I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Kolaina]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

[Sicno]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

Well of course you're gonna find the bench-warmer crowd who doesn't play the game and just AFKs all day long not playing any content is still there, duh. That's... exactly the point. That's the audience the game is catering to now, the audience who doesn't want to play an actual game and just uses it as a glorified chatroom. Of course THEY will still be there.

[Saraide]

Well of course you're gonna find the bench-warmer crowd who doesn't play the game and just AFKs all day long not playing any content is still there, duh. That's... exactly the point. That's the audience the game is catering to now, the audience who doesn't want to play an actual game and just uses it as a glorified chatroom. Of course THEY will still be there.

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.

[Sicno]

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.

Wouldn't be surprised if the most relevant metrics behind some decisions were at the cash shop and not subscription numbers.

[Saraide]

Wouldn't be surprised if the most relevant metrics behind some decisions were at the cash shop and not subscription numbers.

A good point but I would be shocked if sub fees dont make up a significant part of the money SE makes from the game. Cash shop stuff is low effort aswell so that doesnt really detract from the work on the game itself.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.

I think that's more indicative of Steam players having access to & frequently using y'know...steam. A titanic storefront where new games to go play are literally 1 click away, especially for a game like FF14 that's not designed to ultra skinnerbox the player like plenty of other MMOs are. People heavily invested on that platform will naturally drift without some sort of skinnerbox technique forcing them back.

The lucky bancho census numbers on active characters patch by patch has painted a much different picture than the steam metrics, where the active character counts (characters past level 60 who have had changes to their character page since the last census) keeps going up over time. (After the initial drop after EW launched of all the MSQ peeps leaving, but that's the same drop you see every expansion)

Even their fiscal financial reports year over year has had FF14's profits have growth each time, even in the past two years this forum has been dooming and glooming about. Game's still an ever increasing profit generating machine for SE, with trends showing its only continue to go up as we approach the next expansion and that mass of initial drop people coming back. There's a reason the gaming industry as a whole has been shifting towards casualization and simplicity in game design - because that's where the money is.

People can gloom and doom all they want about FF14's current state, but Square's struck a goldmine with their game design and target audience and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

A good point but I would be shocked if sub fees dont make up a significant part of the money SE makes from the game. Cash shop stuff is low effort aswell so that doesnt really detract from the work on the game itself.

You would be quite surprised.
First off, since the mogstation items are developed by an entirely separate team as the FF14 devs, it already has zero impact on the development of the game itself besides creating a new entry in the item database table and linking text / thumbnails /etc to the item that would take all of about 1 minute for any database worth its salt.

But given how heavy people whale, or the amount of players that are fantasiaholics, I have zero doubts the profits of the game are at least 60/40 in mogstations favor. As a lowball estimate. it's the whole ethos behind why games like fallout 76 will slash their prices so ridiculously hard if they're underperforming purely because it drives more players to potentially lay their eyes on in-game cash shops, where the actual margins of most games these days are to be had. One of the games I had worked as a coder on back in 2018 or so cut its digital price on steam by half (about $15), because of the fact that once that price was cut, profits were seeing roughly a $60 increase per game download due to the extra whales that were now playing the game.

[Hurlstone]

It seems to me like a lot of these complaints are things that have been in the game since time immemorial. Not saying these are things that do not need addressing or could use a shake up, but I do not know why people suddenly think the game is as good as dead because of it.

[RyuDragnier]

It seems to me like a lot of these complaints are things that have been in the game since time immemorial. Not saying these are things that do not need addressing or could use a shake up, but I do not know why people suddenly think the game is as good as dead because of it.

Because for some reason it's currently "hip" to be a doomer and they're all trying to change the game into what they imagine it should be. If I didn't know this was the FFXIV forums, I could have sworn I walked into GW2's subreddit pre-EoD (imagine this in a full subreddit where you get downvoted for saying ANYTHING good about the game).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Because for some reason it's currently "hip" to be a doomer and they're all trying to change the game into what they imagine it should be. If I didn't know this was the FFXIV forums, I could have sworn I walked into GW2's subreddit pre-EoD (imagine this in a full subreddit where you get downvoted for saying ANYTHING good about the game).

The XIV forums have been doom and gloom since the start. Even 2.0 didn't improve that. There's a reason there was a running thread titled "the many deaths of ffxiv". Pretty sure the OP of that just got bored of it. They still play though.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.

It's not exactly ideal, but so long as Square continues to refuse to release their exact concurrent sub count statistics the Steam equivalent is all we can hope to rely upon. It's either incomplete and also possibly faulty information, or complete blind faith.

As much as I'd like to say no MMO ever truly dies, there was one worthwhile one that actually did the unthinkable and managed to die.
Rest in peace, Warhammer Online.

My stance is that MMOs on the whole die rather slowly. They don't keel over, instead they hemorrhage and exsanguinate over excruciatingly long periods. As a rule, I actually kind of believe the MMO genre is in a bit of a slump right now.