FFXIV population decline continues

[NamiRocket]

I do, purely for the fact that any of it has to be said.

So, telling people that casual players made the game a success and can "dismantle [it] piece by piece" in "one fell swoop" if other players don't fall in line is, in your estimation, something that "has to be said"?

[Vintersol]

I think a lot of people just feel vindicated in their dissatisfaction with the state of the game being echoed and are glad that the developers are receiving a clear message that change is needed.

What are the changes that are needed?

[BigCheez]

What are the changes that are needed?

Primarily, the game needs more repeatable casual content in the first year of an expansion cycle. There's a decent amount of raid content but there's very little to do once you're done with it, and if you don't raid then there's literally no value in subscribing between x.0 and x.3.

Aside from FRU and CoD, 7.1 was just a couple of one time quests and then logging in for 5 minutes per day to do your beast tribe for 2 weeks, then 30 seconds per week to do the custom delivery for a few weeks.

The exploration zone and relics need to start by x.1 at the latest and I think the game could also do with another source of repeatable content with good rewards. Treasure maps are good but they've been reusing the same 2 doors and roulette wheel formulas for years and I think most people are pretty bored of them. We could really do with some new treasure map instances. I think variant/criterion dungeons had a lot of potential but needed more time to cook. If they added more rewards to the variant version and gave people an incentive to run them a few times per week, and also made the parts between bosses less tedious, I think those would be good too.

[Jeeqbit]

That graph doesn't really align with covid. It shows a slight downturn in december 2020, which is after everyone was isolated at home.

The lockdowns lasted different timeframes depending on country. The effect of people recovering from the lockdowns took time. Some did not get a new jobs or their sector didn't fully recover right away.

Regardless, it does align with the game going viral, and the players that joined during that did not necessarily stick with the game or have the same amount of attachment to it as the bulk that were already playing.

People remember having a lot more to do during Endwalker

No? Everyone on these forums was saying there was nothing to do during Endwalker. Sound familiar? Because we're just repeating the same song and dance this expansion (as we always have).

I pointed out in another thread, FFXIV steam charts look really concerning.

95k for EW launch, 92k for DT launch. Slump to 29k for EW, slump to 27k for DT. Basically the same.

It's worth noting that there is always a slump to about the current amount in December due to the holidays, and that January's figure has literally only had 4 days to be collected and will change over the course of the month.

The peak for EW launch was pretty much replicated for DT.

That's impressive, considering the game had gone viral in EW and it has been an uphill struggle to reach the statistics we had while it was viral. 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.

Most people in this game don't do Savage or Ultimate, so they are getting close to 0 content for months.

We recently established with multiple statistics that 30% of people clear Savage (the entire tier) and the figure is more like 50% in JP. Still a minority overall, but not insignificant, and doesn't count those who merely clear floor 1 or 2.

[Eyrilona]

Seeing how the later years FFXIV have nerfed a couple of older dungeons that's been fine for years upon years because people started complaining how "they were too difficult" just sends me the message how people just don't put in the effort to improve themselves as gamers as people once used to anymore, and that's casuals included.

Since nobody else seems to have picked up on this claim, I am going to ask what you mean, because the only simplification of dungeons I am aware of was because they couldn't get Duty Support NPCs to handle dungeons with unique and interesting mechanics. The other side of old dungeons feeling too easy now is all the potency increases retroactively given to job abilities as the jobs developed (due to SE's, "we never want to take away, so every rebalancing only means making some job's numbers bigger" approach), moving player power further and further away from what it was when those older dungeons were made.

But I may be wrong -- in what instance were older dungeons revamped as a dev response to players complaining about them being too difficult?

[MicahZerrshia]

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.

Well, when it comes to FFXI, it was a completely different situation.

When FFXIV was about to release they dropped Abyssea on us, which upped the level cap, allowed us to level stupid fast, burn through content and gear up extremely easily, while at the same time rendering all old content and gear obsolete. They were essentially trying to rush us through the game, expecting us to just naturally transfer over to FFXIV. Then 1.0 happened (because as a tester I can attest that they completely ignored all of our feedback. For isntance, no one thought the 1.0 fatigue system was even remotely a good idea) and they scrambled to keep FFXI going to help keep the lights on while they were fixing XIV. But, they had already devestated the game and lost a large chunck of the playerbase due to a decade of work and dedication being gone in a literally instant, so they had to scramble which is what brought about trusts and such. They even gave us a new, and frankly amazing, expansion in Seekers of Adoulin that not only helped retain players but brough ppl who had left, back. Expansions in FFXI don't take nearly the work that FFXIV expacs do, and they had a dedicated team led by someone that cared for the world a lot and listened to their audience, so it wasn't hard for them to do.

So, the situation would not be the same unless they have another, yet unannounced, mmo on the burner waiting to be revealed. Even then though at least we knew about XIV when Abyssea fell on our heads like Dalamud would do to Eorzea just a couple short years later. What we are seeing now is purely just inexperienced, and likely overworked devs who are just trying to do something, while being led by someone who has lost his passion and feels he knows better than his audience.

[BigCheez]

No? Everyone on these forums was saying there was nothing to do during Endwalker. Sound familiar? Because we're just repeating the same song and dance this expansion (as we always have).

Forum users are not the average player. We've reached the point where even the average player has nothing left to do.

[Jeeqbit]

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.

What was this "Great Trust Change"?

The only things I know that really happened there were a lot of bans that wrecked trust. Obviously, SE isn't repeating that (or the regular banwave reports would look a lot more catastrophic).

Other than that, they started working on this game and virtually abandoned FF11 but if you spend just a day trying to set it up you will see why they had to... it has many times more spaghetti code than FF14 ever will and they've said how it can't be salvaged. They failed to make it into a single player game or whatever they were trying to do and they still have been unable to detach it from PlayOnline.

Its population never reached the levels of this game as far as I know given the amount of people who used computers was less back then, being on less platforms than this and rivals such as WoW.

They started work on FF14 in 2005, so they were planning to abandon FF11 as early as 3 years after it released anyway. So its population decline was inevitable - people were going to jump ship to the new one and wreck its population regardless.

Anyway, for as many that might develop distrust, I guarantee there are plenty that are filled with trust because I meet them in the game all the time. Either they are unphased older players like myself or newer players that have a backlog of things to do or are completely satisfied by the social environment of the game. You could argue a fair share of raiders will be satisfied by the sheer amount of high-end duties these days if they aren't wound up about rotations and metas and just enjoy classes for what they are.

[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.