Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Rekh]

First of all, you may want to look up what the word "objectively" means because you clearly have no idea. A story being good is most definitely not something objective because people will have subjective opinions on it.

Also, the reception hasn't been tepid just on NA. I play on EU and there has been maybe one person in my FC who really enjoyed the MSQ. The rest fall between "meh" and "that was bad". The zone chats, at least on Zodiark, during early access were full of people complaining about how bad the story was and mocking the really ridiculous plot holes.

I can't speak for other regions, but I think it might be time to stop trying to blame NA for everything.

Correction.
When I say NA I mean EU as well; there's barely any difference in opinion between the two regions when it comes to anything related to xiv. I'm just applying square enix practice, the same way they forget about eu when doing campaigns and other things for non-japanese audiences.

No need to get your butt all twisted, it's all standard practice.

[Petroglyph]

I'm having a great time, and, it actually kind of bums me out to say that I'm having a great time in spite of the story. I've never done EX or whatever content before Dawntrail, and the story is what got me hooked and kept me pumped and excited. Dawntrail is the worst time I've ever had playing through the game's story. The post ARR, pre HW content isn't fun either, but it's only guilty of being long and boring—if you wanted to argue that being boring is worse, I respect where you're coming from, but, I was having an actual just not fun time. There were a lot of little moments where I felt like my optimism was going to pay off, and I stayed hopeful right up until the end.

There's plenty of things that are bad that I love; I love cheesy analog horror, bad donut shop coffee, weird cutscenes from games I'll never play, walking in the rain in the fall with an umbrella but no jacket, and star trek fan films. Likewise, there's plenty of things that I recognize are good, that I can't stand, be it food or a story. And as far as my personal experience goes, this falls in the "It's bad, and also, I don't like it" category. When you write Dawntrail's plot beats down as a synopsis, it kind of kicks ass, but the execution is so upside down to me that I had to wonder what the heck decisions lead to it. I registered to use the forum to talk about it, only to find out there were so many people in my camp already.

It feels like it's written by someone that only watches anime, does venue RP, and never got out of fanfiction culture. You need people that are reading books, watching films, nurturing their minds, and then write like they do that. This doesn't feel that way. In the past I've loved when XIV talks about compassion, community building, mutual understanding, resolving differences, and gets even a little cheesy. Dawntrail feels like it lacks self awareness, using "lighthearted" as a crutch to talk to me like I'm a kid. u.u

But like I said, now that I've seen how EX fights, at least Everkeep and WLD, are like beefed up Undertale fights, I'm honestly having a blast trying to get my wings. Hard content stopped being scary. This is the best time I've had in PvE ever!

[Oku-1]

Final Fantasy XIV is no longer at its peak and Square Enix is taking the revenue to recoup their 70% loss in profits last year. It also "promoted" Naoki Yoshida and Natsuko Ishikawa to non-FFXIV projects to fix the company. So no, "we" aren't destroying FFXIV, Square Enix is. Just like so many other companies, it cut corners in its core product to save money and please shareholders. Fortunately, every other company is also in a race to the bottom and FFXIV is a tad slower than the others in its decline, so it's still worth playing. It'll soon become apparent though that the story will fail to draw new people and players won't stay excited about the new content due to floor-tanking and being clipped by lag. It's okay to enjoy the game as-is but people need realistic expectations and not to deify the devs.

The game is some of the most fun it's ever been and is matching it's Endwalker numbers in terms of players meaning its tying for most players it's ever had, and from the looks of things it's actually losing Expansion launch-day numbers at a slower rate than Endwalker did, which means the game is, objectively speaking, the healthiest it has ever been player-wise in the history of its existence.

People can whine about their WoL being on a beach vacation and letting Wuk Lamat do her thing for the first half of Dawntrail and claim that makes the story the worst thing ever made and a bunch of culture warriors can go give Dawntrail a negative steam review filled with transphobic slurs directed at Wuk Lamat's VA all they want, in terms of actual player retention and engagement FF14 is the best it's ever been right now.

I'd say YoshiP and the team are doing just fine, and if this is the quality of content they're going to continue putting out, then I'm very excited for the future of the game.

Y'all just need to stop with this doom-prophesying. Every expansion there's another round of "IS FF14 DYING????????" threads and the game continues to thrive.

[AnnRam]

Yup, that would be kino so SE can make MMO FF17.

[Xellith]

and from the looks of things it's actually losing Expansion launch-day numbers at a slower rate than Endwalker did

Source? I wouldnt expect there to be anything out there to go off atm. (Since its not even been a billing cycle yet)

[NegativeS]

Honestly, the moment I was finished with the MSQ, I entirely disengaged with current content and decided it was time to devote myself to becoming an omnicrafter.

MSQ burnt me out on the current expansion so much, I figured a dozen-day grindfest would be a better use of my time.

Dunno if that was an appropriate reaction, but... I've probably made a million gil so far, and I didn't even need to Speak with Wuk Lamat a single time!

[Oku-1]

Source? I wouldnt expect there to be anything out there to go off atm. (Since its not even been a billing cycle yet)

Steam Charts has stayed consistently representative of the wider playerbase in terms of growth and fall-off trends and updates every few minutes off of the steam concurrent player counter. We can't get true full-playerbase numbers and likely never will but for getting an idea of what the growth trends are you can't get much better without having access to Square Enix data directly.

[Nothv13]

and from the looks of things it's actually losing Expansion launch-day numbers at a slower rate than Endwalker did,

It took Endwalker 1 and a half months to lose as much player base as DT has in less than a month according to steamdb (the only source of numbers we have). By official release, DT had already lost almost 20k players peak. By week 2 it was almost 40k player peak lost. So roughly 2 weeks and it lost as many player as Endwalker did in 1 and a half months.

Source? I wouldnt expect there to be anything out there to go off atm. (Since its not even been a billing cycle yet)

Only thing to go off of is Steamdb and it proves the statement they made wrong.

[Oku-1]

It took Endwalker 1 and a half months to lose as much player base as DT has in less than a month according to steamdb (the only source of number we have. By official release), DT had already lost almost 20k players peak. By week 2 it was almost 40k player peak lost. So roughly 2 weeks and it lost as many player as Endwalker did in 1 and a half months.



Only thing to go off of is Steamdb and it prove the statement they made wrong.

Wrong on literally both counts lol

[caffe_macchiato]

Steam Charts has stayed consistently representative of the wider playerbase in terms of growth and fall-off trends and updates every few minutes off of the steam concurrent player counter. We can't get true full-playerbase numbers and likely never will but for getting an idea of what the growth trends are you can't get much better without having access to Square Enix data directly.

During the Endwalker decline, everyone said that Steam charts didn't matter. Now they do. Ultimately, though, you might be right: terrible games can in fact sell many copies. But that requires the franchise to be extremely popular. And despite common knowledge, I don't think Final Fantasy is like Madden or FIFA in terms of popularity. I don't think FFXIV will continue being the world's most-played MMO (source: forums) when the story is utter dog water.

Oh, and Wuk's English acting is pretty bad and you can do whatever you want with that information.