I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Akibaws]

Forum posters are the vocal minority.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Acknowledging it's bad for mental health and that people need to back out of the game and probably seek professional help, something I'm currently getting myself, is not denigrating people. It's being aware of a problem that needs to be dealt with before it spirals out of control. Dunno why you seem to think calling attention to your own mental health is denigrating people...the hell is with Americans having this stupid stigma with mental health?

What is even happening here? First off, singling out users of a given country is inflammatory and accomplishes nothing of worth. In addition, equating certain posters being dissatisfied in a video game with people in need of mental health assistance and therapy is being denigrative to people in need of said help. Your own anecdotal experience, while perfectly valid, does little to exonerate your point of view in this instance. This isn't all that complicated a concept, and I'm not entirely convinced certain posters are engaging in good faith at this point in the discussion.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Note: I felt it necessary to separate this from my prior post as it detailed an entirely divorced topic, so apologies in advance for the double-post.

snip

I would humbly request that you not doubt your post OP. It is very much so needed and valid critique, and there's nothing truly wrong or unwelcome about it make no mistake. I think I've spent enough time here on this forum now to be capable of coming to the conclusion that those posters who constantly bloviate about doomers are they themselves doomers, but of another kind. It's merely that their foretellings, the smoking gun in their hands, the murder weapon is aimed at a different target than their attempts at obfuscation.

[Elissar]

I still want a minigame for machinist and dancer like bard has...

For machinist they could make a simple target shooting game with rewards for bronze, silver and gold medals
Dancer could have a guitar hero like where you could use some musics from FF universe.

As i say, can't wait for the next FF MMORPG.

[Ransu]

Definitely starting to look like the whole "10 more years of FFXIV" was less an ambition of his and more of a demand passed down from the higher ranks in order to keep SE afloat. But now that nearly everything good or interesting about this game has been done away with, how on earth is anyone supposed to possibly deliver on 10 more years in a world left in the state Endwalker left it in and with content that only seems to get worse with time?

There's an entire continent we haven't been to yet...

[SenseiMaria]

Lucky Bancho stats
2023/03/06 1.39 million active characters
2022/12/31 1.36 million active characters
2022/10/16 1.45 million active characters
2022/08/20 1.31 million active characters
2022/06/27 1.33 million active characters
2022/04/10 1.7 million active characters
2022/01/03 1.35 million active characters
2021/11/05 1.62 million active characters
2021/07/18 1.2 million active characters

These stats are over a 2-3 month period, which doesn't necessarily give an accurate picture of subscriptions, but the overall trend is still telling us things.

Active characters are higher than in July of 2021 when the streaming thing happened and have remained relatively stable since June 2022.

Criteria

• The maximum level is 60 or higher (not including just 60) OR Jobs that cannot be released in the free trial OR FC affiliation *
• HP, level, and experience have changed since the last survey (12/31)
• The number of minions and mounts possessed has changed since the last survey.
• New characters not present in the previous survey
• Own 1 or more mounts
• Characters using jumping potion in the job at the time of data acquisition (main weapon IL 260 and battle job maximum level 60 at the time of data acquisition, main weapon IL 390 and maximum level 70, IL 530 and maximum level 80) Characters excluded

People use tiny dataset (steam) & personal anecdotes that mean nothing in the grand scheme to doom & gloom when reality is contrary to their cherry-picked worldview, a tale as old as time. In other news, water is wet.
Game's more successful than its ever been with a constant higher active playerbase than even the highest point in SHB, even in these content lulls. Factoring in the deficit of MSQ players that disappear at the beginning of each expansion only to return at the next, 7.0 is on track to shatter player number records once again.

But I'm sure Square will think something major needs to be done to their formula as they walk to the bank depositing their record high profits this game generates from a formula that finds such insane success by targeting the new reality of the video game industry that is accessibility & simplicity in game design.

[Shinkuno]

People use tiny dataset (steam) & personal anecdotes that mean nothing in the grand scheme to doom & gloom when reality is contrary to their cherry-picked worldview, a tale as old as time. In other news, water is wet.
Game's more successful than its ever been with a constant higher active playerbase than even the highest point in SHB, even in these content lulls. Factoring in the deficit of MSQ players that disappear at the beginning of each expansion only to return at the next, 7.0 is on track to shatter player number records once again.

But I'm sure Square will think something major needs to be done to their formula as they walk to the bank depositing their record high profits this game generates from a formula that finds such insane success by targeting the new reality of the video game industry that is accessibility & simplicity in game design.

I was about to write a rather large wall of text why steam data is completly representive of the playerbase but i know you will continue to live in denial. Maybe you are lucky and Blizzard does something stupid with Dragonflight, maybe then the next expansion can "shatter player number records". Because thats the only way FF14 got relevancy: people getting tired of WoW. But people already get tired of FF14 and its half as old as WoW.

[LittleImp]

People use tiny dataset (steam) & personal anecdotes that mean nothing in the grand scheme to doom & gloom when reality is contrary to their cherry-picked worldview, a tale as old as time. In other news, water is wet.
Game's more successful than its ever been with a constant higher active playerbase than even the highest point in SHB, even in these content lulls. Factoring in the deficit of MSQ players that disappear at the beginning of each expansion only to return at the next, 7.0 is on track to shatter player number records once again.

But I'm sure Square will think something major needs to be done to their formula as they walk to the bank depositing their record high profits this game generates from a formula that finds such insane success by targeting the new reality of the video game industry that is accessibility & simplicity in game design.

The immense irony of trying to using sources like Lucky Bancho, MMO-Population and XIVCensus to make a point while dismissing one of the only hard data points we have ever had access to.

Lucky Bancho has incredibly misleading methodology that has evolved over the years in ways that very conveniently inflates the numbers he provides.

Thinking that 7.0 will surpass the Endwalker launch is an inhuman level of copium abuse, and demonstrates a complete and fundamental lack of understanding of what lead to the EW population spike in the first place.

[Ransu]

People use tiny dataset (steam) & personal anecdotes that mean nothing in the grand scheme to doom & gloom when reality is contrary to their cherry-picked worldview, a tale as old as time. In other news, water is wet.
Game's more successful than its ever been with a constant higher active playerbase than even the highest point in SHB, even in these content lulls. Factoring in the deficit of MSQ players that disappear at the beginning of each expansion only to return at the next, 7.0 is on track to shatter player number records once again.

But I'm sure Square will think something major needs to be done to their formula as they walk to the bank depositing their record high profits this game generates from a formula that finds such insane success by targeting the new reality of the video game industry that is accessibility & simplicity in game design.

He also only showed the months the game spiked from WoW players lol. The current population has settled and its average is higher than it was during ShB. Even if it did go back down to the averages ShB had, why is that suddenly a problem? XIV has always been its own thing and its doing fine.

I was about to write a rather large wall of text why steam data is completly representive of the playerbase but i know you will continue to live in denial. Maybe you are lucky and Blizzard does something stupid with Dragonflight, maybe then the next expansion can "shatter player number records". Because thats the only way FF14 got relevancy: people getting tired of WoW. But people already get tired of FF14 and its half as old as WoW.

A) Steam doesn't even make up 1% of the games playerbase, so no its not even remotely representative of the total numbers.

B) XIV was relevant before the WoW players jumped over last year. It was doing fine then, and its doing fine now. A company isn't going to spend money upgrading servers and expanding/opening up more servers if the the amount of players leaving was higher than the amount of new players coming in.

The immense irony of trying to using sources like Lucky Bancho, MMO-Population and XIVCensus to make a point while dismissing one of the only hard data points we have ever had access to.

Lucky Bancho has incredibly misleading methodology that has evolved over the years in ways that very conveniently inflates the numbers he provides.

Thinking that 7.0 will surpass the Endwalker launch is an inhuman level of copium abuse, and demonstrates a complete and fundamental lack of understanding of what lead to the EW population spike in the first place.

Lucky Bancho and XIVCensus pull from the lodestone to give a reference of player activity across all platforms which *gasp* is going to be more accurate than steamcharts where the extreme minority of players are at. The majority of people playing this game are playing the non-steam pc version and on console.

[Aneshda]

There's an entire continent we haven't been to yet...

At this point, I'm completely indifferent to the other continents.
Meracydia will be dragon stuff again, like we didn't have enough dragon content.
I'm also not interested in the history of the dragons anymore, no matter what it will be, it will be boring.
We killed all the bad guys.... end of story. Yoshi killed Final Fantasy 14 with his stupid choices.
Nobody asked for a single player game. No one asked for lousy content that actually isn't content.
Island Sanctuary is a bad joke. This is for the stupid people ... here you have an island, now click something 1 million times so that you level the island, build useless buildings for your mammets.
This is not content, this is nonsense. I'm tired of going to places that are in ruins only to look back through our echo and see how great that ruin once was, while now we wade through piles of shit.
Nobody wanted to see the 12, let alone fight it. That ruined so many things.
Garlemald was completely destroyed just because Yoshi was fed up with what his predecessor created.
If the next expansion came out in the next few weeks, I wouldn't buy it. If nothing really exciting happens from 6.5, then that's it for this game.
Because then there is no turning back for the train, which is heading straight for the wall.