The game needs to open up

[PyurBlue]

There is only one piece of content that may be able to provide a sense of discovery every time you run it and make it worthwhile to explore every nook and cranny. Deep Dungeon. With its randomly generated floors and randomly placed encounters and loot, it is, of course, the most popular of content.... ... ...oh.

The biggest contributor to that is probably duty finder. I don't think people are actually that averse to interesting dungeons. The speedrun mentality came from dungeon and content design, not the other way around. FF14 is very static. The core of battle content is rerunning the same dungeons over and over and the high skill endgame is running the same raids over and over. Players haven't even really had a chance to experience much else.

[Ephremjlm]

No, you have to ask yourself the following : Why Old School Sandbox MMO type have died?

I'm an old MMO player, i started on EverQuest in 1999.... And seriously, people who never experienced those type of content, should never ask for it.
The reason? Simple : The Players....

Who's gonna tell em that OSRS and Classic WOW dwarf FFXIV. Also, pretty much every MMO from back in the day has a thriving private server or retail server population in some cases in the hundreds of thousands, especially if you look at FFXI. Its actually a decent chunk of what the population was back in the day before MMO's were as popular. Seems like it all adds up and makes sense.

Also the most popular games on the plant are hands down FPS games, mobile games, and FPS mobile games lol. You wana talk about toxic that seems to be the most broard with the most open audience. Under the logic of "the players" isn't that what we want? Oh wait I think Yoshi P seems to agree since there IS a mobile game coming. GG's mates.

[brinn12]

I think that a lot of MMO would love dying like supposed FFXIV Doing XD

DSR release had FFXIV peaking at 55k players on Steam. FRU's peak so far was 36k.

Surely a lot of MMOs would want 36k, but why would they want to go down from 55k to 36k?

[Lorika]

DSR release had FFXIV peaking at 55k players on Steam. FRU's peak so far was 36k.

Surely a lot of MMOs would want 36k, but why would they want to go down from 55k to 36k?

errrr, how to say that : The majority of FFXIV player don't use steam... so... The Steam Chart numbers are very far from the reality.

[brinn12]

errrr, how to say that : The majority of FFXIV player don't use steam... so... The Steam Chart numbers are very far from the reality.

Why would a nearly 50% decrease in Steam activity not be reflected on other platforms? Dawntrail is the worst-received expansion in the game's history, with the head designer publicly apologizing for it and promising changes in content. I really don't see how a developer would like this situation to their game. But maybe we are living in different universes and playing different games.

[Ath192]

errrr, how to say that : The majority of FFXIV player don't use steam... so... The Steam Chart numbers are very far from the reality.

All scientific studies are done from a sample size, and steam is a large enough sample of the player base it can be used to make observations. Unless you have a good piece of evidence pointing to why Steam would not reflect broader trends you can't expect people to take you seriously by discrediting it without evidence because you feel like it.

A good way to not troll would be: "Actually, steam numbers do not reflect player base trends because *convincing evidence*"

[Kaliesto]

I'm joining in your chorus Topic Creator, I too had enough of this BS.

Why would a nearly 50% decrease in Steam activity not be reflected on other platforms? Dawntrail is the worst-received expansion in the game's history, with the head designer publicly apologizing for it and promising changes in content. I really don't see how a developer would like this situation to their game. But maybe we are living in different universes and playing different games.

How often have they promised us and how often has it been broken? I'm tired of their excuses, and how much they catered to a certain demographic of players. None of this would not have happened if they were not so hellbent on making this game not having any real fun factor to it except outside of story content which isn't much.

Cut & Paste, and please the casual crowd for "accessibility" which is such a BS reason to make everyone else suffer for it because it proves that they don't believe that players won't help eachother to actually learn and grow.

There is a good reason why PVP is so popular right now for example because there is some actual strategy involved, and also thanks to the new changes finally balancing things out better.

[Lorika]

Why would a nearly 50% decrease in Steam activity not be reflected on other platforms?

And why would it be reflected on other platforms?
What is true on one platforms is not necessary true for the others.

I'm only pointing that : Steam charts doesn't reflect the reality because we don't have the numbers for the other platform.

For the rest of your post i agree, FFXIV reputation was hurt a lot by Dawntrail, and SE need to fix the mess asap.

But i think that was needed in fact, the two last Add-on were too good and CBU3 thought that everything would be fine even with an inferior product.
Maybe like that they will start to think for fresh things.

[Swordsman]

Just because they game has followed a format for a decade doesn't mean it has to remain this way. Everything in this game is too compartmentalized and on rails.

How hard would it be to try out an expansion where zones aren't locked by MSQ,
-where quests don't have braindead markers telling you where to go
-where dungeons are nothing like the stale formula we have
-where underwater isn't just a pretty landscape and combat/breathing mechanics are tried out.
-Where exploration and open world events are tried through the entire introduced zones instead of designated exploration instances like Eureka and Bozja.
-Where some side quests are just damn hard
-Where some open world dungeons are introduced, and the mobs are just lethal

Sure, not all of these systems and things will be hits with everyone, and people are going to complain about them but no one will be able to point the finger and say they've given up just like we all feel they have in DT.

It's obvious to me the current method to the game will just drive it to the ground sooner rather than later. It's time to break the shackles and explore another path for this MMO.

This game needs to work on producing:
1. Shock
2. Awe and wonder
3. Curiosity
4. A feeling of freedom

It would be great for the game for once to release content that doesn't feel like the same junk reskinned, for the 100th time.

I agree with a lot of this. The game has lost a lot of its appeal and continues to do so with each patch. IMO it still beats the competition which is why I still play, but the bar for the MMO market is currently really low.

[Lorika]

but the bar for the MMO market is currently really low.

Well, yeah... All the MMO in the Top 5 are all around 10 years old at least (with WoW being 20 years all) XD