Another "they quit" thread

[Renik]

There are more new subscribers joining than old players leaving the game, but it's just because the game is new and shinny, after a year the real numbers will be shown.

From my point of view, even if this game is getting a lot of new subscribers, it is also losing old subscribers too fast, once the novelty has passed, the old player leaving will outnumber the new subscribers until only the loyal fan-base will be left, and the size of that fan-base will determine if the game changes or not.

[Naberrie]

I too have seen people from my FC just stop logging in and disappearing. But I've also encountered a fair number of people who are just coming in to the game. I don't know if I'd say it's a fair exchange, but I don't believe that everyone who is ever going to play the game is already playing it, nor that just because someone steps away for a while means they're never coming back.

[Enkidoh]

Considering I'm still getting 'world is full - players in queue xx' errors regularly when logging in (usually at peak times), and I still see plenty of new people just starting out, I think this argument is irrelevant.

[Yarikh]

There are days when things are quiet. Or few people are on. But the towns are still crowded as ever during peak hours. Crafting, chatting, hanging around the market boards, queueing for df.. some old players leave, new blood comes in. But they are not dropping numbers like flies either.

I imagine it'll be even more crowded when the new patch gets implemented.

[Kuwagami]

Look to your community and please be honest with us and yourselves; aren't people dropping like flies?

Nope. All the people I've played with since november are still here, at the exception of one person in internship and one waiting for 2.2 to renew his sub (his sub went off 2 weeks ago while he had only T5 and titan Ex yet to beat).

Marketing strategies just work so well on people. It's 1.8million copies sold, not active subscriptions. Please do not spread false information. There was a recent interview between SE and 4gamers on another thread here. Please read that. Yoshida was also hesitant to announce the figures until the china servers were up. Of course, it would inflate the numbers so it appears to be doing so well.

Actually, it's 1.8 million subscriptions, with over 6 millions characters. And around 500k players loging in every day (not necessarily the same ones every day though)

[Athol]

I'm far from bored with this game but I don't really burn thru content like most mmo players and I don't rush to end game. I have 100 leve allowances so that should give evidence as to how slow I level lol. They should add cosmetic rare skin drops to dungeons and stuff like that. It would give people more to grind for. Keep the highest ilevel for the raiders and crafters and give the casuals cosmetic grind. I would love to see zone wide fates.

[Goodberry]

Queues for dungeons (either random orspecific) here are practically instant, like in WoW.
Some months ago I was playing a good-ish game which has gone free to play and one of the reason I stopped playing it was that there was no way to enter a dungeon. I mean, two hours in queue and still nothing. Of course, the forum there is not doom and glom like here but full of "fanboys" and "white knights".
So I'll start worrying when queues get longer, and fewer people post on how this game is horrible and Final Fantasy 11/Final Fantasy 14 1.0/EQ1/EQ2/Ultima Online/GW2/ESO/Wildstar/EQNext/Archeage/Whatever was/is/will be so much better. :P

[Amberion]

Actually, it's 1.8 million subscriptions, with over 6 millions characters. And around 500k players loging in every day (not necessarily the same ones every day though)

No, it was accounts made.

[Xayoc]

Disclaimer -This isn't a "I quit thread".

The rate at which people are quitting seems to be increasing. I've been saying the direction the dev team is taking XIV won't prove to be successful in the long run for a while. Just search for topics and threads I've posted in or started and you will see that.

But I didn't start this thread to toot my own horn, or tell the white knights "I told you so". I also didn't start this thread to start a debate or revisit the casual vs hardcore gamer endless argument.

Look to your community and please be honest with us and yourselves; aren't people dropping like flies?

My original 1.0 friends have all gone. They numbered somewhere between 20-25 people who started in 1.0 with me after making the switch from XI to XIV, and returned for 2.0.

We had the numbers to form an FC, so we did. Some of us formed a static coil group. We were successful and had coil down to farm status. Some others were also successful, but at least half were not. We quickly found ourselves in a situation where some of us were happy with farming coil and developing our characters together, while others felt left out. Incidently, there was literally nothing we could do for them other than guide them on TS and Vent while we watched them attempt coil and other content.

That didn't work out too well. Many of them just felt betrayed by our group's success. The situation devolved into hostility over time, and a sense of resentment towards us built. People we had known for as much as 10 years left our FC and decided to go at it on their own. They didn't last long with PUGs and within a month, unsubscribed.

Our FC, now broken, merged with another FC that were suffering from the same challenges. We tried to get people more involved this time round by mixing and matching strong and experienced players with those of us who were less skilled and with less wins under their belt.

The result was catastrophic. More resentment grew as the splitting of the static resulted in some of the members feeling less motivated to play. They logged on less, and felt that having to run others through coil and repeat the same painful learning experience was unfair. They argued for a return to the old group, and to let the weaker ones fend it out for themselves.

As leader I tried to talk 5 groups into reason, but while a person is reasonable and fair, people are generally selfish and irrational. The amount of personalities and different priorities in the mix resulted in a slow deterioration of friendships, and forming of new alliances and loyalties.

Fast forward 5 weeks, and all have unsubscribed but 3-4 members and 2 of them haven't logged in for 9 days as of this moment.

I'm in many Linkshells as well and see the same situation, more or less, being played out in other groups.

I scroll through my friend list sometimes to look for something to do and see a lot of "deleted" accounts, not knowing who it was, and where they went or why.

I played XI for many years. It was nice knowing people for many years and playing alongside with them. Maybe 64 man Dynamis was over the top, and maybe Absolute Virtue and Pandy Warden were too hard core. Maybe the exp grind was too long, and maybe the battles were a bit slow paced. But there was something there, and I'm certain it had something to do with the community.

I also played WoW for a few months and could never really get into it. There wasn't much difference between a PC and NPC; both were just names on the screen.

I'm not asserting anything here, just telling it like it is. Many of my friends have unsubscribed, and even more acquaintances.

I'd like to know if this will be the norm and the producers are happy with it, because if it is I just don't think I can invest any more time in it as it isn't living up to my expectations. That's not a threat, or an ultimatum. I'm no special snowflake, and the game will continue to prosper without me for sure. But I'm most definitely not happy with the current state of affairs.

2.2 is the first progression content patch for this game and I don't count ex primals as those were cleared by top tier FCs within 12 hours. Right now my FC is double clearing coil every week, half alts half mains. I can tell you now a lot of people "leaving" are going on hiatus until 2.2 launches and you are going to see a throng of people coming back for the new content. For the people leaving because this game isn't the grind fest 1.0 and FFXI were, good riddance imo, those games are thankfully long gone.

[Vensaval]

For the people leaving because this game isn't the grind fest 1.0 and FFXI were, good riddance imo, those games are thankfully long gone.

Except for the fact that XI is still alive and kicking. Just wanted to point that out.