So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

I always wonder how many of those people are "real" new players to the MMO genre. Because every time people tell me they wanted to bring friends into the game and they left because of ARR it was ALWAYS WoW players.
I honestly don't consider WoW players who try out FF14 as real "new players", because very often especially WoW players already start most MMOs with the WoW-mindset (which often means rushing to endgame).

I honestly rarely see people who played other MMOs or played other games and not WoW do the same.
It honestly seems to me like WoW had ruined the mindset of some its players long-term, which is why many of them usually skip everything and don't even read quest texts.

I had very good experiences with new players who never played WoW and usually those people stuck.

On the other hand I tried to bring two WoW players into this game and they usually rushed the leveling, skipped every cutscene and tried to rush till endgame until they eventually quit.
But I honestly would say they ruined the game for themselves by approaching it with the same mindset they did in WoW.

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I mean... I'm a WoW player who stayed. You can push forward this notion all you'd like, but the numbers show the facts here. Alls I see are people defending ARR like it's just fine and not an issue. While the game continues to hemorrhage people across the board. The toxic positivity is as bad in XIV community as the toxic negativity is in WoW. There is no balance, and the 'everything is just fine' thing regarding the story is that one dog sitting in a burning house meme 'this is fine'.

Thing is, I don't introduce WoW players. I introduced my siblings and friends who had never touched MMORPGs before. So your 'speculation' goes out of the window right there. They didn't have any predetermined notions of the game.

And at the end of the day, regardless, a new player to FFXIV is a new player to FFXIV. New to the genre or not. If they played WoW or not really shouldn't make their feedback any less valuable. As... again, WoW is a competitor, as it should be, and different perspectives are a good thing even if you disagree. At the moment, the state of FFXIV clearly shows it's needing to improve. People are sharing their grievances. I don't agree with the toxicity in WoW, but I don't like the 'everything is fine' thing FFXIV seems to have (which is clearly wrong - factually, given numbers, even).

The amount of people that still blame covid is just absolutely insane to me. It could be 20 years later and the cult fans would still blame covid for whatever current day issue the game was having lmao. Like sweeties NO!!!!!! Let that go now PLEASE I am begging. That is NOT what you're looking at, that is not the situation anymore..the game plummeting to numbers as low as when the game first came out-what will it take?? What will it take.

Game just kept shoving all its money at any and everything other than the actual game. Doesnt listen to players. Doesnt do anything new. Doesnt keep promises. Doesnt update anything other than the mog store anymore. Can barely obtain anything cool/cute through actually playing the game these days. Events and Tribes take 2 seconds; are dialogue only. Story is nonsensical. Housing wards havent been updated in 3 solid years despite once being updated every single year reliantly. FCs serve no purpose. Community finder and board things are dead. You can barely have player made events because travel gets clogged everywhere. Everything is so formulaic and predictable you can easily forsee that nothing good is coming your way any time soon-which god forbid certain employees hear that, they go on tirades on the internet about how the staff never does anything wrong and all the customers are just spoiled and greedy for wanting anything ever from the company that they're paying monthly to engage with this product.

And then you try to express how any of this is a downer and a group of cult victims come running out to tell you you're wrong, and also to quit. and then you do quit and they go, "ah right you quit because after covid-" Anyway, its insanely deserved and I hope they're both humbled and humiliated enough that they stop acting like rockstars constantly going on tour, and get back to doing their actual jobs.

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Originally Posted by TheRealDesastr

Thing is, I don't introduce WoW players. I introduced my siblings and friends who had never touched MMORPGs before. So your 'speculation' goes out of the window right there. They didn't have any predetermined notions of the game.

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Well okay. This is why I was asking, because in my case the people who got frustrated with ARR very often were WoW players. For me individually, the people who behaved like you said, were usually WoW players.

As far as I know we are just sharing our experiences with bringing people into the game. Which doesn't mean that every WoW player is like this. But in my experience it was WoW players very often and a lot of times it was their mindset (which was rushing to endgame instead of enjoying the ride) which was at fault.

On the other hand I got two people into FF14 who were not even gamers at all. Mostly people who are avid book readers.
Also I got one WoW person into the game, but I needed to explain to this person that this game is best enjoyed by listening to its story and that you might have a bad time if you skip everything like in WoW.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

Well okay. This is why I was asking, because very often it was WoW players. And like I said, for me the people who behaved like you said, were usually WoW players.
As far as I know we are just sharing our experiences with bringing people into the game. Which doesn't mean that every WoW player is like this.
But in my experience it was WoW players very often and a lot of times it wwas their mindset which was at fault.

On the other hand I got two people into FF14 who were not even gamers at all. Mostly people who are avid book readers.
Also I got one WoW person into the game, but I needed to explain to this person that this game is best enjoyed by listening to its story and that you might have a bad time if you skip everything like in WoW.

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I don't think people should skip, myself, and if they do - go back and play it (comes to be an issue though when you've done it already and would need to again on an alt, but again, that's my big gripe as a player who's been here). But the frustrating thing comes with the lack of being able to play with friends as well who do introduce you. I wish I could have gotten my siblings to stay but they did not. I really have no idea what the solution would be in regard to getting all of the valuable story elements and being able to play current sooner. Though yes - it shouldn't be a rush to current, that's also fair.

It's just baffling. How can they get new people to stay? What can they offer to stop people from currently leaving? I don't want the game to die and I definitely don't want to go back to WoW.

I guess I'm just hoping this next expansion is fun and they learned from DT. I liked the story in the first half but not the second half myself. But also, I just....don't feel motivated to do content given the lack of rewards, I guess.

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Originally Posted by TheRealDesastr

I don't think people should skip, myself, and if they do - go back and play it. But the frustrating thing comes with the lack of being able to play with friends as well who do introduce you. I wish I could have gotten my siblings to stay but they did not. I really have no idea what the solution would be in regard to getting all of the valuable story elements and being able to play current sooner. Though yes - it shouldn't be a rush to current, that's also fair.

It's just baffling. How can they get new people to stay? What can they offer to stop people from currently leaving? I don't want the game to die and I definitely don't want to go back to WoW.

I guess I'm just hoping this next expansion is fun and they learned from DT. I liked the story in the first half but not the second half myself. But also, I just....don't feel motivated to do content given the lack of rewards, I guess.

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I honestly wish they could maybe even introduce an option to play through the story together with other sprouts and join them during some missions. Maybe even give veteran boni for helping sprouts out.
Or give option to run story missions together. This would already maybe help a lot. At least for me.

I also wish there was a way to make myself scale down to minimum item-level of a zone or something, because playing the game together with your friend and one-shotting everything is also kinda sad.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

I honestly wish they could maybe even introduce an option to play through the story together with other sprouts and join them during some missions. Maybe even give veteran boni for helping sprouts out.
Or give option to run story missions together. This would already maybe help a lot. At least for me.

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This would be a lot of fun, yeah. I think the only time that's showing up(in current times I mean, where people can actually do that) is just in dungeons and trials, and even then it can be soloed. Which is good for solo players but I dunno. That like... 'community guidance' aspect for beyond those pieces would be really neat. And add some more flavour to the game and ways to help new players more.

Regarding the population booms in 5.x and Endwalker launch... they definitely could have done better to capitalize on the popularity. I was keeping up with a few WoW players who joined at that time. One in particular, Savix, really fell in love with the game. Did the entire story, got to end game, did some raiding and ults. You know what made him quit, though? There were no fulfilling classic MMO grinds. I know a lot of them enjoyed a bit of Bozja. They really needed field content or similar in Endwalker, and in general need to add content like that EARLY in the expansion. Not a year+ into it. Hate to say it, but relying on story and a catalogue of old content isn't appealing to a lot of MMO veterans. In the end, XIV was just a fun side game for a few months. There are a lot who stuck around, but there could have been more. Seems like they're very concerned with making the story something you can enjoy solo, but that does nothing to promote a healthy end game and end game population, which is vital for an MMO.

I also think it's funny that when we needed the server space (Endwalker launch) they were totally unprepared. When they finally got around to adding new data centers, the population was already beginning to fail. They helped for the DT launch for sure, but without a turning point, I wonder how long they'll even bother with Dynamis and Materia.

Compared to Dawntrail, I yearn for the ARR days. >__>

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Originally Posted by Bitmoar

Regarding the population booms in 5.x and Endwalker launch... they definitely could have done better to capitalize on the popularity. I was keeping up with a few WoW players who joined at that time. One in particular, Savix, really fell in love with the game. Did the entire story, got to end game, did some raiding and ults. You know what made him quit, though? There were no fulfilling classic MMO grinds. I know a lot of them enjoyed a bit of Bozja. They really needed field content or similar in Endwalker, and in general need to add content like that EARLY in the expansion. (...)

I also think it's funny that when we needed the server space (Endwalker launch) they were totally unprepared. When they finally got around to adding new data centers, the population was already beginning to fail. They helped for the DT launch for sure, but without a turning point, I wonder how long they'll even bother with Dynamis and Materia.

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The lack of 'classic MMO grinds' is the exact reason I play this game and remain subscribed to it continually while anytime I try to play WoW it is a flash in the pan for me. You finish it, it's fun, and they go "Alright buddy, here's the mountain you have to climb to do anything else!" and it's an IMMEDIATE turn off because I have a life, a job, and I can't sit and farm crap and do 6 hours of dailies per day just to keep meaningfully and reasonably current. Grinds exist for sub retention, not fun, and is that what we really are looking for? More people doing grinds they hate?

I want them to break away from the formula but through things that are actually fun and engaging, not brainless grinds. This is why OC is really flopping for me pretty hard, which was making the last step of it something for hardcore grinders only is incredibly meh. Sitting there going through and grinding with the understanding that, due to life I'm just never going to see, let alone complete, Forked Tower is extremely meh. It was a massive kick in the groin because field content was always supposed to be 'for everyone', and locking that away behind more content for raiders was a VERY bad decision.

I'm holding judgement on the final boss of the new DD because we don't know what that will look like yet, but this trying to 'hybridize' things to draw people into 'harder content' to justify the amount of time they are spending on it just needs to stop. I mean YoshiP, I am not doing Savage content not because I don't want to, I am not doing Savage content because it is designed in such a way that 8 people need to make a 3-4 hour commitment 3 nights a week wiping to the same absurdly complex mechanics over and over until they figure out the silly 'ballet' that has been designed for each fight.

And Dynamis and Materia aren't going anywhere because the game's housing system pretty much precludes the concept of server merges.

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Originally Posted by Haru304

Compared to Dawntrail, I yearn for the ARR days. >__>

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I can only imagine the feeling of playing in a world where nations mattered, everyone had their own thing. The possibilities of adventure from land to land. Now everything is just a blob of boring peace called the Eorzean Alliance where they casually forgot they had issues in their own nations.

And when its time to adventure? Why bother. Sharlayan the writer pet nation KNOWS everything. Has DISCOVERED everything and has a spaceship that shouldve been IMPOSSIBLE to build. WHY do we even bother anymore as the WoL? We have space bunnies that can do CREATION MAGIC. Endwalker ruined this games world so badly

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That's true, but I want to give you some context here to explain why this decline isn't related to post-Covid.

1. Every expansion has grown by a persistent population of around 200,000 or more, especially since Stormblood. Stormblood likely benefitted from a huge amount of marketing, since the game was still not as mainstream as it could be then.
2. Shadowbringers catapulted it into the mainstream between its epic trailer, a WoW exodus that began in their "BfA" expansion and continued into further expansions due to the disturbing press. To this day, a lot of current players started in Shadowbringers. The gains, however, were relatively consistent with Stormblood's.
3. Covid did not have much impact throughout 2020. There were just the normal patch spikes and that's it.
4. In February/March 2021, the game went viral due to the Blizzard scandal and everyone fleeing to FFXIV, which culminated in Asmongold finally deciding to play. So intense was this gain, that we have yet to surpass it. It was easily the game's peak population. And it had nothing to do with Covid whatsoever.
5. Endwalker maintained gains, often double what we normally get from an expansion release. Up from the 900k in Shadowbringers, we didn't just settle on 1.1 million, we often reached levels of around 1.4 million, due in part that it was the "end of the arc" and over 50% of former players returned at some point or another to see the end of the story (source: % of past players with Endwalker minion on collection sites). But it was obviously in part due to it going viral and Asmongold. By the end of Endwalker, we were long past Covid and could no longer attribute 1.1+ million to Covid.
6. Dawntrail release very nearly reached the peak it did when Asmongold played. It seemed as if the standard expansion gains in Endwalker (of at least 1.1 million) were going to permanently increase to 1.3 million or so, because each expansion usually grows the game that much.
7. That didn't happen. The game has shot down to Shadowbringers levels of around 900k.

And we don't need to say why, do we? Despite all the complaints and pessimism, people returned for Dawntrail, then immediately dropped the population below Endwalker's extremely stable population levels - because people obviously were not happy with the Dawntrail story. And they have struggled with difficulty that is not catered to a wide range of difficulty levels, that SE are trying to solve starting with Pilgrim's Traverse.

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Your break down is enlightening, I'm one of the Shadowbringers babies because I never even thought to try this until then when people started yapping a lot more about FFXIV. So my perspective is naturally tilted a bit when it comes to how things were and how they felt prior. I can only go off what I'm told.

The mogstation slop will continue until profits improve

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I can only imagine the feeling of playing in a world where nations mattered, everyone had their own thing. The possibilities of adventure from land to land. Now everything is just a blob of boring peace called the Eorzean Alliance where they casually forgot they had issues in their own nations.

And when its time to adventure? Why bother. Sharlayan the writer pet nation KNOWS everything. Has DISCOVERED everything and has a spaceship that shouldve been IMPOSSIBLE to build. WHY do we even bother anymore as the WoL? We have space bunnies that can do CREATION MAGIC. Endwalker ruined this games world so badly

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Consequences, friction and world building? What? You're crazy. That'd never sell.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

100% agree.

YoshiP should be ashamed of himself for pushing raid mechanics into MSQ-required 4-man NORMAL dungeons to pander to vocal streamers.

And for hiring clearly unqualified writers to take up the torch of a beloved franchise that built its reputation on the writing.

Of all the ways to cut corners and cheap out, they picked the two absolute WORST for the long-term profitability and reputation of the IP.

Gating non-raiders out of the base game MSQ if they don't prog through Twitch streamer raid mechanics is unforgivable.

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I would really like to know what you mean by "Raid-Like mechanics" in normal content? I've done all of the new stuff and its as standard as it gets, its the stuff we've been doing since ARR, none of this is anything close to what raiding actually has to offer

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Originally Posted by Reolio

I would really like to know what you mean by "Raid-Like mechanics" in normal content? I've done all of the new stuff and its as standard as it gets, its the stuff we've been doing since ARR, none of this is anything close to what raiding actually has to offer

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Some people are struggling with the new dungeons, there are more then enough threads about it.
Nothing special, just follow this forum's lofty standard and call them whiny crybabies.

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Originally Posted by Reolio

I would really like to know what you mean by "Raid-Like mechanics" in normal content? I've done all of the new stuff and its as standard as it gets, its the stuff we've been doing since ARR, none of this is anything close to what raiding actually has to offer

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Being very generous here guessing that maybe they're just referring to splitting the party as "raid mechanics", along the lines of Atomos or the Superior Flight Unit trio.
Because if it isn't that, I've got nothing.

The biggest problem is having bean counters running things, all they care about is profits and it has affected all major gaming studios. When the top were actual gamers, the games were great, it's why I consider the 90s and 00s the golden age of gaming in terms of creativity and more. It was in this period when Final Fantasy was at it's best in terms of storytelling and more. They need to bring true gamers back to the top, I hate when gaming studios are taken over by bean counters who could care less about the quality of games made as long as they are profitable. Don't get me wrong, profits are always good but when it's the sole focus, it has led to the games feeling bland and more when it's missing the love of gaming during it's development. SE needs to stop taking money away from this game and tell the other divisions to make good games without taking money from FFXIV that has suffered from the lack of funding. I want this game to succeed and SE needs to give it the money it has rightfully earned.

A lot of people in this thread just looking at numbers without the context. The context being that its YoY, that is the numbers are compared to the same time last year. What happened the same time last year? We had a major expansion release. This year? We have a patch release. Of course the numbers aren't going to be growing, its typical for mmos to lose profitability and playerbase over a patch cycle only to rebound when the big expansion comes out. We all know that one player who unsubs as soon as the expansion is done and then you don't see them until a month before the new one when they rush through the patch content. Especially for a game like this that's dependent on msq players.

If we are here commenting, regardless of our feelings towards the game, or our personal preferences about how the game should operate, I think ALL of us want the game to get better and we don't want it to die.

That said, to date these are things we know based on what has been admitted by Yoshi P. and/or the team.
1. Some of their proven top creative leadership and have been working on other projects and they haven't been able to replace them.
2. They have expanded their teams but don't have the required new leadership to manage them properly while keeping creative fresh.
3. They have blatantly ignored current player feedback for years (assuming that those who comment on forums, reddit, or even FB groups are arguably the most invested)
4. They have successfully attracted many audiences, but have spread the game too thin.
4a. They cannot keep with with either the proper volume or quality of the content need for all of the audiences they have attracted.
4b. They forgot the golden rule that games made for everyone are inherently made for no one.
5. The team seems overwhelmed as though we have seen the team size increase, we have seen the amount of content go down since development on ff16 started, now the complete remake of tactics, and others.
5a. Really weird bugs, and mistakes are making it through, so much so that Yoshi P. had to admit it. (recently the spell speed instead of skill speed comes to mind)
5b. Creative content like OC comes out feeling less complete or fulfilling, like in the instance of forked tower. Play testing would have revealed that.

Don't hold me word to word on this one as it is just off the top of my head, and there are probably more examples/points to pull from. But I think most of us can agree that the direction of the game at this point is questionable. I think maybe for everyone except for maybe a small handful of players.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I can only imagine the feeling of playing in a world where nations mattered, everyone had their own thing. The possibilities of adventure from land to land. Now everything is just a blob of boring peace called the Eorzean Alliance where they casually forgot they had issues in their own nations.

And when its time to adventure? Why bother. Sharlayan the writer pet nation KNOWS everything. Has DISCOVERED everything and has a spaceship that shouldve been IMPOSSIBLE to build. WHY do we even bother anymore as the WoL? We have space bunnies that can do CREATION MAGIC. Endwalker ruined this games world so badly

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Don't forget everything being ancients all along.

The Allagan Empire? Ancients. Garlemald? Ancients. The gods? Ancients. Preservation and consequently the entire reason we had conflict with Alexandria? Ancients. Yes, I am technically equating Ascians and Ancients here because what are the Ascians at their core?
I honestly can't remember but I wouldn't be surprised if the War of the Magi was caused by the ancients in some form as well.

Having a highly advanced civilization that fell to ruin hundreds of years in the past can be interesting, it's what initially made Allag so interesting in the early days of XIV.
But when that civilization is responsible for every conspiracy, every antagonist, every major event in the history of the world? It becomes stupid.

And to a certain extent it also kills my sense of adventure, because wherever we set foot in the future it's just going to be ancients again.

Endwalker really is the gift that keeps on giving.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Endwalker really is the gift that keeps on giving.

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4.x/shadowbringers was what locked us into this mess

There are 2 universes.
In one, the falling earnings make the exacs pull their heads out of their asses and realize that they need to give this game a proper budget so it can get back on track.
In the other, the falling earnings make the exacs slash the game's already inadequate budget even further, with predictable results.

Let's see which universe we end up in...

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

But how long until that new blood runs into the things that veterans are having problems with? If anything they'll hit the wall sooner because they don't have to wait months/years before the sinking creeps up on them.

I encounter new people frequently on Dynamis, but a lot of them end up with a much different view of the game when they're having to rely on some level 100 (or several in the case of Crystal Tower) to one-shot escort them through mandatory MSQ content. At best they think the game is actually a single-player RPG and the MMO part is "optional" and at worst they think the whole game is dead and people like me are just very helpful survivors. I also can't count the number of "new friends" I've made in the last nearly 3 years that either:

A. Transfer to a data center that isn't Dynamis.
B. Never get seen again.

That said, Square-Enix is reaping what they sowed with regards to their apathy and blunders, and I don't really have enough trust or faith in them to fix things, especially when they have a convenient "exit plan" right there in the form of Final Fantasy 11's Mass Trust.

"Not enough people playing? That's fine, we'll just retoll EVERYTHING to be doable with NPCs." And that's assuming they don't just shutter the whole thing and bank exclusively on the mobile version instead.

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God forbid you tell them to swap servers real quick to get a faster queue instead to experience the content as intended.

Especially in Maduins Novice Network...

I had a sprout in my FC finish base Shadowbringers last night and showed genuine excitement for Dawntrail and it took a lot of self-control to not yuk their yum in a high moment for them. There are and will be players that adore Dawntrail, and there already are. I replayed ARR several times in its heyday and will defend Stormblood tooth and nail, so eh.

Actually I look back now and the MSQ really did totally abandon Tural in its entirety the instant we crossed into Heritage Found. Four whole areas of Dawntrail weren't utilized in about 2/3's ish of Dawntrail's storyline.

FFXIV going hard cyberpunk for DT instead of the South American culture, rife with underutilized mythos to be inspired by.... Amd instead we got Cyberpunk FFIX.

How did we get here?

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

But how long until that new blood runs into the things that veterans are having problems with? If anything they'll hit the wall sooner because they don't have to wait months/years before the sinking creeps up on them.

I encounter new people frequently on Dynamis, but a lot of them end up with a much different view of the game when they're having to rely on some level 100 (or several in the case of Crystal Tower) to one-shot escort them through mandatory MSQ content. At best they think the game is actually a single-player RPG and the MMO part is "optional" and at worst they think the whole game is dead and people like me are just very helpful survivors. I also can't count the number of "new friends" I've made in the last nearly 3 years that either:

A. Transfer to a data center that isn't Dynamis.
B. Never get seen again.

That said, Square-Enix is reaping what they sowed with regards to their apathy and blunders, and I don't really have enough trust or faith in them to fix things, especially when they have a convenient "exit plan" right there in the form of Final Fantasy 11's Mass Trust.

"Not enough people playing? That's fine, we'll just retoll EVERYTHING to be doable with NPCs." And that's assuming they don't just shutter the whole thing and bank exclusively on the mobile version instead.

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I think most will hit the wall just in time for 8.0 ads to start, which is going to be very interesting to watch. The 8.0 hype cycle is already carrying a strange mood. We want to see it, we want it to be great, but calling it cautiously optimistic feels a bit too kind for some of us.




I'm actually really wondering if the plan may be to start another FF MMO if one isn't already in the pipeline. The Japanese fanbase has consistently shared identical complaints as us English speaking players according to everyone who can translate, and if 8.0 isn't HW or ShB levels of story, THEN I think we might be screwed.

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Originally Posted by Big-Isaac

There are 2 universes.
In one, the falling earnings make the exacs pull their heads out of their asses and realize that they need to give this game a proper budget so it can get back on track.
In the other, the falling earnings make the exacs slash the game's already inadequate budget even further, with predictable results.

Let's see which universe we end up in...

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Funding can only do so much when we know from XVI that the decision makers are also a problem. They were given a blank slate and effectively a blank check, and the end result was an offline XIV where they say fuck.

It's as if trying to make your team develop 7 (or whatever) many games at the same time you're supporting your one successful live MMO service led to the deterioration of said MMO.

I'll never understand why Yoshida chose to do this, and I can only hope they don't do this ever again.

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Originally Posted by Atma

The lack of 'classic MMO grinds' is the exact reason I play this game and remain subscribed to it continually while anytime I try to play WoW it is a flash in the pan for me.

And Dynamis and Materia aren't going anywhere because the game's housing system pretty much precludes the concept of server merges.

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Content is optional. Not a server merge, moving Dynamis worlds to the other NA DCs and moving Materia worlds to JP DCs.

Just to expand on this quickly, XIV has some of the most soul crushing achievement grinds in the genre, I'll just assume you don't interact with them. But besides that, the grinds in field content specifically aren't all or nothing. It's a choose your own adventure. The point is, they need to begin whatever their long form optional grind content is (relics/field zone) to keep people engaged. You waste all the hype around an expansion when people finish the story, stick around for raiding if they raid, and then wait 3 months for the x.1 for a day's worth of content and another 4 week wait just for a new society quest or something.

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Originally Posted by TheRealDesastr

New players aren't staying. Everyone I've introduced hasn't remained, & the fact that people need to wait to play with their friends, blocked by an MSQ a majority of people do not like (in terms of DT) is abysmal. To even get to the point of Dawntrail, one has to go through the entire MSQ and that's a huge investment. No one is going to just buy a skip and waste that money for a game they're not invested in yet. Which gets rid of a set of newer folks brought in by older folks entirely.

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They really should just provide a story skip for the latest expansion at this point. In doing so, they can grant raiders the option to immediately jump into the raids they want instead of needing to progress through the story just to do that content. You see there are story skips for previous expansions, so I don't see why there shouldn't be one for the latest one.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm not really enthused by the idea of them making a "new" Final Fantasy MMO when they can't even get this one right. At least when it came from the jump to Final Fantasy 11 to Final Fantasy 14, that FF11 was "complete" and a job well done, while a jump from FF14 to Final Fantasy "17" would be abandoning a dumpster fire for a life boat. (Please note that the dumpster fire was not located in the ocean when visualizing the rubber dinghy trying to row away as fast as possible.)

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I don't disagree, but I do wonder if starting anew without 15 years of legacy code is too appealing to resist, especially after the attempts to continue post Endwalker haven't been hits and ESPECIALLY if the mobile remake takes off as it's been reviewing very well in the beta tests.

(That thing's not a port at all with how many fundamental changes Lightspeed's made.)

Game feels like it's basicly dead, been waiting for 15 min to do the new dungeon as a healer.
If i have to do dungeons alone with bad AI, what the point of paying a subscription at this point ?
Make it offline for 15€, because thats what it's worth imo.

Hopefully they won't repeat what ever the heck dawntrail was for 8.0 cause ppl claiming Dawntrail was the best thing since peanut butter and jelly and no argument.....them FINANCIAL LOSSES WANT A WORD WITH YA. Yeah.....dawntrail is truly one of the worse....almost sad to say cause it doing the same thing stormblood did, yet stormblood post game completely destroys dawntrail post game due to it being actually good.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

4.x/shadowbringers was what locked us into this mess

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At the same time Shadowbringers story writing was 20x better than what ever dawntrail was trying to do.... so its good and bad without the losing player counts and sub counts. Dawntrail is the we tried a new idea but realized that our new idea was completely stupid now.....

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Originally Posted by LyrisAdamanteia

A lot of people in this thread just looking at numbers without the context. The context being that its YoY, that is the numbers are compared to the same time last year. What happened the same time last year? We had a major expansion release.

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You're not looking at the context either. The context is Endwalker's population (on Lucky Bancho) was well over 1.2 million and this did not get lower even during patch lulls. So at minimum, Dawntrail should be 1.2 million duing patch lulls, if not more since an expansion's baseline usually grows by at least 200,000, which would put us at 1.4 mil.

Instead, we're at 900,000 because people are disappointed. My whole explanation of it is at https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6735003

And the chart with data that I made in Google Docs shows we are at Shadowbringers levels and that this is unprecedented:
https://i.imgur.com/FSccjx6.png

You have to go back to 2020 or 2021 to see levels this low. This is true for the Steam stats, the Lucky Bancho stats and the Achievement Hunter stats.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

*Great breakdown on the fact that things are unapologetically messed up right now*

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When even Jeeqbit isn't trying to shine a positive light on an FFXIV-related situation, you know things are rough.

Even Calyx don't wanna be there, dude himself is bored af for simply existing in the game...

A few things I think are important to keep in mind here:

A.) This isn't covid-related at this point. It's comparing last year to this year, not 2020/2021 to this year. Things like more people staying home, playing games, etc. has already long since sorted itself out.

B.) The data is primarily about sales, not active players. The relevant time period last year was the lead up to DT, which had the highest sales of any FFXIV expansion. This year is a "between" year for expansions. Of course sales are going to be lower. I'm quite confident if someone dug up similar reports from past years we'd see the same exact YoY trends between years that have new expansions releasing vs. those that don't.

C.) For those hoping the game will "change direction," I have two pieces of bad news. The first is that it doesn't need to. Remember, this game was still considered very profitable back in the ARR-->SB days, and even with the DT drop, it's still well above those levels. And that was before the cosmetic cash shop really got going. Simple fact is that FFXIV could still drop about 40-50% of its remaining players and remain one of SE's more profitable ventures.

D.) The second piece of bad news - FFXIV has completed its main storyline. Simple fact. Look at other long-running games and you'll see that the "end" of the main storyline becomes the peak of the playerbase, and then it never really recovers to anything close after that. It's happening right now with Destiny 2. It happened years ago with WoW and their Lich King expansion (despite being only a couple expansions in, it was the culmination of a storyline that started all the way back in the previous game - Warcraft III). WoW had a peak of around 12 million players when finishing the Arthas storyline. Since then? It plummeted the very next expansion, and it recently took what are being viewed as two "solid" expansions in a row just to get back up to around 2 million players (meaning over 80% of its one-time playerbase has left and never returned). FFXIV is there now. Endwalker finished it's main story. The climax is over. Anything else they come up with is just "falling action" to make a plot analogy. Personally, I just keep that in mind and set my expectations appropriately, and I've continued having a blast playing DT.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Dawntrail is the we tried a new idea but realized that our new idea was completely stupid now.....

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There are not even new ideas in DT. It is basically a reskinned EW, and EW is a reskinned ShB etc. They literary changed the facade but the core of the game is almost exactly the same. It is like eating potato salad every day. Even if you vary some spice for it, at one day, you will not be able to eat it for a long time. FF14 is in the same state ATM.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I honestly can't remember but I wouldn't be surprised if the War of the Magi was caused by the ancients in some form as well.

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Every calamity (so the flood that came about from the War of the Magi) was all part of the Ascians plan to try and resurrect Zodiark, so yes even the War of the Magi was still the ancients.

I have nothing else to contribute to this thread, just saw this and had to add to it. :D.

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Originally Posted by Velthice

Shame they're still stuck with another year of -Dawntrail- and it's horrible reputation souring the login screen. If I were them, I'd cut the losses entirely, get someone to throw up a new title card as far removed from DT as possible, and treat 7.4 as a soft reboot. Have the next msq quest start at sharlayan without anyone even so much as mentioning anything that happened since 7.0. Just scrub it from the story altogether. Don't build on rotten roots

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i changed my title card to ARR as i have some alts redoing it XD its so much nicer, you are correct. i can pretend (when not doing msq or playing my lvl 100) that DT doesnt exist.