FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Shistar]

It is frightening to see the game that empty. Even on popularted data centers amount of activity is very low. Influx of new players is very low and very slow, sloggish start does not helps. I can not bring any friends into game because they are facing multiple hunderds of hours grind (or extra $50) before they will be able to do any relevant content.
Please allow new people to start in latest expansion.

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

What content are they so desperate to do that they simply must skip everything that sets this game apart from other MMORPGs that actively ignore or delete older content, even against its own community's wishes? I feel it's more like endgame players are giving newbies the wrong idea about this game, or showing up expecting XIV to operate exactly the same way as other MMOs they've played.


The juicy part is the journey, not the destination.

[Nyastra]

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

What content are they so desperate to do that they simply must skip everything that sets this game apart from other MMORPGs that actively ignore or delete older content, even against its own community's wishes? I feel it's more like endgame players are giving newbies the wrong idea about this game, or showing up expecting XIV to operate exactly the same way as other MMOs they've played.


The juicy part is the journey, not the destination.

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

[ovIm]

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

Are we playing the same game? MSQ is ~95% "watch this cutscene by yourself" and ~5% "oh look here is a 15 Minute Dungeon/Bossfight you can play with someone else". This starts off as not so bad as there are quite a few normal over world quests in the beginning that you can share, but that becomes less and less as the game goes on. (if I remember right, it has been a hot minute since I last experienced ARR)

With how much the amount of overworld gameplay quests having been minimized over the years, there is no real "playing together", doing the story with someone else means waiting for them to finish their cutscene so you can mount up and walk to the next cutscene dispensing NPC together, until a dungeon comes in sight.

When a group of my friends last brought someone into the game (during early EW), that person was desperately hoping for more content like PotD to play together for extended periods of time, despite having a small group of people to run content with. We lost that person because they felt too isolated when playing the MSQ, even with people around.

[Shistar]

With how much the amount of overworld gameplay quests having been minimized over the years, there is no real "playing together", doing the story with someone else means waiting for them to finish their cutscene so you can mount up and walk to the next cutscene dispensing NPC together, until a dungeon comes in sight.

Quoting only one of you because I can't be bothered, but it goes for everyone who said it. Honestly, that's a fair opinion if you do nothing except read the MSQ and expect a new experience somehow.
I had a great time going through MSQ multiple times with friends and I think it's lowkey the experienced player's fault for not doing anything besides being a glorified taxi?


Off the top of my head, these are some things my friends and I did, either when I was the sprout or when it was my turn to introduce someone else to the game:

• Theorycraft about things coming up in the MSQ. Sometimes, if they accidentally get spoiled or they get exposed to something that could potentially ruin a plot point later, I would straight up lie to the sprout to throw them off or take their attention somewhere else. Once they experienced that plot point, we would go back and laugh about me scrambling to not ruin the plot twist for them, them being absolutely oblivious to it all or eating my lies up and just discussing our reactions to it.
  Sometimes I would deliberately implant a silly idea/theory on them to see if they bite the bait, and it's incredibly funny when they do. Sometimes they're the ones throwing you a curve ball so insane you have to do your best not to give anything away and see how far their unhinged theories can go.
• If you are even remotely interested in the RP side of things, this can be really fun for both of you.
• Great time to have sprouts be as chaotic as possible. Let them pull everything. Let them get in trouble. You have their back and it'll be a great memory for them to keep or possibly enable more sprouts in the future. It's character development but also teach them good habits and manners because they will eventually have to go out without you and you don't want them to be a menace to society lol
• If it's their first MMO, it's great to have someone to teach you the ropes. XIV was not my first MMO but I still needed lots of help to figure things out. This game is so convoluted and it doesn't tell you many things.
• It's a good time for the experienced player to try out a new job since MSQ is pretty low stakes overall.
• Not everyone had someone to guide them when they first started the game. I think it's up to the mentor to make it as good as possible and how they go about it will absolutely shape the sprout's outlook on the game. If you have a bad attitude towards the game it'll inevitably rub off on the other player and make their experience worse. This is not about your own fun only, as the experienced player you should be especially considerate about your friend's experience.
• Feel free to traumatize/entertain them with old PF/game mech horror stories. We all have at least one and as a sprout I loved hearing them. It gives them something to look forward to and may teach them what to do (or NOT to do) if they find themselves in a similar situation in the future.

In short: In my humble opinion, skill issue lol be a cooler friend.
As their mentor/experienced companion/pocket cryptid you won't have as much fun as them because nothing is new for you anymore and you know exactly what will happen next, but I think making it fun for them is part of our own fun, and their joy is infectious. It's also very up to you, in the end. If you wanna stand there, taxi them around and and be bored to tears until a dungeon or trial pops up, more power to you.

Just because the MSQ doesn't have an explicit multiplayer mode doesn't mean you can't make your own fun.
I'm afraid people have become too dependent on the game holding their hand for everything. I treat this game like a sandbox to find my fun in and I've never been bored so far.

[ovIm]

way too much to quote.

Your assumptions do a lot of heavy lifting in your flailing way of trying to blame the players for the shortcomings of the game developers. You have no idea what kind of experience all of us had, and insulting us is certainly no way to be taken seriously. Honestly, this is one of the most GCBTW posts i have seen in this forum. And in all your flailing you even admit that the MSQ is bereft of actual co-operative gameplay in and out of itself. So thank you for proving the point me and the other 2 posters did.

Consider this though: it is not the responsibility of the players to make the co-operative game design be engaging for all participants. That is the game designers job. As an example of where it works, just look at how Guild Wars 2 solved the issue of co-operative main story gaming. Its possible, but the devs have decided to make MSQ a single player person experience first and foremost.

I could go ahead and speak in length of my experiences, which are definitely far from negative, but still resulted in people all but quitting the game, but that would be wasted in this thread. I have said my piece, and I am too old to go mud flinging in an MMO forum, lmao.

[ViinaS]

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

What?
Have you ever helped someone through MSQ?
It's pretty much nothing but waiting till said friend needs you for a Dungeon or Trial.
Cuz that's what I did for some friends.

Only time it was fun was when I was in DIscord with them and it was kinda like watching a playthrough.
But for 80% of it all you will just wait around till they need you for 20 minutes.

2 didn't make it till level cap and the 3 I helped and stuck around quit due to Dawntrail.
Not to mention that the time (and sub money) needed to get to cap will only increase.

[Yeonhee]

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

Did we play the same game ? If I want to help my newbie friend, the only thing I can do is wait 10 hours for them to read their visual novel up to the point that they get a dungeon or a trial unlocked. Then do it again until the next after we finished this 15 minutes piece of actual gameplay.

Even without that, the game's biggest issue for new player is ARR's story is vastly uninteresting as well as being long as hell. You have to suffer through dozens of hours of bad story only for it to start getting better at Heavensward. And even then, the structure of the MSQ is very, VERY bad. There's pretty much no interactivity with anything outside dungeons and trials, that's just an enormous visual novel but without any choice to make.

And frankly, there's no reason for content like raid and such to not be available to everyone when they have the level to do so while also advancing the story on the side. There are people who do love endgame stuff and having to go through a 300 hours of "go there and watch this cutscene" to get the right to participate in those is just garbage design nowaday.