Any countermeasures planned for declining player population?

Did a /sea all on Asura a couple of days ago around 4pm est and there was around 1.8k people online. I'd say that's pretty good for being EU prime. Maybe a select few servers have lower numbers on average but I really don't think it's anywhere near as bad as it was on Pandemonium before the merge, with 700ish people online at that time. And that's well over 2 years ago already since Pandemonium merged with Asura.

Sunday Morning around 9AM EST we still break the 3k mark on Shiva

Maybe some people like me waiting VanaFest for come back in this game? XD

Threads like this should keep being made until SE fixes these things. I am sick and tired of them presenting an idea and use years to implemeting it. And also not fixing current problems.

They'd better have something big planned for Vanafest like when they blew us away with the pre-Abyssea Vanafest. There needs to be a large-scale injection of new zones, innovative systems, and something Abyssea didn't have at all: story.

I haven't logged in for weeks, and it's not like I don't have things I could be doing in-game, there's just no motivation to do that. Why get X piece of gear to make X job better? So I can then fight more things to collect more gear to do the same stuff? But why? To what end? It's all just running in a hamster wheel, getting gear to fight things to get more gear. It's pointless.

There's no adventures left to be had. No epic stories left to experience. THAT'S what's really killing the game. I'm just crossing my fingers that Vanafest will bring an announcement that the game's future includes new adventures, not just new battle events.

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Originally Posted by Puck

They'd better have something big planned for Vanafest like when they blew us away with the pre-Abyssea Vanafest. There needs to be a large-scale injection of new zones, innovative systems, and something Abyssea didn't have at all: story.

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Dear god, I hope for no new zones. With the exception of the missing hemisphere (reference the area between the Aht Urhgan capital to the east, and the unseen area extending beyond the oceanic space on the Conquest map), there are already dozens of zones that are seldom if ever populated because there is nothing of value in them at this point. Revamp these zones, rather than creating more areas that will not be populated outside of limited times/events.

There isn't enough new blood in FFXI to justify creating a new series of zones, which is why my "I dream of a fully visitable Vana'diel world" to be a fantasy that will never be revealed. So I would advise against getting hopes up on "new zones" while strongly supporting "innovative systems and ... story."

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I haven't logged in for weeks, and it's not like I don't have things I could be doing in-game, there's just no motivation to do that. Why get X piece of gear to make X job better? So I can then fight more things to collect more gear to do the same stuff? But why? To what end? It's all just running in a hamster wheel, getting gear to fight things to get more gear. It's pointless.

There's no adventures left to be had. No epic stories left to experience. THAT'S what's really killing the game. I'm just crossing my fingers that Vanafest will bring an announcement that the game's future includes new adventures, not just new battle events.

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With most MMOs, the secondary attribute of the game -is- gear collection; and it is vastly easier to create new gear and gear-aquisition challenges than it is to add epic storyline content. I think a lot of players don't know that the whole "getting gear just to make the job better" -is- one of the vital aspects of MMOs, and with a member base that shows limited to know growth, adding hard-to-aquire gear is the best method of maintaining a member base which has already completed the storylines. That is to say, the gear aquisition methods need to not be totally futile (*cough* Nyzule *cough*)

Please no more merges. I like my name. Unfortunately there's many copies of it on half of the other servers. I don't want to lose it, and I'd hate for others to lose theirs because of me.

I'd rather see the game become more enjoyable and more people return/pick it up than merge. Or, find ways to make the game fun with fewer people. We don't need 3,000 people per server to have a good time.

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Originally Posted by Meyi

find ways to make the game fun with fewer people. We don't need 3,000 people per server to have a good time.

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I think this is the best course of action to take.

Ugh, not another server merger please... Even if there was 5k people on at once, you would still have trouble finding members for VW because of the root problem: the drop rate sucks. I have every single VW clear, a handful of semi-rare drops like fajin boots, maybe 98 HMPs, and serious lack of motivation to even bother trying for more. That's after months of doing VW on a regular basis 3-4 days a week. I go with a small group that shouts to fill in the gaps. And if the leader wasn't JP I doubt we'd be able to do that since, for whatever reason, NA just don't do well with pickups.

TL;DR you can't get people for anything because there's nothing to do, not because there's no people.

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Revamp these zones, rather than creating more areas that will not be populated outside of limited times/events.

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Revamping zones is what they've been doing for years now. Nobody likes it.