FFXIV population decline continues

[CamuiKushi]

I don't think it's THAT surprising folks started the game and dropped off during Endwalker. I think a lot of old-school FF fans had heard the game actually got a good story that was "ending" and thought "oh, I can experience the whole thing now" and treated it like a single-time experience.

[SWATomega]

So I'll give my two gil what i think is happening. I think our expectations were too high or they were dashed be dawntrail. Reasoning is what we just came from, we just had the original story conclude many if not all plot lines were tied up. We were expecting to have the next expansion to be just like Shadow Bringers and Endwalker. The problem is how to follow up with content that was just as good as those two expansions when a new 10-year story is to begin. We came from characters we liked, WE were front and center to all that was happening, and we went from moment to moment, action to action.

Then we play the DT MSQ and we get characters that people don't like, where our character is in the background, and things are slow-moving. It is a jarring mental change; we wanted more but to start a new thing had to slow down story-wise.

I even kinda expected Dawntrail would be a rough patch for us, realistically how were they supposed to make DT truly equal or even out due ShB or EW. We come this super high in our character and other character development, we beat the bad guy, stop the man behind the curtain, and then save another world. Then we went to, you're a supporting character until the very end, it is a hard shift.

I do see the doom and gloom that FFXIV is dead, won't recover, yada yada yada. I think the player base will be okay, we are in a rough patch for FFXIV but I truly believe we will be fine. DT isn't done yet we still have 7.2 - 7.5 left, and we still have additional activities left, plus other stuff. I know that people hate the patch cycle on how slow it is or how spaced it is, but honestly nothing we can do there that is all the dev team.

This is what i think, i could be right or wrong on this. I love the game, the population will go up and down depending on a bunch of stuff but we'll be fine overall. I just want to UNGA BUNGA MORE and want Hrothgal armor for shoulders and long gloves to be fixed.

[Jeeqbit]

We were expecting to have the next expansion to be just like Shadow Bringers and Endwalker.

I don't think most people were expecting that, to be fair.

I do see the doom and gloom that FFXIV is dead, won't recover, yada yada yada. I think the player base will be okay

I don't think it will be okay. I know it will be okay. People return eventually when something good happens.

As for the game itself... still see hundreds of parties for High-End content and lots and lots of people progging chaotic. It feels like it's booming if you join parties for that. On Dynamis I've met lots of sprouts in mentor roulette, and found full Ocean Fishing parties. I'm not seeing practical evidence of this "decline" reflected in the game.

But also, worst case scenario, if the population became a quarter of what it has been, it would just be like Heavensward and Stormblood which were fine.

[AlanJust]

I don't think most people were expecting that, to be fair.
I don't think it will be okay. I know it will be okay. People return eventually when something good happens.

As for the game itself... still see hundreds of parties for High-End content and lots and lots of people progging chaotic. It feels like it's booming if you join parties for that. On Dynamis I've met lots of sprouts in mentor roulette, and found full Ocean Fishing parties. I'm not seeing practical evidence of this "decline" reflected in the game.

But also, worst case scenario, if the population became a quarter of what it has been, it would just be like Heavensward and Stormblood which were fine.

Bloody hell I have never seen such levels of coping, ngl I almost thought you were trolling

[Jeeqbit]

Bloody hell I have never seen such levels of coping, ngl I almost thought you were trolling

I am talking from 10 years experience playing the game. That is how I know.

[Zackneifein]

I don't think most people were expecting that, to be fair.
I don't think it will be okay. I know it will be okay. People return eventually when something good happens.

As for the game itself... still see hundreds of parties for High-End content and lots and lots of people progging chaotic. It feels like it's booming if you join parties for that. On Dynamis I've met lots of sprouts in mentor roulette, and found full Ocean Fishing parties. I'm not seeing practical evidence of this "decline" reflected in the game.

But also, worst case scenario, if the population became a quarter of what it has been, it would just be like Heavensward and Stormblood which were fine.

If the population of FFXIV fall that low, there is a high chance that Square Enix is going to put it in "maintenance mode" for ever, without any more content added.
"like Heavensward and Stormblood" could obvisouly be enough for players, but won't be close to enough for SE to continue to invest in it. There is even a chance that it would be the moment they decide to invest in a new one.

And if that happen FFXIV won't die, but will "end" in a sense.

Square Enix isn't known to be very patient with online game in decline, that's why they killed nearly all of their gatcha game even when they were just easy cash.

[Jeeqbit]

"like Heavensward and Stormblood" could obvisouly be enough for players, but won't be close to enough for SE to continue to invest in it.

They wouldn't need to if the remaining population sustained it financially (the game supporting itself). The mog station also exists, which was added as a way to get extra funds to support the game.

Square Enix isn't known to be very patient with online game in decline, that's why they killed nearly all of their gatcha game even when they were just easy cash.

Like how they weren't patient with 1.0 and waited 2 years for it to be remade?

I think that they only kill games with no fans. Which those games obviously don't have. FFXIV was different, even in 1.0, and that's why they bothered. They even said that was the only reason they bothered.

[Zackneifein]

They wouldn't need to if the remaining population sustained it financially (the game supporting itself). The mog station also exists, which was added as a way to get extra funds to support the game.
Like how they weren't patient with 1.0 and waited 2 years for it to be remade?

I think that they only kill games with no fans. Which those games obviously don't have. FFXIV was different, even in 1.0, and that's why they bothered. They even said that was the only reason they bothered.

Support itself is maintenance mode, not "I will release an expansion every two years and five patches between each" mode.

And 1.0 -> 2.0 was two things : a do or die moment for Square Enix where they made the right choice about their last released game that transformed a disaster that could have killed them in a marvelous success and, more important, was more than 10 years ago.
Square Enix isn't the same company than back then and their strategies aren't the same neither, and a 10+ years game with a declining population will never have the same amount of risk taken for.

And there was a Final Fantasy game nearly as old as FFXIV in the mobile game they killed, that had a very large fanbase before... declining slowly but surely.

[ViinaS]

I think our expectations were too high or they were dashed be dawntrail.[...] We were expecting to have the next expansion to be just like Shadow Bringers and Endwalker.

That is just not true and you know that. People were fully aware of it being the start of a new Arc and did not expect ShB or EW. They expected another ARR. And we didn't even get that. We got a godawful story that fails to set up anything except a Mac Guffin for a concept we already knew of, being Shard Traveling.

DT isn't done yet we still have 7.2 - 7.5 left, and we still have additional activities left, plus other stuff. I know that people hate the patch cycle on how slow it is or how spaced it is, but honestly nothing we can do there that is all the dev team.

That's not a positive. Realisticaly the devs and SE are very bad at stepping out of their formular. So the necessary changes will be 7.3 or 7.4 the earliest. I also highly doubt the Exploration Zone will be good. It will msot likely be a repainted Bozja cause they are so stuck in the mud with "it worked the last time, just copy paste" which can be clearly seen in the MSQ structure.
Not to mention eahc of those patches is almost half a year of nothing new after.
So if they don't cram in 8.0 prelude into 7.5 they have 2 patches to fix things or DT will be an entire flop.

[Velthice]

I don't give a single frick about the msq. You do that content once and then it's over. The problem is that unless you're interested in raiding or similarly higher end content, there's absolutely nothing worth doing, and that SE seems like they're completely fine with that cadence.

Can you imagine if there were no savage/ultimate content until 7.2/7.3? You wouldn't hear the end of the of it. So why is that reality ok for casual content? Of course having an endgame is important, but in an mmo as large as xiv you have to take into account and cater to a variety of players, you can't just keep making content for one specific group. I think a perfect example of xiv getting this right was ARR relics. It was something you could work on as soon as you finished the msq, was regularly updated, and at various points the relic weapon was useful as a baseline to get into the current raid tier. It was basically the bare minimum expected of you to start the first coil, and it wasn't uncommon to see people with animus and novus relics taking on second coil

At some point, SE seems to have decided that having a meaningful casual progression path (or at this point, having casual content at all within the first year of an expansion) was something that they were no longer interested in doing and now choose frontload their expansions with raiding content and make it the end all be all of progressing your character until a year in where SE decides that they can find the time to address the rest (and the majority of, mind) of their playerbase and grace them with gift of whatever content they can be bothered to pull out of their arse

All the promises of content in dawntrail mean NOTHING if it isn't implemented in a timely manner. If we have to wait half an expansions lifespan for field operations, exploration dungeons or whatever else, that is completely unacceptable. SE's priorities NEED to change. My greatest fear is that after two expansions of people begging for SE to give them something to do outside of raiding, SE finally delivers in 7.2 or 7.3 and people get it and go like "Look! Look! the content is here! SE listened to us! The game is good! I told you it would be!" and then SE sees that reaction and goes "we did a good job" and learns nothing. Then 8.0 comes around and the cycle repeats again with SE self assured that they can just have nothing for their playerbase to do for an entire year and it's completely fine for them to do so. Sadly, and I really do mean it makes me fricken sad, I see this as the most likely outcome