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

[Basteala]

Whether people want to hear it or not, this really is the consequence of a lackluster MSQ. The longer patch cycles are rough, but when there's no hype for the MSQ the is shocking lacking in new casual content.

The new field op comes out in 7.25. In May. Before that would have people grumbling but at least they could look forward to the next chapter of their beloved story, and that would at least tide them over. Right now, I'm not even sure how many people count the MSQ as viable content. I sure don't.

I am not surprised. Back in the Day we got 2-3 Dungeons per Patch and not just one. We also had shorter Development cycles than we have now. We get less content in longer Development cycles. Doesn't make any sense right?

Also the quality of the content suffered a lot. Events are now 2 minute talking quests. Go back a Few years and we had small, fun, mini dungeons for several events like the Halloween event or even the valentines Day event. To much Ressources are wasted on Ultimates which people use forbidden plugins or Boost services to clear.

The normal player gets literally nothing except one dungeon each larger patch.

PvP got turned into a boring Chore people only play till they have their rewards, jobs leveled up or to stomp randoms in premades and relish in their misery.
Unique Rewards, be it pve or pvp, no longer exist cause some first world feelings could get hurt.

I hope it drops further so Squeenix wakes up or just end Service of the damn thing.

Yeah...this game used to be a haven for casual players. I'm not sure whether to blame a vocal minority in hardcore raiders, I don't know whether to blame the CEO change in 2023(?), or a host of other things.

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0 to right ship at this point. That's asking the player base to put up with another year of uninspired story, content, and gameplay, where quantity and quality are hitting Warlords of Draenor levels of bad.

[Araxes]

Whether people want to hear it or not, this really is the consequence of a lackluster MSQ. The longer patch cycles are rough, but when there's no hype for the MSQ the is shocking lacking in new casual content.

The new field op comes out in 7.25. In May. Before that would have people grumbling but at least they could look forward to the next chapter of their beloved story, and that would at least tide them over. Right now, I'm not even sure how many people count the MSQ as viable content. I sure don't.



Yeah...this game used to be a haven for casual players. I'm not sure whether to blame a vocal minority in hardcore raiders, I don't know whether to blame the CEO change in 2023(?), or a host of other things.

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0 to right ship at this point. That's asking the player base to put up with another year of uninspired story, content, and gameplay, where quantity and quality are hitting Warlords of Draenor levels of bad.

Maybe FF NEEDS the current Shadowlands/Warlords like phase to become good again. WoW is having a massive resurgence after they learned their lesson. The Game is up again to something around 7 million "active" players (world wide).

When i started FF shortly before the Heavensward expac, i could barely sleep without thinking of playing again. Now i can barely get myself to come online and step into my house so it doesn't get demolished. I guess Housing demo is saving them subs.
Playing mostly WoW now together with my Wife. Everything goes all day and you have numerous types of content to get max gear, not just one.

[Red-thunder]

I am not surprised. Back in the Day we got 2-3 Dungeons per Patch and not just one. We also had shorter Development cycles than we have now. We get less content in longer Development cycles. Doesn't make any sense right?

A lot of players defended the reduction in dungeons because they believed Yoshi P's lies.

It's honestly very sad. This is what they said back in the day:

If it means more content, I'm happy for it.

Having more variety in my daily EX roulette isn't as important to me as having a wider variety of things to do once I've done my daily EX roulette.

I believe Yoshi explained why only one dungeon. It was a valid answer.

Also... why do we need more dungeons beyond what SE told they are going to give us? Whenever I use DR for my daily reward, I get the same set of dungeons:

50/60/70: KeEpEr Of ThE lAke and The Ghimlyt Dark (2/38 dungeons or 5.2%)
Leveling: Toto-Rak, Doma Castle, Castrum Abania, and Dohn Mheg (4/30 or 13.3%, or 4/27 or 14.8% if you remove the trials)

Square Enix figured you can reduce content by promising something vague and unverifiable.

You can promise that by reducing the dungeons, you can focus on "quality". But what is quality? How would we know when they promise was made real? No one knows. So they can reduce and not actually give anything in return.

[hynaku]

Needs to go down to ARR levels.

[Basteala]

Maybe FF NEEDS the current Shadowlands/Warlords like phase to become good again. WoW is having a massive resurgence after they learned their lesson. The Game is up again to something around 7 million "active" players (world wide).

When i started FF shortly before the Heavensward expac, i could barely sleep without thinking of playing again. Now i can barely get myself to come online and step into my house so it doesn't get demolished. I guess Housing demo is saving them subs.
Playing mostly WoW now together with my Wife. Everything goes all day and you have numerous types of content to get max gear, not just one.

I hate to say it, but you're probably right. The trouble is I'm not sure if FF14 is big enough to survive that and have a resurgence. Especially with SE's CEO being who they are, it's every bit more likely that the game gets downgraded to a F2P shell of its former self.

[brinn12]

We lost most of the people who came from WoW. We lost many veterans and casuals who were here before. The development team is only taking the blame for messing up the MSQ, and instead blames the playerbase for every other major problem the game has — at least in the rare cases where the devs acknowledge such problems exist.

And for those coping that 7.2 will save FFXIV: getting lower highs and lower lows is not a good thing. It's called a downtrend.

[DPZ2]

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0

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"?

[Nero-Voidstails]

not gonna lie bad msq and the woke community is mostly killing me I never have felt a game that protect lies and BS so those kind of people don't leave

[User202503201232]

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"?

The goalposts will keep moving until morale improves!

[Rithy255]

Sure 7.2 will see a boost in players but lets not pretend that damage hasn't been done already.

Frankly I want to see the playerbase fall further until the devs actually start to listen to feedback. (which will likely be at 0 players at this rate).