Is no one happy?

[Dzian]

People who are happy are usually just playing the game and this is the majority, the really loud minority gathers here to cry about the latest changed with which 99% of the playerbase is actually happy with but yeah trolls have to spread their hot takes everywhere here. Glad the devs don't listen to the NA forums, cause it doesn't represent the community in any way at all.

It's been proven time and time again that the vocal minority is bs. its the reason the term hardly gets used anymore because those vocal people have been proven time and time again to be right.

Here's one for you.. recent ads on facebook put the games playerbase as totalling over 25 million players. The most recent lucky bancho thing put the active playerbase at about 800,000 if i recall correctly.

800,000 out of 25 million is in the region of 3%

So are the majority of players really happy with the game when only 3% of them are playing?

The clear answer is no. if they were happy then more of those 25 million would still be playing.

“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

You should never take silence as a sign of satisfaction or happiness. to say the majority of players are happy just because they are silent is beyond wrong.. especially when 96% of the playerbase has dropped the game.

[Vryn]

It's been proven time and time again that the vocal minority is bs. it's the reason the term hardly gets used anymore because those vocal people have been proven time and time again to be right.

Here's one for you.. recent ads on Facebook put the games player base as totalling over 25 million players. The most recent lucky bancho thing put the active playerbase at about 800,000 if i recall correctly.

800,000 out of 25 million is in the region of 3%

So are the majority of players really happy with the game when only 3% of them are playing?

The clear answer is no. if they were happy then more of those 25 million would still be playing.

This is true, Destiny had gotten 20 million additional accounts since new light began, but only 1 million stayed. That's a 95% failure rate at retaining those people who are actively interested in your game to buy it.

Plus, the number of accounts is expected to go up naturally over time, but it's not representative of the game's health or the active player base of the time, which is what matters. So WoW has over 100 million. Are we saying it is doing well? The answer to that is no.

[Vryn]

This is true, Destiny had gotten 20 million additional accounts since new light began, but only 1 million stayed. That's a 95% failure rate at retaining those people who are actively interested in your game to buy it.

Plus, the number of accounts is expected to go up naturally over time, but it's not representative of the game's health or the active player base of the time, which is what matters. So WoW has over 100 million. Are we saying it is doing well? The answer to that is no.

Let's be honest games like Fortnite and Genshin produce massive amounts of content, and they are free; we pay a sub plus box price. So we should be expecting higher quality content at a more frequent rate than even those games produce.

MMO companies are going crazy about the sandpark MMO or, as other people have known it, what everyone was always advertised as but could never do properly.

Most games are MMOs at this point and they take many different forums, it's no longer one of the hardest genres to pull off its industry standard and these companies have been doing it longer than most so they should be better at it than anyone else.

[StriderShinryu]

It's been proven time and time again that the vocal minority is bs. its the reason the term hardly gets used anymore because those vocal people have been proven time and time again to be right.

Okay, let's go with this then. The numbers are true and those most vocal are correct. Cool. But the most vocal players around the game are generally happy with it. It's only here on the forums where there's a mass amount of negativity largely propagated by a handful of regulars. Why do those on reddit, twitter, youtube, twitch, etc. not count? Let's be honest, they don't count because they don't agree with you. If the vast majority of players were complaining about the game you would be saying: "See! See! Look at all of the players who aren't happy! They all agree with me!" The only reason you don't count them is because they don't.

[ForteNightshade]

Okay, let's go with this then. The numbers are true and those most vocal are correct. Cool. But the most vocal players around the game are generally happy with it. It's only here on the forums where there's a mass amount of negativity largely propagated by a handful of regulars. Why do those on reddit, twitter, youtube, twitch, etc. not count? Let's be honest, they don't count because they don't agree with you. If the vast majority of players were complaining about the game you would be saying: "See! See! Look at all of the players who aren't happy! They all agree with me!" The only reason you don't count them is because they don't.

You... don't frequent those other platforms very often do you? Reddit alone is what prompted this very forum to implement an appeal system after the overwhelming backlash on the poor moderation and just how many people have been banned for dubious reasons at best. Granted, that system is a joke but I digress. The mainsub has complained about numerous things from job design to content itself. Eureka and Blue Mage were particular punching bags. The difference between there and here is when topics start to get out of hand or lose focus, they actually get closed down or removed. With that said, the sheer amount of fanart that tends to dominate led people to make separate subreddits. The Discussion sub is where more well, discussion and debates happen nowadays.

YouTube is filled with complaint or critique videos and Twitch is hardly any different. It simply depends when you tune in. It isn't good content for say, Xeno or MrHappy to constantly bring up criticisms they have towards the game. After all, their primary goal is entertaining an audience. Twitter is probably the only platform you mentioned that does tend to lean very positively, albeit even then there have been moments. It's also Twitter where you're ostracised for "wrongthink". I wouldn't exactly put much stock in what Twitter thinks.

The truth is even people complaining about the game don't hate it. And those generally happy with the game likely still have issues. They simply aren't going to voice them every waking second. I could list off popular YouTubers or Streamers who dislike the job design direction, for example. Reddit has several threads criticizing healer design. There's just not much to really talk about on those subjects. What more can be said about healers that hasn't already?

[Minarisweet]

Reddit is the place for happy uwu whole stuff, forums is the place for complaining.

[TaleraRistain]

I'm genuinely happy and excited to play the game. If I wasn't feeling it anymore, I would quit and find another game. I've been playing it for 8 years now. I have a rule that I only log in if I want to play that night. I end up playing most nights. Sometimes I want to do something else for a night and do that. Between patches, I find goals I want to accomplish and work toward those. Or I play on alts.

I've been playing MMOs for, gosh, 23 years now. I played EQ, EQII, WoW, DaoC, SWG, STO, CoX, Champions Online, ESO, and probably others I poked my head in and forgot about. I let games own my life before and I was happy doing that. I'm not happy doing that anymore, so the theme park format of XIV works perfectly for me. I engage with the content I want to and don't worry about things I don't. I'm happy they have a variety for everyone. To be honest, you're going to see more negativity on most official game forums. It's just the nature of the MMO genre.

The game isn't perfect. I certainly have suggestions for the devs. There are some things that lack that they could make better. But it's good for me now and there's nothing that is making me so unhappy I don't want to play.

[Minarisweet]

Seeing how determined a lot of people are to silence other people in the forums honestly makes me sad... constant invalidation and attempts of ridiculization. All of this for what? the sake of a billion dollar company? a japanese director that they don't even know personally and actually WANTS feedback to make the game better?

I don't know, but I feel its very ingenuine to be defending every decision of a company as if it was your personal friend and then neglecting other people that you could actually befriend.

[Liam_Harper]

Seeing how determined a lot of people are to silence other people in the forums honestly makes me sad... constant invalidation and attempts of ridiculization. All of this for what? the sake of a billion dollar company? a japanese director that they don't even know personally and actually WANTS feedback to make the game better?

Sadly it happens in literally every game, no matter how badly that game might be doing. Some people just like feeling morally superior and labeling someone else as "whiny" and "entitled" while painting yourself as positive, open minded and appreciative seems like a good way to achieve that. But in reality it's stifling someone else to create an illusion.

There is nothing wrong with being unhappy with the game. If the forums seem to be all doom and gloom, maybe there's actually a problem and it would be a good idea to address it. I never understand the logic of "yes, it's all doom and gloom but everything's actually fine". WoW used to do that all the time, coming up with all sorts of reasons of why complainers were a loud minority and everything was going well ...until their game fell to pieces.

The forums do not represent the entire population, but while the players who are happy are playing the game, many more people who are unhappy are simply not playing anymore. I see players in my friend list or FC go inactive constantly. While the game certainly isn't dying, for every complainer there are a considerable number of silent leavers.

[Vryn]

We started an FC, and we are genuinly happy and excited to play the game.

On forums, it's all doom and gloom. We are having fun. Why doesn't the ffxiv forum community reflect that.

Overall, this is a great expansion. Came back and did ARR, which so much better, do the rest.

It's a game, have fun. I love you all!
FF6 Sabin

Let me put it this way. You are still in the honeymoon phase. I've been playing the game since 2.0, and so have many others, so we know if something is worse or better. Now many things in the game are better, such as visuals and PVP; however, many things aren't, such as tanks, healers, combat simplification, housing, ToS, customisation, basic Ui/UX systems, toxic positivity etc.

The more you play the game, the more you understand it, and the more you know, the more likely you are not to like something. The sayings Absence may make the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds contempt is true.

Plus, the direction of the game is different. It was very focused on the MMORPG crowd in the early days, and now it's focused on a more single-player audience. There isn't enough high-quality modern content that's long-lasting. For example, the dungeon design is very outdated and linear. It looks excellent and does fit with the story, but dungeons from WoD have better layouts than you have in 2022 FF14. the lack of improvement does alienate long-lasting veterans like myself. We have had to wait for half a decade-plus for basic features such as PVP to be updated, and even then, such problems as glamour plates and retainers should have been resolved within a few years, but we still have them 6yrs later.

Broken Promises add up over the years, and eventually, you're just sick of the devs apologising and then not doing anything for years. Hair customisation is an excellent example in this area.

People talk about this in-game but in closed circles because the community is quite insular. Because you can't trust people in this community not to be offended by anything because they will be, and interacting with them is not worth it, and the game isn't hard enough to the point you need to recruit a ton of people to do even savage. You cant pug a current mythic in wow, but you certainly can a savage.

This game just doesn't respect your time when it comes to gear grinding you might as well leave and come back in the point 5 patches. You will be just as good as everyone else after two weeks max doing 1-2 hrs a day of roulette.

The game has fundamental issues that have not been addressed in a reasonable timeframe, and they add up. The recent housing disaster is just an example of this, and it will worsen as the game ages. People were asking for a graphical update in Heavensward. Even those on the PlayStation were asking for it, and no just because it's an MMO doesn't mean they can't handle it most games are massively multiplayer.

For example, a big thing with Square Enix is creating highly exploitable systems. Instead of fixing the system to stop the degenerate behaviour, they threaten you, which doesn't promote an exemplary game environment. When you're in PVP and can't even type the words hello, it makes you feel like you are being controlled because they are scared, and at that point, it just makes you dislike them more. It's ridiculous.