FFXIV Dawntrail reviews are out on Metacritic

[KageTokage]

This. I recommend people look up a term called the "trust thermocline". It's not a perfect analogy (though there never is), but it's a pretty accurate representation of what happens, particularly in gaming. At a previous game company I worked at, it played out like that exactly. The development management teams kept pushing the players further and further until they finally snapped and left in droves. Players are sticky and won't leave on a whim, particularly if there are other things keeping them around. I for one am sticking around because I have a house and I'm waiting to see what happens with 7.1. Others will stay out of sunk cost, because they have friends still playing, or they have far higher tolerances. But at some point a company will hit a point where their customers lose faith in them and they will go elsewhere en masse.

WoW was a prime example of this because people started complaining about system/grind bloat as far as back as in MoP, but it only really came to a head with Shadowlands where they finally got grouchy enough/started quitting to an extent that the devs couldn't ignore it anymore.

XIV still seems rather early on in that process and the complaints are more about general boredom due to lack of content and innovation, so it's kind of having the opposite issue. "Just play other games" really isn't the kind of mentality any subscription/live service model should be trying to encourage when it comes to finanicial success, though...

[Jojoya]

XIV still seems rather early on in that process and the complaints are more about general boredom due to lack of content and innovation, so it's kind of having the opposite issue. "Just play other games" really isn't the kind of mentality any subscription/live service model should be trying to encourage when it comes to finanicial success, though...

Financial success isn't making the maximum possible profit. Financial success is continuing to make a profit.

The "just play other games when you run out of things you want to do in FFXIV" has worked very well for the game. It has been financially successful at a time when SE overall has been struggling financially.

I think that's because YoshiP, as a gamer himself, understands that most gamers want to be able to play multiple games and not get tied to a single game. Players are free to come and go as their mood takes them (assuming they don't have a housing addiction or have learned how it can be managed if they have). They appreciate that. Few people enjoy feeling like others control them.

That was part of WoW's problem. Blizzard pushed their systems to the point that players felt like they had to keep logging in or they'd fall too far behind to be able to play at end game if they took a break to play other games for a few months. It became a choice between playing a single game (WoW) or playing lots of games. WoW ended up losing that battle except among the most hardcore WoW addicts.

Certainly I appreciate being able to take time away from this game to play other games I enjoy. I don't fool myself into thinking I have to log in every day or that I have to cap my tomestones every week or that I have to do anything in particular. I do what I feel like doing, including playing other games, without a sense that I'm losing out on anything in this one. Even seasonal events can be easy to bypass much of the time. Either the reward interests me or it doesn't. If it doesn't, I'm not going to miss out on anything significant by skipping the event.

I wonder how close we are to the point of no return in that trust thermocline since there are already some warning signs.
DT seems to be the lowest rated XIV product since 1.0, the job reception so far is mixed to negative, the promises haven't been met so far, msq is divisive at best, contand negativity towards the game is more common than it has been in the last years

There are promises that haven't been met yet because the game has only been out for 11 weeks out of a 100+ week expansion cycle. Of course we haven't seen a lot of the promised content yet.

Job reception is always mixed. As much as some players go "things were better back in X expansion", even then reaction to jobs was mixed. They are always those that are unhappy because their favorite job(s) doesn't fall in line with what they personally want it to be.

I think the core problem is that the game is suffering a midlife identity crisis. Just what type of player is the game being made for? It's like they're throwing out all sorts of different ideas trying to find what will stick and that's leaving everyone less than satisfied. What was wrong with sticking what had already worked so well for the game in the past?

Just as players need to remember that grass isn't always greener on the other side, the developers also need to remember that.

They need to pick a path and stick to it so they can deliver the best experience possible. Right now the path has so many branches no one knows where things are going to end up and that leaves people unsettled.

One final note: I certainly hope this game isn't starting to suffer from Activision syndrome after the shakeup at the top of SE. Corporate executives need to keep out of the developers' hair and let the developers make the game decisions. I don't care what their Business Administration classes taught them. Game development is not your typical business because customers put a lot more emotional investment in their game choices than they will in what mobile phone they buy or what store they go to when they need more paper towels.

[CuteBucket]

One final note: I certainly hope this game isn't starting to suffer from Activision syndrome after the shakeup at the top of SE. Corporate executives need to keep out of the developers' hair and let the developers make the game decisions. I don't care what their Business Administration classes taught them. Game development is not your typical business because customers put a lot more emotional investment in their game choices than they will in what mobile phone they buy or what store they go to when they need more paper towels.

This is also a worry I have. Parts of Dawntrail had some telltale signs of rushed rewrites and weird corporate meddling. The story doesn't feel like the FFXIV I know and love, yet the game play is so identical to Endwalker that it feels almost too much like FFXIV...