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

[hagare]

I can vouch for Anhaato. He isn't the alt of a certain Highlander if that is the concern.

I miss him.
His threads was entertaining at least

[Vahlnir]

well then, their intent is obvious.

Oh no, they aren't trolling.

[anhaato]

Oh no, they aren't trolling.

Mhm you’re getting warmer

[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!!")

[Renathras]

I think the problem with this argument is that for a sample to be statistically valid, it needs to represent the whole well and not have any significant deviations.

I'm honestly not sure that Steam numbers do that. If you were to ask me why, I'd say that the Steam users are PROBABLY a lot of the WoW refugees whereas PS4/5 players (especially people that don't PC game) are likely a very different batch of people. Likewise, the people using the regular FFXIV launcher having bought it normally instead of through Steam are probably also a different mindset of player.

In order to use Steam as a sample, one would have to confront each of these arguments with data to suggest that Steam IS a representative sample, which I've seen no one do. People using the number are simply making an implicit assumption it is and not ever justifying this assumption other than "Surely Steam players are the same as the rest, right?" with no actual evidence to substantiate that - and yes, the burden of proof is on the people wanting to use the Steam numbers as a representative sample, not the people questioning that assumption.

Moreover, as people have noted, (a) this trend exist (using the Steam numbers, no less) in some form for all past expansions, (b) the measurement is of concurrent players, not total players (meaning it's weighted to people spending more hours playing and NOT the total number of individual people still playing the game just doing so fewer hours), and (c) even based on those numbers, the player activity is STILL higher than at this point in prior expansions and shows a net upward trend overall if you look at the entire Steam history of the game.

So, for those wanting to use the Steam numbers, not ONLY must you justify the claim that the Steam numbers ARE a good representative sample, you must explain each of points (a), (b), and (c) above somehow also leading credence to your hypothesis. Can you do so, I wonder...?

[Shurrikhan]

I'd say that the Steam users are PROBABLY a lot of the WoW refugees

WoW: Has no Steam tie-in. Has never had a Steam tie-in. Has its own launcher.

XIV: Has a Steam tie-in since 2014, roughly half a year after ARR's release.


So why would WoW players, who've never had any Steam integration, flock to Steam, while all other players of XIV (which has had Steam integration since the game's second quarter) would predominantly avoid it? And why, even, would players be more critical of XIV just because they'd played another MMO prior?

What even is the basis for this "probably"?

[NightHour]

People have been saying make healers more engaging since Shadowbringers, and it’s been ignored.

People have been saying endgame is horrible with lack of content and it’s been ignored.

People want better hairstyles and headgears on the new races and it's been ignored.

After an ENTIRE year of receiving player feedback and FAILING to do what the community wants, now we have them scrambling to fix critical bugs after bugs like the housing lottery bug.

What a joke.

I wanted FF14 to thrive, I loved Stormblood but the game is dying and on it’s way out.

Square Enix, changes need to be made FAST.

NOT in 7.0, NOT in 8.0, it needs to happen THIS EXPANSION or you WILL lose the remaining player base.

Steam numbers LUL

You do realize there's more platforms than just Steam, right?


There's PC, MAC, PS4, PS5.

[Liam_Harper]

If every WoW refugee leaves this game, it will still be popular enough to make money for Square Enix.

The only issue would be the large investment they've made into servers and hardware due to the rush of players on launch. If we lost all those players, that's wasted investment and a harsh loss. And really, Endwalker hasn't actually offered anything new or exciting to retain players, most things are pretty much the same as ShB.

The game will be perfectly fine, but at the same time letting a goldmine like the WoW exodus slip through your fingers is a rough blow for any business. Endwalker really needed to go big and be the best expansion yet.

Ah yes, Endwalker's launch, when we had queues in the several thousands, compared to now, where I STILL have to queue unless it's 3am.

The queues don't mean the servers are full. The game logs players into the game in batches. That's why there always seems to be a 20-50 person queue.

[DPZ2]

The game will be perfectly fine, but at the same time letting a goldmine like the WoW exodus slip through your fingers is a rough blow for any business. Endwalker really needed to go big and be the best expansion yet..

The game was doing fine before Activision/Blizzard blew up their WoW player base. A/B is doing things to bring them back. Not every WoW player will suddenly abandon FFXIV either.

Anecdotally speaking, I played both games side-by-side for four years, running from Warlords of Draenor through the first year of Battle for Azeroth for World of Warcraft and A Realm Reborn through Stormblood for Final Fantasy XIV. I lost interest in World of Warcraft. I remain subscribed to Final Fantasy XIV.

This isn't a zero-sum industry, where There Can Only Be One.

The influx of new players is very welcome. The sudden desire to "improve" the game by changing it to become more like WoW in order to "keep" those new players is not as welcome, mostly because the so-called WoW Refugees aren't the backbone of the FFXIV player-base.

[Raoabolic]

This isn't a zero-sum industry, where There Can Only Be One.

Tell that to the shareholders and companies that funnel resources to said game. I'm sure they would be more than happy to coexist, we should ask EB games or Hudson. :^)