Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Nasigno]

Final Fantasy XIV is no longer at its peak and Square Enix is taking the revenue to recoup their 70% loss in profits last year. It also "promoted" Naoki Yoshida and Natsuko Ishikawa to non-FFXIV projects to fix the company. So no, "we" aren't destroying FFXIV, Square Enix is. Just like so many other companies, it cut corners in its core product to save money and please shareholders. Fortunately, every other company is also in a race to the bottom and FFXIV is a tad slower than the others in its decline, so it's still worth playing. It'll soon become apparent though that the story will fail to draw new people and players won't stay excited about the new content due to floor-tanking and being clipped by lag. It's okay to enjoy the game as-is but people need realistic expectations and not to deify the devs.

That is a bit of a hot take. Albiet has some rather truth to some of the matters. I'll not apologize for Square Enix as quite a many do. Yes. Square Enix did lose a good chunk of its stock value due to poor performances. FFXVI being one of them, of which I'd say Sony had a hand in as well. I do not think 16 did as well and it was apparent which has some long term impacts that SE is now facing. Which yes, they are looking to cut corners, we all know that or should. It is a business, and when you lose 30% of your value you risk the loss of capital from outside shareholders. So yes, they have to appease them as otherwise no money = no game. Same with players, it is a win-win as long they produce quality products. Granted I do see Cloud servers and other items they have been considering as cost savers as much as releasing the game with incremental graphics updates / new combat encounter system as the stop-gap solution to release product on time and actually keep revenue coming in. Do I agree with them? Not exactly, but you have to keep the lights on and another debacle of delay like Endwalker would of caused problems.

As for FFXIV not being at its peak. Statistical data says otherwise. Dawntrail is performing better than Endwalker did. Which both represent the larger concurrent amount of users that are actively playing the game and generating revenue. Dawntrail likewise as per any metric you can actually source has already held player retention well outside of what Endwalker did in same timeframe from release. Endwalker first month saw a noticeable drop in players within the first month, we are not seeing that with Dawntrail. How long will it remain as such? Not sure, but by pure numbers Dawntrail is doing better than previous expansion.

I will however not say it is the action packed, high stakes story that everyone was apparently hoping for? I do not see how anyone expects a Shadowbringer level story with only 7.0 MSQ only. Shadowbringers had 8 years of build up and story telling to reach the point. Dawntrail is the second ARR basically. Give it time and wait for the story to build.