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

[User202503201232]

Hardware limitations really aren't the problem here, limited creativity is.

This isn't an issue like in Heavensward where you couldn't get MP bars in your party list because the useless brick that was the PS3 had only 512mb of RAM combined.

Yep, going to Ps5 would mostly benefit QoL features. Really doubt it's going to solve even 10% of the game's issues that aren't QoL lol

[Araxes]

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.

There is a LOT to do if you are new to the Game. Enjoy your time! Fair Warning though: don't take the latest expac to seriously. The Devs did a big ol' OOOPSIE there and forgot to change diapers.

[Kazuke_Miso]

There is a LOT to do if you are new to the Game. Enjoy your time! Fair Warning though: don't take the latest expac to seriously. The Devs did a big ol' OOOPSIE there and forgot to change diapers.

Honestly the last expac is so much of a GoT season 8 I'd just quit after Endwalker.

Once you finish the quest 'Endwalker' just blissfully unsub and pretend that the game ended there and then.

[SongOfTheWind]

Honestly the last expac is so much of a GoT season 8 I'd just quit after Endwalker.

Once you finish the quest 'Endwalker' just blissfully unsub and pretend that the game ended there and then.

That but with the gathering EW tribe questline and you are really done.

[Auro_Seldaris]

Honestly the last expac is so much of a GoT season 8 I'd just quit after Endwalker.

Once you finish the quest 'Endwalker' just blissfully unsub and pretend that the game ended there and then.

This. Anyone read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King? Theres a part in the final book where the story comes to its natural, destined conclusion. At that point King writes directly to the reader, telling them that they can just stop there if they don't want to know what's actually in the Tower, to just consider that an acceptable ending. He warns the reader that if they continue in, they might not like the way he actually chooses to conclude the book. I use very specific language there, because it's just the conclusion of the book, not necessarily the story, and depending on how you feel about what's inside and what Roland learns, you may not like it.

Sadly, I kind of feel the same way about FFXIV. You could just finish that last cutscene of 6.0 in Mor Dhona, log off and just call it a happy ending.

"And the adventure continues."

(Honestly, part of me wishes I had done that after Seat of Sacrifice and the final cutscene in 5.3. That's a good enough place to stop, too.)

[Larirawiel]

Logged in on Shiva at prime time and no queue. Nooo, it does not look good, IMHO.


Cheers

[Oizen]

I remember getting downvoted to oblivion on the discussion sub on a post shortly after it released where I said 'claiming DT is a success based on the preorder numbers is extremely shortsighted'.

A lot of people struggle to put the picture together that the previous expansion sells the next one.
Endwalker was huge because Shadowbringers made it that way
Dawntrail got a big initial boom because Endwalker made it that way.
And 8.0 will be very disappointing for the investors and SE's bottom line because Dawntrail made it that way, the worst part of the Dawntrail decline is that we're really only at the begining. Dawntrail is going to have long lasting consequences that will hang over this game's future forever.
To make matters worse, they chose to spend a lot of good will here in the advertisements of Dawntrail and straight up lie to the consumer base about its contents, people don't usually forget things like that. So the marketing job for 8.0 is now harder because you now have the job of breaking through the "fool me once" perception a lot of people will have looking at XIV.

[Aneshda]

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.

I'll take the liberty of offering you this advice: leave the forums and never look back.
The negativity here will suck everyone and everything away until nothing is left.
Keep enjoying the game as long as possible; if you stay here in the forums, the positive will turn into negative, and the fun will turn into frustration.
New players should stay away from the forums and the Novice Network.

[Zelda206]

I'll take the liberty of offering you this advice: leave the forums and never look back.
The negativity here will suck everyone and everything away until nothing is left.
Keep enjoying the game as long as possible; if you stay here in the forums, the positive will turn into negative, and the fun will turn into frustration.
New players should stay away from the forums and the Novice Network.

As much as I'd like to support the sentiment, I'd wager a lot (like myself) were thoroughly unhappy with the state of the game before we even considered looking at the forums and feedback to see if there was anything hopeful about Dawntrail (which there seems to be a semi-medium scale of people holding out for 8.x, which is not a good sign for anything 7.x related in spite of a lot of hopefuls waiting for 'that next patch' to fix the inherent issues of Dawntrail as a whole--nay, the problems with the gameplay that began late-Shadowbringers). Not looking into the cesspool won't get rid of the smell of the source of sh*t since, regardless of perspective, the pile of sh*t is still there and hasn't been taken care of. If you catch my cold.

[Gurgeh]

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.

<3

@yoshi

Please don't let them down Yoshi.
- Don't let them spend months to years making friends, only to watch that community disintegrate as it leaves for the raiding DC they innocently didn't know was a thing, so never joined. (Not what happened to me, not directly)
- Don't let them make lots of friends then struggle to queue instances as they get further, because the lion's share of people still logging with that content unlocked not RRPing, are raiders, who have left for the raiding DC they are not on.
- don't let them make lots of friends then lose them, because those friends got bored once they hit end game, because because the shocking learning cliff to extremes or the god awfully balanced unreal scared them away, and there wasn't anything to do, but boring ARR instances, again because the end gamers, left for the raiding DC.
- dint let them make friends then have to watch them leave because even when they hopefully came back to try something challenging, you were waiting to greet them by jeering at them with another Savage Chaotic or savage level Criterion, on Static requiring Deep Dungeon
- have enough self awareness and empathy, to when they are trying to keep their community together, to both tell that community to go "play other games"
- don't sit there watchinh them bounce around happily in idylshire, knowing that when they get to SB the zones are going to be dead, also knowing even now how much better idylshire is on the raiding DC.

All because you can't be bothered, to go down PCmart an buy laptop to run an free open source SQL db, and get college intern to macro lash the functionality you already have together into a cross DC PF.
If you want give everyone shit MSW go ahead.
If you only respect real gamers with ambition to keep going until unreal, that's fine you mashed the game you want. Once we handed our money over it yours, and we experienced certainly know exactly what we're getting.

But play fair. Be at least as kind to our sprouts as we used to enjoy being.

And if this is all because your being cruel to be kind Yoshi because you know Square is fckd and when it folds so will XIV, and your souring the milk to wheen us off it... Then you have my deepest, deepest sympathies.

Because it reality does seem like our well being was baked into the DNA of the early game, by someone who cares about poeple.
Honestly, I don't understand what has happened.
None of us do.
(Saving those on real 'copium' who just, don't 'can't' see it.)

Bye o/
I'm gonna go watch the happy Zepla that I used to know, that is back with us, just playing wow.