FFXIV population decline continues

Tbf, I think XIV could lose their entire playerbase outside of Japan and SE still wouldn't care or change. Until the JP players show dissatisfaction, nothing will change. Japanese companies would rather go bankrupt than listen to their consumers outside of their borders. I never believed that until I played this game for over 12yrs and saw it first hand. Now I see that business behavior from JP companies everywhere. Oh well.

This is normal. We saw the same thing in EW. Until they start giving people a reason to login outside of your weekly 24 man raid, this will continue to happen.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

I believe he was pointing out that FFXIV has a long history of introducing new things with each expansion (as a response to people claiming FFXIV rarely does anything new). Also, if you listen to the forums, very few people will ever be happy about anything. Personally, I see a lot of excitement in game about the Chaos raids, which is where the huge majority of players will be (not here, or on Reddit, or...you get the idea). Don't confuse what you see in online forums as representative of anything.

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Yeah dont let reality hit you with numbers buddy, the game being down over 400 000 players and 1/3 of the population being gone on steamcharts is just a conspiracy to kill off the game

never change man, keep that "muh majoritah" thing rolling

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

Chaos raids? Very few people seem to be happy with it as it is right now.

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It's an experiment. Like almost every other experiment, you don't get it right on the first try. More on that below.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

People still do Criterion/Savage? Could've sworn that was dead content.

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One of, if not the biggest complaint, was that the rewards were not worth it. They acknowledged this and made at least the Aloalo Island something slightly more rewarding.

To take this further, because of the issue with the rewards with the Criterion, they made the Chaotic have a lot more rewards. Like I mentioned earlier, this Chaotic is an experiment. I would imagine they are seeing the feedback and I would guess the next version (assuming there is one) will be different.

Why is there always a Hardcore VS Casual Discussion which even goes the wrong way because i got the feeling people think "raiding" is hardcore, no it isnt, i raid too and im a casual nothing more.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Why is there always a Hardcore VS Casual Discussion which even goes the wrong way because i got the feeling people think "raiding" is hardcore, no it isnt, i raid too and im a casual nothing more.

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No greater holy wars than those about poorly defined terminology.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Why is there always a Hardcore VS Casual Discussion which even goes the wrong way because i got the feeling people think "raiding" is hardcore, no it isnt, i raid too and im a casual nothing more.

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I think a lot of people conflate being "casual" with being bad and having no interest in improving. Casual vs. hardcore is just a question of level of investment. Someone could play casually and still be fairly good at the game, clear savage tiers and whatnot. Hardcore players will just clear much faster because they metagame a lot more and put more effort into learning and improving.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I think a lot of people conflate being "casual" with being bad and having no interest in improving. Casual vs. hardcore is just a question of level of investment. Someone could play casually and still be fairly good at the game, clear savage tiers and whatnot. Hardcore players will just clear much faster because they metagame a lot more and put more effort into learning and improving.

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Much like how there can be Hardcore roleplayers. It might seem like a casual thing to do, just hang out socially and roleplay.
But people who put a lot of effort into it, like finding the perfect outfits, play a role perfectly is not casually roleplaying at that point.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Why is there always a Hardcore VS Casual Discussion which even goes the wrong way because i got the feeling people think "raiding" is hardcore, no it isnt, i raid too and im a casual nothing more.

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It sounds like there is a problem with the definition of "Hardcore" and "Casual" which people self identify with.

To me, "Hardcore" are the players who engage with Savage/Ult/Ex and Ranked CC.
To me, "Casuals" are the players who do not engage with any higher difficulty content. These are the roulette players. These are the Roleplayers. These are the crafters.

The problem is with the content that has come out in Dawntrail so far. Casuals have been fed Porridge, while Hardcore players have been fed Prime rib.

Square Enix has not released any midcore content to bring these two communities together. Instead, they've released rewards, which appeal to Casual players, behind Harder difficulty content. (Which casual players don't enjoy, for a variety of reasons.) Normally, this would be fine if there were other rewards and goals for them to be working towards. There isn't however as of 7.1. This means, that casual players who want the new hairstyles, mounts, accessories, and anything else they increasingly have been locking behind harder content, have to clear the harder content that they don't enjoy, or for any reason of your choosing, they can't clear. That puts them in conflict with the Hardcore community who doesn't want to be teaching people the basics of raiding, doesn't want to teach people strategies, and have to carry in their words "Dead weight" through content. It's only natural they'll clash.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Why is there always a Hardcore VS Casual Discussion which even goes the wrong way because i got the feeling people think "raiding" is hardcore, no it isnt, i raid too and im a casual nothing more.

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It's true that you can be casual and raid. However, when I discuss casual players, I am usually referring to people who play casually in the sense of logging in when there is a patch release and then not playing again for months. In contrast, raiders will usually login once a week at minimum for weeklies.

A lot of the time, people who raidlog casually and are any good at it, have usually played or studied a lot at some point. Because someone really that casual jumping into savage usually will not properly understand stuff like snapshots and basic FFXIV raid terminology and it'll beat them up.

The term isn't always strictly used to refer to people who play casually, but people whose mindset is casual play - ie. not taking content seriously enough to be capable of clearing it, aiming to have fun rather than actually clear it and their definition of fun might be dying. Whereas people actually serious about it usually check The Balance for optimization and prepare themselves properly.

And that's exactly the point. A lot of players will never lookup information about the game or study optimizations guides. I am the same when I play other MMORPGs. I don't lookup guides or study how their raid content works - I just button mash because it's not my main game and I've no doubt a lot of people play this game like that. Same if I play a game for RP reasons.

More often than not, a casual mindset is there due to having, well, played casually the entire time, resulting in not doing much more than the MSQ - if you even get through the MSQ at all.