FFXIV population decline continues

[KiiNGKRUSH]

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?

[Immut]

I'm not worried at all, I've been sounding the alarms for two expansions now. Nobody wanted to hear it. This MMORPG is slowly turning into an MMOVN.

[Skaadenfroid]

Probably not an issue. There's little to no appeal at the moment for casual gamers with the content actually expecting people to put in effort to complete it, no exploration zone for grindcore content, and little to no 4 player party or solo content.

All of that is consistent with x.1 though and you see the same drop off in player count in previous expacs, it's just happened sooner in DT than in previous expansions which SHOULD be expected given SE has verbalized they don't feel the need to baby casual players this expansion (along with most of the midcore/hardcore players having cleared the raid tier enough to not want to keep griding it).

Stormblood was fine and that was BEFORE data center and world travel; the playerbase could drain pretty significantly and the game would be just as playable at all tiers.

Also (in america at least) there are a lot of direct economic contributors, which you see in ShB as well until about the time the Blizzard controversies start spinning up and content creators jump ship. If the best story this game could offer can suffer from the same issues and still be wildly successful then probably DT is doing fine.

[Clockworks]

Nothing surprising, this company has shown times and times again they are absolutely out of touch with the entire playerbase, and the playerbase keeps defending their terrible decisions.

[Voidmage]

I don’t know how bad or normal this is nor do I really care if I’m being honest. I have my theories to the why and so on but who knows.

Is it worrying? Right now I wouldn’t say so.
Imo having strong competition and a reason to develop good content is good for these kind of games.
Personally (even though it’s probably the wrong thing to say) I feel kinda relieved?
EW was when Yoshida and co were on a massive high and even if it was deserved after Shb I think they enjoyed a bit too much glory for too long from players and media alike and it showed with the most lacking content expansion called EW (and let’s be honest that was also when the DT story was written).

Maybe losing players and getting criticism for quite a number of things while getting compliments for things like the new dungeon difficulty will push them to get serious again.
Things like chaotic show that they do want to implement new things.

So all in all no I am not worried but am kinda positive that this might be a chance to get back to better times.

It will start to get worrying if they ignore it though.

[Rueby]

MSQ was pretty bad, there's nothing to do aside from farming EX and then wait 9 months to get some wings. Pretty boring...
I'm done with chaotic, helped a few kill runs today, obtained the hairstyle...

I wish this game had more meaningful open world content but I feel like the game is gonna implode if a bunch of people showed up in one map.

[DynnDiablos]

Probably not an issue. There's little to no appeal at the moment for casual gamers with the content actually expecting people to put in effort to complete it, no exploration zone for grindcore content, and little to no 4 player party or solo content.

All of that is consistent with x.1 though and you see the same drop off in player count in previous expacs, it's just happened sooner in DT than in previous expansions which SHOULD be expected given SE has verbalized they don't feel the need to baby casual players this expansion (along with most of the midcore/hardcore players having cleared the raid tier enough to not want to keep griding it).

Stormblood was fine and that was BEFORE data center and world travel; the playerbase could drain pretty significantly and the game would be just as playable at all tiers.

Also (in america at least) there are a lot of direct economic contributors, which you see in ShB as well until about the time the Blizzard controversies start spinning up and content creators jump ship. If the best story this game could offer can suffer from the same issues and still be wildly successful then probably DT is doing fine.

You do realize it is the casual players that built this game to success. If they want to focus on the 2% of the midcore/hardcore playerbase, they should expect the numbers to continue to plunge. Some of us who have been around over a decade may just decide to never come back. The game is on a downward spiral, the writing quality tanked with DT. I highly doubt this game makes it to 10.0.

[DynnDiablos]

I don’t know how bad or normal this is nor do I really care if I’m being honest. I have my theories to the why and so on but who knows.

Is it worrying? Right now I wouldn’t say so.
Imo having strong competition and a reason to develop good content is good for these kind of games.
Personally (even though it’s probably the wrong thing to say) I feel kinda relieved?
EW was when Yoshida and co were on a massive high and even if it was deserved after Shb I think they enjoyed a bit too much glory for too long from players and media alike and it showed with the most lacking content expansion called EE (and let’s be honest that was also when the DT story was written).

Maybe losing players and getting criticism for quite a number of things while getting compliments for things like the new dungeon difficulty will push them to get serious again.
Things like chaotic show that they do want to implement new things.

So all in all no I am not worried but am kinda positive that this might be a chance to get back to better times.

It will start to get worrying if they ignore it though.

When the majority of your playerbase is casual and turned off by harder dungeons and chaotic raids, I don't believe going "all in" on more of that type of content is wise. The mid-core/hardcore players represent the minority.

[NamiRocket]

You do realize it is the casual players that built this game to success. If they want to focus on the 2% of the midcore/hardcore playerbase, they should expect the numbers to continue to plunge.

This us versus them narrative is so goddamn tired. Other MMORPGs cater to both types of players just fine. It's not a case where you have to forsake one to do the other. Stop stepping all over the things others enjoy about the game just to prop up the things you enjoy about the game. It's pointless.

EDIT: I just realized, you're the person from the other day who made the insanely deranged, "We do not forget, we do not forgive," speech in the other thread. I don't know why I'm bothering.

[Voidmage]

When the majority of your playerbase is casual and turned off by harder dungeons and chaotic raids, I don't believe going "all in" on more of that type of content is wise. The mid-core/hardcore players represent the minority.

Can you stop with derailing this into yet another casual / hardcore debate?
Not everything is black and white.
I didn’t say anything about this stuff.