Quote Originally Posted by Kazuke_Miso View Post
Actually, it helps. There's a reason why Dawntrail has fewer new players than Heavensward and Stormblood, and it's because of its atrocious reputation.

For every doomer loudly hating on a game, we save a soul from having to experience this slop of a game. Players don't just have the power of the wallet, they also have the power of influencing reputation.



Look at Civ 7, a horrendous, half-baked, pseudo-live-service game in the Civ franchise, that is now below Civ 5 in concurrent player count. Consumers complaining about the atrocious UI, the unreasonable content pipeline (that is a live service model in all but name), the idiotic AI has worked and dissuaded other players from wasting $70 on this game (which let's be realistic will not even get you half of the full experience since they plan on releasing DLC after DLC for years).

Consumers have the power to inflict pain and damage on billion dollar companies and their studios if they band together and loudly criticize the company. Negative reputation works: Assassin's Creed's disastrous reputation has threatened Ubisoft with financial meltdown and failure, and they now put far more effort into quality and AC Shadows seems to be one of their better games in a long time, at least I hope so (it sits at 82% on Steam right now and that is with the culture war sword of Damocles hanging over its neck in the form of Yasuke.)

When game studios are afraid, and think this is their last chance before they get shut down, they will go full steam ahead and pour their souls into the game. That is what happened with Final Fantasy I.

For-profit game companies are fundamentally, in this sort of economic system, locked in an antagonistic relationship with you, the consumer. If you don't fight against them they'll just exploit you over and over again.
There's a difference between criticism to improve the quality of a game, and intentionally hating a game to cause it's downfall. I wouldn't call ffxiv slop, it's got it's flaws but it's still a good game especially from a new player perspective.