Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
What makes you think this design is actually drawing more people to the game?
What makes you think it isn't? We know player feedback in MMOs is essentially useless vs how the game is actually doing. Or well, not just in MMOs. Look at all the gacha games making bank despite all readable feedback being how exploitative tactics are bad and microtransactions are annoying. Yet it's working. Silently.

Now Square isn't going to not want to milk FFXIV. So if they have reason to believe this is working, they'll do it harder. If they had reason to assume that it's doing the opposite and going 180° would work better, they probably would. And now of cours subscription numbers are from all we can tell down, but... better or worse than expected? Worse, they might flail wildly and bring Stormblood Astro cards back. Better, they'll give Yoshi P a pay raise and ask him to do what they're doing harder. Which means, looking at the past 4+ years, that what they were doing was working at the time, at least. Or they would have already 180'd by now.