Are the 70% of the playerbase that quit even coming back for DAWNTRAIL?

[Dyvid]

Just half a year after EW launch, we lost 70% of the playerbase.

Yes and no. You'll get the expansion bump from people who are curious about DT and they changes it brings. The question is if DT is going to add enough of a change to keep them playing? Based on media tour, the jobs are more or less the same with just one button combos being added. Understandable due to limitation and the desire to compress things to add more stuff. However the question is should SE have focused on Class/Job redesigns first or was focusing on a graphic facelift the correct path forward? Only time will tell.

[Kaurhz]

Of course the WoW exodus was the principal factor, if not the only major factor.

But is that really the low standards that FF14 players now have for the game? Is it a source of pride for Square Enix to have not been able to capture the vast majority of those WoWfugees? To just let them slip away? Is it a good thing to be handed a golden goose laying golden eggs only for the goose to be so dissatisfied that it ran away in the night?

I mean not that I disagree with that in premise, but I don't think anyone really anticipated it way in advance to actually do anything meaningful with it to actually retain them, especially when it wasn't this game in the first place that enticed them. MMOs generally are in a pretty bad state. I've tried going back to RS many a time, tried WoW on a few occasions and I still come back here. Same thing for WoW players, really, or other players that try migrating to another game. Many of them will have tried the game for themselves and then just dipped out, and a great many will have joined the game because of their favorite streamer, and will have left when they did, so arguably a lot of them weren't even here because of the game but because of who came over to it, but of course this latter part is just me speculating.

If they wanted to actually capture a vast majority of those players then they would need to do an extreme amount of work to the earlier game to actually help them stay interested along the journey. Sure, they can skip the game, but that's not always within everyones budget, and generally speaking XIV is a game with an utterly tragic early-experience. If people join en-masse then they are also going to leave en-masse when they realize there's a good 60 hours minimum of actual in-game play-time before they can even get the same level of satisfaction. This is a massive undertaking anyway, especially if you're coming here from a source of dissatisfaction from another game.

It was only ever going to land one-way, and I don't think anyone got any pride out of it, except those that are on the possessive "Stay out of my(our) game¬!" personality.

[Equitable_Remedy]

The sky really is falling this time! It's not like all those other times people said that the sky was falling! It's really for reals falling this time!

[Equitable_Remedy]

Just half a year after EW launch, we lost 70% of the playerbase.

A funny thing about forum posters is that they can't even conceive of the fact that most players don't 24/7 no-life games that they play. People pop in for new content, play through that content, pop out, and then pop back for new content - that is the natural ebb and flow of live service games.

Put another way, it's fine. Play they game if it's fun for you, or play something else if it's not - that's normal.

[Jeeqbit]

Of course the WoW exodus was the principal factor, if not the only major factor.

But is that really the low standards that FF14 players now have for the game? Is it a source of pride for Square Enix to have not been able to capture the vast majority of those WoWfugees? To just let them slip away? Is it a good thing to be handed a golden goose laying golden eggs only for the goose to be so dissatisfied that it ran away in the night?

I think that no, it does not seem a good thing if most people quit due to ARR, story pacing, not enough fighting, story content sometimes being ridiculously easy due to the ilvl sync, etc. Nor is it good for it to be so rigid and complicated just to pay SE or buy the game.

I think it does turn a lot of players off, not just the people who tried the game in 2021. They could at least improve the system for buying the game, improve the ilvl sync and alter the presention of cut scenes to involve more fighting.

But also, the game will never be for everyone. That's the point of a free trial tbh. Just to let you see if it's for you.

In spite of all these issues... somehow, it's still grown. I think a lot of it is down to the social aspect ie. friends (or streamers/content creators) bringing people in, in a way that is strong enough to endure all these issues and push through ARR, as well as the story because some people will just endure it if they like the story and final fantasy (like me).

People like me, who decided to stick with XIV after November 2021, never left.

I've met plenty who have stuck either as a result of leaving WoW, or having not played WoW before but got caught up in this game going viral.

Source: Played WoW for half a decade straight

In my experience, there's always been WoW players come to the game. But a huge uptick was definitely noticeable in Stormblood into Shadowbringers (2018-2019) due to their BFA expansion. But it felt like that was more the 6-year vets.

What was different about 2021 was it motivated actual 17-year vets who were far more attached to WoW than even that and unable to ever leave because it was their life's work, actually quit to try this game. But most likely some of them just went back or played both after it improved.

[Zadood]

Judging the general consensus of folks in this thread, seems like most of the folks here will have a champagne celebration when CBU3 finally shutting down FFXIV.

[AnimalsALot]

In spite of all these issues... somehow, it's still grown. I think a lot of it is down to the social aspect

That's basically how the entire MMO genre gets away with horrid gameplay (with FF14 being the least worst in a pile of trash).

[DBriggs304]

Eh, we only had a boon due to WoW sucking a couple years back. FF is still good, but the quality is declining slightly. I will say this thought, WoW is about to eat our lunch expansion wise.

[Rekh]

Guild Wars 2 has a solid expansion in august and actually fun past the msq. Wow and Gw2 are in a prime position to hack away at square enix this year. As for the graph, yeah, even without taking into account the exodus xiv's just stagnating; all the single player game features and dumbing down have done nothing in increasing numbers.

Gw2's getting housing in august and I bet 100 million gil it'll be better than ffxiv's; they even hihred some SIMS developers to help them design it. That level of dedication is what square enix was known for in 2013/14.

[Erinellza]

What I see on the Steam charts is that when I started playing in October 2019 we had 9,7k average players and now we have 22,9k. XIV has grown a lot compared to when I started playing and it has a high population for its age.