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

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Pray. That's all we can do for it now.

[LittleImp]

FFXIV, meanwhile, is at its highest active playerbase ever during EW. The spikes were the highest, and even the troughs are still significantly higher than at similar points in past expansions. They can't stand the reality that the game is doing well and your typical casual gamer of today loves FFXIV.

Retention has been absolutely abysmal as a proportion of the people that showed up for Endwalker launch. The game's population has fallen back down to Shadowbringers levels, and is only continuing to trend downwards lmao. The population has peaked, and will never come close to that peak again.

[Duskane]

will never come close to that peak again.

probably not the game will break numbers again once next expansion comes out and itll drop again later
EW might have put everyone in a sour mood(like late ShB did) doesnt mean people wont come back

its just the cycle of this game

[Ransu]

The game's population has fallen back down to Shadowbringers levels

This is patently false.

[DiaDeem]

Lack of Custom Building for your jobs

Double edged sword, and I've never cared too much for this kind of thing in multiplayer games. Sure, there's freedom.. until someone figures out the meta and if you're not built like that, you're literally trolling. It's like League of Legends. You can technically build whatever you want on any champion, but you're not gonna build Deathcap on Master Yi only because his heal has AP scaling. I mean... some people might, but they're weird.

Point I'm trying to make: Customizability in multiplayer games is an illusion. You're either playing the meta, or you're not.

[Striker44]

Retention has been absolutely abysmal as a proportion of the people that showed up for Endwalker launch. The game's population has fallen back down to Shadowbringers levels, and is only continuing to trend downwards lmao. The population has peaked, and will never come close to that peak again.

Except that the middle part of that isn't true at all, and the beginning and the end are meant to be misleading. Population is still at several hundreds of thousands of players in NA alone (and close to a million worldwide), which is significantly higher than it was during the "troughs" of ShB. "Retention" as a % is lower during EW for the same reason that the peak at the start was so high - there was a huge influx of new players, many of whom simply aren't the target audience of this game. A fair number did become fans anyway, and have stuck around, which is a good part of why overall #'s are higher, but many realized this wasn't their preferred style of game and moved on (which is expected). That's not an issue with the game itself, as every game naturally has a certain focus and a certain target audience.

Heck, even several of the bitter negative echo chamber around here whose entire existence seems to be whining about every single part of this game 24/7 went away for a bit...and are now back. We've been seeing the typical trends throughout EW, which continues to re-spike at every patch like normal (it's not continuing to trend downwards, but doing the usual cyclical rise and fall).

[LittleImp]

This is patently false.

Except that the middle part of that isn't true at all, and the beginning and the end are meant to be misleading. Population is still at several hundreds of thousands of players in NA alone (and close to a million worldwide), which is significantly higher than it was during the "troughs" of ShB. "Retention" as a % is lower during EW for the same reason that the peak at the start was so high - there was a huge influx of new players, many of whom simply aren't the target audience of this game. A fair number did become fans anyway, and have stuck around, which is a good part of why overall #'s are higher, but many realized this wasn't their preferred style of game and moved on (which is expected). That's not an issue with the game itself, as every game naturally has a certain focus and a certain target audience.

Heck, even several of the bitter negative echo chamber around here whose entire existence seems to be whining about every single part of this game 24/7 went away for a bit...and are now back. We've been seeing the typical trends throughout EW, which continues to re-spike at every patch like normal (it's not continuing to trend downwards, but doing the usual cyclical rise and fall).

[Oizen]

Double edged sword, and I've never cared too much for this kind of thing in multiplayer games. Sure, there's freedom.. until someone figures out the meta and if you're not built like that, you're literally trolling. It's like League of Legends. You can technically build whatever you want on any champion, but you're not gonna build Deathcap on Master Yi only because his heal has AP scaling. I mean... some people might, but they're weird.

Point I'm trying to make: Customizability in multiplayer games is an illusion. You're either playing the meta, or you're not.

You say that but people have been screeching about how imbalanced Endwalker has been because pathetically small damage differences.
The group you're talking about, the parserot idiots who cry bloody murder when they miss a single gcd, or you ask them to limit break and they whine at you because it hurts their unofficial fansite high score number, they're always miserable.
They're always like that, they will always be like that. You could delete every job in the game and make a singular Omni-Job that only presses one button, and they'd find a way to be like that.

Despite how homogenized things are, jobs still got kicked, and a meta still formed.

Personally I'd rather just throw those players off a cliff and keep systems in the game that allow more player expressions and customizability.

catering to what you said is exactly how FFXIV got so bad where it was in terms of job homogenization and mass and relentless removal of skills.
Balance through the most boring and easy method available. Its why everything is so boring compared to what used to be. And why everything is 2m meta burst

[Minarisweet]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

This is not a bad thing. Figuring out what's best or building what's best for the type of content (there's more to xiv than savage!) is a thing in many rpg and mmorpgs.

[Kaliesto]

I can see how my post comes off as a Doom Topic, and I apologize for that. I'm just concerned of glaring design decisions whether I was right or wrong on the matter (after read everyone's posts on here).


Concerning Custom Builds again, I feel there is a lot of ways where if balanced correctly versus how Monsters work (and having enough variety per dungeon and Zone to balance with the jobs) to where a player will always find some kind of weakness through the use of Elemental powers or their choice of Weaponry locked with their job just as long its not a one note affair, and still be able to keep a custom Job identity without being forced to play X Type of Job.

Like for instance one Dungeon is not going to be completely full of monsters with a Fire Weakness or Blunt Weakness as there is going to be a variety of other weaknesses and resistances so every job is valid, you can make it where Elemental Bonus Damage is just a small amount but not enough to make it where its too OP, but instead your weapon choice tied to your job makes up for the most bonus damage and there is plenty of variety of monsters in the dungeon to where any job is useful for every given encounter.

So basically don't make Elemental Attack and Defense be OP (as it just makes up a small amount of difference), and just keep Weapon Bonus Damage Balanced.

To further tweak how Weapon Bonus Damage works, have it where there is a opening random positional being pointed to the player that allows for max damage, basically a random timed mechanic only the player can see. This would add a bit of fun incentive for Extreme/Savage/Ultimate raids if there is a random opening you can exploit that can help the raid out, and remember I said only the player the can see it, so even if you failed to hit the spot no other players can comment on it because they can't see it (thus we take away the toxic part of MMO gaming). Also this would give players to be a bit of badass if they can land a LB on that random opening.

But after thinking about it I can see how this would clash with Job Freedom if say in the Zones outside of dungeons that some monster Bonus Damage required a certain Job and you may not have friends to help out or too socially shy. So say you ran into a Behemoth that required Slashing Bonus Damage (any job that used a Slashing Weapon) and was weak to lightning (but you don't have the substats for it because you invested it into Fire), and your job and custom stats don't exactly match the need, so you would be forced to play another job or find friends to help out.

So in conclusion while I think you could make it work for all jobs in a Dungeon Setting, but in Zones would be a tricky mess because not all players want to play with other players...but as a MMO idk, MMO has to be a MMO at some point. That or just disable those stats and bonuses in zones, but have it enabled in Dungeons.

==============================

Getting back to Bozja again, I think it was the only time I actually had fun with FATEs aside from a few Endwalker Special FATEs, but the problem with those is the near endless amount of players that kind of curbstomp the whole challenge behind them (like I think they're suppose to be hard, but clearly just cheesing the whole thing is enough to make it pointless).

I think there is ways to fix that, but it would not be popular.