FF14 in 10 years

[Kaurhz]

Won’t last another 10 years unless they start actually making more of an effort to release some actual content sooner.

More and more people are getting used to their same tired old formula. More people are growing less attached to their personal house. When you have casual players writing threads about no content, then you know something is ‘giving’.

[Sylpharia]

If things are not changing in these 10 years, it will probably enter maintenance mode if 8.0 turns out to be disappointing (sadly my expectation) somewhere in that expansion now that the main selling point is it's (current) weakness.
Honestly it's 1 more good competitor away from being in real trouble, infact I think they are using the mobile game to have top spend less on the PC version

[LilaIronman]

Dead game in 10 years

[Exmo]

Whether the game will still be around in 10 years depends mostly on the whims of upper management and not on player numbers or the developers' interests.

[Mawlzy]

Whether the game will still be around in 10 years depends mostly on the whims of upper management and not on player numbers or the developers' interests.

The whims of upper management are generally related to profit, surely? Hence player numbers. Although I guess they could respond to falling subscriptions by producing less content.

[Exmo]

The whims of upper management are generally related to profit, surely? Hence player numbers. Although I guess they could respond to falling subscriptions by producing less content.

For most companies yes. For Square Enix, who can say.

Edit: for example, they may decide to sunset FFXIV if the profits predicted for it are less than what they hope night happen if they were to move CS3 to work on a totally new project. That could happen in 10 years, it could happen in 2 years, profits be damned.

[Connor]

For most companies yes. For Square Enix, who can say.

Edit: for example, they may decide to sunset FFXIV if the profits predicted for it are less than what they hope night happen if they were to move CS3 to work on a totally new project. That could happen in 10 years, it could happen in 2 years, profits be damned.

Aren’t CBU3/CS3 or whatever they are now confirmed to be working on two separate ‘totally’* new projects concurrently with ffxiv? They already expect devs to be pumping out new games and maintaining FFXIV at a service level that generates profits (which I guess they’re currently doing considering they don’t seem too worried about all the people leaving lol)

*unless it’s ff16-2 or some shit which wouldn’t surprise me lol

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

Ignoring all the (admittedly amusing) snark for a bit: it's an interesting question. Given that games like EverQuest 1 and Lord of the Rings Online are still around in 2025 and receiving new content, there is little doubt in my mind that FFXIV will still be around in ten years' time. But what that looks like could go many different ways:

-- Is it still using a subscription-based model, or has it transitioned to a free-to-play model?

-- Is it still receiving content updates, or has it reached a final state?

-- Is most content still gated behind the MSQ?

-- Is the population still high enough that players can progress through required instanced content via the Duty Finder?

-- Did anything ever break the rigid formula of the past ten years?

-- Have they added "classic" data centers to revitalize the game?

The "Big Four" in the MMORPG space -- WoW, FFXIV, GW2, and ESO -- seem unlikely to be dethroned, given that this just isn't a genre developers seem interested in pursuing (mobile gacha games like Genshin Impact have a monthly player count that absolutely dwarfs these four games combined), so it seems pretty safe to say that this is what genre fans are stuck with for the remainder of the genre's lifespan, for better or worse. I definitely see them all living at least another decade, if not longer.

I see a lot of "oh people will leave if there's not more content released," but I've literally been seeing that for a decade with FFXIV now. There is a vocal group of people with a severe video gaming addiction who spend eight or more hours a day, every day, logged in, complaining about how there's nothing to do. These people are not remotely representative of the average player, and no amount of content will ever satisfy them. They're also not leaving. They'll make a big forum post about how they're cancelling their sub, and good-bye forever, yadda yadda, and then, finding themselves directionless in life a few days later, they'll be right back at it. Everything we've seen regarding player count trends with Dawntrail puts it right about at the levels of Endwalker for this point in the expansion lifecycle, so there's very little cause for concern on SE's part yet.

[Colt47]

10 years? Huh that ambitious,

27% decline we are not eve in 7.2, game will be dead in 8.2 at most

It's not the decrease in population from patch to patch it is the decrease in population from expansion launch compared to the next launch. The game peaked at the launch of endwalker and did not reach the same peak when going into dawntrail, presumably because the direction of the game that was chosen went against the wishes of the majority of players. Viability of content is going to be a huge problem going forward. Hardmode content is going to become a lonely experience and zombie FCs are going to become more numerous. Player collapse into a single point to try and make things viable is usually what happens immediately when a scenario like this happens, but people were prevented from collapsing like in Endwalker to the Aether DC.

They also are making difficult content, but making it difficult in the wrong ways and have been doing this for years. The developers do NOT know how to create large team based combat encounters. Good encounter design focuses on a core set of people and the masses, so that way when someone is learning content they can still be useful while not hindering the core set of people. The only kind of content the developers know how to make are dedicated group dance challenges for small teams, which puts enormous pressure on the individual actors to perform. It doesn't allow for a flexible number of people of different play levels to participate effectively, which is why it is a complete waste of time to be building it. That's another reason for the population decline and why I think this game is going to become increasingly niche.

[Nebelheim]

In 10 years ff14 could be in a similar spot as ff11 and release its last major patch and enter semi maintenance mode while providing small scale monthly patches to possibly rotate unreal trials and other monthly content. Or release small scale story archs that last a single patch or 2.