Based on NA FanFest 2026, Do You Think Friends/Players Will Return to FFXIV?

[Veritas-Ancora]

My former ingame friends weren't even interested in watching the stream. DT was a massive disappointment, so Evercold has to deliver twice as much to convince. I am not seeing much of that at the moment.

Despite all this, there are always people who come back for a new expansion, play a couple of months and then return to hiatus, so yes, there will be a good chunk of returners.

Well hopefully they'll have the difficulty staggered a bit for more fun experiences for the casual player. We will have to see how that goes.

[RaionKansen]

I think there would have to be a substantial rework to the quest system for my friends to come back to the game.

Its just too boring for them and I can't really blame them. MSQ is just currently too much Walk -> Read -> Walk -> Read -> Interact with 3 things -> Read

[Wolf_Heartnet]

No, they won't.

[HammAndCheese]

Some will, some won't, MSQ andies will come back and then leave. Cycle as usual.

[Hanzz96]

Personally as someone who has been subscribed for 5 years straight these changes will be chasing me away. I have cancelled by sub after seeing the first look if evolved mode.

Taking away synergy actions aka buffs is a bad move. It was extremely satisfying in high end content to coordinate buffs with your party for a juicy burst where you could easily shave 10% off the bosses health. It rewarded playing well together as a team and separated groups who played well together as a unit and those who didn't.

Before anyone screamed "2 minute meta hugger" at me I believe many of those who don't like the meta didn't interact with it all that much they were casuals who logged in for roulettes and normals and thought in between 2 minutes was boring because they weren't setting up for burst or pooling resources and just wanted big attacks all the time. "2 minute meta" amd "job identity" have become buzzwords imo for "anything I don't like about a certain job."

Evo mode has taken so much identify from the jobs they showed and not added any back. I will focus on bard as a phys ranged main. Losing RNG is catastrophic. Bard has always rewarded fast decision making anf spinning multiple plates with its rng and dot system. You could refresh dots early and lose a tick or risk one more brust shot and proc RA and then have to decide on whether to refresh dots and risk overriding that proc or send the RA and risk dots rolling off before the GCD roll over is finished and you can hit iron jaws.

The play 3 songs in any order to get lego and spend lego on big attack is just new SMN. It even appears to have a 60 second loop like SMN. 8.0 is not about identity its about making an easy mode dispite what the devs said (hell they themselves said the world easy like 5 times in the panel) so that they can and draw back in the players who left in 7.0 as well as new players on switch 2 and console.

As I said before this Ted talk I am gutted and feel like even if these changes draw in 1 more person to return they may have lost me as a long player who did all content from dungeons, to extreme, to savage
, to ultimate right down to finishing.

[HammAndCheese]

Personally as someone who has been subscribed for 5 years straight these changes will be chasing me away. I have cancelled by sub after seeing the first look if evolved mode.

Taking away synergy actions aka buffs is a bad move. It was extremely satisfying in high end content to coordinate buffs with your party for a juicy burst where you could easily shave 10% off the bosses health. It rewarded playing well together as a team and separated groups who played well together as a unit and those who didn't.

Before anyone screamed "2 minute meta hugger" at me I believe many of those who don't like the meta didn't interact with it all that much they were casuals who logged in for roulettes and normals and thought in between 2 minutes was boring because they weren't setting up for burst or pooling resources and just wanted big attacks all the time. "2 minute meta" amd "job identity" have become buzzwords imo for "anything I don't like about a certain job."

Evo mode has taken so much identify from the jobs they showed and not added any back. I will focus on bard as a phys ranged main. Losing RNG is catastrophic. Bard has always rewarded fast decision making anf spinning multiple plates with its rng and dot system. You could refresh dots early and lose a tick or risk one more brust shot and proc RA and then have to decide on whether to refresh dots and risk overriding that proc or send the RA and risk dots rolling off before the GCD roll over is finished and you can hit iron jaws.

The play 3 songs in any order to get lego and spend lego on big attack is just new SMN. It even appears to have a 60 second loop like SMN. 8.0 is not about identity its about making an easy mode dispite what the devs said (hell they themselves said the world easy like 5 times in the panel) so that they can and draw back in the players who left in 7.0 as well as new players on switch 2 and console.

As I said before this Ted talk I am gutted and feel like even if these changes draw in 1 more person to return they may have lost me as a long player who did all content from dungeons, to extreme, to savage
, to ultimate right down to finishing.

*leaves before something is even out of development and before playing the finished product to form a genuine opinion*

It's important to leave feedback, which you have done, quite repeatedly on multiple threads at that. But now you are using the unsub buzzword to try and gather attention from whomever SE has in charge of reading these forums. Lets wait for them to finish cooking instead of declaring DOOOOOOOOM. I say this as someone who does all content as is excited to see the finished product. I'm excited for an improvement to battle content that doesn't follow such a rigid 2 minute fight formula. I want them to cook up some neat content. I want change.

[Sunhwapark]

I think pretty much 90% of the people I know who left the game have settled in other games already with no intention of returning, and that is fine.

[Anwar]

the narrative online on Reddit, such as r/mmorpg and r/lfmmo, are very mixed about final fantasy 14 for every good news or positive thing there comes, there is always 2-3 negatives slapped ontop. If the word of mouth and online sentiment online is always going to be negative, regardless of what square enix does, it's a lose- lose situastion. Will it bring players back/make new players play ffxiv? In my opinion, depends on the narrative and sentiment that comes of this when it's released. But it seems some people are very dedicated to hating the game, as far as Reddit goes at least. Not that i understand it very well. As a new player i thought this fan fest was packed with good stuff and things to look forward too.

In my opinion? It feels kind of unfair that ffxiv are held up to such impossible high standards. Why if blizzard had held a blizzcon with even half the goodies this fan fest promised ff players. they would cheer so loud you'd hear it on the moon. With ffxiv it seems things are never good enough for some people.

[Veritas-Ancora]

the narrative online on Reddit, such as r/mmorpg and r/lfmmo, are very mixed about final fantasy 14 for every good news or positive thing there comes, there is always 2-3 negatives slapped ontop. If the word of mouth and online sentiment online is always going to be negative, regardless of what square enix does, it's a lose- lose situastion. Will it bring players back/make new players play ffxiv? In my opinion, depends on the narrative and sentiment that comes of this when it's released. But it seems some people are very dedicated to hating the game, as far as Reddit goes at least. Not that i understand it very well. As a new player i thought this fan fest was packed with good stuff and things to look forward too.

In my opinion? It feels kind of unfair that ffxiv are held up to such impossible high standards. Why if blizzard had held a blizzcon with even half the goodies this fan fest promised ff players. they would cheer so loud you'd hear it on the moon. With ffxiv it seems things are never good enough for some people.

That's not true at all. The housing addition in WoW gained praise all over. Hell I don't play and even I have a house. Squeenix is not held to higher standards, they are held to SUBSCRIBER standards. It's up to we, the players who do pay subscriptions to this game, need appeasing. And we've lost lots and lots of players, which is genuinely unfortunate.

- WoW solved the housing issues of XIV.
- WoW solved the leveling issues of XIV.

And I don't play WoW, I play XIV.

I just don't see how the game has become more accessible for players who have been away for several years.

[Sekundessounet]

I know people will say "Shadowbringers will bring people back" but I just don't see this happening.

I dunno how I feel about this FanFest. I wanted one thing from the developers and that was to refresh the game in a way that brings people back.

The new "C" Character screen is differently different, but does that give players an incentive to pay a monthly subscription? Can that bring people back?

I don't want to sound negative, but I just didn't feel like they cared about bringing players back. Maybe a level crunch? Maybe skipping Dawntrail? Maybe... anything?

I'm legitimately interested in what people think. A lot of our friends and comrades are gone. Do you think the new job actions are going to bring the players back?

Probably for expansion release or a bit before that. If your friends left because of some issues with the game, they might come back if the way those issues are being adressed pleases them. If they're just burnt out of the game, it will depend of their time away from it and how fresh 8.0 feels for them.
If anything, expansion releases always bring back people.

As for your comment about the character screen, there's no way to feel hyped or doomey because they've literally just told us that it's gonna be a weekly-based system rather than daily. The unknown is how those weeklies will work, what's the progression system tied to it, how content rewards will mesh with this system, etc.
Level crunch would probably do nothing, if anything leveling is easy in this game, it's going through MSQ that's long. They could probably trim down on fluff quests in HW and SB. And skipping Dawntrail won't happen.