Yoshii P wants to know why people are leaving

[geekgirl101]

So, a while back I heard that Yoshii P wanted to know why people were leaving FFXIV. I know I don't speak for everyone but I'm pretty sure a lot of people will agree with what I'm about to say and why I'm playing less than I normally do.

So far each new expansion and content update gives us new battles and new gear to replace our old gear which requires very little extra effort to obtain or just redoing exactly the same thing we did before to earn it. Gear becomes obsolete very fast and is replaced way too easily that it leaves me questioning why go through all the effort of fighting hard to get geared when it's going to be replaced just 2-3 months later with no further effort on my part.

Every dungeon and raid battle is exactly the same - a pattern of mechanics that 1/3 of the way through the lengthy fight repeats in reverse, then at the final 2/3 of the fight gets all smashed together at once until the final 10% where things get very spicy if your team isn't strong enough. I've been through so many raids that it's now getting exhausting remembering how each one is played out and since it's just a mere couple of months before we're moving onto the next tier I'm already burned out. As for the dungeons it's pretty much kite as much as you can and AOE it all in one go.

On top of this every job plays exactly the same too. There used to be some measure of diversity but in the name of balance every job is now a mirror of each other. There's no longer "jobs" but categories. You're either a tank, a healer, a melee, a ranged or a caster. It doesn't matter which job you play because you'll be doing the exact same thing - pressing 1 2 3 and dodging red ground AOEs.

The quests in the meantime are mostly all pretty much the same thing - go a few steps down this road and bring back x amount of items or go find this NPC and come back. The holiday events are even worse. Years ago they had you go explore outside and participate in battles or enter unique places like the Halloween themed Haukke Manor. Now the quests just have you shuffle around town talking to a number of NPCs, watch a cutscene, and get your reward once you've skipped past all the rambling. It's very low effort for an instant dopamine hit that I'm just not getting because I feel I'm being rewarded for doing nothing.

I'm bored. I want something other than this constant recycling of the same stuff over and over. I crave for something new that isn't just another waste of monologue for an instant reward that I may or may not be able to use. I want to know that I suck at some jobs and excel at others so I know where to focus my efforts on to improve upon and be the best at what I do. I need something different that isn't some low effort provision and FFXIV just isn't providing it.

[Supersnow845]

I really think it’s coming to a head where the dev team got too comfortable thinking that rigid repetition was what the playerbase wanted but it’s more like the game got a massive injection of players right when the old playerbase was getting tired and now this new injection is also getting tired but there is nobody new to drown out their complaints

The massive ShB bump has well and truly caught up and it’s now experiencing just how little content the game puts out on a month to month basis and the playerbase is starting to eat themselves alive over it

[Kes13a]

here's a thought if he REALLY wants to know...

Exit Survey.

but they wont do that because they really dont give a damn

[BabyYoda]

I remember one valentine event when we go to dungeon to play mini game with soul mate.. omg that was crazy to me at that time.

Now we got do this 2 min fate and get this housing item even that we can't get a house easily it is just lazy

[Palladiamors]

Because Endwalker unceremoniously destroyed everything I loved about the game in the most unsatisfying way possible. A job that has been in game since the launch of 2.0 was made completely unrecognizable, multiple plotlines were either off screened or shuffled off with little fanfare, and our final boss from nearly a decade of buildup was a depressed bird we meet at level 87, just before the end of the game. Not some ancient evil, not the emperor, not even the Ascians really. Just traumatized birb.

At this point I'm unsubbbed way more than I am subbed and I would have quit entirely but I'm morbidly curious and I have an obsessive personality that makes it hard for me to let go entirely.

[Ilisidi]

here's a thought if he REALLY wants to know...

Exit Survey.

but they wont do that because they really dont give a damn

There is an Exit Survey. It's just very sparse.

[Raikai]

I kind of wonder what is the JP's playerbase impression on their "formula of success". Are they getting dissatisfied as the rest of us? A few months ago I tried to use google page translator to check on their forums, but it was too vague for me. Most of the threads were requests for very minor things.

[Supersnow845]

I kind of wonder what is the JP's playerbase impression on their "formula of success". Are they getting dissatisfied as the rest of us? A few months ago I tried to use google page translator to check on their forums, but it was too vague for me. Most of the threads were requests for very minor things.

You’d be better off searching 2chan for the JP playerbase opinions

Their forums people argue are better because they are more moderated but they fall into the trap of being over moderated, you can’t make any threads because the mods will link to a dead megathread from 3 years ago with a vaguely related topic then delete your post, but if you add a comment to that dead megathread nobody will read it

It’s why their forums only come alive when a totally new and massively controversial topic comes up, like the character model update

[Lyth]

Yoshi-p would have been able to answer this type of question himself a few years ago. It comes down to engaging with your playerbase directly, listening to them, and playing the game yourself.

[Ramiee]

The game desperately needs exit surveys and direct Q&As.
I get that its hard, its a japanese game with a large western fanbase which includes a lot of different languages and cultures outside of just the Anglosphere and Japanese community but hearing voices from different players for every facet of the game is needed as long as its feedback that can have data collected from it.