FF14 player count has fallen off a cliff and is now at 2019 levels (3/16/2025)

[Kaliesto]

We have to go LOWER! LOWEEEEEEEEEER!!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but we need to convince all the international players to unsub for awhile; that is the only thing SE will respond to.

We fought back as hard as we all could, and did not work.

Fine then.

Let's see how they react when they start losing their ill-gotten money.

[User202503201232]

The “make everything easy for the hip new gamer with the attention span of an average tiktok addict” may not be a terrible strategy……

For real, I literally can't get anyone IRL to play this game. They all get bored in ARR and quit by level 30 or something. Getting them into Helldivers 2 was not even remotely close to difficult on the other hand lmao.

[Kaliesto]

Monetarily, you may not consider 1mln subscribers as a failure.

But you also shouldn't be considering a game on a downward trajectory as a successful thing either. All it takes is for that trajectory to hit a threshold that they are not happy with before you start seeing more monetization in the game and ideas, e.g., more subscription tiers, that offer more than just additional retainers or character space per server, more cosmetic items on MogStation, more mounts which would've been suited better as in-game rewards (e.g., Shadow Wolf), and so on.

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

If that ever happened that just proves what everyone thought about CS3 & upper management for awhile now, and it just make more players back off from this game.

[weebtext]

Unironically yes. Seems money is the only thing they will listen to at this phase, judging by the last live letter.

Oh don't worry, I wasn't being ironic. I genuinely want the player count to sink lower and lower, below SB, below HW, below ARR. I'm so far past dooming I just want to see this game crash and burn.

As much as I would love to see the game get better, I don't have much hope for that happening. Might as well enjoy the shitshow!

[Arrius]

For real, I literally can't get anyone IRL to play this game. They all get bored in ARR and quit by level 30 or something. Getting them into Helldivers 2 was not even remotely close to difficult on the other hand lmao.

MMO's were always a time investment on a much bigger scale.
And that's also why they are also a niché that older generations are covering, since they have grown up with this genre.

[Gurgeh]

"Your burnt out.
If your unhappy:
Take a break.
And I mean this in the most patronising way possible, maybe the game is just not for you, and 'that's O. K.' (smiley face)

Now let me get back to what works for me."

(oh sht I probably need to be explicit ^^sarcasm^^ , that's sarcasm.)

[MoofiaBossVal]

I want to like the game but there is nothing for me to do. I did the story, did all zone questlines, did all trial and raid storylines, did most job stories, did the rolequests, did Blue Mage up through level 70, finished Eureka and Bozja, did variant dungeons, leveled gatherers to cap and did questlines, etc. There is nothing meaningful to do. Every now and then I dabble in savage or chaotic and then remember that I don't want to wipe 60 times until everyone perfects the dance so we finally clear once and then have to do it dozens of more times after that to get an ilevel upgrade that you will get for free in a few months anyway or some cosmetic. I can't be bothered to grind all of the jobs to cap when I don't main them just for the sake of grind. I would have liked to have progressed through more field exploration zones as a samurai main but it seems we are only getting two. There is just very little longevity. My friends don't play FF14 - tried getting them into it - so I don't have any reason to go back and do old content with them. Not that I would be able to before they are 200+ hours in and reach Eureka given that the story is a singleplayer experience.

I have been playing WoW on and off over the years. It is in a similar position to FF14 where there is not much longevity, and if you are a long time player who has done everything then there just isn't much to do besides do the same fights but harder over and over for an ilevel increase or PvPing until you get bored.

[YumieYumiki]

That ought to have an effect on the direction of the game. But even if it does it will probably take quite some months for anything significant to materialize.

The game being extremely formulaic is probably a result of highly rigid project planning and they are probably already deep into producing content that 6 month to a year away, which they can't change drastically.

It'll be interesting to see what easier smaller improvement they manage to make in the short and medium term. I bet the small announced QoL features such as increased runspeed in cities or being able to mount up while running are a result of them trying to come up with improvements that they can do right now.

[Lordsem]

I've been a new player for two weeks, and so far, I'm really enjoying FFXIV.

I hope it stays that way and I don't move somewhere else like others.

I came from ESO, GW2, and LotRO, which I still play. But for the past two weeks, there hasn't been any other game for me but FFXIV.

I get up, check the app for sales, and I feel like I browse Lodestone every day. In the evening, after the kids are asleep, I log in and have fun and enjoy the story.

I've been playing FFXIV every day for two weeks. It's been a long time since I was this addicted by a game.

Just to show you that there aren't just fleeing players.

[AshtonCrowe]

Aside from cities, I haven't seen a single other soul on my server in the last 24h.

ARR Zones, HW Zones, Stormblood Zones, Shadowbringer & Endwalker zones i've been gathering nonstop today and not one encounter. At what point is a server considered dead enough to fuse? Halicarnassus is empty af. Their server push failed, Merge the new ones into Seraph.