Is it time to Sunset FFXIV?

[Havenchild]

Translation: "I don't enjoy the game anymore so they should just shut it down."

This. Seriously people somehow don't understand that when a game is just not for you anymore, it's ok to walk away temporarily or permanently. It doesn't mean however the game is dying.

XIV is literally in the top 2 of most popular MMOs on the market and rotates into #1 everytime a good MSQ expansion lands. How is that failing? By what metric should it "sunset" by? Lmao

These forums have a bunch of people that complain about the game but continue to give SE their money while simultaneously saying the game should shut down.

Just quit bro, stop talking, end the para social relationship with the game/ devs etc

[Sensui]

Personally, I'm still doing content after playing since ARR so I can't really relate to this, but I can understand it not being enough if you restrict yourself to not completing certain things.
It is a patch lull. Obviously the congested status changes during patches or for strategic reasons (such as to push people over to Dynamis and balance it out).

As far as Lucky Bancho's numbers go, those are based over multiple months (so could capture activity from an earlier month) but are also typically taken during patch lulls or before patches to capture the lowest numbers, to give a better sense of the baseline rather than the patch spikes.

We shouldn't be in a patch lull 4 months after a major expansion release. The trickle feed is barely life support. There isn't enough variety of things to do. Gear system is mediocre and they likely won't ever change it. So they could at least put things like character personalization behind content. At least then there would be things to do, but they don't, so there's not..

Tattoos.. Face paint, skin, Hair, eye colors and styles... different ear styles (pointy tips for those half elf humes) different ear types for viera. . emotes...

Put them behind content that forces you to play the game. But they don't... there is so much they could do, but they won't. Theyre content just drip feeding us a days worth of content every 4.5 months, same BS as always. Stretching it out as long as they can so they can invest as few hours as possible into the game while milking it's player base..

But cool. We get a donut earring.

[AureliusIX]

This. Seriously people somehow don't understand that when a game is just not for you anymore, it's ok to walk away temporarily or permanently. It doesn't mean however the game is dying.

XIV is literally in the top 2 of most popular MMOs on the market and rotates into #1 everytime a good MSQ expansion lands. How is that failing? By what metric should it "sunset" by? Lmao

These forums have a bunch of people that complain about the game but continue to give SE their money while simultaneously saying the game should shut down.

Just quit bro, stop talking, end the para social relationship with the game/ devs etc

This is a typical example of someone who I find tiring to interact with in this community, doing more harm than help to the extent that Yoshida himself is asking players to please don't quit so where these people got the idea telling players to quit would help FFXIV I do not know unless they are trolls. If your response to people who are airing their criticism and complaints is to simply dismiss them, that your response is to tell people to quit guess what is going to happen? They will quit and the player numbers reflect that reality, FFXIV is trending downwards you don't need to believe me look it up for yourself.

Finally here is YoshiP's own comment (albeit translated) asking players not to quit the game to not give up, to not retire to trust that content is coming, this is from PaxAus an evening with YoshiP.
https://i.imgur.com/ymLlDLM.png

[Sensui]

This is a typical example of someone who I find tiring to interact with in this community, doing more harm than help to the extent that Yoshida himself is asking players to please don't quit so where these people got the idea telling players to quit would help FFXIV I do not know unless they are trolls. If your response to people who are airing their criticism and complaints is to simply dismiss them, that your response is to tell people to quit guess what is going to happen? They will quit and the player numbers reflect that reality, FFXIV is trending downwards you don't need to believe me look it up for yourself.

Finally here is YoshiP's own comment (albeit translated) asking players not to quit the game to not give up, to not retire to trust that content is coming, this is from PaxAus an evening with YoshiP.
https://i.imgur.com/ymLlDLM.png

Maybe it's just too much to ask. Between this game (played since 2013) and FF11, I've spent almost 20 years of my life investing in their IP. But, yeah, maybe it's just too much to ask that SE keep me entertained.

I'm overall just sad, I guess. I've clearly spent a lot of my life with my character, made some friends (and enemies) and enjoyed making my character into what they are. I really did enjoy the game, but it's driving me mad with where we're at right now. I don't want to be bored with it.

Moving from FF11 to FF14 was fun and exciting and I got to experience the awe and wonder and new experiences, that I got from when I first started playing FF11 all over again. I guess. I more or less, just want that experience again. I'm not getting it from this last expac, that's for sure.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Maybe it's just too much to ask. Between this game (played since 2013) and FF11, I've spent almost 20 years of my life investing in their IP. But, yeah, maybe it's just too much to ask that SE keep me entertained.

I'm overall just sad, I guess. I've clearly spent a lot of my life with my character, made some friends (and enemies) and enjoyed making my character into what they are. I really did enjoy the game, but it's driving me mad with where we're at right now. I don't want to be bored with it.

Moving from FF11 to FF14 was fun and exciting and I got to experience the awe and wonder and new experiences, that I got from when I first started playing FF11 all over again. I guess. I more or less, just want that experience again. I'm not getting it from this last expac, that's for sure.

That's called burnout my dude.

[kiotsukete]

Unfortunately, there’s been no public indication that SE is even thinking of developing a next gen FF MMO any time soon.

Instead, in a recent interview Yoshi-P said:
“I consider Final Fantasy 14 as my life work. So, I would like to continue developing 14 until I retire. And I would like to arrange it so that even after I retire, 14 will continue.”

Source:
https://www.si.com/videogames/featur...hida-interview

Personally, I think this is a bad move because FF14 has been showing its age for a long time in its game systems and visuals. The graphics update helped a little, but I doubt it’s nearly enough to carry the game for another 10 years. Before somebody says graphics don’t matter for MMOs, if that were true everyone would still be playing FF11.

All good things come to an end. Sure, FF14 is still a cash cow for now, but who knows how long that will continue and MMO development takes years and years (2.5 years just for an xpac). So all the more reason that now is the time, while the player base is still going strong, for SE to be investing FF14 profits in their next money making FF MMO rather than unrelated money losing projects as they seem to be doing.

[PaulusHamsteru]

Well since they can't figure out their own "spaghetti code" as they call it and blame it for every single problem they have, maybe it's time they actually do something about it and start working on a new game.

[Striker44]

We shouldn't be in a patch lull 4 months after a major expansion release. The trickle feed is barely life support. There isn't enough variety of things to do. Gear system is mediocre and they likely won't ever change it. So they could at least put things like character personalization behind content. At least then there would be things to do, but they don't, so there's not..

Actually, what we're seeing here is the same cycle that has occurred for years, and yes, 4 months after release is plenty of time for a patch lull. ShB is widely praised as the "best" expansion of FFXIV, and it featured practically the exact same "lull" at this point (actually 3 months post-release, not 4 months) that DT is experiencing, and EW had an even bigger drop in population at this point in its lifespan (though some of that is accounted for by the "WoW Exodus" starting to peter out). Point being, there's absolutely nothing unusual or exceptional about what we're seeing right now.

This one isn't fun anymore and I don't know how we can recover from it.

It may no longer be fun for you, but there's nothing to "recover" from in the larger picture. DT just had the highest pre-sales of any expansion in the game's history, and is featuring the same exact population "cycle" that EW and ShB did (it's actually doing better retention-wise than ShB, though see my note above). It may just be time for you to move on, like I gradually did from GW2, SWTOR, and WoW in the past. Humans naturally need change over time. The game itself, though, is doing very well and to even think about "sunsetting" it is, frankly, absurd.

Also, if the game is so congested, why is there a free log in campaign? That smells of low log in numbers.

Isn't it just one specific DC (the largest one - Aether) that's "congested"? Also, it's just the typical low-point in a cycle, which is very different than "low" numbers overall. For comparison, we're hanging around ~18k at the moment on Steam logins, which is 3-4x higher than the regular population back in the ARR-SB eras.

F11 only ran for 8 years before FF14 1.0 released. Why would it be surprising if another game was in development?

Because we're no longer in the era of MMO's being the "king" of gaming. The risk vs. reward is nowhere near as rosy as it was back in the 2005-2015 era.

ugh not jeeq coming to defend on every criticism thread

Yes, how dare someone introduce some common sense and positive thoughts into this forum! Only doomsaying is allowed!

If you don't have a house or belong to the crowd who only play for RP or 'clubbing'...there isn't much to log on for anymore.

I don't have a house, nor am I part of the RP or "clubbing" scene. I still have a ton of stuff to log on for, including finishing leveling my DRG and completing the role quests, doing the FATEs in each zone, and a whole plethora of content from past expansions I'm still either in the middle of or haven't even started yet (plenty of crafting and gathering to do, too).

I took YoshiP's advice and I've been playing other games as caring for FFXIV and seeing a game I loved fall down into mediocrity very energy draining. To put so much of my time and money into this game for it to be in the state it's in. I'm logging in once a week at the moment for my Savage reclears and that's it. I'm completely caught up with all battle content outside of Ultimates as there was nothing to do that was a big grind in EW, the relic weapon was a Tome exchange and there was no Exploration Zone.
It just makes the game feel so empty that there's no current big content to do and the way the gearing system is, you can't even grind for gear once you've got savage bis you're done for two years. Now the game just seems to be getting even worse and the milking of the monetisation/ cash shops is really grating but that's a whole other thing.
I just can't understand how SE/ C3U allowed this to happen from the high heights and player base numbers during the end of Shadowbringers to Endwalker where the game was the most popular and most played MMO in the world to now where there's this entire feeling of the game on it's last legs throughout a lot of the remaining player base. They dropped the ball big time in what I can only see a decision they took not to make the game the best it could be for Dawntrail but simply push out MVP.

Simply put, it sounds like this is a "you" situation where your own disenchantment from something is causing you to see this terrible "objective" thing that just simply doesn't exist. Me? I'm not seeing "mediocrity" anywhere. I'm still having a ton of fun playing a game I find engaging with a playerbase that is leaps and bounds larger than it was back when I started playing (2015).

[Reinha]

Having a free login campaign only 3 months into an expansion did crack me up a lot.

Why aren't players paying to play in the new expansion?

Oh, right. All of a sudden so many people experience natural "burnout" from MMOs this October that it negates the growth of EW and logins are as low as in ShB. What a weird coincidence. Nothing to do with the fresh expansion, of course.

[LittleImp]

A lot of people are finally taking Yoshida's 'play other games' advice, many of whom were mono-gaming XIV for some time, and I've noticed rather than assuaging their burnout it ends up just making them double down and enhances their internal justification for their burnout.

XIV looks so so much worse in comparison when you go play another game that implements better versions of the same systems in XIV that have become so dull, shallow and stagnant.

To be frank, Dawntrail is essentially a carbon copy of Endwalker, despite Endwalker being at times viciously defended by the community. Everyone's focus is suddenly on the games systems and patch schedule because the story of DT wasn't well received and there isn't massive influencer groupthink, and an overwhelming amount of people are finally realizing that a lot of the criticisms that were raised in SHB/Endwalker were right all along. I can't help but feel a little bitter about it, because these issues were pointed out time and time again for the last 5 years, only to be brushed aside by some of the very people who have now joined the chorus. It's interesting the degree to which peoples perception of the story seems to influence their outlook.

Ultimately, the white knights reap what they sow. They defended the worst of this games choices over the years, and now the game they supposedly love is falling off like never before. They're not going to shut the game down or sunset it any time soon, but the degree to which it squandered the one time opportunity that fell into its lap (wow exodus) should be studied.



side note, it's been funny seeing various content creators in this games category forced to get a day job when the category stopped paying.