FFXIV population decline continues

[BigCheez]

This makes me curious how long Final Fantasy 11 was around before the "Great Trust Change" that turned it into the game it currently is due to low population, and if we're approaching the point where the same will happen to Final Fantasy 14 now.

The problem wasn't low population. FFXI has a decent playerbase even to this day. The problem was that you were dependent on other players for pretty much anything and everything in FFXI and the entire playerbase had been at endgame for years, so the game was essentially unplayable for new players.

You need a party for leveling and to do your story missions, so they added trusts so that people could do that solo. You need to buy gear on the auction house and no one was selling low level gear, so they added a challenge log-like system that rewards a currency called sparks which you can use to buy low level gear from a vendor.

[NamiRocket]

The problem wasn't low population. FFXI has a decent playerbase even to this day. The problem was that you were dependent on other players for pretty much anything and everything in FFXI and the entire playerbase had been at endgame for years, so the game was essentially unplayable for new players.

That's called a population problem. That means you're not ever bringing new blood into the game in any volume that is sustainable.

[BigCheez]

That's called a population problem. That means you're not ever bringing new blood into the game in any volume that is sustainable.

It was more of a game design problem that created a cyclical ageing population problem. New players would buy the game, get to level 10 and realise they couldn't really get anywhere from there and then leave because it seemed like it was impossible to get anywhere without agonisingly slowly solo grinding to level 30 and then paying a merc to boost them in Abyssea (which most of them probably didn't even know was an option).

The problem wasn't that the game had a low population. The problem was that the game had an ageing population.

Now that it's very possible to get into the game as a new player, there are actually a lot of new players around in FFXI these days.

[Sunhwapark]

I wouldn't worry about the game's trajectory, it's not like I'm a shareholder or anything.

[BarretOblivion]

Main issue is competition, maybe not in MMO standards are increasing. People are playing other games that have recently released.
You have other issues like lack of "evolutions" of job designs from EW to now outside of further dumbing down of jobs and their identities with "reworks to job identity" promised next expansion instead of THIS expansion that people were clamouring for.
The gear grind is getting stale, especially with the "new" types of content to better bridge the gaps between roullettes and savage raiding coming out far too late in a raid tier instead of soon after or day one of the raid tier to add "variety" to the players.
Not making enough content for casual players while dumbing down the content you make for hardcore players because you are hoping those casual players will be "hardcores" at some point and don't ever do so because the prior point.
This has been a very weak expansion. I joined in HW and SB was my first current expansion I played through. That expansion people said was the worst one but... I can't say it was "bad". This expansion is just... unremarkable, far too tone deaf in the trying to be "safe" when they stuck with systems for 1 expansion too long.

[NamiRocket]

Main issue is competition, maybe not in MMO standards are increasing. People are playing other games that have recently released.

This is the thing people really aren't considering. Sure, the game may have gotten stale in a number of ways and that's for sure also a contributing factor, but there are increasingly a larger number of big, successful, often multiplayer games out right now that people are playing, too. People have finite amounts of both money and time, so it doesn't even have to be another MMORPG that's taking up all of both.

That said, another MMORPG is definitely one of those games. FFXIV's closest neighbor in the space, World of Warcraft, released their newest expansion, The War Within, just less than two months after Dawntrail dropped. While Dawntrail had kind of a lukewarm reception, The War Within was received extremely well and continues being a huge success for Blizzard. They really turned it around in Dragonflight and that's finally started paying off. This is the first time both games have had an expansion release in the same year (they used to alternate years before Endwalker lasted three of them instead of two).

Creative Studio III, or more appropriately Square Enix themselves, probably need to take a look at the game and consider making changes to how they do things as well. And I don't mean in how they write the story. People will always come back for the 20+ hours of new MSQ and dungeon content at the start of every expansion. I mean in how they approach everything after that. Because, while Creative Studio III themselves are okay with you stepping away and playing other games during downtime, Square Enix clearly are not. The game is a money maker and they need to fund it better than they clearly are if they want it to do better than it currently is.

[TakoyakiLala]

Not sure if it's still an issue for others, but the payment processor debacle back in April last year may have also contributed to player numbers dropping.

I STILL can't play on my old 10+ year old account because of that fiasco!

[AnnRam]

https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-14-active-players-large-drop-below-1-million/

Thoughts on this article and are you at all worried about the games trajectory?

People who play the game and do minimum content are leaving, the rest of 85% that consists of ERPs,venues and Mare are never going to unsub from the game, they got their Skyrim SE+SL Online.
Also trial accounts just straight into "moonhoopers" stuff and don't need to sub or buy the game.

[kiotsukete]

To have almost reached EW's viral statistic with Dawntrail's release is a good thing. This has been achieved... without Asmongold and everyone else playing, so consider that.

But according to the Lucky Bancho numbers referenced in the article, while EW gained more players between its launch and 6.1 (1.3 million to 1.7 million), DT lost players between its launch and 7.1 (1.4 million to 1.1 million). In fact, DT is the first expansion since SB to lose players between its launch and x.1 patch.

SB 663k -> 830k
ShB 943k -> 1.2m
EW 1.3m -> 1.7m
DT 1.4m -> 1.1m

7.1 was released in November before Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I don’t think you can write off the player decrease to the holidays.

The question now is how will SE react to so many players leaving FF14? What happens to Yoshi-P’s vaunted plans to keep the game going for another 10 years? Ironically, I think if this leads them to double down on remolding FF14 into a completely soloable game like they’ve been doing, and as they did with FF11, it will just hasten the end since I for one signed up to play an MMO with other players not a single player game with Trust bots.