So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

[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).

[Batbrat]

The amount of people that still blame covid is just absolutely insane to me. It could be 20 years later and the cult fans would still blame covid for whatever current day issue the game was having lmao. Like sweeties NO!!!!!! Let that go now PLEASE I am begging. That is NOT what you're looking at, that is not the situation anymore..the game plummeting to numbers as low as when the game first came out-what will it take?? What will it take.

Game just kept shoving all its money at any and everything other than the actual game. Doesnt listen to players. Doesnt do anything new. Doesnt keep promises. Doesnt update anything other than the mog store anymore. Can barely obtain anything cool/cute through actually playing the game these days. Events and Tribes take 2 seconds; are dialogue only. Story is nonsensical. Housing wards havent been updated in 3 solid years despite once being updated every single year reliantly. FCs serve no purpose. Community finder and board things are dead. You can barely have player made events because travel gets clogged everywhere. Everything is so formulaic and predictable you can easily forsee that nothing good is coming your way any time soon-which god forbid certain employees hear that, they go on tirades on the internet about how the staff never does anything wrong and all the customers are just spoiled and greedy for wanting anything ever from the company that they're paying monthly to engage with this product.

And then you try to express how any of this is a downer and a group of cult victims come running out to tell you you're wrong, and also to quit. and then you do quit and they go, "ah right you quit because after covid-" Anyway, its insanely deserved and I hope they're both humbled and humiliated enough that they stop acting like rockstars constantly going on tour, and get back to doing their actual jobs.

[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.

[Bitmoar]

Regarding the population booms in 5.x and Endwalker launch... they definitely could have done better to capitalize on the popularity. I was keeping up with a few WoW players who joined at that time. One in particular, Savix, really fell in love with the game. Did the entire story, got to end game, did some raiding and ults. You know what made him quit, though? There were no fulfilling classic MMO grinds. I know a lot of them enjoyed a bit of Bozja. They really needed field content or similar in Endwalker, and in general need to add content like that EARLY in the expansion. Not a year+ into it. Hate to say it, but relying on story and a catalogue of old content isn't appealing to a lot of MMO veterans. In the end, XIV was just a fun side game for a few months. There are a lot who stuck around, but there could have been more. Seems like they're very concerned with making the story something you can enjoy solo, but that does nothing to promote a healthy end game and end game population, which is vital for an MMO.

I also think it's funny that when we needed the server space (Endwalker launch) they were totally unprepared. When they finally got around to adding new data centers, the population was already beginning to fail. They helped for the DT launch for sure, but without a turning point, I wonder how long they'll even bother with Dynamis and Materia.

[Haru304]

Compared to Dawntrail, I yearn for the ARR days. >__>

[Atma]

Regarding the population booms in 5.x and Endwalker launch... they definitely could have done better to capitalize on the popularity. I was keeping up with a few WoW players who joined at that time. One in particular, Savix, really fell in love with the game. Did the entire story, got to end game, did some raiding and ults. You know what made him quit, though? There were no fulfilling classic MMO grinds. I know a lot of them enjoyed a bit of Bozja. They really needed field content or similar in Endwalker, and in general need to add content like that EARLY in the expansion. (...)

I also think it's funny that when we needed the server space (Endwalker launch) they were totally unprepared. When they finally got around to adding new data centers, the population was already beginning to fail. They helped for the DT launch for sure, but without a turning point, I wonder how long they'll even bother with Dynamis and Materia.

The lack of 'classic MMO grinds' is the exact reason I play this game and remain subscribed to it continually while anytime I try to play WoW it is a flash in the pan for me. You finish it, it's fun, and they go "Alright buddy, here's the mountain you have to climb to do anything else!" and it's an IMMEDIATE turn off because I have a life, a job, and I can't sit and farm crap and do 6 hours of dailies per day just to keep meaningfully and reasonably current. Grinds exist for sub retention, not fun, and is that what we really are looking for? More people doing grinds they hate?

I want them to break away from the formula but through things that are actually fun and engaging, not brainless grinds. This is why OC is really flopping for me pretty hard, which was making the last step of it something for hardcore grinders only is incredibly meh. Sitting there going through and grinding with the understanding that, due to life I'm just never going to see, let alone complete, Forked Tower is extremely meh. It was a massive kick in the groin because field content was always supposed to be 'for everyone', and locking that away behind more content for raiders was a VERY bad decision.

I'm holding judgement on the final boss of the new DD because we don't know what that will look like yet, but this trying to 'hybridize' things to draw people into 'harder content' to justify the amount of time they are spending on it just needs to stop. I mean YoshiP, I am not doing Savage content not because I don't want to, I am not doing Savage content because it is designed in such a way that 8 people need to make a 3-4 hour commitment 3 nights a week wiping to the same absurdly complex mechanics over and over until they figure out the silly 'ballet' that has been designed for each fight.

And Dynamis and Materia aren't going anywhere because the game's housing system pretty much precludes the concept of server merges.

[Hallarem]

Compared to Dawntrail, I yearn for the ARR days. >__>

I can only imagine the feeling of playing in a world where nations mattered, everyone had their own thing. The possibilities of adventure from land to land. Now everything is just a blob of boring peace called the Eorzean Alliance where they casually forgot they had issues in their own nations.

And when its time to adventure? Why bother. Sharlayan the writer pet nation KNOWS everything. Has DISCOVERED everything and has a spaceship that shouldve been IMPOSSIBLE to build. WHY do we even bother anymore as the WoL? We have space bunnies that can do CREATION MAGIC. Endwalker ruined this games world so badly