The slow decline of FFXIV, a summary.

[AvoSturmfaust]

I can understand people arent happy atm but can we at some point stop doom posting? people are dooming in every expansion and still playing this game, without question the forum people are mostly about talking big without actually real consequences so just let it be at this point, it will not happen that square is changing something and before people now start with "look final is in decline the playerbase is dropping" pls inform your ass, in every expansion since Stormblood the playerbased dropped in between x.0 and x.2 thats how it nearly always was. so just let it be

[ZephyrMenodora]

I can understand people arent happy atm but can we at some point stop doom posting? people are dooming in every expansion and still playing this game, without question the forum people are mostly about talking big without actually real consequences so just let it be at this point, it will not happen that square is changing something and before people now start with "look final is in decline the playerbase is dropping" pls inform your ass, in every expansion since Stormblood the playerbased dropped in between x.0 and x.2 thats how it nearly always was. so just let it be

Sure some people on these forums have been dooming for 6+ years now complaining about anything and everything, and yet are still here. But it is true that the playerbase is shrinking, the writing quality has dropped, and we are back to Shadowbringers sub numbers. What is sad is that XIV pretty regularly grew up through Endwalker, and now it's trending downward. So it's not quite business as usual, there are clear issues that need correction.

Being melodramatic is not my thing and I think some posters here just complain as a bizarre hobby, but I am concerned myself.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Sure some people on these forums have been dooming for 6+ years now complaining about anything and everything, and yet are still here. But it is true that the playerbase is shrinking, the writing quality has dropped, and we are back to Shadowbringers sub numbers. What is sad is that XIV pretty regularly grew up through Endwalker, and now it's trending downward. So it's not quite business as usual, there are clear issues that need correction.

Being melodramatic is not my thing and I think some posters here just complain as a bizarre hobby, but I am concerned myself.

Why did it grew through endwalker ? ask you WHY not because of the great content, because the content is like always, the playerbase grew because of covid and the wow refugees, the covid time is gone, a lot of wow refugees are back to wow so the playerbase ofc sinks again, then like i said earlier between expansion release and x.2 there was always such a big drop

[Valence]

Saying the game is going to die or whatever prophetic lunacies we read on every game since the early 2000s, whatever makes people happy believing.

But telling people to "leave if they don't like the game" and acting all surprised that they still play is a fundamental misunderstanding of those players. They still play and yell at the devs because they still care. They'd have left already otherwise. And then it becomes a real exercise in hilarity when goalposts get shifted and you get told instead "then you're not playing the right game for you, just go play something more aligned with your tastes". There is no winning with those.

Expecting a video like this to bring something new to the table is completely jarring. Videos bringing up good points nobody thought about yet are all well and good, but the point of those videos is to get loud and be heard. It's to make a point across, not to write a thesis.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Why did it grew through endwalker ? ask you WHY not because of the great content, because the content is like always, the playerbase grew because of covid and the wow refugees, the covid time is gone, a lot of wow refugees are back to wow so the playerbase ofc sinks again, then like i said earlier between expansion release and x.2 there was always such a big drop

And it grew through Shadowbringers too, before covid, based on an increase in writing quality and acclaim not just from critics but general players. You can't say the entire trend was only due to Covid.

[AvoSturmfaust]

And it grew through Shadowbringers too, before covid, based on an increase in writing quality and acclaim not just from critics but general players. You can't say the entire trend was only due to Covid.

Nah im not saying its only through covid and wow refugees but its the major aspect, i mean ofc is the writing atm actually really bad but do you really thing it will change something to complain here from early to midnight? Sorry but yoshi p and square enix will go with the direction they go and people will still play the game, square could literally sell shit on a spoon and people here would open the mouth and take it with pleasure, thats how the ffxiv community is, i mean if people are happy to doom or complain just go ahead have fun, but let me tell you one thing IT WONT CHANGE ANYTHING it never will and never has

[ForsakenRoe]

Why did it grew through endwalker ? ask you WHY not because of the great content, because the content is like always, the playerbase grew because of covid and the wow refugees, the covid time is gone, a lot of wow refugees are back to wow so the playerbase ofc sinks again, then like i said earlier between expansion release and x.2 there was always such a big drop

Yes, SE was gifted an incredible opportunity with the influx of players from WOW's temporary selfdestruction, and Covid. But rather than capitalizing on that opportunity, by adapting their development schedule to get more incentive out for those 'temporary' players to become more permanent additions to the playerbase, instead they kept doing what they were doing, and let the golden goose walk straight back out of the pen

and you get told instead "then you're not playing the right game for you, just go play something more aligned with your tastes". There is no winning with those.

This line infuriates me to no end. Because 'something more aligned to my tastes' WAS FFXIV. It's why I started playing it, back in HW. It's not that I'm not playing 'the right game for me', it's that 'the game that was right for me, decided to change to be not-right for me, because they wanted to appeal to another demographic'. So, lets use the logic in reverse: people who would not like HW design decisions, but DO like EW/DT design decisions, should they have been told to 'go play something more aligned with their tastes' going from HW to SB, or SB to SHB? No, because that line, no matter who it's being directed at, is patently absurd a stance to take. The game should appeal to many players, of many skill levels, by offering low skill floors and high skill ceilings in the Jobs, and by offering a variety of content difficulty levels. But over time, we've lost the former of those, and now the skill floor IS the skill ceiling for some Jobs (cough SMN).

So now, all of the 'goal to strive for' is baked into the content itself, which means that the burden of 'is the content fun' rests entirely on the design within that content. And not every fight can knock it out of the park, for example, P6S/P7S are dull as dishwater IMO, and P11S was a bit of a snore outside of the three main mechanics of the fight (Shadowed Messengers, Dark and Light, Letter of the Law). But, unlike older expansions, the Jobs (speaking from the POV of a Healer here) don't have enough meat left on the bone to compensate for the dull fight designs. In older expansions, we had dull fights like O6S, or O10S, but the level of 'the gameplay is bland' complaints was nowhere near what we see today, because even if Chadarnook was a literal training dummy, at least as a Healer we could mess about with trying to practice 'keep all of your DOTs up' and 'aim for zero healing GCDs used' (a goal that was not fully attainable in every Savage fight, even in BIS)

[Azurarok]

But telling people to "leave if they don't like the game" and acting all surprised that they still play is a fundamental misunderstanding of those players. They still play and yell at the devs because they still care. They'd have left already otherwise. And then it becomes a real exercise in hilarity when goalposts get shifted and you get told instead "then you're not playing the right game for you, just go play something more aligned with your tastes". There is no winning with those.

Expecting a video like this to bring something new to the table is completely jarring. Videos bringing up good points nobody thought about yet are all well and good, but the point of those videos is to get loud and be heard. It's to make a point across, not to write a thesis.

[Hallarem]

I guess Yoshi P forgot to add: "Act on feedback and complaints, on a faster pace than once every 5 year cycle"

Its a given that you SHOULDNT act on every random complaint or a game will become a mess, but repetitive complaints over years to add more QoL, more open world, more enterable buildings, Viera and Hrotgar hats, friendslist changes, all of it. Getting "Please look forward to it" is starting to really not cut it at all. I want to like this game, but the honestly DRY content and time between any MEANINGFUL content is actually crazy for an MMO where its supposed to offer you things to do.

[Daralii]

step 1: make content to elicit reactions
step 2: get reactions the content was created to elicit

That's why society is literally falling apart at the seams for "eNgAgEmEnT". If I make a video stating something easily disprovable and then add "I bet someone will answer in the comment section showing me how I was wrong", the chances are very high that someone will indeed comment and how how I was wrong. That doesn't mean my initially untrue statement wasn't untrue. It's up to YOU to actually have some quality standards in the way you conduct yourself, and in the media you consume.

How do you easily disprove that XIV is declining when there's no publicly available data, official or unofficial, to the contrary?