The Great FFXIV Exodus of 2024

[Shikiseki]

They are frankly the vocal minority of the game. The majority of players don't even come to the forums for several reasons

I'll gladly tell that to my 3/200 friends and 2/128 FC members that still play. The rest already silently moved on years ago or just return to clear their content during their free login campaigns lol. Feel free to send them surveys about why they quit the game (because the lack of content/boring gameplay 80% of the cases I know) if they ever bother to reply to begin with.

The forums wouldn't be this negative if they would have put the same effort and passion that they used to have back in 2.0 back into the game again. At least I would!

[Rolder50]

Game would be dead as a doornail if there wasn't an active crowd of people that use it like second life and nothing more

[Chasingstars]

I’ll not mince words because this should be clear to anyone who has been around for a while. Very recently an unprecedented amount of people have been talking about unsubscribing, or have already done so. I’m curious to know what you think about it. Does it represent the silent majority? Are your in game friends talking about taking a break or leaving entirely? Has your fc become more quiet? And most importantly, has Square Enix noticed?

I’ve also seen players express how they have not moved on yet but are considering it. Some have stated they are mainly still subscribed to keep their house but aren’t logging in anymore. A common sentiment right now is that people feel like there is no content left to do for them and/or they dislike the direction this game is heading.

I did a quick sweep of the threads I’ve been active in, and these quotes below are just from the past month. Seriously, has there ever been a month in the history of this game when so many people have simultaneously announced that they are done?

The sentiment and urge of those wanting to post of "I am unsubbing from this game" just seems like the same thing you would've seen on the WoW forums, I wouldn't be shocked if at least some of the players posting that here were also WoW Refugees. As the common response to such posts on the WoW forums would be "Cool, can I have your stuff?" As you would see these kind of posts over there even when the expansion was good. With the amount that would get posted on the WoW forums, that game should've been dead by now if taken seriously, yet it hasn't, partly because of the efforts made to fix things. Cataclysm, Warlords of Draenor, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands have all caused big player exodus moments.

But also in general, just take a break. Instead of viewing it as one of those people permanently quitting, view it more as someone going on vacation. That person might choose to never return, or they might return when it piques their interest. It all depends on the individual.

[Kohashi]

https://steamcharts.com/app/39210#All

Steam obviously isn't the entire playerbase but it's more than a large enough sample size to gauge player behaviour. It doesn't look good.

We had a patch 1 week ago and we're at 27k daily peak. Player numbers haven't been lower than they are right now since 2020.

What you are bringing up is a simple case of causality vs correlation. A correlation between variables, however, does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable.

Unless your "study" accounts and works specifically with people unsubbing due to dissatisfaction it can be anyone's guess, including yours.

2024 was a great year that saw the release of many awesome games. FF14 had a lot of competition, and people are slowly moving away from MMMOs.

[BigCheez]

What you are bringing up is a simple case of causality vs correlation. A correlation between variables, however, does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable.

Unless your "study" accounts and works specifically with people unsubbing due to dissatisfaction it can be anyone's guess, including yours.

2024 was a great year that saw the release of many awesome games. FF14 had a lot of competition, and people are slowly moving away from MMMOs.

The fact that other games in the same space like WoW, OSRS and PoE are experiencing growth while XIV is bleeding players suggests that this problem relates specifically to XIV rather than MMOs as a whole.

You're right, in that people are playing other games instead of XIV, but it isn't because the wider game community is moving away from MMOs.

[ZavosEsperian]

What you are bringing up is a simple case of causality vs correlation. A correlation between variables, however, does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable.

Unless your "study" accounts and works specifically with people unsubbing due to dissatisfaction it can be anyone's guess, including yours.

2024 was a great year that saw the release of many awesome games. FF14 had a lot of competition, and people are slowly moving away from MMMOs.

Did you not read the post? BigCheez never associated a general/specific reason as to why people are leaving the game and just stated they are leaving the game. I understand AI algorithms are still not the greatest at reading everything inside of a given sentence/prompt, but come on this one isn't that comple- wait you're actually a human...

I am so sorry your teacher did not teach you how to understand what someone is saying and instead told you you can insert made up stuff into an argument which you can proceed to attack (Strawman). Listen, for all of us here, perhaps you should reread what was said and this time NOT insert something you made up inside of your head to the argument and just evaluate what was said, as what you just responded with is just words on a page with no meaning, no substance, and no intelligence behind them.

[Lollerblades]

I'm now at a point where I'm seriously contemplating leaving. The lack of content every patch, with the length of time it takes to release, coupled with a mobile version announced. Jesus Christ Squeenix, read the room. Nice to see where our sub money goes

[Awful]

I saw my comment and I'll elaborate it a bit more of why I'm not re-subbing, ever since the latter half of EW I've had this feeling of "bleh" stagnating around me as I continued the MSQ. A lot of the jobs in EW didn't make me feel any more hopeful and then DT, which I was super excited to with all the stuff they were showing off was a brand "new" journey, I was sold. I actually play the game and well, I wont go on a tangent but you either like the DT story or you hate it, like me, I haven't even completed the 7.1 MSQ I just read it online because I didn't need it to unlock the 24 man or EX 3 I've never done this before either I've always done MSQ.

The content release is really what got me to unsub because if you don't raid you don't have anything to do, we went months without anything to do it was just raid logging and that gave me WoW vibes when I used to raid log and do nothing else, it's a hollow feeling and in turn made me apathetic to that sort of raiding. If SE would have released 7.0 with relic + first part of field operations then add savage and build upon these things then I would be more inclined to stay but as it is I did all the content minus MSQ on a Tuesday and it took me a couple hours, I also PvP a lot too but the changes just leave me confused and uninterested.

There's a lot more I could go on about like jobs being EW+, fun coming from encounter design which is hit or miss, all my friends leaving, the sheer amount of nothingness until 7.1. I just feel my times better unsubbed and I dunno if I will come back but for now my time isn't respected and this is the first time I've unsubbed which to me speaks volumes as someone who's played since early ARR.

[ForteNightshade]

And what would you take to gauge the players representativity?

Actual dungeon queues, overall content participation such as Lucky Bancho's census even if it's, technically, unofficial and other stuff with tangible data. While online forums, reddit and social media can give an indication where the general opinion may lean, it's never going to be a majority swing unless it's incredibly one sided. I'm in enough casual circles to say none of them are anywhere near as angry about the game as people here. Heck, a friend of mine argued how much content 7.1 will add, a stark contrast to the opinion here, my own included. A great many people are happy to pay for this game to play for a few hours whenever they feel like it, hang out in social RP venues and do something else when they're bored. Which is the exact demographic SE seems to be satisfied with. Hence all the changes, dumbing everything down and keeping to such a sparse update cycle.

None of this is to say there hasn't been a dip. There has. The most recent census showed 7.1 saw the lowest amount of returners ever for the free login campaign. That still isn't enough to say the game is seeing a "mass exodus" on the scale of WoW.

When you might start to see the general sentiment shift is if 8.0 has another lackluster MSQ and the supposed job overhaul amounts to nothing. Right now, most of the general perception of DT is between enjoying it or accepting it was a bump in the road but will get better. There's concern but nowhere near the same doom and gloom online.

[Greyhawk]

And what would you take to gauge the players representativity?
- The social media. Twitter is still ok, but both subreddit now kinda align with the forum, even the one that was known to be place where you were downvoted to oblivion when you dared to criticized the game. If you go in the comments, you'll see the same kind of "I cancelled my sub" comments, on a far larger scale.
- the numbers we have access to? LuckyBancho, considered as a trustworthy source goes that way, we're bleeding players, and are nearly back to pre ShB numbers.
- You could also use the activity of the game on twitch, but there too it's not so good. Big streamers that used to play FFXIV now only play occasionally, most smaller streamer that were nearly FFXIV only now play other heavily play other things. The FFXIV category has fallen down so much over the last 6 to 9 month.

And those are only the one that seem obvious, I could probably find others if I thought a little more about it.

Now, sure, the game is still far from being dead, but there is moment where you have to consider the possibility that, for once, the forum might be representative of the global feeling and not be "a vocal minority". Every hints point to the direction the game is in crisis, yet there you are, contiuing to pretend the forum are not representative on principle.

I don't believe that we, as players have an accurate capability of doing so. Honestly, SE gives us access to what we can access. Populations, congestion, etc are all part of their statistics that they don't let out of the box unless it's to boast in a Live Letter, or interview from another gaming information media source. We can try and count on our fingers all day long, some people look at Steam numbers and believe it's the most accurate thing which it's not, Lucky's information, which it's not, you name it - we just don't know unless they allow us to be informed. And, they don't have to outside of what they are doing now.