We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[FrogDog]

I believed this to be the case, so I took a few weeks off away from the official forums. Turns out I was right. Basically everyone (not literally everyone) I encounter in game, reddit, twitter, twitch, youtube, basically everywhere but here, who actually plays the game, is very happy with it. I mean, these forums are in a rough place when reddit is more positive about the game.

Kind of working with a skewed sample though. The people still playing right now during a content drought would, in fact, be the people who are satisfied enough with it or can make their own fun out of it. There are people who play this game just to party and dance at RP venues on the weekends. There are some people who subscribe just to play gimmick characters and do shout chat, and I've seen these people standing around towns for years and I'm sure they'll be standing around towns for years to come. That doesn't mean the game doesn't have issues or lack content and features in certain areas.

Most everybody I know no longer plays the game or enjoys it. The ones I know of that are still subscribed are just in it for the housing. I personally saw my interest in the game steadily wane throughout the entirety of Shadowbringer and Endwalker was just the nail in the coffin. I logged in for the free weekend since I still had the game installed and there was really nothing I felt interested in doing. The things that interested me from the Endwalker announcement were Island Sanctuary and whatever the next deep dungeon in, but neither of those things are out. There is no meaningful small group content in this game, and when people point out a lack of things to do they're just given a trite, "Go do savage."

As for the forums, they don't seem particularly worse or more negative than any other MMO's official forums. I think people tend to take criticisms, constructive or otherwise, to official forums because they have a sense that those criticisms will actually be seen and taken in by the developers. XIV's subreddit is notoriously positive from what I've heard, and so it's also pretty useless unless you're only wanting to see fan art and low effort memes.

It's probably a good sign that there are people that still care enough to post criticism and feedback on these forums. I think given a long enough timeline, the only people left on official forums are the diehards who will take whatever comes with a game. I took a look at GW2's forums not too long ago and it was very different from how I remember it being in its first 2-3 years. The attitude that I saw there was mostly, "It's too much work. The devs will never do it. It's a waste of resources to add a new race." etc. Sound familiar?

[Renathras]

...

These are some interesting points, but allow me to make a counter argument or two:

1) Anecdote is not data. While you could argue that people playing and enjoying the game...and people talking about it in Twitter...and on Reddit...and on Twitch...and on YouTube...and "everywhere but here"...might be a skewed sample and your personal "Most everybody I know" might not be - does that REALLY seem all that likely? It's far more likely your friends group is the skewed sample, and likewise this forum, which has long (or always...) had a permanent doomcloud hanging over it.

2) It doesn't mean the game doesn't have issues, but there's a difference between "the game has issues" and "the game is literally dying!". Those are not equivalent statements, and these forums seem to be significantly more towards the latter (apparently, healers not having DPS rotations and two races not having hairstyles is what will sink games, I guess?)

3) I'm a bit curious with what you said about your interest wane over the course of ShB and then into EW. ShB was arguably the best the game's ever been, and it more or less followed SB's overall pattern (patch cycles, gearing system, raid and exploration content releases, etc) to a T. Did you not also feel a waning interest during SB, since ShB was SB with better story? I'm not sure why one would find themselves getting bored in ShB and not SB, since ShB was just an evolution of SB. What did you like so much more about SB? Or was it just the game was still new to you then? (Not asking this to be antagonistic, I'm genuinely curious.)

4) These forums DO seem worse and more negative than most other MMO forums I've been on. And I've been on the toxic sludge pit that is the WoW forums. Even there people weren't as down about the game until BfA gave way to Shadowlands. As for the subreddit, there are two (ffxiv and ffxivdiscussion), the former is mostly upvoting character commissions, but has been negative about the game in mixed measure. While the healer forum here had a total meltdown over a solo heal of DSR, Reddit was oddly more muted, with about 50/50 people saying it was bad vs people saying it was an outlier and an achievement, an exception proving the rule rather than breaking it and indicating doom. It was actually rational discussion where here, only a few voices contested the doom narrative, and were abjectly brigaded into silence - hardly measured and sober minded criticisms.

5) I'd agree that it CAN be good people still care and complain because they care, but there's a point where it becomes an unhealthy doom cult, just like the people insisting "The End is Neigh!" irl probably MEAN WELL, but are not in a health place nor the most rational people to advise others of things like retirement planning or any other future prediction (since all their predictions are "THE END IS COMING!!")