Now that the game is officially on its deathbed, what are your thoughts?

[Valence]

"Now that the game is officially on its deathbed" - The game that places #3 in the MMORPG genre after WoW and OSRS when it comes to the active playercount.
XIV is in the same low WoW was with Shadowlands.
To blame are the minority of the playerbase that is crying on the forum like little babies. e.g. Something "new" comes out (Chaotic) and the casual cry babies coming out of their corner saying its shit, too hard, not fun, too hardcore instead of giving constructive criticism and examples on how to make it better.

I don't know, I've seen plenty of threads laying down in excruciating details everything that doesn't work or causes issues with it, or just doesn't work. You just chose to ignore all of them because it doesn't serve your narrative and you'd rather call people names instead of actually addressing their points. Pretty convenient to paint the other side under that light instead.

[BigCheez]

"Now that the game is officially on its deathbed" - The game that places #3 in the MMORPG genre after WoW and OSRS when it comes to the active playercount.
XIV is in the same low WoW was with Shadowlands.
To blame are the minority of the playerbase that is crying on the forum like little babies. e.g. Something "new" comes out (Chaotic) and the casual cry babies coming out of their corner saying its shit, too hard, not fun, too hardcore instead of giving constructive criticism and examples on how to make it better.

WoW would still be in that low if players who are passionate about the game hadn't pushed back and given extensive feedback.

XIV is ass and has been for a while. Let people vent.

[All_Nonsense]

[idk something reductive and condescending]

It's funny. We've spent over a year giving feedback and the dev's have outright completely ignored it. Not only that, they have DOUBLED DOWN on their stale, bad design and failed to deliver on their promises. It actually ironic, there's a quote in Endwalker that explores this sentiment:

Fandaniel, after his Defeat as Zodiark's Form: "The man I was would weep for what I've become"

I wonder, if we took the dev team from 2019, the same one who accepted a standing ovation for the expansion and one of the best stories in gaming that year, the one that won awards, and we showed them the state of the game now and showed them how they were managing the game now, would they weep too? Would they feel fear? Disbelief? Or maybe not. Maybe they'd say "The game is only placing lower than OLD SCHOOL RUNESCAPE, it's ok, we're ok with that." It's a mystery.

You know the english team is not feeding what we say back to the dev's, it's why YoshiP was so surprised to see creators start turning on the game. Losing the community has a feedback loop effect because the creators won't just stop creating because the game they love is bad now. Instead, they'll create content that highlights everything bad about the game and why they're quitting, and it will act as the propellant to driving sub numbers even lower. Then you have people like me who ended their sub but it still doesn't expire for a few months. We just come to the forums and ring the alarm and the dev's just kinda.....ignore us. Or it feels like we're being ignored. Oh well. I guess I'll ignore my subscription now, maybe they're onto something with this ignore thing.

...

By the way, and I know a lot of the cope-ers are hanging on because they think this way, but most people aren't gonna wait for "the game to get good" again. You might struggle to reconcile why there's so much disdain for FF14 right now, but your lack of understanding isn't going to stop anyone. We're just gonna leave. And then something else that is good grabs our attention, and we're told years later "come back!! FF14 is good again!" and idk. Our last memories of the game weren't good. And we're busy doing other things now. Don't disillusion yourself. Even if they ShB 2 it in 8.0, most people aren't coming back. As the game hemorrhages revenue they will continue to triple and quadruple down on "playing it safe" and reducing development budget until FF14 turns into a dormant husk - a half-abandoned amusement park strewn with the repurposed corpses of the legacy it was built on. Make your peace with it now.

[Uncle_Jafar]

Personally, i’m cancelling my subscription because of not wanting to upgrade to win 11. I think I already saw all the good story that there was. Time to move on to better rpgs.

[CinaedhVik]

I'm done.

That's my thought.

* My accounts (including but not limited to this one, as I did lose my data at one point and had to re-roll) go back to the middle of ARR patch cycle.
For years, I've been a defender. For years, I please looked forward to it. For years, I thought, surely they'll listen to player feedback and fix things.

* They continue to take their cash cow product and invest its earnings into flop after flop instead of back into making this game truly great. And as Yoshida said in PLL 87, I too am not solely speaking about money. They have not expanded their team to handle the demand. Issues solved by third party plugins years ago have not been solved by Square Enix: problems with ping, with UI/UX, with textures and models. Hrothgar still have no hats? Did you know the Lix set just released in OC deletes Fem Ra tails when equipped?

* In PLL 87, SE addressed the complaints about Atma drop rate, higher than they were in past content, as if this were a serious concern and not an issue they manufactured for themselves in how they build content for the laziest, the whiniest, the most unwilling. This game carries a paid sub because it is an MMO experience. At least, it's supposed to be. There is supposed to be some grind, some friction, some challenge. Some need for organization and party teamwork. There is a balance to strike there, where you are not forcing players to sign up on google docs or excel spreadsheets just to run the new Field Op dungeon, nor are you providing players an endless font of single player tools so that they don't have to interact with others at all in an MMO. See earlier complaint about wasted resources. They keep demonstrating that they are eager to listen to the worst of the community and ignore longstanding issues because "spaghetti code" or other limp barricades to hide behind.
[1 of 2]

[CinaedhVik]

[2 of 2]

* There's now a mobile version of the game. If that's not a death-knell, I don't know what is.

* More and more stuff gets dumped in the cash shop for a game that already carries a monthly subscription.

* Patches are more spread-out, with less included. It's clear they are struggling under the workload. Maybe they need more staff, or maybe they need to stop catering to single player subscribers poisoning the MMO. Maybe MMOs as a genre are dying out and being replaced by gacha games.

* SE's releases, when they do happen, are always the same: "New threats!!!" another dungeon, another trial, more "power of friendship" MSQ writing that just hasn't been good in years. Remember when it was good? M6S was the best raid they've made in a very long time, but I'm convinced it was an accidental smash hit and not an intended outcome. I think the playerbase is changing, too, and I don't like where it's going.

In short, none of these issues are new. What's new is that I am all out of patience and it's time to move on. Expedition 33 was a phenomenal game released in 2025. Absolutely peak in story, gameplay, music, every facet was inspired. I've enjoyed Hades 2 early access, playing old Trails in the Sky games through as I progress that series on Nightmare difficulty. The amazing Void Stranger made by two Finnish guys and some basic tools had a better story than FFXIV has had in years. Been going back to Horizon Forbidden West, another gem. I've been a player of MMOs since forever, from EQ to FF11 (NA Launch) to FFXIV ARR and onward, but this is the end for me and Square Enix. I'm not paying a sub for what they're putting out any longer.



It's goodbye game for now and for however long, unless these things are addressed. I doubt they will be, so it might be sayonara.

[Shinku_Tachi]

WoW would still be in that low if players who are passionate about the game hadn't pushed back and given extensive feedback.

XIV is ass and has been for a while. Let people vent.

This!

As much as I love FFXIV, for ppl to deny it's going through a big time rough patch and to say just a minority of the playerbase that's upset, in the face of active user #'s plummeting and Dawntrail receiving mostly mixed and negative reviews is objectively wrong. The situation is so bad it was even brought up at a shareholders meeting.

Personally, I'm the optimistic type, and I believe they can turn things around; but, people need to be able to vent and give feedback like you said. Push back from the players (plus the fact that it's corroborated by player data) is how devs are pushed to get things back on track. Defending it in this situation doesn't help.

[Asari5]

rip ff14
child of square enix
adopted by yoshida
forsaken by both

[Sunhwapark]

That's what I keep saying, pvp is one of the few pieces of content in XIV that actually offers a good shelf life.

It really is, I reckon I would have quit well over a year or two ago if not for the PVP modes.

[Mawlzy]

It really is, I reckon I would have quit well over a year or two ago if not for the PVP modes.

Yeah, same.

I don't understand why SE fails so badly to develop PvE that is repeatable. Bribery via rewards suggests they have little faith in their own content.