Time to Quit

[Renathras]

I think Asmongold said it best. If everyone or if 90% of the playerbase actually just quit right now, SE would immediately do a 180 with FFXIV in a heartbeat.

The thing is, it doesn't appear anywhere close to 90% of the playerbase agree with the doomposters and would quit. Tons of people - we don't know the percent, but it's very likely higher than 10% - seem to still very much enjoy the game. Even a lot who have quibbles with it still enjoy it overall while wanting some changes. It's VERY unlikely there's going to be a 90% dropoff of players. People self-sort between MMOs over time. People that don't like a lot of what FFXIV has have already either allowed their subs to lapse or moved on/back to other MMOs. If all the really discontented people quit, that probably wouldn't be anywhere close to 90%.

The question there is more "At what percent does it become significant?", which must also factor against the fact new people are coming in all the time. So say 25% would be significant. Then not only would you have to have 25% quit, you'd also need an additional X%, where X is the amount of new people coming into the game.

I'm hopeful but I can understand why some are ambivalent.

I agree with most of what you said in this post. This point I want to take note of, though. Ambivalent I can understand - EW was largely "ShB 2.0", and as much flack as people give the SB to ShB transition (particularly on the Healer forums), the changes were a lot less major than people think; the Relic grind was SIMILAR (albeit Covid interrupted), the patch cycles were more formalized, but followed the same formula of some new story, a new dungeon, a new trial, every other a new set of 4 raid bosses, the same tome and token and hunt progression systems, and so on. ShB's big changes to SB were simplifying Healer damage rotations, Tank threat generation, and eventually formalizing the patch cadence. EW's "innovations" other than SMN and PLD were largely the Relic "grind" becoming a second Tomestone weapon that didn't require raiding and the 2 min meta. As much as people (including me) attack the latter, players were already trying to align buffs in ShB as well, particularly 1 min ones, and some raid groups picking Jobs whose bursts aligned, so this was again more formalizing a thing already being done anyway.

Ambivalent I understand, since 6.X has largely been like 5.X which was largely like 4.X in terms of content, cadence, game systems, and encounter/fight design.

What I don't understand are the doomposters saying things are so much worse when...they're largely the same. And player numbers are higher, meaning the game is growing either due to or in spite of it.

No need to go into hyperboles, I'm sure some people who consider themselves midcore are having fun, but if you look around in forums and reddits, you cannot deny content could be designed better for us.

I mean, even I say that and you disparage me for it.

There's a wide gulf between "could be better" and "imaragequit! this game sucks! it's going to die!!"

(Also, I didn't comment on it, but your Second Life comment is moronic - no RPing here and I love the game just fine. No one in my FC does, I think one time they all went around venues for an evening just to see what it was about and were more amused by an Omega Legend being a cook somewhere than the actual "scene", etc etc. The game isn't depending on "Second Life" players, and it's unlikely they carry it anyway.)

20,000+ people are logged in to Mare at any given time. What's the bet that most of the people playing on PC are doing so because it's a better version of Second Life, and not to play the actual game? The devs could stop making content and people would still play, because it's the players that are making the content now.

This is what FFXIV is like on PC. This is why people are subbing. And this is because the amount of gameplay content has fallen. Square Enix's weakness and ineptitude pushed actual players out and allowed habitual TOS-breakers to take over.

No, it's not.

You're trying to make a sweeping statement, and from that more sweeping statements.

PROVE RIGHT NOW that EVERYONE on PC FFXIV is subbing because they are playing "better Second Life". Show your work. Where is your evidence?

Right, you have none.

So your argument that it's "because the amount of gameplay content has fallen" is vacuous, since you don't even know the "better Second Life" is happening in the first place. This further compounds into yet another error when you insist it's SE's "weakness and ineptitude" that "pushed actual players out", since you've provided no evidence that "actual players" have even been "pushed...out".

I'm an actual player.
I haven't been pushed out.

Same with many others.

You can't start with a flawed premise you cannot prove, then draw a conclusion based on that, then draw another conclusion based on THAT, especially when your latter premises seem not to agree with the data.