Loosing players after update?

[Obysuca]

Is it just me or does it seem like the servers are emptier as updates go by? My fc hardly even logs on anymore even though they were all very active.

It's not just you, I've noticed it too. Someone's going to argue about this, but idk how they can deny XIV has been slowly losing it's population over the last couple of months. I remember zones would be packed, even Mor Dhona would be so filled you could barely see yourself in the crowd. Now it's a ghost town, there's barely anyone even doing hunts anymore. Most of the ls I'm in used to be pretty active, now there's only ~10 people ever on in them...silent. Same goes for my FC, or most all of the FCs I've seen, even the bigger ones only sit at 5-10 people on a day now, compared to the 20+ daily that was only a short while ago.

This is one of the first mmos I've seen (and I've played pretty much all of them lol) that's lost 75% of players from release this soon, most were gone the second 2.1 came out. Usually people from release play for far longer, unless a game is just plain bad (you know which I mean XD). Take XI for example(going to keep bringing it up and idc how many butt hurt people try to troll/argue about it), there were still people playing from NA release, 8-10 years after it came out. XIV? Nah, people dropped out within 4-5 months.

It's just there's no real long term goals in XIV, everything is pretty much handed to you with minimal effort. Where's the fun in capping all your jobs in a month and fully gearing yourself out in the highest/second highest item lvl....within the same month or two? The story is only ok, nothing amazing, which is kind of a disappointment from SE, seeing as how great of a story they had in XI and other FF, you'd think they'd have something here. I'm sure a lot of people now just skip the cutscenes, but some of us want a good story too. It also doesn't help that pretty much every job plays almost exactly the same as another, giving no real difference between them. But apparently that'd be "stressful for new players" or some bs like that, so they've said.

I've said it months ago and I'll continue to say it until I see otherwise. I don't see XIV lasting another year if they keep this up. Shouldn't have to give proof on that, seeing as its everywhere in mmos today. They all try copying the WoW model and end up dying off within 1-2 years, sometimes less. Remember Wildstar? What's Wildstar? Exactly.

Is this turning into a f2p game that we are paying for?

It pretty much is lol Everything in XIV has been done, sometimes done better in f2p games. XIV: F2p quality that you pay for! Not to mention it's attracted the f2p community too.
Tbh, even some f2p games give better quality content (and more of it!) than XIV's doing. Not to mention SE outdates stuff as quick as they make it. I can see that proving to be a problem later down the road with "limitations" and everything, because they'd have 3-4 new dungeons and 75 or more outdated, dead ones, taking up space. If you look at the amount of current content we have now, you know, the content people actually do, we don't have a year's worth, we still have the same amount as 2.0 (1 - 1 1/2 endgame dungeons, 2-3 dungeons for tomes)