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

[Darkshade]

The game has become formulaic, predictable and boring. The systems in place actively hurt many aspects. It goes beyond just mere stagnation. The developers go to the trouble of making these huge intricate zones and then they only serve as a backdrop to a mostly bland and forgettable story. While I did enjoy ShB/EW, I would argue that the story peaked in HW/SB.

There is no adventure, there is no danger, there is no difficulty, or real sense of community and the game rewards those willing to cheat and punishes others. Player housing actively hides and sequesters large chunks of the player base, with it's many many instances of the same set of houses and rotated houses. The party finder both doesn't go far enough [not cross datacenter] and goes too far, essentially removing the need to necessitate communication. World/DC travel minimizes sense of community and player reputation.

I continue to pay to keep a house I don't use in a game I don't enjoy because I hope one day it will be fun again. Without the bravery necessary to make sweeping changes to game systems, this game I fear will slowly fail.

If it is fun for you I am glad for you. I hope one day it is fun again for me too.

[Exmo]

This is the most bizarre line of thinking I think I've ever seen. "People love what we're doing and are invested in our very successful story, so we'll blitz through the conclusion in such an unsatisfying way that the big bad that we've spent 10 years hyping up is a midboss loot pinata, all so we can hurry to The Passion of the Wuk?" Where is the logic here?

SHB was much more popular than Stormblood. Devs rightfully interpreted that to mean players preferred all the business with shards, ascian and light vs dark to all the garlemald stuff. So they used this feedback and focused on what players seemed to enjoy.

You can't please everyone of course.

[BlisteringFrost]

SHB was much more popular than Stormblood. Devs rightfully interpreted that to mean players preferred all the business with shards, ascian and light vs dark to all the garlemald stuff. So they used this feedback and focused on what players seemed to enjoy.

You can't please everyone of course.

I wonder what happened during SHB that kept people at home for 3 years....

What could it POSSIBLY be..... Hm....

[Myotis]

Recently i feel that quite outdated system of the game work deeply against me other than on mine benefit demotivating me futher to be away from the game.
I don't think something like a video game should be seen as a life accomplishment and when we see certain achievments , accesability restriction where we gotta seek discords to actually enter the new content area... I feel that i'am the issue for the game instead of being a living part of it.

The more people can actually enjoy the content the more people are willing to be part of it and give a life to the society living in a game.
Otherwise we are where we are right now where everything was supposed to be for 3-7% of playerbase who does clear everything.
Heavy duty grind is what we do daily at our jobs pushing it to be in the game does increase the burn out.

I would like to hear any poof of evidence where accesability did caused a harm towards the game itself. So far the market does prove that most living games are those what are the most accesible where most of the playerbase can enjoy lots of the content.

I want to share an quick example of FRU to unlock it you do need to clear latest tier 4th fight.
However what does happen when you are too late for the farm train on that and there is a new tier unlocked?
No one does the previous tier or is willing to learn it with you to prog it you will end up on hours over the hours in the PF.
Someone could say find a static - but then that's addtional challange where certain static would be willing to grind that as well.

Life circumstances are not equal for everyone yet access to a content should be specially if the requirements are outdated when the new tier is being realised.

There is way more examples like that in our game like tome cap etc... At this point is it even worth to mention those? Do they listen to us?

[Grimforth]

It's incredibly sad that so many people here don't understand that the best way to hurt a company that's making subpar content in their game is to simply not buy it or unsub.

Yet the playerbase would rather make posts complaining about "make better content" this, and "this game is boring" that and still keep playing instead of just simply quitting not resubbing until they fix stuff.

[Striker44]

I wonder what happened during SHB that kept people at home for 3 years....

What could it POSSIBLY be..... Hm....

They're talking popularity as in satisfaction/reviews, not sheer numbers. ShB had significantly inflated population numbers because of Covid and then the WoW Exodus near the end, but it's also rated as the best expansion in practically every online survey. DT is a great example of how something can have a huge population (DT had the highest sales of any expansion) but not be rated highly. It's not just that a lot of people were playing ShB, it's that they were also shouting its praises.

[Exmo]

I wonder what happened during SHB that kept people at home for 3 years....

What could it POSSIBLY be..... Hm....

Shadowbringers was released July 2019, well before the first lockdowns hit, and received critical acclaim well before its popularity boon later into the patch cycle. It's safe to assume a two year lead into each expansion, so the decision to focus less on Garlemald probably occurred over a year before the Lockdown+Exodus numbers came in.

With that established, those who compare current numbers against Lockdown+Exodus numbers would have us believe this is a fair comparison, as if external factors are consistent and equal. Which they obviously aren't. It's much more coherent to compare current numbers against StB and early patch ShB numbers. With that in perspective, thread titles like this one are clearly just bait.

[JMadFour]

gawd, I cannot wait until we finally get into the 8.0 cycle so we can move on from pretending like Dawntrail was The Worst Expansion That Has Ever Been Released In The History Of Gaming(tm) because of one character and a corny gospel song.

[Xurtan]

It's incredibly sad that so many people here don't understand that the best way to hurt a company that's making subpar content in their game is to simply not buy it or unsub.

Yet the playerbase would rather make posts complaining about "make better content" this, and "this game is boring" that and still keep playing instead of just simply quitting not resubbing until they fix stuff.

Ngl, I don't get this argument. Most of the people complaining are complaining because they love the game and want it to be better. You can like MANY aspects of a game, far and away enough to keep you playing, and still be critical of other aspects of it. It's not an either/or black and white issue.

[bic12]

gawd, I cannot wait until we finally get into the 8.0 cycle so we can move on from pretending like Dawntrail was The Worst Expansion That Has Ever Been Released In The History Of Gaming(tm) because of one character and a corny gospel song.

Lmao the game is boring AF with or without the story. It's literal second monitor cookie clicker content atp