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

[hydralus]

Bro's hobby is complaining on a forum about a game he hates. I can respect it. At least it keeps them off the streets.

[MsMisato]

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.

this way we can focus on next worst expansion being worst?

[Alicie]

It is frightening to see the game that empty. Even on popularted data centers amount of activity is very low. Influx of new players is very low and very slow, sloggish start does not helps. I can not bring any friends into game because they are facing multiple hunderds of hours grind (or extra $50) before they will be able to do any relevant content.
Please allow new people to start in latest expansion.

[Voidmage]

It is frightening to see the game that empty. Even on popularted data centers amount of activity is very low. Influx of new players is very low and very slow, sloggish start does not helps. I can not bring any friends into game because they are facing multiple hunderds of hours grind (or extra $50) before they will be able to do any relevant content.
Please allow new people to start in latest expansion.

What "relevant" content?
The endgame is simply the weekly raiding scene.

The problem isn't the long story up to endgame but that it's so extremely boring to do it with the state of the jobs, dungeons and trials till DT being in an atrocious state.

The story is the main selling point of this game and if people want to play that game they either know that or do it BECAUSE of the story.
I don't mind a skip personally but it's not the solution people think it is because what then? You simply are bored with the endgame.

The whole path to that needs to be interesting again with jobs being fun and content like crystal tower being properly addressed.
I would bet money, that would address a good number of issues already for new players because at least from what I have seen and felt myself by replaying the whole thing is that the story itself is fine but the whole construct around it is boring.

People act like there don't exist players who genuinely enjoy starting a game for the story.
This whole community has become so endgame obsessed nowadays or have forgotten their own journey.

The early game design needs to change from a gameplay perspective and not just giving a story skip.
I would bet, that if Ifrit wasn't a laughing stock that dies as soon as a newborn coughs at, then new players could and probably would enjoy the early game far more.

[Shistar]

It is frightening to see the game that empty. Even on popularted data centers amount of activity is very low. Influx of new players is very low and very slow, sloggish start does not helps. I can not bring any friends into game because they are facing multiple hunderds of hours grind (or extra $50) before they will be able to do any relevant content.
Please allow new people to start in latest expansion.

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

What content are they so desperate to do that they simply must skip everything that sets this game apart from other MMORPGs that actively ignore or delete older content, even against its own community's wishes? I feel it's more like endgame players are giving newbies the wrong idea about this game, or showing up expecting XIV to operate exactly the same way as other MMOs they've played.


The juicy part is the journey, not the destination.

[Nyastra]

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

What content are they so desperate to do that they simply must skip everything that sets this game apart from other MMORPGs that actively ignore or delete older content, even against its own community's wishes? I feel it's more like endgame players are giving newbies the wrong idea about this game, or showing up expecting XIV to operate exactly the same way as other MMOs they've played.


The juicy part is the journey, not the destination.

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

[ovIm]

It's like people forget that there's a whole ass story to do and your endgame friends can sync down to do duties with you... or make a new character to run it with you... specially since no content is particularly time-limited, there's really no rush to get into anything.

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

Are we playing the same game? MSQ is ~95% "watch this cutscene by yourself" and ~5% "oh look here is a 15 Minute Dungeon/Bossfight you can play with someone else". This starts off as not so bad as there are quite a few normal over world quests in the beginning that you can share, but that becomes less and less as the game goes on. (if I remember right, it has been a hot minute since I last experienced ARR)

With how much the amount of overworld gameplay quests having been minimized over the years, there is no real "playing together", doing the story with someone else means waiting for them to finish their cutscene so you can mount up and walk to the next cutscene dispensing NPC together, until a dungeon comes in sight.

When a group of my friends last brought someone into the game (during early EW), that person was desperately hoping for more content like PotD to play together for extended periods of time, despite having a small group of people to run content with. We lost that person because they felt too isolated when playing the MSQ, even with people around.

[ViinaS]

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

What?
Have you ever helped someone through MSQ?
It's pretty much nothing but waiting till said friend needs you for a Dungeon or Trial.
Cuz that's what I did for some friends.

Only time it was fun was when I was in DIscord with them and it was kinda like watching a playthrough.
But for 80% of it all you will just wait around till they need you for 20 minutes.

2 didn't make it till level cap and the 3 I helped and stuck around quit due to Dawntrail.
Not to mention that the time (and sub money) needed to get to cap will only increase.

[Yeonhee]

It's a foreign concept for most. Helping your new friend? Hah. Syncing down to do content with them? Hah. Making a new character to go alongside them? Pfft. It's not that complicated. Why are people trying to implement skipping the whole game??

Did we play the same game ? If I want to help my newbie friend, the only thing I can do is wait 10 hours for them to read their visual novel up to the point that they get a dungeon or a trial unlocked. Then do it again until the next after we finished this 15 minutes piece of actual gameplay.

Even without that, the game's biggest issue for new player is ARR's story is vastly uninteresting as well as being long as hell. You have to suffer through dozens of hours of bad story only for it to start getting better at Heavensward. And even then, the structure of the MSQ is very, VERY bad. There's pretty much no interactivity with anything outside dungeons and trials, that's just an enormous visual novel but without any choice to make.

And frankly, there's no reason for content like raid and such to not be available to everyone when they have the level to do so while also advancing the story on the side. There are people who do love endgame stuff and having to go through a 300 hours of "go there and watch this cutscene" to get the right to participate in those is just garbage design nowaday.

[BlisteringFrost]

Helping a newbie friend level up is 100% just letting them do 5 minutes of overworld stuff, watch 2 hours of cutscenes, then they need 20 minutes of actual help in their next dungeon.

And dawg. That's depressing.