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

[Hallarem]

I hope it continues a downtrend, but like I said before. They won't move a muscle until the Japanese players start dropping off or complaining.

[DiaDeem]

As someone who usually defends XIV, who's still mostly happy with the game, who usually troubles herself with doing all sorts of content, and who understands that game development isn't as easy as flipping switches on a whim...

I'm starting to resent the 4 month patch cycle. The way content is structured just doesn't spread well over such a long period of time.

We were supposed to get less dungeons so they could focus on other content, but I haven't felt the presence of that content. Savage, Chaotic and Ultimate? That's nice and all, but those can't be run without a static or a guide, or I guess I can spend three hours in PF and subject myself to the whims that come with that, but that's not my idea of exploring and learning content on a normal pace. We should be getting a Variant Dungeon at least every patch, but those have been MIA for two patches now. HM dungeons are dead, and I'll continue to lament their disappearance. I'm working on finishing all ShB relics, on getting some gil to get a small house on an alt, and I love caring for my garden's plants, so it's not like don't have "things to do", but more the fact that I'm not really even engaging with the xpac's content right now. As a side note, I threw away my Mandervilles. They're worthless as far as power is concerned, their design never appealed that much to me, and because how utterly easy they were to make, I felt absolutely no remorse whatsoever after tossing them away without fanfare.

I'm so uninterested in the MSQ plot right now, and it's not Wuk. I think Zepla mentioned it, but the whole of Dawntrail's plot and characters lack polish. Wuk's characterization is just a symptom of the bigger problem of how unfinished and disjointed everything feels. I even told my sister while we were playing... it felt like 2 completely different teams made each half of the Dawntrail MSQ. Tone is all over the place, stakes make no sense, and the more I think about it, the worse I feel about the whole Living Memory situation. It was an interesting topic that we simply rushed through at the tail end of the entire story. There's this Fashionista video about the xpac being about a pirate treasure, and stuff like that would have been so much fun. Instead, we're saving the multiverse once again. Nuance has been completely absent from the story for a while now, and it's making me miss the rather forgettable Zero/13th Plot of the 6.X patches, which is something I never thought I'd say.

Last but not least: Hats for hroths and buns are RIGHT THERE. It's exhausting to hear Yoshida say it's very low in the priority list or that it's not currently possible, when all they have to do is implement the thing that already exists and say "Thanks" to the person making it.

I still love the game, and I'm not going anywhere... but gosh, some of this stuff is just so frustrating to me.

[ElysiumDragon]

I'd really like to know how much of this whole mess is just natural burnout from 14 hours a day gaming sessions of a single game for 4 years.

Because I get it, happened to me during Endwalker. Ended up sitting out a lot of the last two patches because I didn't want to log in much, and got back into it properly leading up to Dawntrail.

I've no agenda to push, nothing to sell. I thought Dawntrail was alright but dragged at the start, that Wuk Lamat was nice but yapped a bit too much, that the battle content's been solid this expansion, and that job design is overall in a better place than it was in the past, but that they maybe overcompensated on a few jobs. (Summoner having what seems like very little room for skill expression is probably not the best design choice).

[Red-thunder]

I'd really like to know how much of this whole mess is just natural burnout from 14 hours a day gaming sessions of a single game for 4 years.

Because I get it, happened to me during Endwalker. Ended up sitting out a lot of the last two patches because I didn't want to log in much, and got back into it properly leading up to Dawntrail.

I've no agenda to push, nothing to sell. I thought Dawntrail was alright but dragged at the start, that Wuk Lamat was nice but yapped a bit too much, that the battle content's been solid this expansion, and that job design is overall in a better place than it was in the past, but that they maybe overcompensated on a few jobs. (Summoner having what seems like very little room for skill expression is probably not the best design choice).

Lol how do you even get burnout on FF14? What is there to even do? Lmao

The real burnout isn't playing 14 hours a day because no one around me does that, not even the top raiders. People are bored when they come back to the game after being unsubbed for 3 months. THAT is how stale the game is now. You get burnout on this game after playing for 6 years or 8 years or 10, not because you're playing 10 hours a day. Not even 1 hour a day. But because this game hasn't changed in 10 years lmfao. In the next patch we're getting Bozja 2.0 aka Eureka 3.0 aka Diadem 4.0 aka 3.1 Diadem 5.0. And what will 50% of it be? FATEs 6.0 and they have not added ANYTHING to FATEs in 10 years other than a single mob you can kill to get some extra XP.

And once you've stopped raiding when you realize they don't do anything other than the donut out left right spread stack light party partners shiva titan tiles expanding shrinking etc slop, each patch offers less than 5 hours of content over four months, most of which has already been done before in this game. Even the story is getting repetitive.

One good thing about this game though is that it's never been easier to ERP. Hell there's even animations now. That's four months of content if you can't find a guy or gal IRL lmfao

[Striker44]

I don’t know, man. What I see is that we’re basically back to the same numbers we had before the WoW exodus during Shadowbringers.

And honestly? I don’t think that being back to ShB numbers after two full expansions is a particularly good sign. Whatever player increase XIV had during that time, SE clearly didn’t manage to hold onto it.

Whether this drop in revenue pushes CS3 to step up and put more effort into the game, or if they just keep doubling down on their current trajectory, we’ll only find out with the next expansion.

Given that we were never going to keep the "refugees" considering how different the games are, that we managed to hold onto at least a handful of them for two full expansions is actually quite extraordinary. And if you look at the average daily logins, we're in the same exact place we were during ShB and significantly better than at this point in EW. Likewise, we're considerably better than we were anytime pre-ShB. If the revenue was fine with a fraction of the playerbase back then, it's fine now.

[Ath192]

As someone who usually defends XIV, who's still mostly happy with the game, who usually troubles herself with doing all sorts of content, and who understands that game development isn't as easy as flipping switches on a whim...

I'm starting to resent the 4 month patch cycle. The way content is structured just doesn't spread well over such a long period of time.

They always either quit or come to the dark side. Welcome. We have cookies.

[Red-thunder]

Your goalposts shift constantly it's not even funny

you literally celebrated people leaving wow for FF14 but honestly this is probably your real opinion anyways

Inb4 "the hateful bitter malcontents on the forums blahblahblah

[Supersnow845]

Given that we were never going to keep the "refugees" considering how different the games are, that we managed to hold onto at least a handful of them for two full expansions is actually quite extraordinary. And if you look at the average daily logins, we're in the same exact place we were during ShB and significantly better than at this point in EW. Likewise, we're considerably better than we were anytime pre-ShB. If the revenue was fine with a fraction of the playerbase back then, it's fine now.

Again the fact that 14 didn’t keep the WOW refugees is neither guaranteed nor desired and it happened because 14 simply didn’t care and thought “we are so perfect they will stay by default”

14 has almost exhausted its well of potential players. It’s even pulled from other MMO’s and is still out of players

[DiaDeem]

They always either quit or come to the dark side. Welcome. We have cookies.

Oh no, the only time I unsubbed was when they were doing the weird new payment thing and it forced me to unsub and I had to get a Time Card through G2A for a couple months before I could sub again, but other than that, I've been here ever since Sept 2013.

Sadly, they don't even reward loyalty anymore

When this game bleeds players, is not by one big nuke, rather by a thousand cuts.

[Wasselin]

Again the fact that 14 didn’t keep the WOW refugees is neither guaranteed nor desired and it happened because 14 simply didn’t care and thought “we are so perfect they will stay by default”

14 has almost exhausted its well of potential players. It’s even pulled from other MMO’s and is still out of players

If these WoW "refugees" you are assuming XIV didn't keep are the reason player number is down, how would they have kept them? Change the game fundamentally to keep them and thus alienate their long time players? Or if it's because they "had nothing to do" after burning through four expansions worth of content do you think SquareEnix is somehow going to start releasing content at 4x the speed as the past?

It really doesn't make sense, and Striker44 is right that if they did leave they were never going to stay to begin with.