FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Wasselin]

I’m not saying a small population is always better or that all small MMOs are thriving. My point is that a larger player base doesn’t automatically mean a better game experience. A game can grow so large that its original community and culture get diluted.

And as for server costs, my argument isn’t that ‘low costs = good game,’ but rather that more players also come with increased costs, so the idea that ‘more players -> more money -> a better game’ isn’t necessarily true. That extra revenue doesn’t have to be reinvested into making the game better—it could just as easily go toward other things, like a CEO's yacht.

[Supersnow845]

I’m not saying a small population is always better or that all small MMOs are thriving. My point is that a larger player base doesn’t automatically mean a better game experience. A game can grow so large that its original community and culture get diluted.

And as for server costs, my argument isn’t that ‘low costs = good game,’ but rather that more players also come with increased costs, so the idea that ‘more players -> more money -> a better game’ isn’t necessarily true. That extra revenue doesn’t have to be reinvested into making the game better—it could just as easily go toward other things, like a CEO's yacht.

“Original community gets diluted”

What original community? 14 never had a small unified community in its early days (unless you count us banding together to universally hate legacy) we were all as fractured as we are today. This reads way too much like “I miss the halcyon days of old” (that never existed). At least with complaints about say job design you can actually point to tangible elements of old design structure

As for “a larger game doesn’t necessarily mean reinvestment” that may be true but you have a larger chance of reinvestment when you actually have enough money to invest anything at all. The only reason square forked out the money to remake legacy is because it would have sunk the company to not do it, if they were in a better financial position then legacy would have just sank with its small playerbase and 14 would be dead and gone