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

[CuteBucket]

These days I honestly struggle to even care...

I'm pretty much the same. I haven't quite thrown in the towel yet, maybe it's just the ol' sunk cost or fringes of hope that it will improve again, but I barely log in anymore. Lots of people I once played with have left now. Sometimes I used to stay up late because I was so excited for the next PLL and getting that first sneak peak of new content. Now I don't even know when the next PLL or patch is coming out. I was really hoping Occult Crescent would be fun because I really enjoyed Eureka (mostly) and Bozja, but OC just bored me so much and I haven't bothered getting a single relic weapon started. I guess that's good news for other video games in my backlog, but I really miss the feeling of community I once had here. I used to LOVE talking about the worldbuilding and characters of this game with people for hours on end. But now I can't even talk about the characters and plot, because A) they don't interest me and I feel no desire to talk about them, and B) being open about my dislike of DT on socmed just brings out it's rabid defense squad who LOVE Wuk and Sphene and want them to kiss or some sh*t, idk.

[Darkshade]

Are you me? :| This describes me exactly.

[0blivion]

They were new to the role, but they were hardly new to writing in XIV. The lead had been doing side stories since 3.0, worked on MSQ patches in SB, and was Matsuno's right hand for all the Ivalice content.

Here's the thing though. Ivalice sucked, SB has the same story issues that DT has and 6.1-6.5 patches were a trainwreck.

[Larirawiel]

Big layoffs at Square Enix:
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/mas...ebugging-soon/

It seems, that they get rid of non japanese teams.

Cheers

[Selsix]

Big layoffs at Square Enix:
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/mas...ebugging-soon/

It seems, that they get rid of non japanese teams.

Cheers

While I don't like the idea of AI handling the lion's share of QA and debug work, I am a fan of them moving development back to Japan. Time will tell how well this plays out for us I suppose.

[0blivion]

Frankly, I think them downsizing their overseas team is a massive fumble. The FFXIV codebase in particular is ancient spaghetti garbage running on two other games at this point, and they have trouble bringing in talent because they make relocating to Tokyo a hard requirement. Instead of setting up the infrastructure required for the company to remain competitive in the current environment, they decided to save money in all the wrong places. And now they want people more in the office because HR are control freaks I guess? lol

SE's application process is also like, known to be a pain in the ass, and if you somehow manage to nepo your way into the inner selection in the first place, you might still get ghosted.

What I'm saying is that SE cannot afford to do this, actually.

/e: Forgot to mention, their non-FFXIV operations will suffer for it as well, because their EU presence at major events was indeed a factor in customer acquisition.


Also, FFXIV's QA already sucks? Don't make it worse with AI slop lol.

[Ath192]

Frankly, I think them downsizing their overseas team is a massive fumble.

I don’t know. Let’s take a look at our feedback contributions

1. We kept complaining the game was too hard until it became too boring to bother playing.
2. We kept forcing them to focus on current social issues the west is mostly interested in instead of writing engaging stories and good gameplay.
3. And finally, when they did all the things the west wanted them to they all ditched them game because it was ruined.

Just about the only positive thing we contributed to this game was asking to keep the graphics and UI fresh so it doesn’t stagnate as Japan is reluctant to changing games that are already established. (XI suffered this fate). And to this day there are people complaining about it.

I don’t know, I think they have a point going back to a close knit development environment. Only time will tell, but we didn’t exactly improve their company.

[Raven2014]

Hearing them moving back to Japan is the best news I have heard about this game in the last 2 years. Simply put, the less influence and input the Western side of the market have on Eastern developer, the better their game will be. DT feels like a game that was made by and for a committee in a similar ways how the Western games market have been in the last 5 years or so. Whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, there is no denying that the West currently have an obsession with co-op every damn thing with social issues, and as these group get an out-sized influence, it makes these developers reading the room wrong. Even for games that were made for Eastern audiences (like Nintendo and Atlust titles) also received weird localization changes that nobody want but everyone know why those change happens.

And it's not just that, even the gamestyle also change. This is less about good vs bad, but about variety, uniqueness and charm. I grew up playing a lot of both Western RPG and love a lot of them. Baldur Gate, Neverwinter night Mass effect series .etc. I love them as much as I love Xeno series, Trail series, and the final fantasy of old. But, frankly, to me the 3-4 main line FF tittle is closer to Mass Effect than they are to FF7->10. I had a much better JRPG experience playing games like trail of Cold Steel than SE's flagship tittles these day. Frankly, I wish these misguided Westernization of Eastern developers need to stop, and the change revert. I heard that FF16 was made with an English first approach ... and yeah ... it kinda shows ... in not a good way.

So yeah, if this means SE is cutting off all the stupid craps they saddled with by having a Western teams, that's a correction that's long overdue.

[Supersnow845]

I would love anyone to explain how dawntrail “leans too heavily on western social issues”. Like what does that even mean?

DT was bad because it was a bad ripoff of 9 with unimaginative writing and badly written characters that took up too much screen time. What on earth does that have to do with “western social issues” and why part of DT’s writing do you think is smothered by writing “by committee” rather than just generally poor writing

1. We kept complaining the game was too hard until it became too boring to bother playing..

The JP playerbase are the people happiest with the overall balance of the game right now, not sure how that’s western audiences fault

[Shipp]

I would love anyone to explain how dawntrail “leans too heavily on western social issues”. Like what does that even mean?

DT was bad because it was a bad ripoff of 9 with unimaginative writing and badly written characters that took up too much screen time. What on earth does that have to do with “western social issues” and why part of DT’s writing do you think is smothered by writing “by committee” rather than just generally poor writing



The JP playerbase are the people happiest with the overall balance of the game right now, not sure how that’s western audiences fault

You know exactly what it means. They just don't want to say the quiet part out loud so they are dog whistling. Was especially clear when they brought up the Atlus stuff.