FFXIV population decline continues

[Rolder50]

Population decline? They should be lucky that RP community still gives a damn, otherwise they should just merge the servers at this point. They are doing just the bare minimum to keep ffxiv going, at the same time they request all the players to pay the sub for what? Content that last for a few days after patch launches? Good luck with that if they truly want to keep this game alive at least for the next decade. Too bad people that are praising this game doesn't know how much damage they are doing, less critical feedback means simply that they will stick with this ancient formula, enjoy!

Even then it’s not really the RP crowd, but the Gooner crowd that’s really keeping things afloat. If they ever add anticheat or ban for cosmetic mods, they’d lose half the player base instantly

[Hanayumi]

Even with the decline it still would take the collapse of SE or some insanely new MMO to actually kill FFXIV. While I do believe our voices are being heard I also believe we wont see any ideal changes to FFXIV anytime soon, I genuinely believe not even by 8.0... their development process is just that bad and that slow...

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

Even with the decline it still would take the collapse of SE or some insanely new MMO to actually kill FFXIV. While I do believe our voices are being heard I also believe we wont see any ideal changes to FFXIV anytime soon, I genuinely believe not even by 8.0... their development process is just that bad and that slow...

The bigger problem is that people keep playing it and paying for it even though they don't enjoy it anymore, because they're so hooked on it and have been playing it for so long that they can't imagine not playing it at this point.

Think about how many messages there are here and on reddit that are basically like "well, I at least want to finish this raid tier," or "well, I'll see what 8.0 is like before I quit for good," or "well, I don't want to lose my house," etc. The only message that sends to SE is "whatever you're doing now is good enough to warrant continued payments from me, so keep it up."

To anyone reading this that fits into one of those buckets: it may be time to cut the cord. If you're not enjoying the game anymore, you're literally just throwing your time in the trash.

[BigCheez]

The bigger problem is that people keep playing it and paying for it even though they don't enjoy it anymore, because they're so hooked on it and have been playing it for so long that they can't imagine not playing it at this point.

Think about how many messages there are here and on reddit that are basically like "well, I at least want to finish this raid tier," or "well, I'll see what 8.0 is like before I quit for good," or "well, I don't want to lose my house," etc. The only message that sends to SE is "whatever you're doing now is good enough to warrant continued payments from me, so keep it up."

To anyone reading this that fits into one of those buckets: it may be time to cut the cord. If you're not enjoying the game anymore, you're literally just throwing your time in the trash.

It's the WoW dilemma. We're currently in BFA. No one is enjoying the game but a lot of people are still hesitant to leave because they've invested a lot of time, effort and in some cases money into the game and it has sentimental value for a lot of players. If 8.0 doesn't fix a lot of the issues then I think a lot of people will just be done. There comes a point where, while you have a lot of memories of good times with the game, clinging to a sinking ship is just preventing you from making new memories somewhere else.

[Hallarem]

It's the WoW dilemma. We're currently in BFA. No one is enjoying the game but a lot of people are still hesitant to leave because they've invested a lot of time, effort and in some cases money into the game and it has sentimental value for a lot of players. If 8.0 doesn't fix a lot of the issues then I think a lot of people will just be done. There comes a point where, while you have a lot of memories of good times with the game, clinging to a sinking ship is just preventing you from making new memories somewhere else.

I quit before Shadowlands, started in actual vanilla. And I can say, the last 5 years that kept me in? Was pure community, guild members and such. The gameplay loop is much better than FFXIV, but the story was crap and hidden in expensive novels.
You aren't a true WoW player if you don't play WoW and actively hate it too. You stay because its familiar and there is nothing better on offer. Now that I've played 14, and it's the best for RP mechanics. I'm stuck in the same loop of a company that can't dev themselves out of a hole and as a cherry on top, the story sucks now too. So BOTH games' stories suck, woopidooooooo~~

[Altina_Orion]

I quit before Shadowlands, started in actual vanilla. And I can say, the last 5 years that kept me in? Was pure community, guild members and such. The gameplay loop is much better than FFXIV, but the story was crap and hidden in expensive novels.
You aren't a true WoW player if you don't play WoW and actively hate it too. You stay because its familiar and there is nothing better on offer. Now that I've played 14, and it's the best for RP mechanics. I'm stuck in the same loop of a company that can't dev themselves out of a hole and as a cherry on top, the story sucks now too. So BOTH games' stories suck, woopidooooooo~~

Shadowlands sucking isn't a secret, but dragonflight and tww have been received quite well. If you haven't played them its disingenuous to say the game sucks.

[Connor]

Feels like they’ve just given up entirely on this expansion and are just leaving it to rot while they work on their ‘super mind blowing ultimate shake-up 8.0 uniqueness update!!!’

As if we don’t already know it’s going to be some more 120s cooldowns with no interaction and a visual upgrade to 1 pre-existing ability

[Daralii]

Feels like they’ve just given up entirely on this expansion and are just leaving it to rot while they work on their ‘super mind blowing ultimate shake-up 8.0 uniqueness update!!!’

As if we don’t already know it’s going to be some more 120s cooldowns with no interaction and a visual upgrade to 1 pre-existing ability

Most of the "new abilities" that are visual updates to old abilities end up looking and feeling worse at this point. The particle effects are bigger and more elaborate, but the sound design is awful and there's no weight to the character animations and no feeling of impact.

[MayuAmakura]

Could definitely see population decline on Chaos data center ever since DT was released. Unfortunately I was forced to leave Chaos for Light since raiding was dead there and I was tired of needing to constantly go back and forth. This led to others leaving as well so now servers like Sagittarius are extra low pop.

[Hallarem]

Feels like they’ve just given up entirely on this expansion and are just leaving it to rot while they work on their ‘super mind blowing ultimate shake-up 8.0 uniqueness update!!!’

As if we don’t already know it’s going to be some more 120s cooldowns with no interaction and a visual upgrade to 1 pre-existing ability

Still waiting for my Gunbreaker Quadruple-down ability