Please grow the MMO part of the game. End game is lousy.

[Skiros]

Please provide proof of your claim, because as far as I can see this company has enough proof for them to invest in more solo content. A company as large as SE would not invest in this aspect of the game if there were not a call for it.

I do not understand why people keep saying this!

Businesses and corporations are NOT all-seeing, omniscient gods who have perfect information and perfect foresight. They make mistakes all the time, mistakes that consumers see coming from a light year away.

It's literally why business schools have tons of case studies on what NOT to do. And most of the people at Square Enix making decisions aren't trained in economics or business! That's not even to say that the caliber of the typical economics or business major is astoundingly low anyways, even at top schools. I've seen and TA'd my fair share of idiots going to top consulting firms.

You'd be a fool to think that most people in positions of power making decisions are competent and capable. They really don't!

[LittleImp]

And what does the NA playerbase want? To me, it seems they want RP features, looking at PF on aether lol.

Content PFs have, and always will, vastly VASTLY outnumber RP pfs. There were times during this patch-cycle where the PF was hitting 130+ parties in the high-end section alone. Even now during extreme off-hours for NA, content PFs outnumber RP pfs by a factor of over 10 to 1 on Primal. The vast majority of players in this game do not get their primary entertainment out of acting out the same pretend bar scene 5000 times.

I thought people got sick of wow being a mindless grind fest, don't want xivs endgame turning into that.

How does just adding more content automatically make something a mindless grind fest? WoW is like that because they specifically engineered character progression systems around that, literally no one is asking for that.

More content in existing categories, or earlier/incremental releases of higher longevity content wouldn't magically force players to grind. Content with higher degrees of replayability like Deep Dungeon or Bozja/Eureka are released incredibly late into the expansion, and are usually somehow less complete than their previous iteration for some reason. Many players have abandoned doing things like expert roulette altogether due to the mind-numbing lack of variety created by 1 dungeon per patch. Even lifestyle systems like restoration and or island sanctuary won't appear until like 6.2.

[Vahlnir]

Your game is literally emptying out right now because of low content.

Or, just a thought, maybe we're in the lull between patches. And there's a ton of AAA titles being released back to back. Either way this is business as usual. They'll be back.

[Illmaeran]

With as many people as we have here on the forums alone complaining about other peoples' performance in dungeons/raids and asking for an update to the Trust system it doesn't surprise me that it's happening. Improving players' ability to get through the MSQ on their own via Trusts will only benefit the community.

[LittleImp]

I do not understand why people keep saying this!

Businesses and corporations are NOT all-seeing, omniscient gods who have perfect information and perfect foresight. They make mistakes all the time, mistakes that consumers see coming from a light year away.

It's literally why business schools have tons of case studies on what NOT to do. And most of the people at Square Enix making decisions aren't trained in economics or business! That's not even to say that the caliber of the typical economics or business major is astoundingly low anyways, even at top schools. I've seen and TA'd my fair share of idiots going to top consulting firms.

You'd be a fool to think that most people in positions of power making decisions are competent and capable. They really don't!

The funny thing is, Square Enix has become pretty notorious for investing in publishing extremely bad games lately. There's a reason people frequently joke that XIV is used to financially recover from their other failures.

Marvel's Avengers, Balan Wonderworld, Left Alive, Oninaki, The Quiet Man, Just Cause etc.

[Raoabolic]

Nah, build up Trusts so I won't have to worry about dealing with... you know... in parties where one wrong move means getting a call from a GM. If the trend continues I am seriously considering moving to a jp server. I would rather deal with a fight lasting a little longer than a min maxer screeching at people that mechanics are not being skipped or people that have obviously bought a level/story skip book crashing a prog party with no survivors.

[ForteNightshade]

A company as large as SE would not invest in this aspect of the game if there were not a call for it. .

You say this yet we're playing the revived version of a game that happened precisely because of SE's arrogance outright saying, "It's Final Fantasy, they'll play it anyway." That arrogance cost them nearly half a billion dollars. For a more recent example, look no further than Marvel Avengers which lost them a 100 million dollars due to a litany of issues and a heavy emphasise on micro-transactions.

Of course, neither are a comparison to FFXIV in it's present state but rather to showcase Square Enix is far from infallible.

[DPZ2]

The funny thing is, Square Enix has become pretty notorious for investing in publishing extremely bad games lately. There's a reason people frequently joke that XIV is used to financially recover from their other failures.

Aside from the Marvel Avengers debacle (in 2020), I haven't ready anything in particular about 'extremely bad games', or major losses. The HD Games division almost tripled net sales from FY2020 to FY2021 (due to that 'extremely bad' FFVII Remake?) and was still double FY2020 in FY2022 net sales. They must be doing somewhat ok.

If anything, the Smart Device/PC Browser division of Digital Entertainment brings in double the revenue of the MMO division, so the 'joke' is pretty laughable.

[Ath192]

With as many people as we have here on the forums alone complaining about other peoples' performance in dungeons/raids and asking for an update to the Trust system it doesn't surprise me that it's happening. Improving players' ability to get through the MSQ on their own via Trusts will only benefit the community.

This right here xD Look after them saying they do read the forums after everyone in the forums complained they never read them and then actually announcing a graphics update that I'm 100% sure is something really hard to tackle but people were asking for it here so they went with it, it is no wonder they are focusing on making everything solo friendly.

If you were to read these forums you'd think everyone hates each other and can't get along lol.

I think we easily outnumber 1,000:1 each thread where people clearly don't want to play with each other and never reach an agreement versus any thread that says I love getting along with others and working together with them to accomplish goals. And I'll even admit I'm one of them. I love to discuss and present arguments that aren't always the most popular.

But I think this is a problem of our own doing. If we showed more appreciation and requests for multiplayer activities instead of bickering and complaining about others we would be getting it. I do hope more content that requires others to help you does show up though, despite some bad moments the majority are fun and positive. Solo is boring.

[Raoabolic]

I do hope more content that requires others to help you does show up though, despite some bad moments the majority are fun and positive. Solo is boring.

Solo is boring but removing choices from the player is even more boring.