Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Nothv13]

Wrong on literally both counts lol

You need to stop looking at simply monthly peaks.

25 days out from early access Endwalker was peaking at around 62k

25 days out from early access DT is peaking at around 50k-55k

Official release of EW saw a fall from 95k to 86k, just under 10k
Official release of DT saw a fall from 92k to 72k, right at 20k

DT yesterday peaked at 46k yesterday. Endwalker took until mid Jan to get that low.

[Rekh]

Yeah, because we log in every day to redo MSQ, right? Lower/Higher numbers have nothing to do with msq; it has to do with the mmo part of the game, everything outside of msq.

The reality is that square enix refuses to give casuals something to do after msq until the end of the X.3 patches.

[sharknado]

Yeah, because we log in every day to redo MSQ, right? Lower/Higher numbers have nothing to do with msq; it has to do with the mmo part of the game, everything outside of msq.

The reality is that square enix refuses to give casuals something to do after msq until the end of the X.3 patches.

The game has a lot of plot watchers who are subbed only for expansion launches and then they quit until the next one.

[Volgia]

The game has a lot of plot watchers who are subbed only for expansion launches and then they quit until the next one.

I have a friend who does that. THen they wait like a year and a half, and do patches 1 to 3, and then quit until the next expansion and do the MSQ like that.

[Ruris]

I think the only thing I'd like to add to this thread is that I wouldn't count or trust content creators more than anyone else in game, forum or friend to give an honest opinion about the game. Quite the contrary in fact, they're in the business of keeping conversations open and your eyes on their stream or youtube videos for profit, so if its interesting or provocative to say a game is bad, failing or whatever, they are likely to jump on the trend for views and engagement.

Thank you, but I haven't forgotten why streamers stream. I'd appreciate if we can ground the context here properly. Zepla and Preach are well known for enjoying the MSQ in prior expansions, have directly interviewed Yoshi P himself, and are now both hitting the same beats of dissatisfaction with the story, along with a huge blanket of unhappiness laying over the playerbase in result of the DT MSQ, I think it is safe to conclude there's a bit of consistency there with their opinions.

Also on the note of Preach, that man isn't jumping on hate bandwagons, he dropped WoW for a reason. Man won't play what he isn't interested in. He gave an extremely fair review at the end of his playthrough that doesn't just sum up to "DT bad" so what trend is he jumping on?

"Streamers gonna stream" is just ringing massive cop out response to me.

[Kiurt]

You need to stop looking at simply monthly peaks.

25 days out from early access Endwalker was peaking at around 62k

25 days out from early access DT is peaking at around 50k-55k

Official release of EW saw a fall from 95k to 86k, just under 10k
Official release of DT saw a fall from 92k to 72k, right at 20k

DT yesterday peaked at 46k yesterday. Endwalker took until mid Jan to get that low.

Steam Charts has stayed consistently representative of the wider playerbase in terms of growth and fall-off trends and updates every few minutes off of the steam concurrent player counter. We can't get true full-playerbase numbers and likely never will but for getting an idea of what the growth trends are you can't get much better without having access to Square Enix data directly.

Endwalker, end of an arc building for 10 years
Game being hyped by streamers right before release
WoW Shadowlands existing

Dawntrail being an ARR like expansion with a slow build up and talk to Wuk Lamat (pray return to the waking sands btw) that annoyed more than one.
New WoW expansion coming soon, after all the praise Dragonflight got...
Game not that much hyped by streamers (and a bald man) as before.

Yup, you can't trust steam charts before there's so many outside factors to take into account than just reading numbers.

[Volgia]

Thank you, but I haven't forgotten why streamers stream. I'd appreciate if we can ground the context here properly. Zepla and Preach are well known for enjoying the MSQ in prior expansions, have directly interviewed Yoshi P himself, and are now both hitting the same beats of dissatisfaction with the story, along with a huge blanket of unhappiness laying over the playerbase in result of the DT MSQ, I think it is safe to conclude there's a bit of consistency there with their opinions.

Also on the note of Preach, that man isn't jumping on hate bandwagons, he dropped WoW for a reason. Man won't play what he isn't interested in. He gave an extremely fair review at the end of his playthrough that doesn't just sum up to "DT bad" so what trend is he jumping on?

"Streamers gonna stream" is just ringing massive cop out response to me.

Streamers are indeed are gonna stream, but my point is that you shouldn't take their word as gospel. They're not professional game critics or reviewers, they're just another guy who happens to be really good at entertaining.

I don't know why we are focusing so hard on Preach here, but I'm kind of tired of people using streamers or influencers to measure the success of an expansion.

[Paviski]

As a huge story and lore enjoyer myself, I feel like people attribute way too much to an expansions story alone, whilst it is the most marketed aspect of the expansion (for now) it's so much more than just the story itself.
It's the story that is still coming, all the content (new field instance, cosmic exploration, new allied socities, raids [normal, alliance, savage and ultimate + new variant dungeons] new limited job (beastmaster, + updates to bluemage) (forgive me If I forgot to mention anything).

I didn't enjoy the story of Dawntrail much either for various reasons (not liking wuk much, story pacing, bland voice acting all around), but there is still many redeeming qualities like how they designed the new areas, the new music following them and foremost (IMO) the new "difficulty" level they chose for the dungeons/trials and normal raids.

The things I liked and disliked are all very subjective to myself. People may share the same opinion, or they may not, and thats perfectly fair and valid.
Saying that "The players are ""destroying"" the game they like/d" feels like a huge stretch to me. Just because you see discourse going around and being poorly handled by those involved it doesn't mean that people actually hate the game or wanna quit it over the story being poorly written, normal raiding content (dungeons etc.) being too hard. You are not forced to do anything for more than once in this game, you can skip the story If you don't like playing through it, you can go through dungeons with trusts (even repeatedly) and you don't need to do leveling dungeons cause you can just do overworld FATE's instead.
Now, with that being sad, I don't want to say "You are not allowed to complain about / criticize something since in the end everything is optional! (except for unskippable cutscenes)" I'd much rather want to say, in one of Dawntrails own (IMO kind of badly written) morals:

Try and find common ground, show understanding to those who are trying to give valid criticism (not transphobes or racists) on all sides. Not everyone will feel the same way you do about everything this expansion entails, but rather than dividing people over things they disliked, be open, let everyone say their pieces and just leave it at that at best. You don't have to like their criticism, but trying to invalidate it while
1. People paid for this product
2. People are allowed to have an opinion on a game/story they care about/liked beforehand
Leaves such a sour taste in my mouth personally at least.

.

1/2

[Paviski]

2/2 (had to split cause way too long apparently)

One of the reasons why people go and pull streamers/youtubers/influencers opinions into this is because theres many people (not just here) who invalidate criticism or dislike of certain things and put the "you're a transphobe/racist" tag on it. I don't wanna say that theres none of those people around, there is definitely plenty, but that shouldn't mean any criticism towards, for example (the most prominent I could think of right now), Wuk's character or her voice acting/direction is because people dislike Sena / dislike her being a transwoman

What I wanna say is / TL;DR, personally, I think it is pretty much too early to say "man this expansion SUCKS!!!!" and go at each others throat because of it. The story =/= the whole expansion experience.
Saying that the story and whats associated with it "is bad" shouldn't be as big of an issue as it currently is in the eyes of many. Having normal discussions over points of dislike/like should be encouraged instead of "no you're wrong", "you are being racist/transphobic" (unless they actually blatantly are obvsly).

People who steer the discourse into this kind of direction and at the same time question "why has the community become like this" are a big part of the issue, on all sides, whilst it would be SO simple to avoid that by just being decent to one another.

[Sharie]

Imo its important to voice your Displeasure, its a clear Downgrade of a MSQ we got. As a MSQ Person with some endgame playing with friends, 7.0 is the most Disappointing MSQ we had so far even ARR for its Time was better in Terms of being a "Final fantasy" Story a ok/Decent Good vs. Evil plot with good Set up for the future.
in Dawntrail until level 96 nothing is really Happening there is no tension there is no Suspense about the so Called Fierce "Competition" its Side Quest level of things, make Food, catch a Alpaka, help repair a Boat and crops to Grow, the "Antagonist" Bakool ja ja only is one in the first 2 Levels, there was Zero things that could maybe hint at that Wuk might lose the "competition" since her brother was always on her side anyway.
The content itself Dungeons trials, 8 mann Raid seems very Good so that kinda saves it. but all in all a 6/10 overall MSQ.