The ACTUAL reason for the decline in players

[Kitalizer]

Every week, there is a new forum post/YouTube video about the decline in players in FF14, all citing various reasons. Things like the decline in story quality or non-engaging content that can't keep people for long periods of time. However, I'm here to tell you the REAL reason for FF14's player decline.

The cashshop NEEDS to be featured in-game and preferably with in-game pop-ups and link you directly to the cashshop. With Yoshi P's recent statements blaming the "cost" of adding a feature like an easy mode to the forked tower, it is clear that they need more money. So, along with featuring the cashshop in-game, I will be going over possible revenue streams the FF14 team could look into.

- More paid cosmetics (Mounts, outfits, emotes)
- A lootbox feature that can reward gil and in-game items the main prize would be exclusive mounts (think Squeal of Fortune from OSRS and gacha-type games)
- An option to pay for in-game gil (think wow token or bond from again OSRS)
- More events dedicated to producing FOMO to keep players subbed for longer
- An option to pay for in-game items used for crafting (to cut down on time having to gather too!)
- An increase in subcost (it's been a long time, and it deserves to go up with all the content we have access to)

I believe all of these changes could provide FF14 devs with ample funds to continue developing the game and make it even better for everyone. Most importantly, if you aren't playing, you could also still keep your sub active so the devs get more money to develop with!

Please let me know what you guys think, this stuff seems so obvious too me and I hope someone in SE reads this!

[IttyBittyShark]

in case anyone is slow this person is trolling

[Carin-Eri]

in case anyone is slow this person is trolling

Absolutely - in fact, having seen first-hand what happens when a MMO moves to a gambling-fuelled/FOMO business model, I'd rather not see ANY of what was listed occur.

[Jeeqbit]

The cashshop NEEDS to be featured in-game and preferably with in-game pop-ups and link you directly to the cashshop.

The entire reason they don't do this is because they don't want to be pushy with it. They value trust above chasing infinite revenue and statistics like WoW did for a long period of time. It's just there in case you want to go out of your way to buy stuff.

With Yoshi P's recent statements blaming the "cost" of adding a feature like an easy mode to the forked tower, it is clear that they need more money.

They said "development resources", not "financial cost". You can even double check if they said that here, in the official translation.

Having multiple difficulty levels would've been ideal; unfortunately, with the time constraints that we had, we lacked the development resources to design and debug two separate difficulties in addition to creating large-scale battle content like Forked Tower from the ground up.

They addressed this further in interviews and said that even if they doubled their team size, they don't think it would necessarily double their output. They said they have tried to recruit but the process of doing so doesn't keep pace with the growth of the game and the people who retire/transfer roles (obviously they have to train them). A lack of leaders and project managers was explained as being a major issue, because what use is employing 100 people if there isn't a leader to direct them? So you see, it's not the simplistic problem that the FFXIV community wants to make it out to be.

I will be going over possible revenue streams the FF14 team could look into.

They don't need it. They're a billion yen company. They have lots of revenue streams and it's easy to see that in their investor reports. Don't forget there is also FF7R, graphic updates and overhauls for old games, new players buying old games, that bring in a lot of revenue, as well as lots of merchandise (digital and physical goods) that bring in a lot. By the way, they had over 4,000 employees, at least prior to the recent layoffs, and layoffs in themselves are a way to increase profit.

A lootbox feature

Not a good idea when they are on their way to being banned.

An increase in subcost

It's not needed and I figured out why. The currency conversion has been favorable to Japan so essentially their revenue has increased over time from the same subscription cost.

[Gwenkatsu]

in case anyone is slow this person is trolling

Oh? They were trying so hard, I really thought they were for real.

[Kitalizer]

Oh? They were trying so hard, I really thought they were for real.

No this is my real opinion, more money = more game. To the extent of how much more game we would just have to see. I just want the best for my favorite game

[Kaurhz]

I will take this at face value that the surface proposition is legitimate (against my better judgement, as it's an interesting discussion otherwise)... I don't think this will resolve as much as you think it would resolve.

IMO, most of the reasons that people are leaving has very little to do with resourcing and much more to do with longevity and creativity of content. Like, why bother developing content that is going to be dead the next patch. Focus more on content that is going to survive through multiple expansions, or add/update features for 'older/dated' content to actually encourage people to play it outside of that patch/expansion.. Like, GCs have been dead for god knows how long at this point.

We can argue HW was trash, but that level of risk-taking, and some of the creativity that come along with it is something this game is missing.

To simplify, the game has done far better when it had much lower revenue streams, so I don't think more revenue streams will actually solve that much. Unless it were significant enough that it would allow for major system/code-base overhauls to actually support features that this game so desperately needs, that are limited by 'spaghetti'.

[TheMightyMollusk]

The solution for dropping player counts is to milk more money out of current players, so that the lapsed players will come back and spend more money. Riiiiiiiight.

[Zakuyia]

Honestly i feel like op was rage baiting and failed............AGENT OF WUK LAMAT DETECTED.

[Selsix]

No this is my real opinion, more money = more game. To the extent of how much more game we would just have to see. I just want the best for my favorite game

On the off-chance you're not trolling, this wouldn't even fix any problems. XIV isn't suddenly making less money than it used to. Shadowbringers was the best expansion we've ever had (by popular opinion) and it was done off of a budget earned by Stormblood, one of the worst (by popular opinion). The issue isn't that we aren't giving them enough money, the issue is they are funneling money this game makes away into other projects rather than back into it.