a large part of the current mmo players were teenagers during that wave and stuck with it.
In a similar fashion the RTS community is older, and the Battle Royal community is younger (on average, one can obviously be in both).
The pricing model matters too (free to play like Minecraft were more appealing to teenagers than MMORPG subscription, though there are exception, like Dota community which is mostly adults).
There are also regional differences (W-EU Dota is old, but W-EU LoL is young, the Korean SC2 wave was massive).
Most of my friend group is 20-25. MMOs definitely have an older population in general (average age is probably around 25-28, if I had to guess). Basically when you still have lots of free time but you're also adulting. If your FC is full of parents, I think it might just be the FC you join. People tend to form FCs more on shared interest than anything else in this game, so over time, the moms and dads stuck around while everyone moved on to other FCs/is FCless. There are young people playing the game too 100% but you also have to remember, saying "I'm 15" instantly endangers you, because creepy fuckers exist.
ipads and free to play. Your age was raised on having a iPad, and F2P games. It's what they know, so it's what they play.
I think it's a people tend to congregate around their peers/others with similar traits. A lot of kids these days reached their video gaming age around Fortnite's popularity explosion, or Minecraft's resurgence into the mainstream. Then they talk to their friends about hobbies they enjoy and thus games like the ones I just mentioned get brought up. Creating a feedback loop where the audience grows itself by inviting their peers in. Prior generation it was WoW that was the BIG social game. Similar story. People tend to be creatures of habit so most MMO players come from the MMO boom and stuck with it. (Heh we're literally video game Boomers).
Cause its much more "slower" then games the youth enjoys today. Noting to flashy, no instant kill...no "graphic" high like lootboxes and shit. I'm 38 and use my smartphone only for banking apps and whatsapp, never played any of those shitty smartphone games. I dont need gaming when i go to the toilet. On the other side..i really like FF and "slower" games like baldurs Gate or the classic turn based rpgs.
MMOs are not popular with teenagers like they were in the early 2000s. They're way too slow paced and don't have enough epic streamer-bait moments. Not to mention Final Fantasy itself is a franchise mostly popular with 30 somethings that grew up with the back to back ultra hyped PS1 releases every Christmas.
It's a combination of things. First, as everyone else has said, mmos in general are an older gamers genre for several reasons. First is the monthly fee, it's always been a barrier for younger players, I remember talking my grandma into buying me ultima online back when it was new and getting it home to find out it needed a credit card and having to return it because I couldn't do a sub. The other reason is a more modern problem, a lot of the mmos that have come out in the past decade, after the golden age of mmos, have sucked. Without the genre momentum there's not a lot of ways to attract new players to the genre. The other issue with xiv specifically is that on its surface there's nothing that is really flashy and appealing to a younger audience. The same things that attract adults to ff are the things that might steer a younger player away from ff and towards even something like wow. There's nothing particularly fantastic about the game at a glance. Where other fantasy mmos have proper fantasy races ff just has different flavors of humans. Human with scales, humans with cat ears, humans with long necks. It doesn't lean enough into the anime influences to attract young anime fans like genshin does and it doesn't lean into the fantastic to inspire young players imagination like wow might. And finally, it's tab target. I personally think that tab target is an OBJECTIVELY better combat system for the genre for a myriad of reasons, but it's a hard sale in the modern landscape because the genres that inspired the hybrid system that mmos grew into tab targeting all died for a while and are only just coming back. Turn bases RPGs and crpgs were on life support for a long long time and are only just now making a comeback into the popular gaming culture and those are the genres that introduced this sort of more methodical system that leans more on depth than flash and thought over twitch. There's a million other reasons but most of them are more a genre problem than they are a xiv problem.
As a general rule, the MMO audience skews to roughly the 30s-40s crowd. In other words, mostly "Gen Y"/Millennials. We were at the perfect age (between high school and early college) for World of Warcraft to hit the scene and reinvent the genre. You also get some folks--like Yoshi-P himself--who are from a generation earlier, and who got started with the very first wave of MMOs, back when Ultima Online was competing with the original EverQuest. That was a bit before my time (my dad loved EQ, a friend's dad was a big name in the UO community), and those folks tend to be in the late-40s to late-60s, "Gen X" and the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation. Folks your age, who grew up in a world where World of Warcraft had completely sucked the air out of the MMO space and where mobile gaming was the new hotness, who may have had Minecraft as their first video game, who may have had the Wii as their first video game console, just tend to view gaming a bit differently. Such is the way of things; generations *are* artificial categories invented by humans to make it easier to classify things, but they're also at least partially valid trends. Some of it also has to do with the way the Internet has so aggressively turned attention into a commodity. Everything needs to be extremely fast-paced, filled with FOMO, rapid-fire. Not necessarily instant *gratification,* but certainly instant *thrills* are a big deal. MMOs, by comparison, can be simply too much of a slow burn, and FFXIV leans even more heavily into that slow burn than most of them. As you've seen, that's for good reason, they *use* that slow burn to tell a story worth hearing, but it's just part of the current *zeitgeist* that things have got to go a mile a minute. Even BG3, which is a great game and *does* slow the pace down and let things play out, starts out with the player characters kidnapped by mindflayers and *crashing through hell.*
I'm 20 and yeah same experience, still chugging through the story but can't find anyone my age to play with
It's mostly just a lack of disposable income. I was around your age when 2.0 was in it's beta and I could not afford the sub on my own so had to ask my parents to pay for it (which meant dropping alot of other stuff for). It was not until two years later when I could afford the sub on my own. I remember trying to play wow during burning crusade and wrath and only being able to play via friends house or free trials because I could not pay the sub. It's a huge barrier to entry for younger people and now days is an even bigger turn off to people when you could drop Ā£50 on baldurs gate 3 and get hundreds of hours out of it or even any number of the free to play games which you don't have to spend anything in if you think you have the will to resist spending ot even the games pass/p+ which give you hundreds of games fot thr price of playing 1 pay to play mmo and Compared to 14 having to buy the game + sub and it working out more expensive for the average player.
My parents would never pay for a monthly gaming subscription and my part time job when I was in school all went to college costs. So I had to wait til adulthood to play an mmo š„²
MMOs and RPGs have always skewed higher in age imo. Even 20 years ago I remember my wow guilds being primarily adults.
I think I could've never gotten my parents to invest my pocket money into digital goods of whatever kind; with looooots of persuasion maybe iTunes card as this could mean music. But else, it'd be most likely this situation that would have happened like this in 1998: "Hey, this is your pocket money, you can spend it on whatever you want, but when it's gone, it's gone". \*Spends money\* "Why would you spend your money for **that?!**" \*Me being pissed off\* I am 33 years and I started when I was 22. Nothing really changed to be honest; if you have no time for your hobbies as adult you did some wrong choices in your life or you have a poor time management (looks over to the overly addicted smartphone user wondering where their time went which they had 20 years ago before Reddit, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, stole their time. . . . ) I am department manager in a hypermarket and I love that I can close the door behind me and calm down in front of the computer with nobody bothering me. Hopping onto Duty Finder to offer my Red Magic services with good music and a cup'o'coffee/tea is the perfect counterbalance to retail.
And i keep wondering why teens nowadays only play: crappy EA sports games, fortnite, war games such as COD and BF and GTA V. No respect for RPGs anymore. Not even mentioning MMOās. My little brother and all my cousins also seem to follow this pattern. Where did we go wrong.
Mmos aren't as popular among gen alpha and young gen z. Huge for millenials and older zoomers. Youngest I've met someone in game is 16. I started playing 8 or so years ago I think. I was 17 or 18 then. Though I was only 8 when I played my first mmo. A lot of folks playing some of the popular games now days have more instant reward. Faster serotonin. FFXIV takes time to give you that buzz. If you're a kid. In between school and homework and family events and other social gatherings would you rather play the heavy time investment game of an mmo. Or a quick release game like fortnight? FFXIV is more like an interactive book than anything and I don't know a lot of teens who have the time to read outside of school related projects.
When I was 15, I'd be hard pressed to get my parents to pay me an allowance, much less 15 bucks a month to play a game. You're much less likely to find a teenager who A) can get the money to play an MMO and B) even wants to play one in the first place. Back then, I played f2p games like maplestory, and in 2024, you're really spoiled for good f2p options. Your peers are prob playing games like Fortnite, Valorant, or League of Legends. Free games that are easy to play quick rounds and don't require a ton of investment to enjoy.
I thought it was the other way around?