Few close friends quit FFXIV, one wants to explain why, hopes SE improves the game

[Dzian]

You're friends certainly aren't the only ones. It's becoming a more and more popular opinion that players are getting tired of the treadmill and meaninglessness of the rewards given. game is to easy and boring. predictable etc etc.

I came to FFXIV in 1.0 initial release along with 40-50 of my friends. Pretty much my XI endgame linkshell. We are/were a very close knit group of friends. and have been since well basically the millenium. we've had massive parties and get togethers over the years where we'd all go celebrate the new year together at la macumba in france or having almost 40 of us meeting up in london / cardiff / paris for a weekend.

Since 2.0 though that circle of 50 friends in XIV has shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller and at present is down to about 10 maybe 12 that play somewhat regularly. generally speaking the other 40 have quit because they hate the treadmill and futility of everything along with the game being so damn easy its just not rewarding to play. There's no satisfaction clearing a dungeon trial or raid that you literally cannot possibly fail to complete.

As for Yoshi's comment about losing players if they changed the system the problem is they're losing players by the bucket load anyway... wasn't so long ago they were boasting 10 million plus players but literally 5-6% of them are active at best... 94% of those players don't play....

There's a changeing trend in the business world where companies are starting to focus more on former custoemers than current ones. and I think SE should really invest in listening to former players. I mean if it turned out the treadmill was the reason 5 million players stopped playing that would tell se a lot more than the relatively small active playerbase can.