FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Ath192]

As someone who usually defends XIV, who's still mostly happy with the game, who usually troubles herself with doing all sorts of content, and who understands that game development isn't as easy as flipping switches on a whim...

I'm starting to resent the 4 month patch cycle. The way content is structured just doesn't spread well over such a long period of time.

They always either quit or come to the dark side. Welcome. We have cookies.

[DiaDeem]

They always either quit or come to the dark side. Welcome. We have cookies.

Oh no, the only time I unsubbed was when they were doing the weird new payment thing and it forced me to unsub and I had to get a Time Card through G2A for a couple months before I could sub again, but other than that, I've been here ever since Sept 2013.

Sadly, they don't even reward loyalty anymore

When this game bleeds players, is not by one big nuke, rather by a thousand cuts.

[ElysiumDragon]

I'd really like to know how much of this whole mess is just natural burnout from 14 hours a day gaming sessions of a single game for 4 years.

Because I get it, happened to me during Endwalker. Ended up sitting out a lot of the last two patches because I didn't want to log in much, and got back into it properly leading up to Dawntrail.

I've no agenda to push, nothing to sell. I thought Dawntrail was alright but dragged at the start, that Wuk Lamat was nice but yapped a bit too much, that the battle content's been solid this expansion, and that job design is overall in a better place than it was in the past, but that they maybe overcompensated on a few jobs. (Summoner having what seems like very little room for skill expression is probably not the best design choice).

[Red-thunder]

I'd really like to know how much of this whole mess is just natural burnout from 14 hours a day gaming sessions of a single game for 4 years.

Because I get it, happened to me during Endwalker. Ended up sitting out a lot of the last two patches because I didn't want to log in much, and got back into it properly leading up to Dawntrail.

I've no agenda to push, nothing to sell. I thought Dawntrail was alright but dragged at the start, that Wuk Lamat was nice but yapped a bit too much, that the battle content's been solid this expansion, and that job design is overall in a better place than it was in the past, but that they maybe overcompensated on a few jobs. (Summoner having what seems like very little room for skill expression is probably not the best design choice).

Lol how do you even get burnout on FF14? What is there to even do? Lmao

The real burnout isn't playing 14 hours a day because no one around me does that, not even the top raiders. People are bored when they come back to the game after being unsubbed for 3 months. THAT is how stale the game is now. You get burnout on this game after playing for 6 years or 8 years or 10, not because you're playing 10 hours a day. Not even 1 hour a day. But because this game hasn't changed in 10 years lmfao. In the next patch we're getting Bozja 2.0 aka Eureka 3.0 aka Diadem 4.0 aka 3.1 Diadem 5.0. And what will 50% of it be? FATEs 6.0 and they have not added ANYTHING to FATEs in 10 years other than a single mob you can kill to get some extra XP.

And once you've stopped raiding when you realize they don't do anything other than the donut out left right spread stack light party partners shiva titan tiles expanding shrinking etc slop, each patch offers less than 5 hours of content over four months, most of which has already been done before in this game. Even the story is getting repetitive.

One good thing about this game though is that it's never been easier to ERP. Hell there's even animations now. That's four months of content if you can't find a guy or gal IRL lmfao

[Red-thunder]

Your goalposts shift constantly it's not even funny

you literally celebrated people leaving wow for FF14 but honestly this is probably your real opinion anyways

Inb4 "the hateful bitter malcontents on the forums blahblahblah

[Bonoki]

Something that isn’t talked about enough is how FFXIV isn’t that fun to watch, and that’s a huge reason why so many people left. Many of the WoW refugees who came over were raking in views during the MSQ hype, but once they hit the endgame? Their numbers tanked—because, let’s be honest, FFXIV’s endgame isn’t good streaming content.

Even our biggest FFXIV streamers struggle to keep their audiences engaged. The game doesn’t have the kind of high-energy, unpredictable content that makes for good live entertainment.

So yeah, it makes complete sense that many people left. If you’re a streamer, your livelihood depends on keeping an audience—why stick around in a game that actively loses viewers?

[Red-thunder]

do you think SquareEnix is somehow going to start releasing content at 4x the speed as the past?

Yoshi P is so good at propaganda he really managed to convince a whole bloc of people that they're actually already producing at peak capacity.

Bruh they're literally focusing on two other new games. This game is their side project.

[Clockworks]

Yoshi P is so good at propaganda he really managed to convince a whole bloc of people that they're actually already producing at peak capacity.

Bruh they're literally focusing on two other new games. This game is their side project.

Its been 6 years they're working on viera and hrothgar hats, that's peak capacity right there

[DPZ2]

Yoshi P is so good at propaganda he really managed to convince a whole bloc of people that they're actually already producing at peak capacity.

Bruh they're literally focusing on two other new games. This game is their side project.

And you know this for a fact because ...?

[ovIm]

And you know this for a fact because ...?

Because the man Yoshi-P himself has actually said that CS3 are working on two more titles in an interview with a different gaming site.
Now we don't know how the workload is balanced within the team, or how much capacity the project FFXIV even requires, so whether 14 is a side project or not is debatable, but his words do imply that not all resources CS3 have available are used on FFXIV.