Future direction of FFXIV

[EaraGrace]

I don't think it's at all unfair to say that the majority of this games growth is a result of the state of the MMO market. Growth did in fact explode around the time Shadowlands sputtered out, far beyond what had been seen previously, and was largely instigated by the migration of big name influencers like Asmongold. Growth up until that point was steady, but fairly weak.

Looking at the numbers, this month the peak player count is currently 28k.

In the month before 5.1 dropped, the player count was 17k.

I’d say that’s healthy growth.

When I talk about direction of the game, I more or less am talking about the game play, systems, and post MSQ content. The story is what ever in the end it's a one and done thing in my eyes and every ones opinions on that will differ. I did not like EW plot, I thought it was as bad if not worst than Stormblood, but other players like it and that is fine.

My point was more that those are the major criticisms that I see in this thread and elsewhere. You’re criticisms are distinct I recognize but if I was a dev looking for criticisms those are the most common ones I’d find.

I used the term boom for a reason. FFXIV likely would have seen an increase of 1 - 2 million players at best if Shadowlands did not fail, based on the growth from previous expansions.

Sure, I actually agree that the peak wouldn’t have been as high without outside factors. What I’m pointing out is that the trend would remain up regardless. The health of the game isn’t really rooted on whether it can maintain the player count it had when it was the “it game” on twitch, but rather if it continues to grow as it has.

To really drive home why I may seem dismissive of criticism, allow me to offer some examples from the past. Here’s some threads I found by searching “Yoshi P” and “stale.”

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ith-this-game?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...hat-s-not-MSQ?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ding-end-game?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...odest-Thought?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Patch-3.5X%21

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...killed-players

And my personal favorite

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-We-love-Yoshi

Now let me be clear I’m not saying “oh shut up the game is perfect and your criticisms are dumb and old and stupid and blah blah blah.” You’re more than welcome to think there’s problems with the game. I’m only pointing out that this thread, and the view that the game must change right now before it fails, is not unique to this moment and was not proven true in the past.

[Minarisweet]

Okay I'm going to be honest with you, with most people the avarage person is a braindead fool this is why numbers mean little to nothing when it comes to quality.

The average person would be satisficed with a bowl of shit so long as the bowl is pretty and has a ribbion on it, which is basically what twilight and Justin beaver fans are and lets be honest both have more fans than haters.. The typical person have a lack of taste for things and either only follow it because "Oh look the girl has big boobs lets play and enjoy this mentality, or they just be like this pretty so lets play it over anything else.

And lets be honest ffxiv has some of the prettyist customization in any game, which is enough to satified the average person.

A little agressive here I don't recommend you get emotional in sites like this that take every chance possible to dunk on you and it will only feel worse.

[Rulakir]

IMO a good example of this is the introduction of soloing the story from 1 - 90 through a newly implemented trust system. This takes a lot of dev time for something to appease what I would consider a smaller portion of the player base.

Yoshi-P said the main reason people were giving for not playing FFXIV is having to group with others. One of the Wildstar devs infamously said: "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were)." WoW also ended up having to add LFR to justify the resources going into raids, prior to that they were open about the fact that only ~10% of the playerbase raided. I'm going to take their word for it that there's a substantial market of players who are not being catered to at the moment.

[IdowhatIwant]

Yoshi-P said the main reason people were giving for not playing FFXIV is having to group with others. One of the Wildstar devs infamously said: "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were)." WoW also ended up having to add LFR to justify the resources going into raids, prior to that they were open about the fact that only ~10% of the playerbase raided. I'm going to take their word for it that there's a substantial market of players who are not being catered to at the moment.

About 15 - 25% of players participated in Normal Mode raids, 50 - 75% of players participate in LFR raids, 8 - 10% participated in heroic raids, and 1-2% participate in mythic raids. That is how is has been most expansions where those modes apply. Shadowlands is hard to judge as the game has lost over half of its player base since it launched. LFR is not a single player experience either, you are still grouping with other players so I am not sure what that has to do with a single player experience. LFR was introduced for the same reason FFXIV has normal mode trails and normal mode "raid", so players could still experience the plot with out devoting time to raiding.

If a more single player driven experience is the route the players and the devs want to go, and the game proceeds that way. What ever I guess I will save $12 a month, and $40 per expansion. At least I got to see the stories completion in the end.

SNIP

That list of forums I think is a problem. This is stuff that should have been addressed. Once Yoshi P mentioned that the games plot was going to end in a couple expansions, I assumed that would be my last expansion if the gameplay loop does not have any significant changes by then. And sadly the loop IMO has only gotten worst over time, and here we are at the end. I would not be surprised if there are a lot of players with a similar point of view.

[Dzian]

From the mouths of the 14 devs themselves. Clearly complaints are much more important than some people want to believe.

They are. General consumer research often often says that for every person that complains there's 25 people that share the same complaint but remain silent about it.

“Only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain. The rest churn. A lesson here is that companies should not view absence of feedback as a sign of satisfaction. The true enemy is indifference.”

Source

This is a big mistake many people make.
They make the assumption the forums and other sites such as reddit are a "vocal minority" and don't reperesent the community as a whole. They believe everyone who is silent is satisfied with the game and thats wrong on many levels.

If it was true the player numbers would be higher, and while theres no official statisitcs theres good pointers out there if you look. Just 3 or 4 weeks ago you'd go to log in and have 2,000 people in a log in queue and now currently its like 10 maybe 15.. (on my server at least) Where did all those other players go? iIf they liked the game that much why arent they playing?

There's also the word of mouth effect where 1 unhappy person will tell 10 to 20 more of there experience and that can severely hinder your future customer base.

The game struggles to keep new players and you'll see comments like that all over the internet. some of the bigger FCs on bigger servers can invite new players on a daily basis only to find that many of them just stop logging in very very quickly and then you look at your FC list and find 90% of the members havent logged in for months.

On a personal level its the friends that keep me playing not the game itself because honestly the game is pretty stale. and I know a lot of people who have similar opinions.



Fun is a big one, Especially when you look at the complaints. Jobs arent fun they're all the same. healers are the most boring thing ever... Raids are getting more and more boring apparantly. dungeons and relic quests also... (taking bets that 6.0 relic quests involves yet more Crystal tower alliance raids AGAIN and even more Fate grinding because players love fates.. / sarcasm))

Patches are stale and repetitive.. not exactly aiming to amaze when every patch is basically the same.

The game has almost certainly forgotten its roots at this point. It's an MMO not a single player RPG, and its a Final Fantasy, not just another WoW copy...

While true some players may be put off the game by having to play with others.. It's equally if not more true that some players will also be put off by how single player it really is.. People pick up MMOs specifically to play with other people.

As for the first point tough I think it was around shadow bringers launch that Yoshi said that the Final Fantasy franchise needs to move away from mainstream audineces and go back to its fans. because trying to cater to everyone ends up catering for no-one and many would say thats XIVs predicament.

[IdowhatIwant]

The game struggles to keep new players and you'll see comments like that all over the internet. some of the bigger fcs on bigger servers can invite new players on a daily basis but find that many of them just stop logging in very very quickly and then you look at your fc list and find 90% of the members havent logged in for months.

This is very true. About every expansion launch I will recruit anywhere from 50 - 150 players to my FC. By the end of the first patch cycle there are maybe 3 - 5 that stick with the game.

[Skyborne]

This is very true. About every expansion launch I will recruit anywhere from 50 - 150 players to my FC. By the end of the first patch cycle there are maybe 3 - 5 that stick with the game.

It can have a domino effect as well, if someone logs in to see that a once-bustling FC has dwindled into a ghost town where only they're on. It can be discouraging and cause them to leave, or quit entirely.

[Dzian]

It can have a domino effect as well, if someone logs in to see that a once-bustling FC has dwindled into a ghost town where only they're on. It can be discouraging and cause them to leave, or quit entirely.

Definitely. especially if you're a player who likes playing with others and have seen the same thing happen in 3 or 4 FCs that you've joined...
It could easily put you off trying to join another one and invest in making even more social coonections only to see the same thing happen again..
You'd just drop the game.

[Jeeqbit]

This is very true. About every expansion launch I will recruit anywhere from 50 - 150 players to my FC. By the end of the first patch cycle there are maybe 3 - 5 that stick with the game.

That's pretty normal for an MMO and games as a whole. A lot of people try them out and then stop playing once something else attracts their interest. If you look at a lot of Steam profiles you will see them playing a new game release for a few days and then they don't seem to touch it again for a long time.

MMOs have to keep track of player retention and there are usually a lot of different factors that cause them to lose interest. There isn't likely to be anything that would increase that rate to 100%. It's been the same in any other MMO that a guild ends up mostly dead if you don't keep recruiting.

What I think has affected it negatively is when the free trial only went up to level 35, the story being so long now that there is no end in sight and at first you can find the UI such as the map confusing. Not having a mount from the very beginning is tedious, but there has been the same problem in other games where it takes time to earn your methods of transport.

It can have a domino effect as well, if someone logs in to see that a once-bustling FC has dwindled into a ghost town where only they're on. It can be discouraging and cause them to leave, or quit entirely.

Lack of social connections is definitely a problem for some people. I see it in the novice network occasionally where if it wasn't for the novice network, they would have no social connections and it was what made them keep playing.

Once social connections are formed it seems to be different because most of the 200 people I added on my friends list who are at max level continue to login.

[Minarisweet]

I say it a lot because it's both true and constantly misunderstood. It's invalidating to the extent that an argument is premised on a self-selecting minority being representative of the majority. It's a very common, understandable mistake, but it is a mistake.

Consider the following: you don't actually have any evidence that "people that post in those sites are mostly the more active fanbase of the game." You reason from being the most vocal to being the most active, but even then, what is the significance of being the most active? It's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

If the question is as to the attitudes of the player base as a whole, taking a small, self-selecting minority (the most vocal players, the most active players, etc.) doesn't actually tell you much about what most players think. The self-selecting aspect of posters on forums/Reddit/Twitter is important precisely because you should expect their opinions to differ from most other players.

tl;dr Twitter isn't real life.

Ffxiv isn't real life either.