This game is on a terrible state right now.

[AwesomeJr44]

P.S the game doesnt need defending, its great as is

If this is the case, why are you still here defending it then? Go touch grass.

[Theodric]

No business succeeds through mindless praise. Even fancy restaurants widely celebrated for their incredible cuisine will change up their menu to remain competitive and relevant.

[Jojoya]

If this is the case, why are you still here defending it then? Go touch grass.

I think a lot of posters in this thread on both sides could use a couple of hours away from the game to touch grass. The air in the echo chambers is bound to be stale at this point and the conversation isn't getting anywhere.

My own perspective:
Was Endwalker as good as it should have been? No.
Was it bad? No, it was still good. But it was a bit of a let down when we've seen SE do better.
Is it a sign of doom and gloom for the game's future? No. We haven't seen any major changes to the basic game formula that tend to precede rapid declines.

We were warned at the announcement showcase back in Feb 2021 that post 6.0 Endwalker was going to be a period of transition for the game and that things would be a little different from what we were used to as they start to set up the game's future. To me, that warning seems to have been fairly accurate.

If the transition is making you uncomfortable and you feel like you're not getting what you are paying for, then stop paying. Wait for the transition to finish in its entirety (which should happen between 6.55 and 6.58) and return between that point and 7.0 to get caught up. Play other games that are more fun to you in the meantime.

Have a house? It's your decision but I don't see the point of paying to keep a house in a game you don't want to be playing. That's the proverbial ball-and-chain but you've done it to yourself. Let go of the house and move on. If you're intent on keeping the house, then stop complaining that you have to pay for it. You're the one who has decided that keeping the house is more important than the money. If you genuinely believe that the housing system is designed as it to keep you subbed, congratulations. You've helped to create the problem you're complaining about by doing exactly what you think SE wants you to do.

Make choices that improve your life instead of clinging to a past clouded by rose-colored glasses. Things will never be the same as they were. We've grown older and changed. Friends we made along the way have come and in some cases gone. The game has grown older and changed. It's no longer fresh and new to us now that we have several years of experience playing it. Taking the break from the game will give a clearer vision of whether the game in recent months has been a positive presence in your life that should be continued or a negative that's been dragging you down.

You do yourself no favors by pretending loyalty to something that has no loyalty to you in turn because it's incapable of loyalty. It's just a game. Why cling to it when it's making you so unhappy?

No business succeeds through mindless praise. Even fancy restaurants widely celebrated for their incredible cuisine will change up their menu to remain competitive and relevant.

And yet sometimes those changes have led to the restaurant's failure. The customers showed up expecting a particular experience and they were served something else. There was no surge of new customers responding to the change because they were already patronizing other restaurants offering the same thing.

Change has to be done carefully.

[Stormpeaks]

big post here

So much rambling about how people should just quit and let go of their house, just so when they eventually come back they have to bid on the plot for multiple years if they have a half decent plot, because bidding and seeing the "better luck next time" message time after time is so much fun right ? I would love to come back to that after taking a break from the game, how entertaining and exciting !

As I have mentioned multiple times before, if Yoshi P wants people to play other games, remove automatic demolition, period. Stop this hypocrisy of "you can take a break but not unsubscribe, or you'll lose the house you're worked on for months if not more", stop blaming the players for the incompetence of this dev team, and for wanting to take breaks, excusing it via a fake "housing crisis" that they could have fixed a long time if they wanted to, but are "limited by their infrastructure", yet islands are a thing, somehow that works, but not instanced housing or additional wards, why ? How convenient.

[Ayche]

For god's sake, whoever you are, drop the cringe business consultant larping. It is cringe.
It is normal to keep posting how bored the game is making you, but just shut up about actual sales and performance.
None of us work there, they have the actual numbers on subscriber retention, none on us don't.

[Stormpeaks]

For god's sake, whoever you are, drop the cringe business consultant larping. It is cringe.
It is normal to keep posting how bored the game is making you, but just shut up about actual sales and performance.
None of us work there, they have the actual numbers on subscriber retention, none on us don't.

That's actually a great move, that way we cant judge a game at all by its popularity since you can just deny any sort of metrics, saying that "it's not the entire population" or "only them have the real numbers", knowing VERY WELL that they will never release those numbers because it wouldnt look good for them, once again, you use that to your convenience so it fits your narrative, that's not how a sample works, and the steamcharts metric is a good example of that, people keep denying it, while it is in fact a good metric and gives a downward trend since about 3 months.

[Boblawblah]

So much rambling about how people should just quit and let go of their house, just so when they eventually come back they have to bid on the plot for multiple years if they have a half decent plot, because bidding and seeing the "better luck next time" message time after time is so much fun right ? I would love to come back to that after taking a break from the game, how entertaining and exciting !

As I have mentioned multiple times before, if Yoshi P wants people to play other games, remove automatic demolition, period. Stop this hypocrisy of "you can take a break but not unsubscribe, or you'll lose the house you're worked on for months if not more", stop blaming the players for the incompetence of this dev team, and for wanting to take breaks, excusing it via a fake "housing crisis" that they could have fixed a long time if they wanted to, but are "limited by their infrastructure", yet islands are a thing, somehow that works, but not instanced housing or additional wards, why ? How convenient.

Fair enough. Keep subbing then. That'll show them all.

[Stormpeaks]

Fair enough. Keep subbing then. That'll show them all.

I have mentioned multiple times that I am only subscribed to the game for my friends in the game and for housing, absolutely everything else in this game is mediocre and not worth the time, and that is my opinion, from the parts that I like about the game, which is hanging out with friends, and doing housing, I am satisfied (mostly because I already have what I want housing wise), however the content itself in this game is absolutely mediocre and honestly one of the worst iteration I have ever seen from any MMO

[Theodric]

As far as the frustration is concerned, a lot of people leave feedback because they still care about the game on some level. I'm not even playing the game at the moment - I just happened to make use of the free login campaign and that allowed me to post for the first time in months due to the...questionable decision to prevent players from leaving feedback if they haven't logged into the game within the last two weeks.

I've made threads in the past such as this one:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...epresentatives

Asking for more direct engagement, though like so many video game companies these days the only feedback taken on board seems to be that which will allow the developers to stick their maws into ESG funding troughs through pandering to the Twitter crowd and pretending as if 'influencers' are genuinely excited about the latest product they're promoting in order to receive financial benefit and social clout amongst their followers.

It's really bizarre that elements of this community pretend as if Yoshi-P is anything other than extremely distant and disconnected from regular, invested players. Even the Q&A sessions where players can put forward questions to the development team are heavily curated and even if a question is lucky enough to go through, half the time it isn't answered with any meaningful depth or is just dismissed with an outright joke.

To me, at least, it's perfectly understandable why so many around these parts have decided to be vocal in their frustration - and being a bit testy in tone does not equal losing sleep over something, either. The whole 'go play something else/quit' in response to any critical feedback is far from helpful. Save that for those so addicted to the game that they believe it to be perfect and any criticism whatsoever is taken as a deeply offensive personal attack.

[Ayche]

That's actually a great move, that way we cant judge a game at all by its popularity since you can just deny any sort of metrics, saying that "it's not the entire population" or "only them have the real numbers", knowing VERY WELL that they will never release those numbers because it wouldnt look good for them, once again, you use that to your convenience so it fits your narrative, that's not how a sample works, and the steamcharts metric is a good example of that, people keep denying it, while it is in fact a good metric and gives a downward trend since about 3 months.

No normal customer has any sane reason to actually care a lick about how popular a game is. At an extreme end where you literally can no longer play a multiplayer game cos the pop is so low as the only exception (don't even waste breath bringing up FFXIV running out of player for patch days), one might only really obsess over game popularity as a proxy for weird tribal wars where you can "prove" how bad x is or how good y is in comparison. And so it is not left unsaid, that loser behavior. Obsessing over game's popularity as a customer is loser behavior. Don't bother replying more proofs about reading public data sets how tailend of patches have less players than expansion highs, I am interested.

Developers have the genuine reason to care, their wage relies on it. If FFXIV goes away in the future, I might be sad over it, not fatal. For the devs that means layoffs, a bit more consequential. If you wanna go check your internet message board scoreboard for wins, go do that.