14 thoughts on “Final Fantasy XIV Player Counts Predicted To Drop Below 1 Million After Dawntrail Expansion”
a big problem was that the last expansion endwalker, was the conclusion of the first saga so it had big moments and setpieces while dawntrail is the beginning of a new saga so its much slower introducing a new world and all that
No shit this expansion was ass 9 years dedicated to this game and everything went "DAWN"hill with this expansion Once you finish the story is like meh the issue was Wuk Lamat and the loss of focus on our characters, they were like hey guy this is wuk lamat remember like wuk lamat, you see wuk lamat? hello players this is wuk lamat The game needs shit tons of quality of life improvements and they keep ignoring the community
This isn't complicated. FF14 should have just ended with Endwalker. It was literally in the name of the damn expansion, but no company will allow something like an MMORPG to reach it's natural conclusion. Same thing happened with WoW with Legion.
Which hilariously enough, makes Dawntrail FF14's version of Battle for Azeroth… which means the next expansion is FF14's Shadowlands. Boy is that going to be something if it follows that same pattern.
FF14's huge popularity rose from the story of the previous 2 expansions being great, yet the patches of the previous expansion and the new one in general were written without the person that brought those stories and characters to life (natsuko ishikawa, our christie golden if you will, although i don't know if golden is still considered a positive figure for WoW, i haven't been following WoW news for years), and the writing has been terrible ever since, along with the amount of content available being at an all time low, and most of the promises that were made during the communication of the new expansion were left unfulfilled.
It's funny that you mention cosmic level threats from WoW, because Ishikawa made cosmic level threats good in FF14, with well written characters that still have individual stakes, and a story that really includes your character, it wasn't just shallow praise like WoW where you get called the almighty savior but you're never treated like you matter to the other characters.
Dawntrail was supposed to be a return to simpler stakes and the start of a new era from the ground up, but somehow the ff14 loyalists that gobble up everything the devs say have been gaslit into forgetting that the story literally put the whole multiverse at stake for its climax, and keep praising it as the "back to basics" storyline that it is definitely not. It's basically our battle for azeroth, where the promise of the return to the faction war turned into all the cosmic voidlords nonsense. Which you know, could still be good if it had the same level of quality that we've been used to, because ultimately "simpler stakes" vs "cosmic stakes" is not what makes an expansion good or bad. And god, this one was bad.
Well, what other speakers said. FF14 is valued for its story among other things, and Dawntrail was horrible on so many aspects of its story that people are shell-shocked, especially after masterpiece writing of previous expansions. Besides, it is not bad because it is "woke" or something. There is exactly nothing "woke" in entire story, expect for english VA (very active in twitter btw) of central story character that did pretty bad job, which certainly didn't help matters… The story is just bad.
I have only been playing FFXIV for 1.5yr; I absolutely loved the game for its story – even the first one, A Realm Reborn, which my siblings said was 'crappy' was actually pretty good. This is my first MMO since text-based games.
Dawntrail did promise to be a vacation, a back to basics as people say, and after such an awesome fight at the end of the world, being an adventurer felt right. BUT IT SUCKED! The story seems half-baked and the protagonist, Wuk Lamat, is not well-written. She is force fed to us, I liked her during the first half of the expansion but then it was just too much. Add that to the bad story full of holes and the characters not having any kind of development… and it's a disaster. You cannot feed us a juicy t-bone and then give us gibblets, and expect us to be happy about it.
From playing, the issue is content release rather than the MSQ. It's meant to be a send-off/new beginning for the story of the game. Wuk Lamat goes through "mini versions" of each expansions main issues, and the focus is taken from the WoL. She can get overbearing, but I feel like that isn't really the issue and that people are looking at it like it's supposed to be an MSQ that has you running around doing jack crap and finding stuff, when the MSQ is meant to focus on storylines that were left to expand on and new ones that are introduced. There is very little to do OUTSIDE of it right now, however. There's no lead up to keep players hooked, the story is new. Nothing else to do for crafters because that stuff just isn't out yet. No exploratory content because, again, that stuff isn't out yet. If you don't wanna raid, you're kinda screwed to be frank. I think the story is fine, and it has ties to the criterion dungeon Aloalo Island as well. It feels like everyone complaining has merit but it is also a situation where you kind of have to let the game cook. I do agree that it sucks right now, but I like what the game has to offer still.
The storys fine, if you don't like it you're stupid, open and shut. No reason to pretend it's any worse than anything else. Player counts are dropping because endwalker was the end of a10+ year long story arc and people feel like they're ready to be done with the game. Dumbfucks
idgaf. dawntrail is one of my favorite expacs story wise, and ill continue to enjoy the story, as well as the rest of the content the game has to offer
For me Dawntrail is a combination of issues. The MSQ has a very mediocre story over all, and almost every quest both starts and ends with the same character who is also the main character for the msq…. (for those out there that will assume – I do like the VA's work. She had very limiting lines to deal with.) There's no chance for us to "miss" the character due to her being with us literally all story. The soundtrack is both hit or miss with the tracks…. They have knock off Disney song for multiple scenes – one of which we are building a bomb; not exactly something a song about being happy and smiling should be sung. So much feels unfinished – or like they did a midnight writing session to pump stuff out last minute. Also… . most of the zones feel small compared to previous expansions. This is mostly due to shoving two zones into a single map area. For some pro's we have the dungeons and raids. Those are heck'in fun. Folks that complain about a difficulty spike in them are usually ones that have never touched the side content in previous expacs where all of the mechs have been used previously.
FF14 is best described as your favourite dish you like to eat. You love to eat it but if you get the same dish EVERY day for years it starts to get boring. Maybe a new flavor added spices things up bit in the end its the same dish.
This happens with every expansion cycle. ff14 isn't the type of game you stay subbed to 12 months a year and the devs have even admitted this telling us to 'play other games'. They have expansion, major patches and catch up patches. We just got through a new expansion and its first major patch. We're now in a catch up patch with no new raid tier. This is normal, it gives casual and new players a chance to literally catch up in the story and gear up in the raids with the echo now that they're off content and have the echo buff added to them.
These articles aren't new, they come out every catch up patch. What is new is all the coverage it seems to be getting for some reason.
You have to remember, ff14 isn't a game where you can just level up and jump into the current expansion. New players have to do everything. If the game didn't have this schedule new players would be othered from the community and never get to play with us in end game.
As of now there's not much of a reason to play other than if you're a raider helping group prog.
there's nothing much to do pretty much people go on hiatus after they finish the msq i've been a ffxiv player for about 3 years coming from wow. the story is meh not as great as endwalker. there's still actice player base in na. this is pretty much normal after a while
a big problem was that the last expansion endwalker, was the conclusion of the first saga so it had big moments and setpieces while dawntrail is the beginning of a new saga so its much slower introducing a new world and all that
No shit this expansion was ass
9 years dedicated to this game and everything went "DAWN"hill with this expansion
Once you finish the story is like meh the issue was Wuk Lamat and the loss of focus on our characters, they were like hey guy this is wuk lamat remember like wuk lamat, you see wuk lamat? hello players this is wuk lamat
The game needs shit tons of quality of life improvements and they keep ignoring the community
This is only on Steam. We don't know how many concurrent players there are because mmos don't release those numbers anymore.
sighs
This isn't complicated. FF14 should have just ended with Endwalker. It was literally in the name of the damn expansion, but no company will allow something like an MMORPG to reach it's natural conclusion. Same thing happened with WoW with Legion.
Which hilariously enough, makes Dawntrail FF14's version of Battle for Azeroth… which means the next expansion is FF14's Shadowlands. Boy is that going to be something if it follows that same pattern.
FF14's huge popularity rose from the story of the previous 2 expansions being great, yet the patches of the previous expansion and the new one in general were written without the person that brought those stories and characters to life (natsuko ishikawa, our christie golden if you will, although i don't know if golden is still considered a positive figure for WoW, i haven't been following WoW news for years), and the writing has been terrible ever since, along with the amount of content available being at an all time low, and most of the promises that were made during the communication of the new expansion were left unfulfilled.
It's funny that you mention cosmic level threats from WoW, because Ishikawa made cosmic level threats good in FF14, with well written characters that still have individual stakes, and a story that really includes your character, it wasn't just shallow praise like WoW where you get called the almighty savior but you're never treated like you matter to the other characters.
Dawntrail was supposed to be a return to simpler stakes and the start of a new era from the ground up, but somehow the ff14 loyalists that gobble up everything the devs say have been gaslit into forgetting that the story literally put the whole multiverse at stake for its climax, and keep praising it as the "back to basics" storyline that it is definitely not. It's basically our battle for azeroth, where the promise of the return to the faction war turned into all the cosmic voidlords nonsense. Which you know, could still be good if it had the same level of quality that we've been used to, because ultimately "simpler stakes" vs "cosmic stakes" is not what makes an expansion good or bad. And god, this one was bad.
Well, what other speakers said. FF14 is valued for its story among other things, and Dawntrail was horrible on so many aspects of its story that people are shell-shocked, especially after masterpiece writing of previous expansions.
Besides, it is not bad because it is "woke" or something. There is exactly nothing "woke" in entire story, expect for english VA (very active in twitter btw) of central story character that did pretty bad job, which certainly didn't help matters… The story is just bad.
I have only been playing FFXIV for 1.5yr; I absolutely loved the game for its story – even the first one, A Realm Reborn, which my siblings said was 'crappy' was actually pretty good. This is my first MMO since text-based games.
Dawntrail did promise to be a vacation, a back to basics as people say, and after such an awesome fight at the end of the world, being an adventurer felt right. BUT IT SUCKED! The story seems half-baked and the protagonist, Wuk Lamat, is not well-written. She is force fed to us, I liked her during the first half of the expansion but then it was just too much. Add that to the bad story full of holes and the characters not having any kind of development… and it's a disaster. You cannot feed us a juicy t-bone and then give us gibblets, and expect us to be happy about it.
From playing, the issue is content release rather than the MSQ. It's meant to be a send-off/new beginning for the story of the game. Wuk Lamat goes through "mini versions" of each expansions main issues, and the focus is taken from the WoL. She can get overbearing, but I feel like that isn't really the issue and that people are looking at it like it's supposed to be an MSQ that has you running around doing jack crap and finding stuff, when the MSQ is meant to focus on storylines that were left to expand on and new ones that are introduced. There is very little to do OUTSIDE of it right now, however. There's no lead up to keep players hooked, the story is new. Nothing else to do for crafters because that stuff just isn't out yet. No exploratory content because, again, that stuff isn't out yet. If you don't wanna raid, you're kinda screwed to be frank. I think the story is fine, and it has ties to the criterion dungeon Aloalo Island as well. It feels like everyone complaining has merit but it is also a situation where you kind of have to let the game cook. I do agree that it sucks right now, but I like what the game has to offer still.
The storys fine, if you don't like it you're stupid, open and shut. No reason to pretend it's any worse than anything else. Player counts are dropping because endwalker was the end of a10+ year long story arc and people feel like they're ready to be done with the game. Dumbfucks
idgaf. dawntrail is one of my favorite expacs story wise, and ill continue to enjoy the story, as well as the rest of the content the game has to offer
For me Dawntrail is a combination of issues. The MSQ has a very mediocre story over all, and almost every quest both starts and ends with the same character who is also the main character for the msq…. (for those out there that will assume – I do like the VA's work. She had very limiting lines to deal with.) There's no chance for us to "miss" the character due to her being with us literally all story.
The soundtrack is both hit or miss with the tracks…. They have knock off Disney song for multiple scenes – one of which we are building a bomb; not exactly something a song about being happy and smiling should be sung. So much feels unfinished – or like they did a midnight writing session to pump stuff out last minute. Also… . most of the zones feel small compared to previous expansions. This is mostly due to shoving two zones into a single map area.
For some pro's we have the dungeons and raids. Those are heck'in fun. Folks that complain about a difficulty spike in them are usually ones that have never touched the side content in previous expacs where all of the mechs have been used previously.
FF14 is best described as your favourite dish you like to eat. You love to eat it but if you get the same dish EVERY day for years it starts to get boring. Maybe a new flavor added spices things up bit in the end its the same dish.
This happens with every expansion cycle. ff14 isn't the type of game you stay subbed to 12 months a year and the devs have even admitted this telling us to 'play other games'. They have expansion, major patches and catch up patches. We just got through a new expansion and its first major patch. We're now in a catch up patch with no new raid tier. This is normal, it gives casual and new players a chance to literally catch up in the story and gear up in the raids with the echo now that they're off content and have the echo buff added to them.
These articles aren't new, they come out every catch up patch. What is new is all the coverage it seems to be getting for some reason.
You have to remember, ff14 isn't a game where you can just level up and jump into the current expansion. New players have to do everything. If the game didn't have this schedule new players would be othered from the community and never get to play with us in end game.
As of now there's not much of a reason to play other than if you're a raider helping group prog.
PS: Take a shower before you record.
there's nothing much to do pretty much people go on hiatus after they finish the msq i've been a ffxiv player for about 3 years coming from wow. the story is meh not as great as endwalker. there's still actice player base in na. this is pretty much normal after a while