FF14 player count has fallen off a cliff and is now at 2019 levels (3/16/2025)

[Kaurhz]

Monetarily, you may not consider 1mln subscribers as a failure.

But you also shouldn't be considering a game on a downward trajectory as a successful thing either. All it takes is for that trajectory to hit a threshold that they are not happy with before you start seeing more monetization in the game and ideas, e.g., more subscription tiers, that offer more than just additional retainers or character space per server, more cosmetic items on MogStation, more mounts which would've been suited better as in-game rewards (e.g., Shadow Wolf), and so on.

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

[ServerCollaps]

it has the same active player numbers that wow has and wow just dropped a big patch while ff14 is still on a draught

i think they are very successfull with what they are doing

[brinn12]

Drastic? As in ... what? Closing the game down and spending upwards of six years creating a new one? You do realize that the storyline, artwork, quests and gameplay design are moving from pre-production to production for the rest of Dreamwalker, right? Aside from adjustments, there will be no major earth-shaking changes to anything in-game until the next expansion. That's how expansions work.

From the OP's perspective: Since when is 1 million active players considered a failure? When is Operating Income (aka Profits) of 17.3 billion yen [FY2025/Q1-Q3, Q4 ends in two weeks] considered a failure?

More importantly, since when did the LuckyBancho census indicate "total number of paying subscribers"?

Study finance a bit more, and you'll find the answers to your questions. Why wait for a company to go bankrupt to call it a failure? The sooner a downtrend is identified, the better. FFXIV is in a downtrend, just like SE's earnings. Are you aware that the 17 billion number was much higher before?

What truly matters at the end of the day is whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing over time.

[Absurdity]

it has the same active player numbers that wow has and wow just dropped a big patch while ff14 is still on a draught

i think they are very successfull with what they are doing

Not sure where you're getting those numbers from.
Granted neither Blizzard nor SE publish their numbers officially so even Luckybancho is just an estimate.

But any cursory search for WoW's player numbers seems to be sitting somewhere between 7-8 million monthly and anywhere between 200-700k daily unique active players.

[YukioKobayashi]

It has now dropped to below 1 million players and to nearly Stormblood territory.

That means we get Stormblood quality content soon, right? RIGHT? o.o

[MuraBoy]

Can we get much lower? (So low)
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh-oh, oh

[User202503201232]

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

Definitely. It also just seems that Yoshi P does not understand what exactly the discontent is about. He has repeatedly said that he is confused by the reception and when asked about longstanding issues answered something completely orthogonal to what players are actually concerned about.

I think they are self aware that they legitimately do not know how to fix the sinking boat. So if they've already mentally given up, why bother fixing it? Just try to cash out and recoup as much of the sunk cost as possible.

[Larirawiel]

Ohhh, i am sure, that they will try to fix it. Because if they don't then SQEX is over. FF14 carries the whole company. If the game dies then SQEX dies too.

But it seems, that the current devs do not even know how and why the game works. It is like, that they memorized some things but they do not know the reasons why the things are like they are. And this is the reason why the game is so formulaic. They just copy&paste things from ShB for the third time and they wonder why the people are not happy with it. They cannot figure it out why things, which worked in the past do not work now. Blizzard has made this error too. But they listened and they changed thing massively. It will be interesting whether SQEX can also make such changes or not.


Cheers

[User202503201232]

Something got brought up to my attention:

From Dawntrail onwards, the absolute number of new characters is lower than in the Heavensward and Stormblood periods, when the overall number of characters achieved was lower.

It seems like their corporate strategy of constantly attracting new players, churning through players so that getting bored by the absolute dearth of content is not a concern since there's always fresh blood to replace the old... that seems to be finally coming to an end, in the sense that it no longer works.

They have taken the veterans for granted to chase the imaginary "young", "modern" gamer out there, but outside the WoW exodus that strategy hasn't succeeded. Especially when the MSQ is tediously long and is conveyed in an extremely outdated format.

[Supersnow845]

Something got brought up to my attention:

From Dawntrail onwards, the absolute number of new characters is lower than in the Heavensward and Stormblood periods, when the overall number of characters achieved was lower.

It seems like their corporate strategy of constantly attracting new players, churning through players so that getting bored by the absolute dearth of content is not a concern since there's always fresh blood to replace the old... that seems to be finally coming to an end, in the sense that it no longer works.

They have taken the veterans for granted to chase the imaginary "young", "modern" gamer out there, but outside the WoW exodus that strategy hasn't succeeded. Especially when the MSQ is tediously long and is conveyed in an extremely outdated format.

Square always seems to focus on particular elements that in a vacuum seem to be “smart” but ignore massive conflicting elements that make the decision stupid

The “make everything easy for the hip new gamer with the attention span of an average tiktok addict” may not be a terrible strategy…….if you didn’t have to slog through 200 hours of MSQ. The whole “fix the lack of healers by making them easy so they aren’t scary” may not be terrible but……..MMO players will never not blame healers for everything even if it isn’t their fault

They never seem to look holistically at a problem they are trying to tackle