"We're people too." To the producer and Dev team of this MMORPG

[Exmo]

Simple. You are trying to make people walk on eggshells with their reply because what you consider a harsh or negative tone can be considered mild ribbing to some at worst. Why you so disingenuous bro? You know what you are doing, lol.

You're projecting.

[Halivel]

I'm really not sure but if what he says is true that financially they aren't doing well

It might well be true, and part of that is likely contributed by factors outside of their direct control.

For one, there's major crisis worldwide, with a lot of people becoming tighter with their spendings, and I'm relatively certain there will be a portion of playerbase who stop playing the game less because they don't like it anymore and more so because they cannot afford it right now. Regardless of how many people leave for that reason, that's revenue lost, and it's a bigger concern today than it was even 2 years ago. "We aren't doing well financially" these days will apply to a lot of areas, and it doesn't look like it's going to be any better in a few years to come.

There's also the matter of Japanese Yen dropping in value not that long ago, which doesn't help with internal economics specifically, because currency drop typically means noticeable increase in prices while wages stagnate or become lower.

That alone, even without the general criticism towards DT, would put them in a worse position than what they were even in Stormblood, which also had mixed perception. And combined with the fact that SE just generally doesn't always make the best management decisions, this creates a non-perfect environment.

Some issues should be still avoidable even with all that in mind to be honest, but I can see where Yoshi-P is coming from when he's raising that point.

[Raoabolic]

You're projecting.

Care to elaborate or just going to throw words you heard on the wall and hope something sticks? lmao

[MayuAmakura]

Yeah well if devs "did listen" we wouldn't be here in the first place. So much of "listen".

[Kahnha]

They have never acted as if they are above criticism, but what you call "criticism" i call pointed harassment. The sheer volume of toxic behavior towards the dev team, the voice actors, other players, and the game in general, has increased by a MASSIVE amount in the last 4-5 years. A lot of the complaints aren't even framed in a way that could be considered constructive by ANY metric except your own.

Some of these things include:

harassing devs, or Yoshi-P over social media, sending death threats to voice actors like Sena Bryer, accusing anything and everything under the sun that gets added to 14 of being "Woke" or DEI, or "SBI" Slop, Complaining incessantly about content not being hard enough and when they make it more difficult people complain it's too hard and not fair, going after a member of staff who has no control over the game's story and calling for them to be fired because they dared to suggest fascists have no place in office on social media.

I do agree, people are indeed fickle back in SHB they were doom saying about WoW and look at how good that game is going.

All XIV needs to do is become a better game and people that were before loving the Dev team and now hating the Dev team will go back to loving them, I want the community to go back to loving and fully defending the dev team and sharing memes and enjoying the game together like we were before.

That said just because you are sensitive to the Dev team receiving criticism does not mean that they shouldn't receive any. me sharing what I believe will improve the game is in no way "pointed harassment" What you are saying comes across as this; Because some retards sent them death threats and said DEI we regulars should no longer say anything against what Dev team has produced.

Tbh I don't care to hear the tiresome alarmist language of you guys... "fascists" "socialists" "extremists" "communists" or whatever because you lot water the words down by handing it out to just anyone, no way you have the freedom of info, the right to bare arms, vote and protest while being under a one power dictatorship government, I assume taht you live in America not North Korea, you have never lived under fascism, that's why you can ask for stupid nonsense like real ID on the internet that gives your gov more power to monitor you!

Get out of this forum with that garbage! You have not helped in a fight against your ill informed president by defending insufferable employees like Kate; who remains a brand risk! or defending the poor choices of a dark Japanese corporation like Square Enix; that has taken your funds and instead of lightening the work load on this dev team have decided to further stretch them thin on flop projects like FF16!

Again the real world topics are not at all important to FF14; an international MMO it just shouldn't be welcome here! Miss me with the nonsense!

[Raoabolic]

I do agree, people are indeed fickle back in SHB they were doom saying about WoW and look at how good that game is going.

All XIV needs to do is become a better game and people that were before loving the Dev team and now hating the Dev team will go back to loving them, I want the community to go back to loving and fully defending the dev team and sharing memes and enjoying the game together like we were before.

That said just because you are sensitive to the Dev team receiving criticism does not mean that they shouldn't receive any. me sharing what I believe will improve the game is in no way "pointed harassment" What you are saying comes across as this; Because some retards sent them death threats and said DEI we regulars should no longer say anything against what Dev team has produced.

Tbh I don't care to hear the tiresome alarmist language of you guys... "fascists" "socialists" "extremists" "communists" or whatever because you lot water the words down by handing it out to just anyone, no way you have the freedom of info, the right to bare arms, vote and protest while being under a one power dictatorship government, I assume taht you live in America not North Korea, you have never lived under fascism, that's why you can ask for stupid nonsense like real ID on the internet that gives your gov more power to monitor you!

Get out of this forum with that garbage! You have not helped in a fight against your ill informed president by defending insufferable employees like Kate; who remains a brand risk! or defending the poor choices of a dark Japanese corporation like Square Enix; that has taken your funds and instead of lightening the work load on this dev team have decided to further stretch them thin on flop projects like FF16!

Again the real world topics are not at all important to FF14; an international MMO it just shouldn't be welcome here! Miss me with the nonsense!

Counterpoint: Have you considered that your criticism sounds mean and might make Yoshdia and the western branch cry. :/

[Exmo]

Care to elaborate or just going to throw words you heard on the wall and hope something sticks? lmao

Can you clarify what you don't understand?

[Raoabolic]

Can you clarify what you don't understand?

You are saying someone is projecting without even bothering to explain why. Geeze, I feel bad for the XIV fanbase if this is what the modern audience entails. You are somehow more of a giant corop defender than that Jeqque guy. At least he can see the other side's PoV, actually concedes with a positive spin, and explains his stance. You are just blindly firing in the gallery at this point hoping SE-sama sees ya! lmao

[DeathNoodles]

We are a part of this business, according to the team. 2e have been called partners and valued customers. It is in the actions of the company I'll have to judge. This is one unhappy post of many is necessary "whining" to be true, but it's clear game is trying to impelent changes and dealing w internal struggles more than we know. I blame upper mgmt (yes it includes Yoshi-P who is an executive) for not hearing not just fans but their workers I'm sure. Corporate behemoths regardless of their public image are often mishandling HR and other labor issues.

[Ephremjlm]

So before any back and forth occurs I just want to say that I don't think all of your statement is wrong I just think it's wrong in this instance and here's why.

A.) Yes, we as customers are free to criticize them. However, we also have to be mature enough to acknowledge that it's their game to design, not ours. What we don't have is the right to "demand" anything, nor does it come off as anything but immature and sad if we personally attack them. They get to make the game they want; we get to decide whether the game they make is worth our time and money.

So i think if this were either a new MMO or a single player game, then yeah I would agree with this whole statement. OBVIOUSLY we shouldn't attack people personally for any reason. That said, this is a long running game that pulled peoples lives in. People spend A LOT of time and money in MMO's, and communities are not only encouraged, but fostered on purpose. I think its 100% fair to demand things from these types of games. For instance, if SE hired new management devs and they said that the game they wanted to make was a hello kitty island adventure MMO going forward using FFXIV, I think everyone would rightfully riot. Though a hyperbolic example, this is because when it comes to MMO's everyone playing the game was sold some sort of promise. The game lured people in with a certain expectation. Currently many of those who stood by it and were encouraged to keep supporting feel like they were sold on a lie. Their time, money, and sometimes whole friend groups are tied to this game. It would be significantly different if the game were brand new, and examples of that are MMO's that start up and just die. People might say they suck but no one is going after the devs. The investment was significantly smaller than that of an established MMO that you sunk your life and money into.

And I agree they should just unsub. That's the mature thing to do. However if you ever want a reason to once again come back to your home, then make your demands. Tell the devs what it takes to get you back, and to earn your sub. The devs are more than free to make the game that they want to, but there has to be compromise, in that at the end of the day they need to sell subscriptions or whatever it is that keeps the game afloat. If the game they want to make isn't selling, or keeping up with shareholder demands, then this might not be the place for them to do so.

B.) The other fallacy we can fall into is mistaking subjective opinion for objective fact. For example, I'm very much enjoying DT and have been the entire expansion. Saying things like "poorer quality" need to be acknowledged as personal opinions.

This is like also your opinion man. I would say that there have been plenty of hardcore breakdowns that you can youtube that AREN'T hateful, that critique the literary work, creative design, and gameplay throughout. And like, it's possible to enjoy bad things. Im pretty sure most people have some type of creative work that they can objectively say is bad, that they enjoy. The problem comes when you start to see a pattern of arrogance, and deliberate indifference. But like, that's just my opinion man.

C.) The game could still lose about 50% more of its playerbase and still be very healthy. It's not bleeding money - it's one of SE's biggest money makers. The population is still well above the ARR-->SB days when the game was already acknowledged as having a healthy population, and that was before the cosmetic cash shop really took off.

This part however I think is completely false, and I'll tell you why. From the last financial report the MMO division is said to have gone down by 45%. FFXI and FFXIV are the only two games in their MMO division currently. FFXI's playerbase has actually grown by an estimated 100% (probably around 200k accounts), meaning that in theory that should offset that negative number, but its still as bad as it is. This can only lead us to believe that FFXIV has lost somewhere around 50% of their playerbase. Keep in mind that this division funnels money to other SE projects and massive failure in this division affects the WHOLE company. That said, if the game was around 1 million-ish before, we can assume that now it is around 500k. If they lost another 50% like you said, they would be down to around 250k, a number that is insanely close to their first MMO FFXI, in the year 2025. If that were to happen I think you would see significant budget cuts to FFXIV, and a very likely sunsetting of the service to start anew.

And unfortunately, knowing that SE got a large portion of their shares bought out by that activist conglomerate, I'd put money down the next MMO be a cross platform mobile style MMO. I mean shit they might just pivot everything to the FFXIV-M and keep costs super low, and profit high by pumping out gatcha garbage. That's my personal fear anyways.



Anyways, full transparency I don't want anything bad to happen to FFXIV, but I have made my fair share of criticism (without attacking the devs). I am putting my money where my mouth is and since 6.2 EW I have taken long extended breaks. My sub ended earlier this week and I don't see myself resubbing until the .5 or .55 patch. And if there is no real replayability or things that I want to do then it'll only be a month long sub. Hoping that's not the case though. It's just the only way I know to get SE to hear mine and others voices.