Quote Originally Posted by Sensui View Post
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).