Face it, this game is in maintenance mode now, i.e. managed decline

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

you guys are doing the worst thing imaginable to trolls. Given them praise and attention.

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The irony. Or is it the projection? Nah definitely irony given that TC is definitely trolling

Skiros at least participates in the thread, rather than spewing the same "hot take" in slightly different wording and then leaving it for one of his simps to get mad over.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Skiros has good taste in the images he posts. If he's a troll, at least he's a cultured troll. 10/10 signature.

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Thanks, I pride myself for my taste in men.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Thanks, I pride myself for my taste in men.

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To bad my standards are abit different, otherwise Id call him handsome
To me...he looks Cool. But not handsome

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Hop over to fresh new 10/10 games like Forspoken

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They're probably starving the players from content here so they go buy a PS5 and play XVI, think about it, after savage XVI will be about to release and they need the player base good and bored. Big brain strats. There will be no grind to keep you busy. Go buy XVI.

Aaaaaaaaaand it's been resurrected.

https://i.imgur.com/gJ2JscQ.gif

"You have no power here, foul necromancer. You are nameless, formless. Return to the shadow from whence you came!"

But also, I have no clue if some wise man has ever said this but in the spirit of the thread's topic I'll say this:

"It's not about playercount, it's about player retention."

Has FFXIV managed to do this? Who knows, I'll leave that up to your imagination. ◕‿↼

I just love how prophetic I am.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

As for the new EU DC, if you think it will be a success, you are in for a rude awakening, Sagittarius which is my world is already very much dead, with multiple mediums not even taken in PERSONAL wards, just like Raiden on Light, only Phantom and Alpha are nicely populated, if you think an entire new DC of 8 worlds will work, I dont know what to tell you

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Phantom player here. The ward my personal is in took over a year to fill, and people move out-even out of mediums!-more often than I would expect. The ward my FC is in only recently got two new neighbours since Dawntrail dropped. Phantom is also a ghost town lol
The one thing we have better than NA is that Phantom & Sagittarius are part of Chaos DC, thus we benefit from faster queues being fed by mostly Ragnarok, Omega, Louisoix, etc. Same thing for the new servers in Light, with the added bonus that they get the active PF too. I truly don't know why I didn't move to Raiden instead of Phantom lol at least we got the cooler names!

If you think FF14 is in maintenance mode, you have no idea what that word even means.
Check out Rift if you want to see a game truely in maintenance mode.

Not that I think FF14 is in a good spot right now.

You have no idea the confusion I got when people were mentioning Hogwarts Legacy coming out soon, thinking everyone was probably trolling- only to realize this thread was necro'ed from 2 years ago.

Managed decline seems pretty close to me. Like it's definitely going downwards.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

If you think FF14 is in maintenance mode, you have no idea what that word even means.
Check out Rift if you want to see a game truely in maintenance mode.

Not that I think FF14 is in a good spot right now.

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I would say there is a misdirection of where it is going. However, I do believe they can readjust the trajectory and bring it back into shape. Overall, it is far from being in maintenance mode.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Managed decline seems pretty close to me. Like it's definitely going downwards.

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Not sure if it's, as you say, managed decline, or simply SE being insouciant regarding the game's current 'health'.

I think the problem iis that Square Enix, see the game as a stagnant venture capital problem. Even if you could amass every single MMO player into FFXIV, it wouldn't be enough for the profiteering seeking executive and investor who needs just infinite growth and money, so instead of reinforcing the game to keep the people who like it inhabit it, they need to "innovate" and create mass appeal so the continue promise of neverending growth exists.

I've seen it time and time again, in an attempt to appeal to players outside the genre they dumb it down, they get a massive short-term income from new players who eventually grow bored and leave because this isn't the type of games they like to play, and the game enters a crisis mode.

It happened to WoW and GW2 and other MMOs who did not survive this cycle like Wildstar.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Not sure if it's, as you say, managed decline, or simply SE being insouciant regarding the game's current 'health'.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

I think the problem is that Square Enix, see the game as a stagnant venture capital problem.

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Perhaps at the intersection of insouciance and corporate finance we have a wilting daffodil.

A game developed with the passion of Wordsworth...

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

Decays into a tabloid summary...

I walked around a bit.
On my own.
There were some plants.

The thing is how do they actually pull the game up enough for people to care at this point?
We're looking at a 2027 launch as most likely for 8.0, MSQ was poor, OC and CE were both cool but don't have reason to do it for over a month, OC's bonus's only really matter for forked tower and CE is the relic (It's achievement mount being a recolor is ridiculous). Still over a year and a half for the next expansion and people be bored, raiding (when it comes) can also keep a person entertained only so long. A content drought worse than Endwalker's is coming except this time the good wills gone.

8.0 would have to be basically like a 1.0 -> 2.0 level change at this point.

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Originally Posted by NaoSen

The thing is how do they actually pull the game up enough for people to care at this point?
We're looking at a 2027 launch as most likely for 8.0, MSQ was poor, OC and CE were both cool but don't have reason to do it for over a month, OC's bonus's only really matter for forked tower and CE is the relic (It's achievement mount being a recolor is ridiculous). Still over a year and a half for the next expansion and people be bored, raiding (when it comes) can also keep a person entertained only so long. A content drought worse than Endwalker's is coming except this time the good wills gone.

8.0 would have to be basically like a 1.0 -> 2.0 level change at this point.

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8.0 comes out next summer. 7.3 is August 2025, 7.4 is December 2025, 7.5 is April 2026, 8.0 launches June/July/August 2026. Do the math and count the 4 month gap between content.

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

8.0 comes out next summer. 7.3 is August 2025, 7.4 is December 2025, 7.5 is April 2026, 8.0 launches June/July/August 2026. Do the math and count the 4 month gap between content.

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5.5 -> 6.0 was 7 months, 6.5 -> 7.0 9 months, they have expressed being under strain. You're expecting 7.5 -> 8.0 to be 4 months ?
Expansions launch with far more content and changes than a simple incremental bump.

Dawntrail | 6.5 (Oct 3, 2023) → 7.0 (Jul 2, 2024) | 9 months
Endwalker | 5.5 (Apr 13, 2021) → 6.0 (Dec 7, 2021) | 7 months
Shadowbringers| 4.5 (Jan 8, 2019) → 5.0 (Jul 2, 2019) | 6 months
Stormblood | 3.5 (Jan 17, 2017) → 4.0 (Jun 20, 2017) | 5 months
Heavensward | 2.5 (Jan 20, 2015) → 3.0 (Jun 23, 2015) | 5 months

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

8.0 comes out next summer. 7.3 is August 2025, 7.4 is December 2025, 7.5 is April 2026, 8.0 launches June/July/August 2026. Do the math and count the 4 month gap between content.

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You've misunderstood something. There is a 19 week gap between patches, but that is not the case between the 7.5 and 8.0. The gap between that is actually 8 months, because 7.5 is split into two halves so they have more time to work on the expansion. This has been the case prior to both Endwalker and Dawntrail, where the gap was increased from 5 months to 8 months.

• 7.4 23rd December 2025 (19 weeks)
• 7.5 5th May 2026 (19 weeks)
• 7.55 18th August 2026 (15 weeks)
• 8.0 2nd February 2027 (24 weeks)

Although there are normally 19-20 weeks between patches, it's a bit different for 7.55 and 8.0, but if you move the 4 over to the 15 weeks you get the same overall result.

Now, maybe they will try to put in a lot of effort and make it sooner than that. But how sooner? They might manage November 2026 again like they did with Endwalker. But to get it out in August 2026 would be some sort of big demonstration of how many more people they have employed to work on FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Managed decline seems pretty close to me. Like it's definitely going downwards.

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I don't think it's intention. I think corporate SE's point of view was that FFXIV is doing well, therefore CBU3 doesn't need a lot of resources, while the offline and mobile games divisions are underperforming, therefore they need a bunch of money pumped into them.

Hopefully the decline will help them realise that maybe the continued success of their flagship product is something worth investing in.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't think it's intention.

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It's clearly not their intention. It's just happening anyway because their decisions (or execution of said decisions) are leading people to be unhappy.

For example:

• Many people are unhappy with the job design since prior to 7.0, yet addressing it has been put off until 8.0.
• The focus is almost entirely on the next patch, leaving almost everything else ignored and forgotten, except highly specific things such as the graphics update or dungeon revamps, while the mobile version routinely improves past content and quality of life issues across the board. Yet, a lot of complaints pertain to past systems that have been abandoned and not improved, ever.
• When issues are addressed it's often not sufficient ie. account privacy, housing.
• Content is formulaic and scripted, so a lot of people do it once and then feel there is no content left, as opposed to it being different (and fun) every time like PvP. Most systems aren't made to create dynamic experiences, so people get bored of repeating the exact same thing. This is not just the case with battles, but also things like Island Sanctuary. What past MMORPGs excelled at was creating dynamic experiences.
• Even casual players like dynamic systems and PvP in any MMORPG is an easy example of that.

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Hopefully the decline will help them realise that maybe the continued success of their flagship product is something worth investing in.

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Yoshi-P actually just said at the Anime Expo "even if we were to double our number of developers, I don't think we'd necessarily be able to double our output while trying to maintain the same level of quality."

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't think it's intention. I think corporate SE's point of view was that FFXIV is doing well, therefore CBU3 doesn't need a lot of resources, while the offline and mobile games divisions are underperforming, therefore they need a bunch of money pumped into them.

Hopefully the decline will help them realise that maybe the continued success of their flagship product is something worth investing in.

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They have invested in it, with the massive graphical overhaul, with making everything soloable with trusts, that must not have been cheap...

I'm not sure I buy that they're using the revenue money from subs and sales of FFXIV to reinvest in other projects. I'm not an economist but from what I understand big investment require outside funding (FF16 and FF7R had an exclusivity deal with Sony precisely because of this) and FFXIV isn't gonna bring them massive revenue to justify that, even if you brought everyone back and made every single lil' warrior of light happy. It's their projected profit thing that ends up being the problem (to this and any gaming company), there's just not enough MMO players to satisfy their insane greed.

I remember on FF7Remake and Rebirth sold out, but it didn't meet Square Enix sales expectations, despite it being PS5-Only and at that point they were just angry people didn't buy the game 3 times to meet the expectations.

Forspoken is unironically better than this expansion tbh.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You've misunderstood something. There is a 19 week gap between patches, but that is not the case between the 7.5 and 8.0. The gap between that is actually 8 months, because 7.5 is split into two halves so they have more time to work on the expansion. This has been the case prior to both Endwalker and Dawntrail, where the gap was increased from 5 months to 8 months.

• 7.4 23rd December 2025 (19 weeks)
• 7.5 5th May 2026 (19 weeks)
• 7.55 18th August 2026 (15 weeks)
• 8.0 2nd February 2027 (24 weeks)

Although there are normally 19-20 weeks between patches, it's a bit different for 7.55 and 8.0, but if you move the 4 over to the 15 weeks you get the same overall result.

Now, maybe they will try to put in a lot of effort and make it sooner than that. But how sooner? They might manage November 2026 again like they did with Endwalker. But to get it out in August 2026 would be some sort of big demonstration of how many more people they have employed to work on FFXIV.

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Just a small correction here. 5.0 patch notes released 24 months after 4.0. Releasing 8.0 in November 2026 is not putting in "a lot of effort". It's putting in no effort at all, considering they've managed to do it in late June before, following the same timeline.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I don't think it's intention. I think corporate SE's point of view was that FFXIV is doing well, therefore CBU3 doesn't need a lot of resources, while the offline and mobile games divisions are underperforming, therefore they need a bunch of money pumped into them.

Hopefully the decline will help them realise that maybe the continued success of their flagship product is something worth investing in.

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Doubtful, as things stand.

Apologies if you've already seen this, but this was Square Enix President Kiryu's take on the situation, when asked to address it at the very recent shareholder's meeting:
https://i.imgur.com/TImb8pO.png

I can't help but find this response laughable; it basically amounts to "We're aware of this problem but the experience that our overworked FFXIV producer is gaining through working on games that are not FFXIV will make everything better for FFXIV".
Completely tone-deaf.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

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I don't disagree, but I feel the need to post SE's "clarification", because it's hilarious.

https://img001.prntscr.com/file/img0...g9HnSluEkw.png

src: https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...rsmeeting.html

lol

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

I can't help but find this response laughable; it basically amounts to "We're aware of this problem but the experience that our overworked FFXIV producer is gaining through working on games that are not FFXIV will make everything better for FFXIV".
Completely tone-deaf.

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The funny thing is, that he actually brought his experience with FF14 over to other games too (FF16), because that game suffers from the same thing this one does, terrible pacing, samey combat, and a huge but barren world with not much to do or interact with.

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Originally Posted by brinn12

Just a small correction here. 5.0 patch notes released 24 months after 4.0. Releasing 8.0 in November 2026 is not putting in "a lot of effort". It's putting in no effort at all, considering they've managed to do it in late June before, following the same timeline.

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You're ignoring some important context here. They increased the timeframe of each of the major patches. So to release it after 24 months would require releasing it a lot sooner after 7.5 than they normally release a major patch even. The timeframe between final patch and expansion has generally always been longer than the timeframe between major patches, about 5 months until they increased it for Endwalker release.

I think you may underestimate how much they were actually pushing themselves to meet the 24 month timeframe as well, and the intent of it taking longer is to increase breaks, reduce burnout, and increase producitvity and consider the health of employees. This was likely also the case for major patches due to them having a wider variety of content types than they used to.

I remember they said how meeting one of the deadlines was going to be really tough and I think it must have been prior to Shadowbringers they said that, but they were going to do it anyway and crunch hard to keep it in summer. Then they flat out couldn't with Endwalker due to delayed contracts, remote working issues, etc. No doubt it was comfortable having more time so they seemed to stick with it.

So if they released it in November, that would be about 6 months after 7.5, similar to their previous timeframe of 5 months afer the .5 patch.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I think you may underestimate how much they were actually pushing themselves to meet the 24 month timeframe as well, and the intent of it taking longer is to increase breaks, reduce burnout, and increase producitvity and consider the health of employees. This was likely also the case for major patches due to them having a wider variety of content types than they used to.

I remember they said how meeting one of the deadlines was going to be really tough and I think it must have been prior to Shadowbringers they said that, but they were going to do it anyway and crunch hard to keep it in summer. Then they flat out couldn't with Endwalker due to delayed contracts, remote working issues, etc. No doubt it was comfortable having more time so they seemed to stick with it.

So if they released it in November, that would be about 6 months after 7.5, similar to their previous timeframe of 5 months afer the .5 patch.

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You don't get As just for putting in your best. Results matter.

I don't blame the devs though. It's a management problem. Their workflow is obviously just pure garbage. They literally still use Excel for everything.

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Originally Posted by AlucaDragonheart

The funny thing is, that he actually brought his experience with FF14 over to other games too (FF16), because that game suffers from the same thing this one does, terrible pacing, samey combat, and a huge but barren world with not much to do or interact with.

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I like how so many people ignore this.
The problem with this game is very clear to see when you look at the other game also made by the same person and it suffers the same problems.

Almost like both of them have something in common....

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Forspoken is unironically better than this expansion tbh.

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Has the bar been set this low now that we are comparing the expansion to that?

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

Has the bar been set this low now that we are comparing the expansion to that?

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Yes it is.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Yes it is.

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You are legit going to have the Square Enix staff zoom on this comment as "positive feedback" and make Forspoken 2

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

You are legit going to have the Square Enix staff zoom on this comment as "positive feedback" and make Forspoken 2

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The sad part about this is, they are probably already deciding where else to invest... Probably anywhere that isn't this game.

To be clear... I don't think Forspoken is good, and people can meme on it all day long, but to be honest Dawntrail is just as bad.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

The sad part about this is, they are probably already deciding where else to invest... Probably anywhere that isn't this game.

To be clear... I don't think Forspoken is good, and people can meme on it all day long, but to be honest Dawntrail is just as bad.

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They wrecked the story after Endwalker, and it was at such a high point. It's pretty amusing how, once the story is criticized, everything else in the game falls apart.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

They wrecked the story after Endwalker, and it was at such a high point. It's pretty amusing how, once the story is criticized, everything else in the game falls apart.

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I think it's just one of those... Breaking point situations... e.g., a person may be more than happy to ignore other flaws in a game and look on the overall product more favorably if something in the game is doing well that they like... In this discussion case, story for example... They may be willing to overlook issues with content if the story is good... Same vice versa..., some people may overlook an atrocious story if the gameplay is good....

It doesn't really surprise me, as the game has always been touted as having a really good story, so for me people reacting this way is very... on-brand.. I just see it as... Everything had been falling apart for a long time (A matter of opinion, obviously), but there's always been small little vestiges in the game that people have managed to hold onto... For some people that was story, for some other people it might be something as simple as deep dungeon, achievement hunting, or crafting.

Took a look at a gameplay video of Forspoken.

Gotta say, looks generic & boring AF.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You're ignoring some important context here. They increased the timeframe of each of the major patches. So to release it after 24 months would require releasing it a lot sooner after 7.5 than they normally release a major patch even. The timeframe between final patch and expansion has generally always been longer than the timeframe between major patches, about 5 months until they increased it for Endwalker release.

I think you may underestimate how much they were actually pushing themselves to meet the 24 month timeframe as well, and the intent of it taking longer is to increase breaks, reduce burnout, and increase producitvity and consider the health of employees. This was likely also the case for major patches due to them having a wider variety of content types than they used to.

I remember they said how meeting one of the deadlines was going to be really tough and I think it must have been prior to Shadowbringers they said that, but they were going to do it anyway and crunch hard to keep it in summer. Then they flat out couldn't with Endwalker due to delayed contracts, remote working issues, etc. No doubt it was comfortable having more time so they seemed to stick with it.

So if they released it in November, that would be about 6 months after 7.5, similar to their previous timeframe of 5 months afer the .5 patch.

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Huh? I'm not ignoring anything, the first part on bold is exactly what I am criticizing. They shouldn't have done that. The second part on bold is also very hard to believe, but we all choose what to believe in, I guess. It's not like SHB, EW and DT were much more profitable than the previous expansions and had longer patches, right?

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Forspoken is unironically better than this expansion tbh.

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Unless CBU3 shutters like Luminous Productions did with Forspoken, I am pressing X to doubt.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Hop over to fresh new 10/10 games like Forspoken

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YOu do know that maintanence mode implies a few things:
1) no expasions
2) no new cosmetics would be added to teh shop
3) it would only be patches
want a real example of maintanence mode? Heroes of the storm