Now that the game is officially on its deathbed, what are your thoughts?

[AvoSturmfaust]

Dawntrail is not like every expansion. People are leaving because the content has been weak.

the content was in every expansion weak, its the same formula nothing changed its literally the SAME as always with 1 difference
EW had Variant, DT has Chaos Raid, thats it and DT will have more content at the end then EW because we got a exploration zone which we didnt get in EW, so sorry but its like i said ALWAYS the same

[AvoSturmfaust]

Dipping a couple thousand has been the norm during low patches and minor content droughts, not going to a 5 year low. That's something else entirely.

a couple thousand? did you actually check your facts? the time between 7.2 and 7.3 had always HUGE drops not only a couple thousand and like i said you cant literally count the last few years in because of all the WoW player and covid like Catwho said earlier, when do people understand it? the 2020 numbers are the real numbers

[Mawlzy]

the content was in every expansion weak, its the same formula nothing changed its literally the SAME as always with 1 difference
EW had Variant, DT has Chaos Raid, thats it and DT will have more content at the end then EW because we got a exploration zone which we didnt get in EW, so sorry but its like i said ALWAYS the same

I just don't think this is the case.

The DT story was... uninteresting, at least to me.

Cosmic Exploration was embarrassing.

OC/FT was a royal fuck up.

[Mawlzy]

a couple thousand? did you actually check your facts? the time between 7.2 and 7.3 had always HUGE drops not only a couple thousand and like i said you cant literally count the last few years in because of all the WoW player and covid like Catwho said earlier, when do people understand it? the 2020 numbers are the real numbers

I guess it's conceivable that the intrinsic limitations of the game mean that it cannot maintain a player count above 2020 levels.

The problem is that the quality of the game is manifestly getting worse, both in terms of the cadence of content release and the quality of that content. I'd love to be proved wrong, but on its current path there is no way FFXIV will even stabilize at 2020 numbers.

[AvoSturmfaust]

I guess it's conceivable that the intrinsic limitations of the game mean that it cannot maintain a player count above 2020 levels.

The problem is that the quality of the game is manifestly getting worse, both in terms of the cadence of content release and the quality of that content. I'd love to be proved wrong, but on its current path there is no way FFXIV will even stabilize at 2020 numbers.

But thats kinda a personal opinion, i know many people are unhappy how the content is atm but there are plenty people which love it, take as example me, i love OC, i love FT and i will love the DD even if its just a improved version of PotD

for you the quality drops, for me it increases because the content outside of savage/ultimate finally starts to not be a push over dummy fight

[All_Nonsense]

To the op :
I mean if you are no longer enjoying the game .then it is time for you to pack up your bags and move to some other game .
For me I am still enjoying the game and my friends are still playing .

To the catgirl:

I am unsubbed. Most of the people I used to play with every day haven't been around in months. Even now very few of us are playing regularly anymore - even I don't log in daily at this point. I'm just making sure the lights get turned off before I lock up. Around this time in EW I was saying the same thing to the first wave of trailblazers unsubbing and quitting the game forever. I didn't get it. Time made sure to remedy that for me.

I was you once. And you will be me too some day. And when that day comes, may you enjoy the solitude of it.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to stir the pot before you go - the people on the forums love it

[All_Nonsense]

you cant literally count the last few years in because of all the WoW player and covid like Catwho said earlier, when do people understand it? the 2020 numbers are the real numbers

When the game enters a soft maintenance mode in 8.0 and development time between patches is increased to 6 months as the veterans of CBU3 are redistributed to other projects while the new hires continue writing their shonen slop story and copy-pasting dungeons from a decade ago, are you going to keep blaming Covid and WoW for it? Or will you finally realize (too late) that the dev's have been fleecing you because they think you're an idiot who will play the game no matter what they do (oh hey, just like WoW did!)

HW numbers by the end of 7.3. I'll be watching and waiting.

[TheRealQuah]

The iron bell is tolling as the cash shop is inundated with mid-tier or old outfits for $40 to make up for cratered subscriber population, loot drops for new content is just old loot from past expansion content, and mogpendium content isn't popping at all despite the "incentive" of getting yet another earring you're ne

Hardcore raiders have been shafted with the cancellation of Ultimate and no new raid content until January. Mid-core players have been shafted with the "Chaotic" raid that body-checks (SE doesn't know how to make content "hard" aside from punishing a lack of perfection), and now with the Field Operation raid that body checks with 48 players (they forgot what made Baldesion Arsenal and Bozja good). They're re-releasing Palace of the Dead for the 4th time, and Variant/Criterion dungeons - which they promised more of, are nowhere to be found. Everyone already knows the new Blu content is going to be "beat Pandemonium raids lol" and only 500 people will ever do it. The Beast Master content is going to be a bad copy-paste of Blu since that's what everything else in the game is.

The devs got mad at us during the last live letter for not playing the content they made and said "sorry you didn't like it" instead of apologizing for letting 60 year old developers continue to make content that would have been popular in 1999; ignoring a quarter century of QoL improvements and content preference changes that have occurred in the gaming industry since they made their last generational hit (it was Dragon Quest 3 or something like that).

SE has extended the dev cycle by a month each patch to deliver us the least content we've gotten in over half a decade for the same price we were promised so much more. Even the story - the main selling point of the game for years, is bad now.

The next dungeon will go like this: Pull 2 packs down a hallway, kill, pull 2 more packs, kill, go to boss, repeat 3 times. The new trial will be in/out, left/right but with different graphics and some no-name boss saying voice lines over the top of it. The Alliance raid will nostalgia bait the 22 people who played FF11 and still play FF14 with the following format: Add pack, boss, sub-boss, boss, sub-boss, boss, boss. There will be a cutscene partway through the last boss fight - that's what makes it special.

Knowing what comes next and seeing everyone leave the game, what are your thoughts? I try to bring an unbiased perspective so we can enjoy everyone's opinions


Predictions for replies:

"Just unsub"
"Wuk Lamat..."
"Actually you're wrong because"
"I took the obvious bait. Here is the dissertation I ran through ChatGPT to make sure you're wrong and I'm right"
"I'm sad that the game is dying but I'm going to take it out on the people who complain about the drop in quality and not on the devs who are fleecing my wallet to give me slop"
"This was a reading comprehension check"

this post aged well

[All_Nonsense]

this post aged well

You bet your bottom dollar it did

We're getting 6.3 again is what the LL was.

- They made a couple changes to the deep dungeon, gave the 4th Palace of the Dead release some depth for once.

- They delayed housing again, so the only people who are still playing the game are gonna be mad

- Barring the quick and clean end of the DT story arc with the effective complete excision of the characters from it (think how they did that with Lyse and Raubahn (I miss him)) in StB, the MSQ will still be going in a terrible direction even now. They just introduced Mr Bad Man Scary Boi and ig we're gonna kill him now, or he's just gonna be a blemish we carry to 8.0. Ironically they're probably only going to permanently remove Krile and Erenville since they love ruining the things people seem to like

- Your typical pvp, dungeon, extreme, alliance raid, treasure dungeon shit that you always get in the X.3 patch. Nothing special to see here.

- Chat bubbles for people who haven't been modding for a decade are coming out. Gamers who just woke up from a 20 year coma reportedly "not impressed"

- Did I mention Palace of the Dead 4 is different?

- The next Deep Dungeon is different

- In the new Deep Dungeon-



This was a live letter about a Deep Dungeon...