So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/26q1slides.pdf

I mean, we ALL know this. We're the ones sticking it out out of hope, spite, or RP, but yeah. There it is.

The devs keep stating they WANT to change, but we're only seeing the very earliest start of it possibly happening.

Oof.

I think it's more concerning that literally everything is less profitable than it was before than just the MMO division.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

I think it's more concerning that literally everything is less profitable than it was before than just the MMO division.

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People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

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You can argue that the quality of the MSQ of DT has tanked as well prior to 7.2, so that has led many players to stop playing too.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

You can argue that the quality of the MSQ of DT has tanked as well prior to 7.2, so that has led many players to stop playing too.

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The quality is mostly the same as it was in EW and SHB. The reality is what happened was mass disillusionment.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

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Sadly, it does come currently with a stupidly massive wave of layoffs in the industry, while the top that got them into that trouble in the first place give themselves a pat and still remain in position, 'trimming the fat' so they say.

CBU3 has a horrible road ahead of them. They've already gained as many new players as they could these past 10 years, the real problem now is to bring all those players back.

I don't envy their jobs right now. I think bringing back Ascian-level storytelling is the only way they're going to convince players to resubscribe.

With Dawntrail being the most poorly reviewed FFXIV release since 1.0, the number of active players falling precipitously, and Kiryu being directly questioned by shareholders over Dawntrail being a flop in terms of player retention.

We all should have expected that news to come.

Now is the time for a fire to be lit under Yoshida-san's and CBU3's ***. Because if 8.0 doesn't perform, lol... somebody better call Tanaka and ask him what happens when Square Enix starts asking, "what have you done for me lately."

this is what happens when they ignore the years opon years of player feedback an keep doubling down on a stale formula an poorly pieced together coding that burns the engine apart everytime its past time they did away with all the limitations an rewrite the entire structure to give the populace what they've been demanding YEARS AGO not later, not next expansion but NOW here in the present before this game really does crash an burn again like days of eld the dark times of version 1.0

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time.

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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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You can think of it like a miniature crash.

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See, it could be miniature. There is precedent for people returning to an MMORPG. ARR proved this, and so has WoW recently. But it's ultimately contingent on the offer being enticing enough.

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FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid.

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I agree but for different reasons. The baseline population is really those who started the game in its earliest days. They not only have a greater sunk cost, they also have a greater understanding of the game and of how much infectious passion the developers showed from its earliest days. Clearly, a lot of newer players do not understand that since they weren't around for it, so never developed the same sort of understanding of the developers and thus find it easier to leave. Additionally, the people who joined due to streamers like Asmongold obviously just follow said streamers to the next game they play. The result being a reduced population after the hype wears off, and this is all regardless of Covid.

Even amongst long-time players, while the game was growing, a decline was happening simoultaneously amongst the long-time players, and it began a very long time ago:

• Shadowbringers and to a lesser extent Stormblood alienated some players and made them quit, as they saw the trajectory of jobs very early on and swiftly quit. I saw this plenty among people I'd met in the game at that time.
• Endwalker and to a lesser extent Shadowbringers people began to observe frustrations with battles, which SE are now attempting to solve in Dawntrail. There were people who quit over this, but it wasn't really reflected in the statistics because more people were joining the game than quitting.
• But a lot of players stuck around for one simple reason and that's the story. So once that disappointed them, they were done. That was Dawntrail.

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws. It helped me during Covid.

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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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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Cat's out of the bag at this point. The only thing they could do and are doing now is redirecting the story back at the Ascians, because this was a formula they knew and conducted well.

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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 mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction. The post MSQ had a bit of a rocky start, but i think 7.3 help make Dawntrail a bit tolerable. Can't spoil why since not everyone has reach 7.3 yet. I just hope they find a writer that understand the core of 14 and learn from the previous writer's mistake.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

CBU3 has a horrible road ahead of them. They've already gained as many new players as they could these past 10 years, the real problem now is to bring all those players back.

I don't envy their jobs right now. I think bringing back Ascian-level storytelling is the only way they're going to convince players to resubscribe.

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They only have themselves to blame. But I wish them luck all the same.

Good. They deserve this.

Now hurry up do a U-Turn and put back those money into the game rather than funding Yoshi-P's new spellspeed ring to show in next Live Letter. If struggling is what they need to make the game a bundle of joy to play again, then so be it.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Good. They deserve this.

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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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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction. The post MSQ had a bit of a rocky start, but i think 7.3 help make Dawntrail a bit tolerable. Can't spoil why since not everyone has reach 7.3 yet. I just hope they find a writer that understand the core of 14 and learn from the previous writer's mistake.

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I'm not saying the content in Dawntrail is bad. I'm saying Dawntrail, the name itself and specifically the attached msq storyline carry a stigma to them now of being "the bad expansion" so I would just kill the name entirely. They can continue the Arcadion and other things that are working for them. Stormblood is still remembered as a weak expansion despite having some of the best content packed within it and one of the best post patch stories (imo) of Doman and Garlean tensions. it never escaped the shadow of its launch msq, not even today, and that's exactly how everything Dawntrail will be remembered.

I stand by cutting the msq out. The worst thing they could do is make Dawntrail "required reading" to understand future events, especially if they end up turning it around and come up with a great story for 8.0. Nobody who quit because of the DT story is going to want to come back if they have to play through the thing that made them quit

Yoshida is far from blameless in this situation, but SE funneling 99.9999% of XIV funds into assorted flops and the latest entry of the FF7 remake is probably 50% of the reason we will never see real improvements to ingame infrastructure

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws. It helped me during Covid.

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You don't need to worry about the game actually existing. Even if it's population reduces more, it will likely just be at its original baseline of 500-600k and the game was definitely just fine back then. It's all relative to individual datacenters, after all, so in a worst case they could attempt to merge worlds or make transferring to a target data center less problematic.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction.

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Dawntrail wasn't perfect. In retrospect I'd even rank it below ARR, especially because of how it got FF9 lore and portrayed it in a way that makes me sick. But I still enjoyed it, especially everything prior to Heritage Found. Even the story after that at least had more time spent on it than the patches. Because as you said, the environments and dungeons and trials were great.

In a lot of ways, what has made it difficult for me is the patches. They all doubled downed on "electrope FF9", including the latest one, which reminds me of the sickness I had tried to move on from, and the result is just apathy - not really caring for the MSQ much. I just really didn't care for what was going on in 7.3 at this point. I even think that all the people who skipped it didn't miss much; it was more of all the things they're tired of.

I'd have loved if Underkeep could have been in Living Memory instead and had no electrope whatsoever, so it could just be a true exploration of FF9 in all its authenticity. We always deal with the scions nodding and thanking but it just felt even more excessive than normal in 7.3 and it stands out so much more when you're apathetic about what's going on.

The irony is that FF9 is an example of some of the best storytelling. They could learn something from actually playing the game, like how to make the scions interesting instead of existing solely to shower you with praises and be a duty support NPC. I know they need them there for duty support, but you really notice when there is no purpose in that character being in the story, and they do it just so you have Duty Support. They need to try harder to make it feel natural, probably by just introducing new warrior characters. It's not like they can't; they do it in sidequests all of the time and it doesn't take them long.

As for what 7.3 tells us the future holds, if you've done it, you know. In some ways I'm glad we're (somewhat) moving on, but in other ways I'm just apathetic at what it seems to be hinting.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Good. They deserve this.

Now hurry up do a U-Turn and put back those money into the game rather than funding Yoshi-P's new spellspeed ring to show in next Live Letter. If struggling is what they need to make the game a bundle of joy to play again, then so be it.

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This right here is the real elephant in the room in my opinion.

The game could be so much more if they actually put more of the monies it generates back into the game. It's the definition of stupidity for them to outright acknowledge that FFXIV is their most popular, reliable, product.... and then do the bare minimum to maintain it.

In fact, it's disappointing that they didn't make any attempt to future proof the game (financially) during Covid because the positive impact it had on gaming was never going to last indefinitely.

It turns out, much to the surprised of everyone I'm sure, that if you just funnel money into bad projects you lose money.

Their best releases have been remakes and remasters, everything new pretty much flops and probably the best they can hope for is things breaking even. Partially because they think people just don't want the RPGs of ye olden days but everything has to be more of an action game... Because THAT worked so well for FF 15, and FF 16... And they also keep hiring consultants to sabotage their games.

All their financials troubles are of their own making, they deserve them.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws.

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Agreed, same!

At the end of the day, even with my criticisms it's all love, ya dig.

I want Yoshida-san to succeed, I want CBU3 to succeed, I want Final Fantasy XIV to succeed.

When they're succeeding, it means we're getting great content. When they're succeeding, we're regularly getting new blood in the playerbase. When they're succeeding it means we're continuing to have a game we love to login to day-in day-out, week-in week-out, month-in month-out, year-in year-out.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

It turns out, much to the surprised of everyone I'm sure, that if you just funnel money into bad projects you lose money.

Their best releases have been remakes and remasters, everything new pretty much flops and probably the best they can hope for is things breaking even. Partially because they think people just don't want the RPGs of ye olden days but everything has to be more of an action game... Because THAT worked so well for FF 15, and FF 16... And they also keep hiring consultants to sabotage their games.

All their financials troubles are of their own making, they deserve them.

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"Turn-based RPGs don't have a place in today's market" says the company that keeps reselling its old turn-based RPGs, and we can't forget about the sales of their action games versus a random French RPG mimicking old JRPGs.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws. It helped me during Covid.

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I'm not sure whether it's because a new patched launched very recently, but - speaking in terms of my experience - I've had quite a few instances running roulettes where the team was mostly Sprouts who seemed genuinely new to the game. Heck, I had 'Final Steps of Faith' pop in roulette this morning and, after we'd defeated angrywyrm there were four sprouts discussing how awesome they thought the trial and story leading up to it was.

I guess there is something to be said for the fact that some 'veterans' of the game may not be happy with recent offerings but the game does still seem to be attracting some new blood.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

[...] they think people just don't want the RPGs of ye olden days but everything has to be more of an action game... Because THAT worked so well for FF 15, and FF 16... And they also keep hiring consultants to sabotage their games.

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With the new fight design they even try to turn FF14 into an action RPG. They hollowed out the job mechanics and replaced them with the DDR fight mechanics and visual cues. But this isn't Monster Hunter or Dark Souls and they are alienating their casual playerbase with it.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

I'm not sure whether it's because a new patched launched very recently, but - speaking in terms of my experience - I've had quite a few instances running roulettes where the team was mostly Sprouts who seemed genuinely new to the game. Heck, I had 'Final Steps of Faith' pop in roulette this morning and, after we'd defeated angrywyrm there were four sprouts discussing how awesome they thought the trial and story leading up to it was.

I guess there is something to be said for the fact that some 'veterans' of the game may not be happy with recent offerings but the game does still seem to be attracting some new blood.

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Oh it is, and let me tell you, those players are just as happy with the game as people used to be back in Heavensward and other expansions where people were way more positive. There is no shortage of these sprouts, either, you've just met the tip of the iceberg there.

But they are just a percentage of a larger pie at the end of the day. They and returners have been masking anyone that leaves for quite a long time so that it doesn't reflect statistically.

The problems Square Enix has now gotten itself into with Dawntrail are critical. If you look at the latest Lucky Bancho (from July 25, 2025), it looks more like the numbers will continue to decline.

The mistakes were clearly made at the management level of SE and CBU3, and the fact that no one told Daichi Hiori that a character like Wuk Lamat wouldn't work raises some questions for me.

Added to this is the problem that, assuming 7.4 comes in December 2025 and 7.5 in April 2025, 8.0 could not come until December 2026 at the earliest. I very much doubt that 7.4 and 7.5 will manage to offset the subscription numbers (perhaps minimally).

I'm curious to see if CBU3 can turn things around again. In my opinion, they missed an opportunity to release XIV-2 towards the end when Endwalker was released.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

I'm not sure whether it's because a new patched launched very recently, but - speaking in terms of my experience - I've had quite a few instances running roulettes where the team was mostly Sprouts who seemed genuinely new to the game. Heck, I had 'Final Steps of Faith' pop in roulette this morning and, after we'd defeated angrywyrm there were four sprouts discussing how awesome they thought the trial and story leading up to it was.

I guess there is something to be said for the fact that some 'veterans' of the game may not be happy with recent offerings but the game does still seem to be attracting some new blood.

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I totally agree. I also have sprouts on the regular in my roulettes and some of them also mentionhow awesome this game is! I can confirm. Problem is that the current discourse of this game is almost completely dominated by veteran players who have already finished everything in the game and who put in propably 1000-2000 hours. Sometimes those veteran voices drown out all the people which are still going through the story and enjoy it.

Seeing sprouts every time i do Duty Roulette makes me hopeful, because even though compared to other MMOs, this game at least still attracts new people.

With other MMOs I play I don't even know the last time I saw or connected with a new player, because the only "new" characters I often see are alts from veterans.

This is deserved, but I don't think it will change anything.... It's a one-trick-pony game design, and indicative of their own self-admitted poor leadership, I frankly don't even think it can be course corrected since it would basically require overhauling patch cadence and deviating from Excel spreadsheet design.

8.0 will feed the same, as will 9.0 feed the same, as will 10.0 feed the same, the only difference being you'll see more aggressive use of the Mogstation.

That's my prediction.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

I totally agree. I also have sprouts on the regular in my roulettes and some of them also mentionhow awesome this game is! I can confirm. Problem is that the current discourse of this game is almost completely dominated by veteran players who have already finished everything in the game and who put in propably 1000-2000 hours. Sometimes those veteran voices drown out all the people which are still going through the story and enjoy it.

Seeing sprouts every time i do Duty Roulette makes me hopeful, because even though compared to other MMOs, this game at least still attracts new people.

With other MMOs I play I don't even know the last time I saw or connected with a new player, because the only "new" characters I often see are alts from veterans.

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Unfortunately, nobody's going to invest in making a new MMO when there are so many failures. I've been waiting ages for a new superhero MMO to play and the only one who is even trying to launch looks like absolute garbage. It's either go back to games from 2013 or nothing at all.

They got a bunch of new players, instead of working ln keeping them all in. They rushed the story (Endwalker) because of the success. Which makes NO sense at all. And now they are struggling to make anyone interested in their new storylines. You take your time and POLISH if you are successful. You dont RUSH

They did not fix their systems or QoL as a priority and focused on other projects on the side. Because they thought the "new player experience" would keep people hooked and their outdated dinosaur japanese thinking of "we have a product and it stays the same so clients are comfy because people hate change" again. You are NOT coca-cola, you are an MMO. Change is critical, innovation is critical.

What can I say except you get what you deserve. 8.0 is my limit, or if another MMO with better rp features comes along.

This MMO needs a new director who focuses ONLY on ffxiv and the CEO needs to give the director and team more funds and time to innovate.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

This right here is the real elephant in the room in my opinion.

The game could be so much more if they actually put more of the monies it generates back into the game. It's the definition of stupidity for them to outright acknowledge that FFXIV is their most popular, reliable, product.... and then do the bare minimum to maintain it.

In fact, it's disappointing that they didn't make any attempt to future proof the game (financially) during Covid because the positive impact it had on gaming was never going to last indefinitely.

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I personally think the people in charge of the SE direction and investment projects are just poorly informed and out of the loop of what actually happens outside of JP.

The only reason why FF14 managed to be salvaged by Yoshi-P is that he had experienced other popular games outside of JP, and he implemented some of their elements into the game.

I also do not think it's bad to use some of the money other projects generate and try to do other projects, but it seems that the projects they engage with are very poorly thought out and planned. This overall makes me think the people who are in charge of approving the projects and the research around them are very poorly prepared.

This extends into the DT direction as well. There had to be somebody who gave the green light for this radical change.

It seems a shame they didn’t take the time to work on the infrastructure, netcode and some of the underlying issues that are precluding the game from trying new things, 12+ years of inventory assets and still managing glams, gear etc is a flaming nightmare. The DDR doubling down and 2 minute game loop, homogenisation of job roles, no interplay in jobs, constant simplification and lack of casual enduring content. Totally get that we shouldn’t have silly skills and being busy for busy sake but all the open world is empty and it is wasted. So many things to list. I wanna play more but there is little of interest for me and it just feel annoying to hear take a break, play other games, quit game etc, pfft.

I think we should be able to ear 450 tomes per job type etc

Time to retire the creatively bankrupt "saviour" of the franchise. It turns out you can't lie and manufacture your way to success forever, I'm surprised it took so much time for people to wake up.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

I think it's more concerning that literally everything is less profitable than it was before than just the MMO division.

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After some NFT-games and so total successes like Forspoken, i am sure, SQEX has a serious management problem. It could kill the whole company.


Cheers

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.

If we go with 'new player starting off and excited for the story' as well, I still can't see people staying. No matter who I've tried to suggest, they leave, because the slog of ARR is drawn out so much & not captivating at all.

Then, for me, the only thing keeping me is RP, but the fact that rewards aren't account bound and alt-friendliness is illegal here in FFXIV is demotivating. I don't care to have everything on one character and 'all jobs on one' isn't exciting.

WoW has alt-friendliness to offer & now housing, too. What can XIV say that it has that WoW doesn't? Before anyone gets on my case about 'just going to play WoW', I have RP & housing keeping me here in XIV, not any of the 'actual elements' of the game anymore. I don't intend on leaving and my type of player is probably not that common. Most others would just leave at this point.

Also, looking into rewards, WoW has trading post. We get a tiny sprinkle of mounts, pets, & gear every patch cycle & sometimes abysmal rewards relating to holiday events. But that's hoping for 1 mount, minion, emote or outfit(usually just 1) & SOMETIMES furnishings. Otherwise, we need to wait for the long patch cycles to see anything and usually again it's a smaller amount than the monthly things WoW does.

one could argue 'but WoW does a bunch of recolors and is lazy'. Sure. They also had mount collect achievements and all that too. It just...feels pointless to be a collector in FFXIV if things aren't account bound tbh, so that gets rid of yet another element of the game right along with the fact that we just have so little rewards or incentive to keep us logging in.

And that's just it - if you don't have a house keeping you here, what's the incentive to even log in? That's being directed at the general folks, not extreme RPers or anything like myself. (I say extreme given I have dozens of characters, most people don't juggle that). But even if I'm an unusual case, I know other people have alts and don't want to regrind the same things over and over, & may find one thing fitting on a different character but not wanting to slog through all of those locks.

So - there's little incentive for current players. Little incentive for new ones. Nothing of excitement being introduced at all lately while other games like WoW have so much more to offer and now *everything* to offer that XIV does & a LOT more. Only niche players are now staying like myself, and it's worrisome.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

After some NFT-games and so total successes like Forspoken, i am sure, SQEX has a serious management problem. It could kill the whole company.


Cheers

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Forspoken should have been their biggest lesson on what not to do. But I guess it's too much to expect a company to look at their failures and ask themselves "Why did this fail?"

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Originally Posted by TheRealDesastr

If we go with 'new player starting off and excited for the story' as well, I still can't see people staying. No matter who I've tried to suggest, they leave, because the slog of ARR is drawn out so much & not captivating at all.

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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 WoW players already start most MMOs with the WoW-mindset (which often means rushing to endgame) and don't really approach games like other new players. They often already treat every new MMO they start like WoW.

I honestly rarely see people who played other MMOs or played other games which are 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.

So I am always interested when someone is talking about "new players" which they tried to get into the game and that quit in ARR, if those are WoW players, because usually I am right.

Instead of writing up a 500 line manifesto of thinly-veiled conspiracy theories, or a diatribe on why the devs need to be collectively fired, I'm gonna list the things I don't like about the game, as a 10-year veteran.

1. Gear progression sucks. It's the same system from Heavensward, but with almost double the jobs. There just isn't the time to gear everything unless you're in the dungeon treadmill pretty much every single week for 8 months. There needs to be more ways of gearing jobs both alt and main, and a first good step would be an increase in the tome cap after the first 8 weeks of Savage.

2. Links to the above, but too many timegates. Alliance Raid timegating, Normal Raid timegating, Treasure Map timegating (especially this one), Savage Raid Timegates, Allied Society timegating, etc, etc. Just let people play the actual game, instead of constantly getting in their way. It's an MMO, not a Hoyoverse gacha title.

3. Lack of responsiveness on job changes. Dancer Mains like myself have been asking for Tillana to be fixed since launch, yet it's still annoying to deal with. It's a QoL fix that wouldn't meaningfully change the rotation or cause any balance issues, so why isn't it fixed?

4. A stubborn refusal to adjust older content. The most notable example of this is Eureka Orthos, where a simple -30% HP adjustment to enemies on the first handful of floors would make the content a lot more enjoyable, and wouldn't meaningfully affect balancing for said content. While we're adjusting older content, why don't we also add the Bicolor Gemstone system to every expansion, along with vendors offering rewards for those areas. And hey, while we're in ARR, why not adjust the Zodiac Relic's infamous 'books' stage so that multiple can be active at once? It's still a several-hour grind either way, right?