So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

[Pimsan20]

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws. It helped me during Covid.

[Velthice]

Shame they're still stuck with another year of -Dawntrail- and it's horrible reputation souring the login screen. If I were them, I'd cut the losses entirely, get someone to throw up a new title card as far removed from DT as possible, and treat 7.4 as a soft reboot. Have the next msq quest start at sharlayan without anyone even so much as mentioning anything that happened since 7.0. Just scrub it from the story altogether. Don't build on rotten roots

[TeresaFortell]

Shame they're still stuck with another year of -Dawntrail- and it's horrible reputation souring the login screen. If I were them, I'd cut the losses entirely, get someone to throw up a new title card as far removed from DT as possible, and treat 7.4 as a soft reboot. Have the next msq quest start at sharlayan without anyone even so much as mentioning anything that happened since 7.0. Just scrub it from the story altogether. Don't build on rotten roots

Cat's out of the bag at this point. The only thing they could do and are doing now is redirecting the story back at the Ascians, because this was a formula they knew and conducted well.

[Pimsan20]

Shame they're still stuck with another year of -Dawntrail- and it's horrible reputation souring the login screen. If I were them, I'd cut the losses entirely, get someone to throw up a new title card as far removed from DT as possible, and treat 7.4 as a soft reboot. Have the next msq quest start at sharlayan without anyone even so much as mentioning anything that happened since 7.0. Just scrub it from the story altogether. Don't build on rotten roots

I mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction. The post MSQ had a bit of a rocky start, but i think 7.3 help make Dawntrail a bit tolerable. Can't spoil why since not everyone has reach 7.3 yet. I just hope they find a writer that understand the core of 14 and learn from the previous writer's mistake.

[Valence]

CBU3 has a horrible road ahead of them. They've already gained as many new players as they could these past 10 years, the real problem now is to bring all those players back.

I don't envy their jobs right now. I think bringing back Ascian-level storytelling is the only way they're going to convince players to resubscribe.

They only have themselves to blame. But I wish them luck all the same.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Good. They deserve this.

Now hurry up do a U-Turn and put back those money into the game rather than funding Yoshi-P's new spellspeed ring to show in next Live Letter. If struggling is what they need to make the game a bundle of joy to play again, then so be it.

[AlienDiplomat]

Good. They deserve this.

100% agree.

YoshiP should be ashamed of himself for pushing raid mechanics into MSQ-required 4-man NORMAL dungeons to pander to vocal streamers.

And for hiring clearly unqualified writers to take up the torch of a beloved franchise that built its reputation on the writing.

Of all the ways to cut corners and cheap out, they picked the two absolute WORST for the long-term profitability and reputation of the IP.

Gating non-raiders out of the base game MSQ if they don't prog through Twitch streamer raid mechanics is unforgivable.

[Velthice]

I mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction. The post MSQ had a bit of a rocky start, but i think 7.3 help make Dawntrail a bit tolerable. Can't spoil why since not everyone has reach 7.3 yet. I just hope they find a writer that understand the core of 14 and learn from the previous writer's mistake.

I'm not saying the content in Dawntrail is bad. I'm saying Dawntrail, the name itself and specifically the attached msq storyline carry a stigma to them now of being "the bad expansion" so I would just kill the name entirely. They can continue the Arcadion and other things that are working for them. Stormblood is still remembered as a weak expansion despite having some of the best content packed within it and one of the best post patch stories (imo) of Doman and Garlean tensions. it never escaped the shadow of its launch msq, not even today, and that's exactly how everything Dawntrail will be remembered.

I stand by cutting the msq out. The worst thing they could do is make Dawntrail "required reading" to understand future events, especially if they end up turning it around and come up with a great story for 8.0. Nobody who quit because of the DT story is going to want to come back if they have to play through the thing that made them quit

[MoonNoire]

Yoshida is far from blameless in this situation, but SE funneling 99.9999% of XIV funds into assorted flops and the latest entry of the FF7 remake is probably 50% of the reason we will never see real improvements to ingame infrastructure

[Jeeqbit]

I just hope 14 can rebound after this. I really like the game even with it's flaws. It helped me during Covid.

You don't need to worry about the game actually existing. Even if it's population reduces more, it will likely just be at its original baseline of 500-600k and the game was definitely just fine back then. It's all relative to individual datacenters, after all, so in a worst case they could attempt to merge worlds or make transferring to a target data center less problematic.

I mean, not everything about Dawntrail is bad per-say. Don't get me wrong, the main story in 7.0 has many flaws, i admit. But if we look beside the MSQ, the raid series, the dungeon and trails were a good step in the right direction.

Dawntrail wasn't perfect. In retrospect I'd even rank it below ARR, especially because of how it got FF9 lore and portrayed it in a way that makes me sick. But I still enjoyed it, especially everything prior to Heritage Found. Even the story after that at least had more time spent on it than the patches. Because as you said, the environments and dungeons and trials were great.

In a lot of ways, what has made it difficult for me is the patches. They all doubled downed on "electrope FF9", including the latest one, which reminds me of the sickness I had tried to move on from, and the result is just apathy - not really caring for the MSQ much. I just really didn't care for what was going on in 7.3 at this point. I even think that all the people who skipped it didn't miss much; it was more of all the things they're tired of.

I'd have loved if Underkeep could have been in Living Memory instead and had no electrope whatsoever, so it could just be a true exploration of FF9 in all its authenticity. We always deal with the scions nodding and thanking but it just felt even more excessive than normal in 7.3 and it stands out so much more when you're apathetic about what's going on.

The irony is that FF9 is an example of some of the best storytelling. They could learn something from actually playing the game, like how to make the scions interesting instead of existing solely to shower you with praises and be a duty support NPC. I know they need them there for duty support, but you really notice when there is no purpose in that character being in the story, and they do it just so you have Duty Support. They need to try harder to make it feel natural, probably by just introducing new warrior characters. It's not like they can't; they do it in sidequests all of the time and it doesn't take them long.

As for what 7.3 tells us the future holds, if you've done it, you know. In some ways I'm glad we're (somewhat) moving on, but in other ways I'm just apathetic at what it seems to be hinting.