So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

[TheRealDesastr]

New players aren't staying. Everyone I've introduced hasn't remained, & the fact that people need to wait to play with their friends, blocked by an MSQ a majority of people do not like (in terms of DT) is abysmal. To even get to the point of Dawntrail, one has to go through the entire MSQ and that's a huge investment. No one is going to just buy a skip and waste that money for a game they're not invested in yet. Which gets rid of a set of newer folks brought in by older folks entirely.

If we go with 'new player starting off and excited for the story' as well, I still can't see people staying. No matter who I've tried to suggest, they leave, because the slog of ARR is drawn out so much & not captivating at all.

Then, for me, the only thing keeping me is RP, but the fact that rewards aren't account bound and alt-friendliness is illegal here in FFXIV is demotivating. I don't care to have everything on one character and 'all jobs on one' isn't exciting.

WoW has alt-friendliness to offer & now housing, too. What can XIV say that it has that WoW doesn't? Before anyone gets on my case about 'just going to play WoW', I have RP & housing keeping me here in XIV, not any of the 'actual elements' of the game anymore. I don't intend on leaving and my type of player is probably not that common. Most others would just leave at this point.

Also, looking into rewards, WoW has trading post. We get a tiny sprinkle of mounts, pets, & gear every patch cycle & sometimes abysmal rewards relating to holiday events. But that's hoping for 1 mount, minion, emote or outfit(usually just 1) & SOMETIMES furnishings. Otherwise, we need to wait for the long patch cycles to see anything and usually again it's a smaller amount than the monthly things WoW does.

one could argue 'but WoW does a bunch of recolors and is lazy'. Sure. They also had mount collect achievements and all that too. It just...feels pointless to be a collector in FFXIV if things aren't account bound tbh, so that gets rid of yet another element of the game right along with the fact that we just have so little rewards or incentive to keep us logging in.

And that's just it - if you don't have a house keeping you here, what's the incentive to even log in? That's being directed at the general folks, not extreme RPers or anything like myself. (I say extreme given I have dozens of characters, most people don't juggle that). But even if I'm an unusual case, I know other people have alts and don't want to regrind the same things over and over, & may find one thing fitting on a different character but not wanting to slog through all of those locks.

So - there's little incentive for current players. Little incentive for new ones. Nothing of excitement being introduced at all lately while other games like WoW have so much more to offer and now *everything* to offer that XIV does & a LOT more. Only niche players are now staying like myself, and it's worrisome.

[TimotheusReed]

If we go with 'new player starting off and excited for the story' as well, I still can't see people staying. No matter who I've tried to suggest, they leave, because the slog of ARR is drawn out so much & not captivating at all.

I always wonder how many of those people are "real" new players to the MMO genre. Because every time people tell me they wanted to bring friends into the game and they left because of ARR it was ALWAYS WoW players.
I honestly don't consider WoW players who try out FF14 as real "new players", because very often WoW players already start most MMOs with the WoW-mindset (which often means rushing to endgame) and don't really approach games like other new players. They often already treat every new MMO they start like WoW.

I honestly rarely see people who played other MMOs or played other games which are not WoW do the same. It honestly seems to me like WoW had ruined the mindset of some its players long-term, which is why many of them usually skip everything and don't even read quest texts.

I had very good experiences with new players who never played WoW and usually those people stuck.

On the other hand I tried to bring two WoW players into this game and they usually rushed the leveling, skipped every cutscene and tried to rush till endgame until they eventually quit.
But I honestly would say they ruined the game for themselves by approaching it with the same mindset they did in WoW.

So I am always interested when someone is talking about "new players" which they tried to get into the game and that quit in ARR, if those are WoW players, because usually I am right.

[TheRealDesastr]

I always wonder how many of those people are "real" new players to the MMO genre. Because every time people tell me they wanted to bring friends into the game and they left because of ARR it was ALWAYS WoW players.
I honestly don't consider WoW players who try out FF14 as real "new players", because very often especially WoW players already start most MMOs with the WoW-mindset (which often means rushing to endgame).

I honestly rarely see people who played other MMOs or played other games and not WoW do the same.
It honestly seems to me like WoW had ruined the mindset of some its players long-term, which is why many of them usually skip everything and don't even read quest texts.

I had very good experiences with new players who never played WoW and usually those people stuck.

On the other hand I tried to bring two WoW players into this game and they usually rushed the leveling, skipped every cutscene and tried to rush till endgame until they eventually quit.
But I honestly would say they ruined the game for themselves by approaching it with the same mindset they did in WoW.

I mean... I'm a WoW player who stayed. You can push forward this notion all you'd like, but the numbers show the facts here. Alls I see are people defending ARR like it's just fine and not an issue. While the game continues to hemorrhage people across the board. The toxic positivity is as bad in XIV community as the toxic negativity is in WoW. There is no balance, and the 'everything is just fine' thing regarding the story is that one dog sitting in a burning house meme 'this is fine'.

Thing is, I don't introduce WoW players. I introduced my siblings and friends who had never touched MMORPGs before. So your 'speculation' goes out of the window right there. They didn't have any predetermined notions of the game.

And at the end of the day, regardless, a new player to FFXIV is a new player to FFXIV. New to the genre or not. If they played WoW or not really shouldn't make their feedback any less valuable. As... again, WoW is a competitor, as it should be, and different perspectives are a good thing even if you disagree. At the moment, the state of FFXIV clearly shows it's needing to improve. People are sharing their grievances. I don't agree with the toxicity in WoW, but I don't like the 'everything is fine' thing FFXIV seems to have (which is clearly wrong - factually, given numbers, even).

[TimotheusReed]

Thing is, I don't introduce WoW players. I introduced my siblings and friends who had never touched MMORPGs before. So your 'speculation' goes out of the window right there. They didn't have any predetermined notions of the game.

Well okay. This is why I was asking, because in my case the people who got frustrated with ARR very often were WoW players. For me individually, the people who behaved like you said, were usually WoW players.

As far as I know we are just sharing our experiences with bringing people into the game. Which doesn't mean that every WoW player is like this. But in my experience it was WoW players very often and a lot of times it was their mindset (which was rushing to endgame instead of enjoying the ride) which was at fault.

On the other hand I got two people into FF14 who were not even gamers at all. Mostly people who are avid book readers.
Also I got one WoW person into the game, but I needed to explain to this person that this game is best enjoyed by listening to its story and that you might have a bad time if you skip everything like in WoW.

[TheRealDesastr]

Well okay. This is why I was asking, because very often it was WoW players. And like I said, for me the people who behaved like you said, were usually WoW players.
As far as I know we are just sharing our experiences with bringing people into the game. Which doesn't mean that every WoW player is like this.
But in my experience it was WoW players very often and a lot of times it wwas their mindset which was at fault.

On the other hand I got two people into FF14 who were not even gamers at all. Mostly people who are avid book readers.
Also I got one WoW person into the game, but I needed to explain to this person that this game is best enjoyed by listening to its story and that you might have a bad time if you skip everything like in WoW.

I don't think people should skip, myself, and if they do - go back and play it (comes to be an issue though when you've done it already and would need to again on an alt, but again, that's my big gripe as a player who's been here). But the frustrating thing comes with the lack of being able to play with friends as well who do introduce you. I wish I could have gotten my siblings to stay but they did not. I really have no idea what the solution would be in regard to getting all of the valuable story elements and being able to play current sooner. Though yes - it shouldn't be a rush to current, that's also fair.

It's just baffling. How can they get new people to stay? What can they offer to stop people from currently leaving? I don't want the game to die and I definitely don't want to go back to WoW.

I guess I'm just hoping this next expansion is fun and they learned from DT. I liked the story in the first half but not the second half myself. But also, I just....don't feel motivated to do content given the lack of rewards, I guess.

[TimotheusReed]

I don't think people should skip, myself, and if they do - go back and play it. But the frustrating thing comes with the lack of being able to play with friends as well who do introduce you. I wish I could have gotten my siblings to stay but they did not. I really have no idea what the solution would be in regard to getting all of the valuable story elements and being able to play current sooner. Though yes - it shouldn't be a rush to current, that's also fair.

It's just baffling. How can they get new people to stay? What can they offer to stop people from currently leaving? I don't want the game to die and I definitely don't want to go back to WoW.

I guess I'm just hoping this next expansion is fun and they learned from DT. I liked the story in the first half but not the second half myself. But also, I just....don't feel motivated to do content given the lack of rewards, I guess.

I honestly wish they could maybe even introduce an option to play through the story together with other sprouts and join them during some missions. Maybe even give veteran boni for helping sprouts out.
Or give option to run story missions together. This would already maybe help a lot. At least for me.

I also wish there was a way to make myself scale down to minimum item-level of a zone or something, because playing the game together with your friend and one-shotting everything is also kinda sad.

[TheRealDesastr]

I honestly wish they could maybe even introduce an option to play through the story together with other sprouts and join them during some missions. Maybe even give veteran boni for helping sprouts out.
Or give option to run story missions together. This would already maybe help a lot. At least for me.

This would be a lot of fun, yeah. I think the only time that's showing up(in current times I mean, where people can actually do that) is just in dungeons and trials, and even then it can be soloed. Which is good for solo players but I dunno. That like... 'community guidance' aspect for beyond those pieces would be really neat. And add some more flavour to the game and ways to help new players more.

[TeresaFortell]

New players aren't staying. Everyone I've introduced hasn't remained, & the fact that people need to wait to play with their friends, blocked by an MSQ a majority of people do not like (in terms of DT) is abysmal. To even get to the point of Dawntrail, one has to go through the entire MSQ and that's a huge investment. No one is going to just buy a skip and waste that money for a game they're not invested in yet. Which gets rid of a set of newer folks brought in by older folks entirely.

They really should just provide a story skip for the latest expansion at this point. In doing so, they can grant raiders the option to immediately jump into the raids they want instead of needing to progress through the story just to do that content. You see there are story skips for previous expansions, so I don't see why there shouldn't be one for the latest one.