FFXIV population decline continues

Considering how Stormblood was also "good raids and patches, bad everything else", it is unsurprising that DT is going down the same road.

LB numbers are actually the same as through most of Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Sure, the issue is a drop in sub numbers means a loss in revenue at a time when expected content is being skipped because of "costs." The term is vague, but it would be unusual if less income produced more content.

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Not necessarily. The problem is not that SE is broke. The problem is that SE is funneling money into its "HD games" and mobile divisions because those are losing money, and neglecting the online games department because it's generating revenue, and therefore assumed to be doing well.

I don't think SE like to feel like they're putting all of their eggs in 1 basket, so they throw their eggs at the wall instead.

I really wish they would just invest more heavily in their actual successful product instead of using it to fund doomed nonsense like Forspoken.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Not necessarily. The problem is not that SE is broke. The problem is that SE is funneling money into its "HD games" and mobile divisions because those are losing money, and neglecting the online games department because it's generating revenue, and therefore assumed to be doing well.

I don't think SE like to feel like they're putting all of their eggs in 1 basket, so they throw their eggs at the wall instead.

I really wish they would just invest more heavily in their actual successful product instead of using it to fund doomed nonsense like Forspoken.

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Sure, that's fair. Equally, SE's decisions are so bizarre that I wouldn't want to bank on plummeting sub numbers encouraging them to invest in 14. They might just start hurling more and more eggs (nice image, btw).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

LB numbers are actually the same as through most of Shadowbringers.

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Look at the derivative! There has never been such a sharp decline.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I feel like we'll be sinking until 8.0. Maybe we'll hit the floor of 'people who will never unsub no matter what' before that though.

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Yep. It's going to decline until the next expansion. People will come back for 8.0 to see if the story delivers, and if it does not, they'll leave again.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Look at the derivative! There has never been such a sharp decline.

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Look at the blue bar (new players). It looks lower than 1.0. :eek:

I'm not going to attempt to recruit anyone else I know to play this game until my world is permanently un-congested

Yeah, this game is burning down because SE doesn't know how to run a game. They spend this game's budget on lame mobile projects or NFTs, and give us, the people who pay money to play this game, worse and less stuff with every patch. It's frustrating.

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

I'm not going to attempt to recruit anyone else I know to play this game until my world is permanently un-congested

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I'm no longer trying to get people to play the game with me.

Honestly, I hope the numbers keep going down. Maybe that'll give them a wake up call.

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Originally Posted by PaulusHamsteru

Honestly, I hope the numbers keep going down. Maybe that'll give them a wake up call.

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Agree in principle, although would argue that the alarm bells should already be ringing really.
As have said previously, when your problem is created by repeatedly hitting yourself in the face, step one is to stop hitting yourself in the face instead of continuing to do so while announcing that you're well aware that a bloody nose is not optimal and are looking into ways to stop the bleeding.

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Originally Posted by PaulusHamsteru

Honestly, I hope the numbers keep going down. Maybe that'll give them a wake up call.

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Won't happen.

SE and CBU3 will see the decline in population, and instead of taking a hard look at themselves that they should turn the game around, listen to the community, and improve the game, they'll sunset the game and go into maintenance mode so they continue milking subscription money without spending any more money in development.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Won't happen.

SE and CBU3 will see the decline in population, and instead of taking a hard look at themselves that they should turn the game around, listen to the community, and improve the game, they'll sunset the game and go into maintenance mode so they continue milking subscription money without spending any more money in development.

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I don't think this is true. FFXIV has proven that it can be very successful. If you take a look at SE's most recent financial report, SE have proven that they tend to allocate funds to bring up areas of the business that are underperforming, rather than investing in the areas that are performing well.

Right now, I think we need people to vote with their wallets and stop playing FFXIV. We need SE to realise that they can't just do the bare minimum and expect XIV to continue to be successful.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't think this is true. FFXIV has proven that it can be very successful. If you take a look at SE's most recent financial report, SE have proven that they tend to allocate funds to bring up areas of the business that are underperforming, rather than investing in the areas that are performing well.

Right now, I think we need people to vote with their wallets and stop playing FFXIV. We need SE to realise that they can't just do the bare minimum and expect XIV to continue to be successful.

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Just unsub, make a free trial account, and live rent free inside their walls as a civil protest. Sure no house or apartment, but no sub fee either. And if the free trial were to ever reach endwalker, then the island sanctuary is basically freetrial housing with the fact you can decorate it with outdoor furnishings and have friends over.

It also kills two birds with one stone. They lose money as your not paying a sub and also therefore not buying from the online store anymore, yet you also still play the game as you might enjoy the game but not enough to actually pay for it.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Just unsub, make a free trial account, and live rent free inside their walls as a civil protest. Sure no house or apartment, but no sub fee either. And if the free trial were to ever reach endwalker, then the island sanctuary is basically freetrial housing with the fact you can decorate it with outdoor furnishings and have friends over.

It also kills two birds with one stone. They lose money as your not paying a sub and also therefore not buying from the online store anymore, yet you also still play the game as you might enjoy the game but not enough to actually pay for it.

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I don't really play the game anymore. My sub fee is legally sanctioned RMT. Once my submarines have stacked up enough cash to get up and running again if I come back, I'll unsub and wait to see the 8.0 changes before deciding whether I'm coming back.

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Originally Posted by PaulusHamsteru

Honestly, I hope the numbers keep going down. Maybe that'll give them a wake up call.

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I'm not holding my breath because they have proven to be really thick-skulled but maybe? The game failing got them to fix things once, hopefully it can happen again. I just find it remarkable that they took so much inspiration from WoW and are now treading in its footsteps in catering way too much to the high end players + releasing an expansion with atrociously bad writing.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't really play the game anymore. My sub fee is legally sanctioned RMT. Once my submarines have stacked up enough cash to get up and running again if I come back, I'll unsub and wait to see the 8.0 changes before deciding whether I'm coming back.

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That is fair, I have a few days left on my sub. Going to let it lapse as I am already caught up on crescent stuff aside from the tower. Didn't even start on cosmic exploration content until 2 months after it came out and after I did crescent stuff, and speaking of that, got my gatherer relics and just need to get my culinarian and alchemist relics. Probably going to wait to resub till at least 7.35 to come back and do a quick cleanup of content I let stockpile.

With all the effort they make into improving the gameplay, they'll definitely sooner close up the game than actually start taking a hard look at the game and it's issues.

Even if they decide they need to do something to keep players from leaving, it will take them 1-2 years to actually do anything.

I don't care about the number of players. Actually I enjoy the game, having good times with friends. I understand everything could be better but cant follow players that prefer FFXIV going deep and deep with losing amount of players. It seems its not your game or? Wishing bad things to your own game is cringe as F.

This forum, every day same people complain about same things, invest your time in something better for you.

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Originally Posted by IdleBlood

I don't care about the number of players. Actually I enjoy the game, having good times with friends. I understand everything could be better but cant follow players that prefer FFXIV going deep and deep with losing amount of players. It seems its not your game or? Wishing bad things to your own game is cringe as F.

This forum, every day same people complain about same things, invest your time in something better for you.

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I think you're missing the point.

No one cares about the player numbers as long as their are enough people to support an MMO. People care about the quality of the game and the huge drop in player numbers is a result of the low quality of the game.

People want the devs to improve the quality of the game and the only way that will happen is if they realise that continuing to serve slop will not be profitable. People don't want bad things to happen to the game, they want the game to be better.

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Originally Posted by IdleBlood

I don't care about the number of players. Actually I enjoy the game, having good times with friends. I understand everything could be better but cant follow players that prefer FFXIV going deep and deep with losing amount of players. It seems its not your game or? Wishing bad things to your own game is cringe as F.

This forum, every day same people complain about same things, invest your time in something better for you.

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Once your friends stop logging in because the game just doesn't deliver anymore, you will start to understand why the declining numbers of players is a problem. This isn't coming out of nowhere.

I play with a small group of friends, and we have all canceled our three month subscriptions which run out in August. After nine years I'm over the whole thing.

I have gotten actually a bit bitter towards yoshi p's lack of apologies regarding anything and everything this expansion. the way nobody can play with people on aether. and dynamis was a failure i stayed on for more than a year, had to pay to get out. No conversation from yoshi about any of that, he's fine collecting the transfer money.
i was also gone from 6.1-DT so i don't know if this attitude is new from the dev team but i really dislike it.

also how out of touch forked tower as a whole was, even for raiders and the JP community. not even mentioning cosmic because..what even was cosmic?

been playing clair obscur and forgot what it felt like to be so engrossed in a storyline.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I think you're missing the point.

No one cares about the player numbers as long as their are enough people to support an MMO. People care about the quality of the game and the huge drop in player numbers is a result of the low quality of the game.

People want the devs to improve the quality of the game and the only way that will happen is if they realise that continuing to serve slop will not be profitable. People don't want bad things to happen to the game, they want the game to be better.

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The point being missed in comments like this is "quality" as being used here is completely, entirely, 100% each person's own subjective opinion. The quality isn't "low." You personally just happen to not like the current direction the game is going. That's perfectly fine, but trashing the developers, personally attacking them, and trying to act as if one's own opinion is somehow objective fact isn't. It's just immature.

What's "better" for you may be very much worse for me, and vice versa. When people can start stepping back and realizing they're advocating for their personal opinions instead of just labeling anything they don't personally like as "bad," you're more likely to have a productive discussion. But I'm not sure that's what the forum crowd even wants...

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The point being missed in comments like this is "quality" as being used here is completely, entirely, 100% each person's own subjective opinion. The quality isn't "low." You personally just happen to not like the current direction the game is going. That's perfectly fine, but trashing the developers, personally attacking them, and trying to act as if one's own opinion is somehow objective fact isn't. It's just immature.

What's "better" for you may be very much worse for me, and vice versa. When people can start stepping back and realizing they're advocating for their personal opinions instead of just labeling anything they don't personally like as "bad," you're more likely to have a productive discussion. But I'm not sure that's what the forum crowd even wants...

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You cannot be serious. They even apologized in the PLL over the quality of service we have received. It has been slop.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

You cannot be serious. They even apologized in the PLL over the quality of service we have received. It has been slop.

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Context was in reference to the sort of things the emergency maintenances had to fix, such as localization issues or Mech Op bugs.

• In terms of environment design, it's amazing quality.
• In terms of music, the quality is adored and they do concerts.
• In terms of dungeon design, yes it's super formulaic and many people find that boring and lacking in depth. But the quality of that formulaic content is nevertheless good.

I could go on, but the point is that things being formulaic or boring does not mean they are poor quality. It just means they are simple. It is like saying a suit is poor quality because it's pure grey with no patterns or uniqueness to it.

People are spinning quality to mean different things:

• SE probably just means things like mistranslated text or Mech Op bugs.
• Forum users are gonna spin it to mean that simplistic, formulaic, homogenized systems are the quality issue.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Context was in reference to the sort of things the emergency maintenances had to fix, such as localization issues or Mech Op bugs.

• In terms of environment design, it's amazing quality.
• In terms of music, the quality is adored and they do concerts.
• In terms of dungeon design, yes it's super formulaic and many people find that boring and lacking in depth. But the quality of that formulaic content is nevertheless good.

I could go on, but the point is that things being formulaic or boring does not mean they are poor quality. It just means they are simple. It is like saying a suit is poor quality because it's pure grey with no patterns or uniqueness to it.

People are spinning quality to mean different things:

• SE probably just means things like mistranslated text or Mech Op bugs.
• Forum users are gonna spin it to mean that simplistic, formulaic, homogenized systems are the quality issue.

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Is not Forked Tower an example of a quality issue? Had SE told anyone here, including you, what the plan was with the entry system and difficulty level, wouldn't nearly everyone say: "no, you're doing that wrong"? Isn't part of a game's quality avoiding really unpleasant friction within the player base, thanks to content like CAR and FT.

I agree with you that assessing the quality of certain design choices is subjective, but I'd suggest Cosmic Explo illustrates a lack of thought and QA in multiple areas. Scaling issues that punished low-pop worlds were completely predictable, and the consequences of fail states bizarrely punishing. The project leveling content is purely a subjective preference, but find me someone who enjoyed running around in triangles clicking things for 40 minutes, and I'll find you ten who were insulted by that design.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Context was in reference to the sort of things the emergency maintenances had to fix, such as localization issues or Mech Op bugs.

• In terms of environment design, it's amazing quality.
• In terms of music, the quality is adored and they do concerts.
• In terms of dungeon design, yes it's super formulaic and many people find that boring and lacking in depth. But the quality of that formulaic content is nevertheless good.

I could go on, but the point is that things being formulaic or boring does not mean they are poor quality. It just means they are simple. It is like saying a suit is poor quality because it's pure grey with no patterns or uniqueness to it.

People are spinning quality to mean different things:

• SE probably just means things like mistranslated text or Mech Op bugs.
• Forum users are gonna spin it to mean that simplistic, formulaic, homogenized systems are the quality issue.

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Just like you're spinning every possible angle in the devs favor? Lack of innovation is lack of quality. Stop latching onto the meanings of words, you know everyone here means the BIG PICTURE as a core point.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Is not Forked Tower an example of a quality issue?

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The raid itself is amazing quality. The atmosphere, textures and music are amazing quality.

The entry system is a problem and can be argued to be a quality issue. But there are people on the forums spinning what SE said to be an admission that every single thing they make is "slop", including models, textures, environments, music and raids. That was obviously not what SE meant and that's obviously what Striker was trying to convey as well.

Really systems design and stories are the most contentious issues people have, but that's only a percentage of the overall development, and saying everything across the board is slop is also saying models, textures, music, animations, sounds, environments are not good quality when they clearly are.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Just like you're spinning every possible angle in the devs favor?

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You just seem to assume this about me these days without reading my posts properly.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The raid itself is amazing quality. The atmosphere, textures and music are amazing quality.

The entry system is a problem and can be argued to be a quality issue. But there are people on the forums spinning what SE said to be an admission that every single thing they make is "slop", including models, textures, environments, music and raids. That was obviously not what SE meant and that's obviously what Striker was trying to convey as well.

Really systems design and stories are the most contentious issues people have, but that's only a percentage of the overall development, and saying everything across the board is slop is also saying models, textures, music, animations, sounds, environments are not good quality when they clearly are.

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Again, my subjective opinion, but for me dungeon/boss design has been getting steadily worse.

I absolutely loved the ambience of early dungeons and the integrated visuals and music, as well as the variety in combat. CT gets a lot of hate, but LotA is a visually stunning experience with some unique mechanics. The Vault is a masterpiece IMO, not only for the visuals and vibe, but also for the way it sits seamlessly in the story, getting you where you need to go.

SE still does this well in some cases, but is ruining it for me with this absurd visual clutter. I don't want to have to squint or look away from the screen during a fight.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Just like you're spinning every possible angle in the devs favor? Lack of innovation is lack of quality. Stop latching onto the meanings of words, you know everyone here means the BIG PICTURE as a core point.

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Even I think your kind of misconstrusing that. Its very possible for the art and music departments to make really nice stuff, but the gameplay and writing room stuff has its issues. Like World of Warcraft has had patches and expansions like that. Stuff looks and sounds nice, shame about the actual gameplay content though.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Again, my subjective opinion, but for me dungeon/boss design has been getting steadily worse.

I absolutely loved the ambience of early dungeons and the integrated visuals and music, as well as the variety in combat. CT gets a lot of hate, but LotA is a visually stunning experience with some unique mechanics. The Vault is a masterpiece IMO, not only for the visuals and vibe, but also for the way it sits seamlessly in the story, getting you where you need to go.

SE still does this well in some cases, but is ruining it for me with this absurd visual clutter. I don't want to have to squint or look away from the screen during a fight.

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Objectively, they aren't getting worse. They are exactly the same as they've been since at least SB and that's actually still a problem. It's bland and we're all over it.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Objectively, they aren't getting worse. They are exactly the same as they've been since at least SB and that's actually still a problem. It's bland and we're all over it.

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I just gave a specific example in how they differ.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I just gave a specific example in how they differ.

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I didn't play HW, but I will say that today the vault is just clunky. Story wise, its great. Otherwise, its still entirely too easy and its clunky as heck. It's also 10 years old.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

CT gets a lot of hate, but LotA is a visually stunning experience with some unique mechanics. The Vault is a masterpiece IMO, not only for the visuals and vibe, but also for the way it sits seamlessly in the story, getting you where you need to go.

SE still does this well in some cases, but is ruining it for me with this absurd visual clutter. I don't want to have to squint or look away from the screen during a fight.

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It's true that they added more clutter. This began in Stormblood, when they dropped support for PS3. It was easy to notice, because the Ala Mhigo dungeon was full of NPCs fighting, which was unprecedented in prior expansions and tanked FPS on machines that couldn't handle it.

In Shadowbringers, they dropped official support for 32-bit and DX9, so the effects clearly increased a huge amount. You need no greater example of this than the first dungeon, Holminster Switch, which not only had NPCs everywhere but was full of light particles and rays.

Obviously with the release of Dawntrail they did a Recommended Specs increase allowing for even greater capacity and detail in these effects. I haven't personally noticed a difference since Shadowbringers, but I don't have any of the issues others do with eye strains or migraines.

Obviously, they got away with good quality dungeons with the examples you gave, such as The Vault. But I wouldn't say that the visual effects represent lower quality. Given it's a fantasy game, they want to create the vibe of magical effects and particles and things going on in the background, after all.

I can understand that a lot of people may want some settings to reduce such effects or adjust them but as someone with no accessibility needs in this area, I don't really notice any issues myself. Probably the worst issue I have is when a ranged DPS does LB3, but that's been there since ARR.

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Originally Posted by IdleBlood

I don't care about the number of players. Actually I enjoy the game, having good times with friends. I understand everything could be better but cant follow players that prefer FFXIV going deep and deep with losing amount of players. It seems its not your game or? Wishing bad things to your own game is cringe as F.

This forum, every day same people complain about same things, invest your time in something better for you.

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I think you might want to work on your reading comprehension. The people who complain are the ones who want the game to be better. What's wrong with that? The game is hemorrhaging players either way and all people are saying is that maybe, this drop in player numbers are finally going to get SE to invest more into the game.

And yeah, we complain about the same things. Because nothing has been fixed.

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Originally Posted by IdleBlood

I don't care about the number of players. Actually I enjoy the game, having good times with friends. I understand everything could be better but cant follow players that prefer FFXIV going deep and deep with losing amount of players. It seems its not your game or? Wishing bad things to your own game is cringe as F.

This forum, every day same people complain about same things, invest your time in something better for you.

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People who do not publicly complain or outright quit are the problem with this game, they just grumble privately on discord at most and pay their sub to AFK in Limsa, keep their house or just play another game and don't care to cancel.
The majority of people who complain do so because they like the game and want it to be better, how else are SE supposed to know that a system they implemented may be bad ?
The problem is that it goes on for so long because SE never acknowledge the complaint/feedback outside of a live letter so why stop complaining if you think you are not being heard.

It's gotten to the point where number drops get wished for because "All SE cares about is money, unless they start losing a lot of it they won't change anything", after all if they cannot fund their other projects anymore due to not having enough FF14 revenue to do so.

I'd love for FF14 to be the only game I have installed on my PC, I started near the end of SHB and for at least a year I didnt play another game, I didnt watch tv series, I didnt watch movies, my spare time was FF14 and nothing else. That is not the case anymore but I wish it was.

Well, SE acknowledge the issue but don't seem too concerned:
https://i.imgur.com/TImb8pO.png

Completely tone-deaf.