Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Nasigno]

Don't take this personally, but I'm so tired of seeing this argument. ARR set up the ongoing conflicts with the Ascians, Empire, beast tribes(as well as their internal issues), and ongoing political tension between the city-states as well as political tension within them. DT has nothing like that, and by the end of it everyone is completely unified behind Queen Wuk Lamat and peace and love for everyone. The hourglass/key resonating with Azem's crystal means we still haven't moved on from Amaurot and the slate hasn't been wiped clean.

Of course, no offense taken.

It did, and don't get me wrong it did start a good storyline for them to start from here to now. It did not however mention threats they had no intent or otherwise imagine up in say Endwalker with talking with Metion. But as said, I did not like the introduction of Meteion being that late that we had no inkling or idea that set why it got from ARR to EW.

Could it of done better, of course. I'm not crazy enough to believe DT is peak story telling or did not have its faults cause it did. But I'll say its better than Endwalker for me.

Citation needed. Looking at Steamcharts, really the only place we can get numbers, Endwalker peaked higher than DT on release and DT has not been out long enough to compare to longevity. DT is in all likelihood riding on eth success of ShB and EW. Could the endgame be enough to keep more people? Potentially, but that does not mean that people don't think that the MSQ is utter crap, just means they want to get to the good part.

“Hello everyone, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV,” started the developer. “I would like to thank you all for your patience and cooperation in dealing with server congestion during the early access for Dawntrail. With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013.”

But beyond the official statement from Square Enix, the only reliable numbers we can go off is Steam Data, least of all unless you have a metric that is something we can base performance off? I guess we could wait for 2025 Financial performance to compare the operational revenue, but for right now that is the only metric we have that is open to the public so I will cite it as such.

Endwalker
January 2022 65,565
December 2021 95,102

Dawntrail
June 2024 91,883
July 2024 91,883

[Voidmage]

“Hello everyone, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV,” started the developer. “I would like to thank you all for your patience and cooperation in dealing with server congestion during the early access for Dawntrail. With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013.”

But beyond the official statement from Square Enix, the only reliable numbers we can go off is Steam Data, least of all unless you have a metric that is something we can base performance off? I guess we could wait for 2025 Financial performance to compare the operational revenue, but for right now that is the only metric we have that is open to the public so I will cite it as such.

Endwalker
January 2022 65,565
December 2021 95,102

Dawntrail
June 2024 91,883
July 2024 91,883

To be fair. The great DT numbers could also mean that EW gave some kind of hype push.
If I had to interpret them I would say:

EW had a good start and got additional players a month later.
DT has round about the same initial players as EW had at its "peak" (is it the peak?).
To me it seems mroe people preordered for DT, roughly the amount of EW players.
The "stagnating number" also doesn't have to do with unhappy players neccesarily but could also just mean that most players did early access. The servers were really stable this time.

You sure thats not an error? The numbers are the same for both month for DT.

I'm not denying DT's intial great success mind you. I just find it interesting.

[Striker44]

I never checked this froum in the past and just came here recently to look for the "community voice" but.. is it really that bad? Are people that mad about DT or was it always like that in the forum? Maybe someone that observed the forum for a few years can tell me.

Is it really that bad? No. Not even close. This forum has always been an echo chamber for negativity and ridiculous hyperbole. I've been around here for years, and if you went by the forum, every single xpac in this game's history was the worst ever when it came out. Even ShB, which is routinely ranked as the #1 favorite by players, was trashed here. Please don't think this forum actually reflects the playerbase at large. There's a reason you haven't seen that kind of feedback in your FC and social groups - it's not the norm. There are tons of people thoroughly enjoying this expansion.

Are here any people that actually enjoy the game? And if not.. where are they? I've heard player counts are looking good, and I tbh can imagine why.

There's a few of us. Most people who enjoy the game tend to head to other places like YT and Reddit or, you know, are just actually playing the game instead of hanging around here. I'd encourage you to check out some YT videos, not from your "content creators," but just videos of DT. I recommend some of the ones for the OST. Check out the comments. Even though they're OST videos, people will be talking about the in-game story that's associated with the music, and you'll find a lot of people posting about how much they're enjoying the story and finding it meaningful (and compared to the dozens of "likes" negative comments will get around here, you'll see those positive comments getting hundreds of likes in support).

I have the feeling people are more and more driven into the mindset "Well if everyone says it is bad.. then it must be bad!" until they actually feel that way.

This can be a real thing. I experienced it with Destiny 2 recently. In the run-up to their own latest expansion, I was active on the forums there, and I have to say...as negative as this place is, these forums look like a paradise compared to the D2 forums. It actually did deflate my anticipation for the new expansion. Then the xpac actually launched, I put the forums in the rear-view mirror, and just...played the game. And let me tell you, I had a blast. It's a very real psychological thing that surrounding yourself with negative people, especially when it's a full-on echo chamber, can impact you negatively as well. Best bet if you start feeling that way is to just get away, go play the game, and have fun enjoying it!

[Nothv13]

“Hello everyone, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV,” started the developer. “I would like to thank you all for your patience and cooperation in dealing with server congestion during the early access for Dawntrail. With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013.”

But beyond the official statement from Square Enix, the only reliable numbers we can go off is Steam Data, least of all unless you have a metric that is something we can base performance off? I guess we could wait for 2025 Financial performance to compare the operational revenue, but for right now that is the only metric we have that is open to the public so I will cite it as such.

Endwalker
January 2022 65,565
December 2021 95,102

Dawntrail
June 2024 91,883
July 2024 91,883

I find his statement hard to believe, because there is no way ARR had as many concurrent users as ShB or EW as it simply did not have the market penetration back then

Steam DB doesn't have Peak numbers for July yet since July is not over. The number you give is for early access which was in June. On July 1st (only two days after early access) it was 77,305, and that will likely be the peak for July as it didn't even spike up at all for release. As of yesterday, not even a month since early access, peak player count per day is down to 49,639. It took until mid January, a month and a half for EW to fall to those numbers. So no, with the numbers we have access to, DT is not out performing EW. That said, if the post expansion content is good, the DT could hold on to more longer since post expansion EW content was quite bad. However, the expansion itself is not out out performing EW.

[NoOneofConsequence]

This can be a real thing. I experienced it with Destiny 2 recently. In the run-up to their own latest expansion, I was active on the forums there, and I have to say...as negative as this place is, these forums look like a paradise compared to the D2 forums. It actually did deflate my anticipation for the new expansion. Then the xpac actually launched, I put the forums in the rear-view mirror, and just...played the game. And let me tell you, I had a blast. It's a very real psychological thing that surrounding yourself with negative people, especially when it's a full-on echo chamber, can impact you negatively as well. Best bet if you start feeling that way is to just get away, go play the game, and have fun enjoying it!

100% with you on this. The forums almost killed the game for me at one time. Because you start to doubt your own opinions on whether or not you are enjoying yourself. Distance yourself from the forums. Look and feel for yourself, and understand that yours is just one opinion in a sea of 10s of thousands.

[Rekh]

Back then a sizable amount liked stormblood base MSQ more than heavensward
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...?highlight=msq

Interestingly I agree with them, but that's my opinion. I just wanted to bring this up to prove the point that MSQ feedback is hard for any company to really waste a lot of time with. The best they can do is follow trends and "what has worked in the past." MSQ/story feedback seems to boil down to "mixed reception" most times than not, specially for an mmo.

[Nothv13]

I'm not denying DT's intial great success mind you. I just find it interesting.

His July DT number is just the June DT number. SteamDB has not release peak July numbers. July first, DT was already down to 77k players, so that will be July's peak since it has only gotten lower since.

[boopadoop]

our forums are always, always negative tbh. and full of trolls... i've also seen a lot of positive feedback for DT in other places, but here...heh gl finding anything pos

but yes. yes we are. bc positive feedback is rarely given out by the average contended person versus the voluminous negative feedback from ppl who may or may not have legitimate concerns (and many imo are just bored trolls). we also have a lot of people who dont even bother to think for themselves because they follow "big" social media accts who might say thing a or thing b and decide to bandwagon off of that. i say this in general, not ffxiv specific... honestly the internet is the pits for a lot of reasons

anyway ffxiv forums perpetually not a the place to look if you wanna feel good abt anything

[Reimmi]

Providing feedback on the story because alot of players were unhappy isn't destroying the game. quite the contrary- providing feedback so they can improve is ff14s success story

[Reimmi]

our forums are always, always negative tbh. and full of trolls... i've also seen a lot of positive feedback for DT in other places, but here...heh gl finding anything pos

but yes. yes we are. bc positive feedback is rarely given out by the average contended person versus the voluminous negative feedback from ppl who may or may not have legitimate concerns (and many imo are just bored trolls). we also have a lot of people who dont even bother to think for themselves because they follow "big" social media accts who might say thing a or thing b and decide to bandwagon off of that. i say this in general, not ffxiv specific... honestly the internet is the pits for a lot of reasons

anyway ffxiv forums perpetually not a the place to look if you wanna feel good abt anything

Twitter is a hugbox, the subreddits are mixed.
my positive feedback is the content is looking way better than endwalker, which tended to make me fall asleep mid fight