So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

Imma be real the decline has more to do with state of the world right now
All the online media industries have been reporting similar hits since covid lockdowns ended.

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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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Ngl, literally just learned the other day that I can have the title screen and movie be whatever I want.

So I promptly changed it to Shadowbringers, because I'm tired of being flashbanged by the brightness and its loudness blaring through my speakers, every time the Dawntrail title screen appears.

Shadowbringers title screen is much easier on the eyes and the volume of it is reasonable, it doesn't come in booming.

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Originally Posted by Shinku_Tachi

Ngl, literally just learned the other day that I can have the title screen and movie be whatever I want.

So I promptly changed it to Shadowbringers, because I'm tired of being flashbanged by the brightness and its loudness blaring through my speakers, every time the Dawntrail title screen appears.

Shadowbringers title screen is much easier on the eyes and the volume of it is reasonable, it doesn't come in booming.

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That feature is really nice in concept, because I also don't like to be flashbanged.

But unfortunately, unless I missed something, it resets every time you close the game, making it pretty useless at it's intended function.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

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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True, when you take into consideration their goal to rejoin the shards with the source, which always came with a calamity, they would be behind all of them.

What I'm not sure about is if they actively caused all of them, or if nations were already in conflict by themselves and the Ascians just exploited what was already happening on it's own.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

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

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Shadowbringers absolutely started it, but Endwalker was what really locked us into this mess by trying to explain every remaining plot thread that 1.0 and ARR set up with "the ancients did it".

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That feature is really nice in concept, because I also don't like to be flashbanged.

But unfortunately, unless I missed something, it resets every time you close the game, making it pretty useless.

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They added it to the options menu this patch, so it finally functions in a way that makes sense.

https://i.imgur.com/PhWQsxm.jpeg

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Originally Posted by GeriTero

Imma be real the decline has more to do with state of the world right now
All the online media industries have been reporting similar hits since covid lockdowns ended.

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Oh please. Lets stop this

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That feature is really nice in concept, because I also don't like to be flashbanged.

But unfortunately, unless I missed something, it resets every time you close the game, making it pretty useless.

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Nah you can change it in the ingame system settings so it always starts with whatever intro you want be it Arr to ShB

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Originally Posted by Daralii

They added it to the options menu this patch, so it finally functions in a way that makes sense.

https://i.imgur.com/PhWQsxm.jpeg

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Originally Posted by Moggwa

Nah you can change it in the ingame system settings so it always starts with whatever intro you want be it Arr to ShB

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Oh thanks, that's good to know.
I do not remember that option being there.

That's what I was looking at, but the HD/Remakes should increase in profit in the next few months, the mobile and web games should keep dropping because they're pulling resources away from that division. I think the MMO profits should stabilize they're still higher than SHB profits, just not as high as EW profits.

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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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There are no raid mechanics in the normal dungeons. They're seriously not that hard. It's ok if you die trying to learn a new dungeon. I do Savage raiding and I died on both a BLM and VPR on the 2nd boss of the new dungeon. I just got a rez and we moved on. Way too many people expect everything to be ridiculously easy in this game and I don't get it. Why even play if you want absolutely zero challenge?

I think the big question is how they fix things from here. This game primarily draws people in for the story. I don't think it has ever competed with other games when it comes to job design or raid mechanics. I do really like the direction of the raids/dungeons. I love the new Alliance Raid, and Arcadion has mostly be excellent, even though I think M6S was a bit overtuned with the add phase and I'd prefer a door boss on M8S.

For me the biggest let downs have been the story (Didn't enjoy most of 7.0 - the end was better than the beginning though), 7.3 was a big improvement though and I enjoyed that and job design. Job design has just been getting worse and worse. Too simple, too similar between jobs, too boring.

I'm not sure what they can do to really bring back the story to as good as it was in ShB/early EW. They're clearly trying to return to the Ascian story, which I'm a big fan of, but how much longer can that actually work? Once we run out of Ascians, then what? It feels like they're stuck trying to come up with a story as gripping as the Hydaelyn/Zodiark/Ascian plot has been. When you've been to the edge of the universe, and defeated universe ending bosses, what's left to keep people entertained?