The Great FFXIV Exodus of 2024

[Rueby]

Well, speaking personally, the friends I have left from when I first started (very early ShB) have all had negative sentiments that started from post Endwalker, I share them too.
Ever since I've started playing I've been in love with the game, the story and all else, I could say I was a FFXIV shill having come from Bugwars 2. The concept of Live Letters and devs actually communicating with us felt hmm... personal I guess. I never cared much about my character, the story or NPCs as much as I did in this game and I think it's really unique that they managed to create this kind of experience...

After EW, I've essentially been playing this game solo, all the people I'm familiar with are gone. My close friend whom I met in this game and known for years is considering quitting for good and I know how much we both love this game. DT was the first time I started contemplating leaving the game, every memory felt like it was tarnished, one way or another. Perhaps I haven't been around for long and perhaps the rose tinted glasses and the honeymoon phase of ShB wore off...

I've been pretty sad everytime they sloppily change something, I've been fearful of playing the MSQ and/or unlocking new content out of fear of eyestrain that I never had in any game before prior to the 7.0 Graphical Update.

Not that I'm missing much, the quality of the MSQ has taken a nose dive since post EW and honestly the only reason I don't skip (though I really want to) is to see it for myself.

All this could be meaningless, perhaps their target audience is the new green player who just has so much content to do and give em a few years and cycle out the old and bring in the new.

[ReynTime]

Well, speaking personally, the friends I have left from when I first started (very early ShB) have all had negative sentiments that started from post Endwalker, I share them too.
Ever since I've started playing I've been in love with the game, the story and all else, I could say I was a FFXIV shill having come from Bugwars 2. The concept of Live Letters and devs actually communicating with us felt hmm... personal I guess. I never cared much about my character, the story or NPCs as much as I did in this game and I think it's really unique that they managed to create this kind of experience...

After EW, I've essentially been playing this game solo, all the people I'm familiar with are gone. My close friend whom I met in this game and known for years is considering quitting for good and I know how much we both love this game. DT was the first time I started contemplating leaving the game, every memory felt like it was tarnished, one way or another. Perhaps I haven't been around for long and perhaps the rose tinted glasses and the honeymoon phase of ShB wore off...

I've been pretty sad everytime they sloppily change something, I've been fearful of playing the MSQ and/or unlocking new content out of fear of eyestrain that I never had in any game before prior to the 7.0 Graphical Update.

Not that I'm missing much, the quality of the MSQ has taken a nose dive since post EW and honestly the only reason I don't skip (though I really want to) is to see it for myself.

All this could be meaningless, perhaps their target audience is the new green player who just has so much content to do and give em a few years and cycle out the old and bring in the new.

That appears to have become their strategy since they analyzed the success of Shadowbringers.

I think if anyone stop and analyze the previous expansions they will notice this too. Heavensward and Stormblood were mostly focused on pleasing the players they already had. When Shadowbringers' changes were developed there was a little more concern about the experience for new players, and when they saw how many newcomers joined, they have since doubled down in form of patches and then EW/DT in their entirety.
We don't get much in terms of "midcore" because all they do for veterans is add more high-end content. The so called midcore isn't an audience they care to keep around, because for the past 4~5 years the design they came up with has been compensating those players leaving with new players who will take their time to finish the MSQ and alliance raids... Possibly stay for the roleplay and fall to the housing trap.

[CNitsah]

That appears to have become their strategy since they analyzed the success of Shadowbringers.

I think if anyone stop and analyze the previous expansions they will notice this too. Heavensward and Stormblood were mostly focused on pleasing the players they already had. When Shadowbringers' changes were developed there was a little more concern about the experience for new players, and when they saw how many newcomers joined, they have since doubled down in form of patches and then EW/DT in their entirety.
We don't get much in terms of "midcore" because all they do for veterans is add more high-end content. The so called midcore isn't an audience they care to keep around, because for the past 4~5 years the design they came up with has been compensating those players leaving with new players who will take their time to finish the MSQ and alliance raids... Possibly stay for the roleplay and fall to the housing trap.

This whole things seems to me like the companies trying to create a hero shooter to get some part of that juicy hero shooter market, but fail one after the other because a few titles are well installed, and why play the game that try to be Overwatch or Valorant when you can play Overwatch or Valorant.

Lately I feel like SE see the success of Genshin Impact and Honkai star Rail (Yoshi-P has mentionned them on a few occasion, and even the quote given last page can be understood as talking about those kind of game), and want to somehow get that kind of player on a game that not thought for that. So you tray to attire players that will prefer playing those games, and at the same time alienate the players that are there. Worst of both world.

[TheDustyOne]

Well, speaking personally, the friends I have left from when I first started (very early ShB) have all had negative sentiments that started from post Endwalker, I share them too.
Ever since I've started playing I've been in love with the game, the story and all else, I could say I was a FFXIV shill having come from Bugwars 2. The concept of Live Letters and devs actually communicating with us felt hmm... personal I guess. I never cared much about my character, the story or NPCs as much as I did in this game and I think it's really unique that they managed to create this kind of experience...

After EW, I've essentially been playing this game solo, all the people I'm familiar with are gone. My close friend whom I met in this game and known for years is considering quitting for good and I know how much we both love this game. DT was the first time I started contemplating leaving the game, every memory felt like it was tarnished, one way or another. Perhaps I haven't been around for long and perhaps the rose tinted glasses and the honeymoon phase of ShB wore off...

I've been pretty sad everytime they sloppily change something, I've been fearful of playing the MSQ and/or unlocking new content out of fear of eyestrain that I never had in any game before prior to the 7.0 Graphical Update.

Not that I'm missing much, the quality of the MSQ has taken a nose dive since post EW and honestly the only reason I don't skip (though I really want to) is to see it for myself.

All this could be meaningless, perhaps their target audience is the new green player who just has so much content to do and give em a few years and cycle out the old and bring in the new.

I know that stories like this are only anecdotal, but I've had similar; most of the people I played with during ShB largely went away by the middle of EW, and few of them came back for DT, even fewer have stayed for 7.1. At this point it's only a handful of FC members that I play with that still log on, the others only come back when there's a free login campaign.

The use of Steam charts can only tell part of the picture since it's only part of the playerbase, but it's still a rather large sample size we can work with, and as such shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't include PS4/Xbox/etc. Barring major port issues, if 10% of Steam players up and left the game, there's a good chance that around 10% of the other platforms also lost players (give or take some margin of error) because of similar reasons to those Steam players.

[IDontPetLalas]

I know that stories like this are only anecdotal, but I've had similar; most of the people I played with during ShB largely went away by the middle of EW, and few of them came back for DT, even fewer have stayed for 7.1. At this point it's only a handful of FC members that I play with that still log on, the others only come back when there's a free login campaign.

The use of Steam charts can only tell part of the picture since it's only part of the playerbase, but it's still a rather large sample size we can work with, and as such shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't include PS4/Xbox/etc. Barring major port issues, if 10% of Steam players up and left the game, there's a good chance that around 10% of the other platforms also lost players (give or take some margin of error) because of similar reasons to those Steam players.

Not necessarily, I would argue that there are other factors that make it more difficult to extend from one platform to another - age/ gender/ gaming history, income etc can also affect the platform that someone selects- so the 10% of Steam users isn't really a reliable indicator.

For my part- that doesn't mean that I'm dismissing out of hand anyone's stories that they know players who have negative feedback, or have un-subbed.

[ZavosEsperian]

I know that stories like this are only anecdotal, but I've had similar; most of the people I played with during ShB largely went away by the middle of EW, and few of them came back for DT, even fewer have stayed for 7.1. At this point it's only a handful of FC members that I play with that still log on, the others only come back when there's a free login campaign.

The use of Steam charts can only tell part of the picture since it's only part of the playerbase, but it's still a rather large sample size we can work with, and as such shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't include PS4/Xbox/etc. Barring major port issues, if 10% of Steam players up and left the game, there's a good chance that around 10% of the other platforms also lost players (give or take some margin of error) because of similar reasons to those Steam players.

The thing with anecdotal evidence is while it is just people recounting what they have experienced, these particular stories are becoming more and more common in the most recent months. It can't take the place of actual metrics, but it can be used as a supplement along with what little we have to work with to help discern trends and patterns, at least among specific parts of the community.

I have to word it the way I did above because what someone experiences is, of course, unique to themselves. Based on current trends in the game, I would expect people who are, for lack of a better term, involved in 'Etheirys' Nightlife (or Eorzea's Nightlife)' scene are not going to experience these things as much as those of us who are not involved with it. I would also contend communities of older players (those of us who have been around for a long time) are more likely to see it for one reason or another.

What is inconsistent is the rate in which groups of people form and fall apart. I am seeing a lot more, well-established, FCs having issues maintaining active membership these days compared to some of the worst times back in the ARR/HW era, suggesting something has changes that is causes FCs that traditionally have above average churn to have even more churn than they had before. FCs that tend to be a bit more transient and are more season-driven are not able to maintain active members beyond a couple months and they are not returning for patch content - suggesting a lack of interest to return to the game for one reason or another.

From my experience as a 2.0 player, my main guesses as to why this is happening is due to poor patch cadence, lackluster story, and uninspired/boring class/job design (particularly healers, which I am one of). Many players I have known for well clear of 6-8 years at that point faded out around that time, while people who were normally extremely active became seasonal players during that same time frame. The patch content in EW didn't give players who wanted to play the game a lot to work with outside of the normal grind, which I believe further increased the rate of players transitioning away from being extremely active to being more seasonal and, in turn, eventually leaving the game now.

I will need to discuss ShB separately for some specific reasons. ShB is a bit of an anomaly due to COVID and the surge of new players that occurred during that time, so it is hard to evaluate ShB properly. With that said, I observed a lot of people were active despite this most likely due to travel restrictions and using MMOs as a means of socializing. Since this isn't going on anymore, I do expect some of the drop-off of players is just due to these players slowly transitioning back to a normal lifestyle, but this reason I think is not as major as the one stated above and some of this drop-off could actually be due to the above reasons as well, since these players would now be entering their 2nd expansion so to speak.

How all of this above plays into the Steam metrics, I really don't know. What I do know is that the Steam metrics are sufficiently large to the point you can use them as a sample size of the population at large, and thus they should not be ignored when trying to evaluate the health of the game. I have stated before the game is going into a period of regression and moving backwards, with the Steam metrics only being one piece of evidence to this argument.

[Lium]

The irony of this is that I *am* one of those "green players" who started post-Endwalker (December 2022), hadn't even been playing the game for two years before Dawntrail launched, and yet I'm eyeballing that "Cancel Subscription" button as much as any jilted longtime vet because the mobile version pretty much nuked whatever trust and faith I had in Square-Enix when it comes to the PC version.

The sad part is though, I don't really have another MMO to go to now. I refuse to return to WoW, I'm sure as hell not going to play Square-Enix's *other* MMO, I'm kinda "eh" about picking up SWTOR again, and I'm not convinced about trying PSO2 or ESO. This isn't just quitting FF14, this might be where I quit the entire genre because there's literally nothing left I want to play anymore.

I've been playing LOTRO again. But I'm also a Tokien fan, so your mileage may vary.

[CVXIV]

The irony of this is that I *am* one of those "green players" who started post-Endwalker (December 2022), hadn't even been playing the game for two years before Dawntrail launched, and yet I'm eyeballing that "Cancel Subscription" button as much as any jilted longtime vet because the mobile version pretty much nuked whatever trust and faith I had in Square-Enix when it comes to the PC version.

The sad part is though, I don't really have another MMO to go to now. I refuse to return to WoW, I'm sure as hell not going to play Square-Enix's *other* MMO, I'm kinda "eh" about picking up SWTOR again, and I'm not convinced about trying PSO2 or ESO. This isn't just quitting FF14, this might be where I quit the entire genre because there's literally nothing left I want to play anymore.

Neverwinter is fun but it is extremely grindy