Quote Originally Posted by USAFJerrySo View Post
Yes, 7.2 is square last chance to add meaningful content, to have a better story, & such. Because if it doesn't a lot of people will continue to leave the game including myself as we know it won't get better.
I have to agree with this sentiment, only because their patch cycles are so long. People don't wait around forever. They move on, even if they do happen to look back from time to time. It may take longer for some players over others, but a lot of people have already adopted their "wait and see" approach over the past year or so. A lot of them just decided they have seen enough and left, and with the dissatisfaction in the forums and other social media, I can assume 7.2 might be the breaking point of many players as well if it doesn't live up to the hype. If the sample from Lucky Bancho and Steam are accurate, then FFXIV has been bleeding a lot of players recently, and at a very fast rate. Even after the general hype dies down, previous expansions usually maintain a steady growth rate overtime in the post-patches. FFXIV didn't grow but saw a drastic decline instead. I've been popping in on the forums during the free login campaigns to check if the game's problems are properly getting addressed, but I was mainly spending my time playing other games for the last couple of months and having fun. Most people on the forums are all new faces. A lot of consistent forum posters just stopped posting and playing in general. It indicates these people indeed have unsubbed since the complaints haven't been addressed very well and are still at the forefront of the discussion threads today.

For me, I heard 7.2 was dropping with Exploratory content and was originally going to wait until the patch dropped, but I ended up changing my mind and resubbing early to give a friend a gift for Valentines Day for staying in touch. Great friends really do go a long way in a social game like a mmo.


Still, the new exploratory zone is the main deciding factor for me to see as to whether the game will ever improve its PVE design. On my first day back after resubbing, I did a couple of roulettes and faced the grim reality as to why I unsubbed and made me want to go right back to cancelling my sub for next month. PvE in general (and especially healer gameplay) was so unpalatable and dry compared to what I've been experiencing in the last couple of months. Battles was so scripted and so hallow, devoid of decision-making. Pretty much everything in this game can be boiled down to "dps harder". The feeling did not improve much on tank either because of how ridiculously powerful tanks are and how lacking the interaction with the enemies are. I did not realize how bad this game actually got when I had actual gameplay to compare it to. I can't believe I'm saying this, but a F2P but P2W FOMO MMO I'm currently playing felt like I'm making actual gameplay decisions more than FFXIV currently can do (in both gearing and moment-to-moment combat), even with all the jank I have to deal with in that game. I'm having more fun over there than here as far as PvE gameplay is concerned, because while there's a huge focus to DPS, the developers finally remembered DPS isn't the end-all to a game and subsequently started designing their content to account for these changes.

Here's to hoping Shades Triangle and Phantom Jobs change my mind, because this is what SE considers as going out of their box to make fun design choices they can't do in their usual bland PvE design. If this still ends up letting me down, I won't bother staying around to consider trying out their 8.0 design. The only reason why I might consider staying subbed occasionally is just hanging out with friends because practically everything in the game has not met my basic expectations. If my friends leave as well because they reach a point where they also can't login to the game anymore, then that's that.