Time to Quit

[CStrife912]

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All I'm going to say is I am appreciative of someone whos way more analytical and offered better concrete evidence to support whatever you claim. But alas you'll be called a white knight even though your evidence above sort of aligned with what I thought about the game with its actual steady growth compared to pre-wow exodus. This is without console player data and like someone above saying people on PC sub to be second life there's a lot of console players that make up the playerbase (id love to see the percentage of console to PC) that can't access mods and there are people here who sub because they just do story or housing...just cause they don't engage in content types isn't the be all end all.

[Theodric]

There's ample proof to be found by simply daring a look at what the FFXIV tag brings up on Twitter to see exactly what a lot of players use the game for.

As for players being 'pushed out', one only needs to look at how vocal members of this community behave if someone likes or dislikes the 'wrong' character or doesn't react the 'right way' to certain cutscenes.

[Rufalus]

I've been saying over and over for a few years that the formula is creating apathy. The schedule is so packed full of story and cookie cutter content that they don't have any gaps for reacting to player demands or even doing a collab with their own game FF XVI at its launch. Isn't the 10 year mark a good time to rethink the giant MSQ wall, like balance out the ratio of linear goals to very repeatable evergreen multiplayer activities with rewards that people need more than once.

[SturmChurro]

...

I think enjoy is a strong word, but there is definitely not 90% of the playerbase who would agree to completely drop the game in protest. And also, for that matter, if 90% were to leave, it is just as likely that SE would call it with FFXIV, put it on permanent maintenance mode, and move on.

The game's numbers are naturally higher. The people who leave are replaced with new/returning players, not to mention, a pretty large portion of the active playerbase probably don't even largely care about the current state of the game, rather there would probably be a bigger hit to their active playerbase, if SE were to start banning players for explicit activities and modding in general. Not to necessarily say that EVERYONE who stays actively subs and stays for that, people also generally just play for the social aspect too. As for "playing" for df, achievement hunting, and making alts, I will never understand people who play for that.

[Heavenchild]

I don't want to quit, but..., it's really not much to do. I like the new content (for example the island) but it's somehow all ded end. Nothing longlasting.

I miss a good relic farm/grind, some tasks to do to get something from it. Most of the time I had enough stones to get the relic right after the quest. I have also no interest to collect all weapons because I ran out of inventory space looooong time ago.

It's sad that they did not improve the rewards for Criterion. So it's the same problem as last time. People have no interest to do it.

They separated the island from the rest of the game. So this is also ded end. It's not even possible to visit other islands when people are not online. I really hope they change the direction of island sanctuary. I like the idea, but what we have now is sadly a ded end.

I don't want to quit. But I am really bored. And when I am bored, I come to the forum. :x

[Theodric]

My concern with Island Sanctuary is that its very bare bones in general but has a lot of potential to be something that persists through expansions and gains additional features over time. It's the sort of content I enjoy in theory since I'm very fond of anything involving building and carving out a slice of the game world to call my own. I'd be surprised if it continued to receive updates as of 7.0 and especially if it's anything more than a new seed type being added every patch or two. For every bit of content like Triple Triad that is updated every patch there's many more pieces of content that are simply left behind to gather dust.

[Rufalus]

Oh yeah, forgot to add the observation that this is one of the most engaging games when they drop content, but one of the least engaging during its lulls, owing to its linear nature and mostly cosmetic rewards you only need once and the low cap weekly restrictions.

[Renalt]

I believe that even though some of us don't like the direction it is going and might leave...SE stands to gain more people rather than lose by making the MMO easier and more accessible. They are a business and business seems to be going good for them right now. I don't really blame them making the choices they have been even though we have been quite vocal we don't like it on here. We are the minority of the community at large.

Lose 10,000 regulars as opposed to gaining 50,000 people starting fresh? That's a good trade. I'd make that trade. Even if half of the new crowd quits in as early as a single month...that's still 50,000 new games sold at what...$60 a person? Also after that you still retained half which is more than double what was lost. Game just might not be for me anymore. I do wanna see what 7.0 offers. It might rekindle my interest or not but that remains to be seen.

[LU_K]

I don't plan on leaving but the current direction is making me itch for the next FF online game or a FFXIV/ WOW Killer. I love this game a lot but everyone's opinions and frustrations are valid.

[Renathras]

There's ample proof to be found by simply daring a look at what the FFXIV tag brings up on Twitter to see exactly what a lot of players use the game for.

As for players being 'pushed out', one only needs to look at how vocal members of this community behave if someone likes or dislikes the 'wrong' character or doesn't react the 'right way' to certain cutscenes.

You...can't be serious, can you?

1) There are no numbers with "what the FFXIV tag brings up on Twitter". "a lot"? How many? 1? 50? 500? 1,000? 1,000,000? How is this "data"?
2) "anecdote is not data".
3) Can you offer evidence that the majority of FFXIV's playerbase is even on Twitter?
4) Can you show the number of them that post on Twitter?
5) Can you show the number posting "Second Life" on Twitter, and what percentage that is of the playerbase?
6) Twitter, in general, represents only a small segment of society, and studies have shown that around 80-90% of posts are made by only around 2% of Twitter users to begin with. Did you know that?

No?

Then that's not data. That's not useful to a discussion. "A few hundred" - in a game played by between 1 million and 3 million people? 100 is 0.01% of 1,000,000. 500 is 0.05%. You need 10,000 to get to even 1% of the playerbase. Can you find 10,000 individual FFXIV posters on Twitter all posting Second Life topics? I doubt you can. And even if you could, that would be at best 1% of the playerbase, hardly a majority. And that's if we lowball the playerbase at 1 million instead of 2 million or 3 million (I think around 1.7-1.8 million is the general ballpark of active player by various estimates.)

In short, you contest data with "look at Twitter".

That's like contesting serious policy debate with "Read the President's Twitter rage takes".

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EDIT:

Again, I don't think the game's perfect. It's leaving a lot of potential content and players on the table by not developing more midcore content - something other MMOs have also failed at (for years, WoW was "raid scene and PvP" and nothing else). I think there's also room for both simple Jobs (like current SMN) and complex ones (like old SMN) in the same design space. Hell, old SMN had a 2 min rotations so would work with the 2 min meta system, even!

I think the solution is to change things up a bit, but keep the core, just adding to it. Cast a wider net, both to catch new fish and to give existing fish more room to swim within. I don't see anything wrong with that.

However, the notions that the game is dying or only held aloft by "Second Life" players is both insulting AND statistically invalid. The data does not support either claim.