servers way more empty now? Still doing the linear gear climb?

[detlef]

Erm... Man I don't think you have been paying attention. BEFORE they even started the the ilevel stuff and even before Abyssea people were leaving. Pay attention why don't you? The servers only had around 3000 to 2500 and steadily decreasing wait you know what? If you haven't been checking the population then this is useless to explain.

I don't think you've been paying attention. Steady decrease yes, humongous, noticeable decrease no. Until now.

[Zumi]

SE said 1.5M people were playing FFXIV, not that 1.5M people who play FFXI were playing FFXIV. Just because a lot of people are playing that game does not mean that the issue of this game is not the ilevel system. The fact is, ilevels suck as an idea for this game. This game has always had gear which lasted a long time, every update was not likely to bring gear so much better that your gear you got since last update was practically worthless by compare. On top of that, the power gap is to large, far to large, anyone without a boss weapon has a massively lower DPS, so much so that its insane by compare to the old idea of RME > All, a massive issue in the community since Abyssea till the start of SoA.

So far as just saying its a dated game, that's never stopped it before. The game has been old for quite some time, and not a single person I know of who has quit or has been talking about quitting has even once brought up its age. Everyone I know who has even talked about quitting brings up that the game is changing to much, they don't want to go get new gear every couple months and feel like they are starting from scratch. Maybe you and the people you know are different, but from what I have seen, your statements are completely wrong as to why people are leaving.

I have an LS of 88 people in FFXIV that were former FFXI players. I am the only one who occasionally plays FFXI. The general consensus is the game got old or there was just nothing to do because lack of updates. I think you guys are underestimating the amount of players FFXIV:ARR took from FFXI. Which was the sharp decline in people in Aug/Sept. I haven't heard anyone in FFXIV complain there different item levels, 50, 55, 60, 70, 90. Obviously people with ilvl 90 gear way out preform people who just hit 50 and using ilvl 50 gear. To me the system seems to work very well.

Its not oh the ilvl system made people quit the game. Delve has been the top gear in FFXI since last April, with pretty much no new gear since, skirmish 2 was slightly worse but better if you could get certain arguments. I seen the argument in game that people don't want to have to get a new set of gear every patch, this isn't the case at all look how long Delve gear has been top since April. SE will probably take a full year or 2 to outdate delve 1.0 gear, given how slow they release new content.

If you ask me there isn't enough upgrades in this game to chase. People need to be farming that new gear set, otherwise its just do Tojil for the 200th time for no reason other then to sell airlixers on the AH for gil.

There needs to be constant new goals in the game to keep players interested its just you cap out on delve gear so fast you are left with little to do after you got all the best gear in the game. There isn't a new delve or anything in the November patch so what will happen is the game will be do Tojil with newly updated R/M/Es.

[predatory]

Zumi

There needs to be constant new goals in the game to keep players interested its just you cap out on delve gear so fast you are left with little to do after you got all the best gear in the game. There isn't a new delve or anything in the November patch so what will happen is the game will be do Tojil with newly updated R/M/Es

Actually they are adding quite a bit of content in November, the problem is, it's limited in scope, and won't hold peoples attention for much more than a few days, what they needed to do was fix the RMEs, add the new WKRs, SoA missions and quests they added, and update something from the older content to give people something really worth while to do, Sky v2, assault v2, meeble barrows v2, whatever, just something that people would want to do over and over again. That's just not the case with this update

[Blah]

And like I said before it's because a bunch of people jumped ship to XIV (and GTA V and possibly even COD Ghosts to be fair) taking the population down below 1000 and people jumped on looked around (basically) and saw it was empty took off too especially when they didn't come back like before. Now I am trying to get you to understand it's because people just can't get a party together anymore is the reason people have left and are leaving even now. I see them even now yelling and hollering for lair or reilve only once maybe twice a day and most times not getting any takers. People are fed up and leaving because of that. P.S. and if you were paying attention you would have noted that it happened practically the day FFXIV came out

[Fynlar]

The gear upscale is not the problem

The fact that skirmish/delve are easy to "finish", coupled with the fact that not even the previous long-term projects of RMEs are even worth working on anymore and skirmish/delve offer no such equivalents, is the problem

Yeah, RME update is coming, but it's a case of too little too late and a significant blow to the populace has already been dealt. This is something that should have already been rolled out along with the new content, not half a year afterward.

[Jerbob]

I don't think it's accurate to lay the blame on a single cause. For me, and a lot of people I know, the gear upscale IS the primary issue, and I've gone from playing for several hours every day for years to essentially not playing at all.

I'm sure that for the "top tier" players who are able to clear content quickly (often with questionable methods), boredom and lack of content is a major problem, but to deny that SE's recent decisions have been disastrous as well is rather disingenuous. SE needs to work on pleasing both types of players, and I think that both issues can be sorted out by quite similar solutions. It would be more positive for us as a playerbase to stop arguing about what the problem is and start focusing on making SE fix all of it so that everyone can be happy.

[predatory]

The problem is SE did a few things almost simultaneously, and it had a snowball effect on population. They obsoleted R/M/Es with the release of SoA, and regardless of what some say here, quite a few people did leave over this; They stated, (and later recanted), that the fix to the R/M/Es was going to be to add the weapon skills from those most coveted of weapons onto the newly created delve weapons, which drove quite a few more R/M/E owners from the game; they released FFXIV, which took a significant chunk of the population with it, (but new game releases have always done this for a month or two until the glitter wears off); and finally they failed to add anything significant to stem the tide, even the upcoming November, (which on the outside looks huge) does little to address what I see as the main issue FFXI will never come back from the recent hits it took.

After all the recent hits FFXI has taken, (even if we assume some pie in the sky, all the R/M/E players are gonna flock back after the update- something that most likely will not happen, some will come back sure, but not all), a chain reaction has taken place and as more people left for the reasons stated above, even more people left out of sheer boredom or because they couldn't get things done, and that's where the problem lies, because the ones who left because they couldn't get anything done or were bored, will never come back, to them this game is a done deal, and at this point even if all the people who left over R/M/Es do come back, it will only bring the population back to between 600 and 700 during peak hours on Bahamut, and they'll quickly leave out of boredom.

Expansions are supposed to bring people to the game, not drive them out in droves, but this expansion was so poorly thought out, and executed, that it actually managed to drive people away rather than bring them into the fold. When the Delve weapons were introduced the R/M/Es should have been upgraded to match their strength, the wasn't enough content added to make the expansion self sustaining, and rather than keeping the old gear relevant until there was enough content for the new expansion to stand on it's own, they brushed it all aside with no real plans to revise anything.

Everyone on the FFXI team knew for almost a year that SE was going to be revamping FFXIV, but instead of having a major update ready to compete with FFXIVs release they gave us crap and still have yet to release an update that has any real content, or an update that brings relevance back to some of the older content. Had they made a major content release simultaneously with the release of FFXIV, a lot of the people who went to 14 would have come back to do the new and revamped old content when they grew bored with 14, as it stands right now, there is no reason to come back, and the upcoming November update is doing little in that regard

In November they're fixing R/M/Es and upgrading AF armor to match SoA AF armor, (BFD that should have been done at the release of SoA, and when they added Run and Geo AF); they're adding new reives, (nobody does the old ones why would SE expect the new ones to be any different?); they're updating fov chests and spawn times and drop rates from the older nms so lower levels can get gear more readily, (who really cares? Go naked to 30,then go to abyssea naked until you can get into curor gear at 78, who really worries about lowbie gear other than AF and gear for Maat fights anymore?); they're adding mog garden quests, a default choice to go to your mog garden, and a porter moogle for your mog garden, (I personally could give a rats ass less about mog gardens); they're adding stuff to monstrosity, (never did it so I have no opinion on it); they're adding new bcnms, (I wanted the old battlefields revamped not new bcnms). There's really no actual substance to this update, it's just more fluff. You don't go into a steak house to eat salad, you go to eat meat, and like every update since SoA this one lacks any meat.

[detlef]

I don't think it's accurate to lay the blame on a single cause. For me, and a lot of people I know, the gear upscale IS the primary issue, and I've gone from playing for several hours every day for years to essentially not playing at all.

I agree completely with this. I don't think that there was any one cause, I just think that saying "it's an old game and has been declining for years" is a lazy answer.

It's likely fair to say that the population is always in steady decline because a game like this isn't going to attract new players. However, the current lull in content definitely caused the game to lose players at a faster rate, not to mention how many players left due to the bungled RME fiasco. And at exactly the right time, 14 was waiting with arms open to receive disenchanted FFXI players.

It's actually a real shame because I, among others, thought that a new expansion would revive the game. Instead, things have become quite bleak.

[predatory]

Me and a couple friends are coming back after a breaking (one since ToAU, the other since seekers started). Ive only been gone since May, but on a Sunday night around 11pm i noticed that the /sea all turned out around 600~ players on Asura. I know its not the best time frame to check how its doing, but thats the lowest ive seen it in a long time.

Are the servers really that empty all of a sudden? Did 14 put a dent in it? I played 14 for a couple weeks and blew right through it because its another post WoW casual fest and i was bored as hell and was basically done with all the endgame content/was basically done with my relic weapon (yes they are jokes to get in that game). I dont see that people will stick with it, especially FFXI players who are used to games with a lot of depth.

My reason other than FF14 for leaving was how the content was in seekers which was turned into a very linear gear climb (which is what 14 has and its awful and dull). Have they stuck to that still or are they spreading out the good gear between events?

There were 600 on asura? Wow, that's at least 100 more than we have on saturday during peak playing hours on Bahamut, and upwards of 200 more than are on some days during the week, and it's not just 14 that's causing the population drop, 14 is just an excuse many use, it's a combination of the whole rme thing, outdating gear, a poorly planned expansion, and just plain nothing really fun to do

Edited to add: on Bahamut

[Camiie]

I'm just going to reiterate that I didn't quit playing because of the new gear grind. I quit because of the lack of variety in endgame content, and the complete and utter uselessness of all but one of my jobs. I was left with one job to play and 2 events that would garner me progress. The jobs I hadn't leveled either didn't interest me or required gear that I didn't feel I could realistically obtain. So basically if there wasn't a Delve or Skirmish run going on there was nothing enjoyable for me to do.