Recently I’ve been hearing about how Endwalker is the worst FFXIV expansion and causing players to quit the game. Unfortunately, I feel like some of these takes have been really biased and ignoring very obvious issues. I wanted to share my opinions. Here’s the real reason why Final Fantasy 14 is losing players. Sit back, sip on your Fantasia, and enjoy!
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The honeymoon phase is over, FF14 bloomed in Shadowbringer and for MMOs players fan that got here and new were to the game, it felt amazing with praises and a whole new world! But as the longer you go, ppl realized that the game isnt got much to offer, doesnt satisfied feel when you achieved something (relic weapos, eureka was just a big grindfest). Raids and PvP is too hard for like 99% of the playerbase (sadly this is becouse they are bad/dont care enough. PvE in FF14 is just so easy) and if you are a content creators, you probably see that this FF14 isnt the right place for a long and stable contents to fish from (most of it are memes, jokes, NSFW), not skills like WoW or other nowaday online games so it make ssense that ppl slowly straffing away from it. But thats fine as long as the remaining ppl have fun 😀 <3
As someone who was a newer player, I was absolutely in love with FFXIV… right up till I had saved enough and decided to get into housing seriously. Seeing the absolute mess that was the lack of available land, let alone a particular plot you might be hoping for or the same neighborhood as a guild mate… it just sorta killed off any enthusiasm or feel of forward momentum. Eventually i just moved to other games that weren't so restrictive.
TBH, I am not worried about. There are things that are important in life than playing a game. I do love playing Final Fantasy for the story content from the time Final Fantasy came out. My favorite expansion of FF14 is Shadowbringers because of the story content. If people do not want to play Final Fantasy 14 so be it. Everyone can do whatever they want. I cannot worry about their choice. I have to respect it and move on. I will just play on and enjoy what is important to me. Avy do not worry about it. This play the game how you want to play and have fun.
Here's my take about players "leaving".
We have to keep in mind that players come from different games and game-style, so if, let's say, they skip the entire story and focus on one piece of content, ie. savage raids/ultimates, they will run out of things to do EXTREMELY FAST, because for some reason, everyone is fixated on getting everything done as fast as possible and then they're sitting there, not knowing there's a whole bunch of other content from previous expacs to delve into.
At the end of the day, these players will "quit", but will most definitely come back as soon as their preferred piece of content gets new toys to interact with, so overall, I think it's just causing a big fuss over nothing just for clicks and creating a panic.
Stay calm warriors of light and keep enjoying what you enjoy doing!
as a casually play everyday frontline player a good thing is that it never gets boring because of the nature of pvp games, BUT the direction ffxiv seems to be going with pvp which is a VERY big focus on CC…which makes sense as it is new game content but at the same time balancing in CC means balance in FL sucks so bad….Nald'thal would be disappointed…and then the recent patch where they made ice map feel more like pve (who can kill more ice first..) and get rid of the borderline ruins (which i think they wanted to fix because people kept kicking other people off the middle platform….)…I don't understand why they can't put casual CC as a daily roulette, and insist on keeping FL but also screwing it up every patch update ;_; I know PVP isn't as big of a focus compared to PVE but feels bad man haha (having series items was great though, and i heard in 6.5 they will FINALLY update at least one of the pvp currency shops so hoping for the best)
6:52 I'm hollerin 🤣
AI TOTALLY AGREE, shadowbringers is BY FAR the best expansion!!!! I cryed and replayed shadowbringers 3 times, and out of them all…endwalker is the worst! i dont like stormblood either, but endwalker is even worse bleah !!!!
Even for someone like me, who rarely interacts with chat, (if at all) there's something about doing large-scale group content that just feels right, even if the content itself is a drag. Farming a ludicrous amount of Heavensward FATEs isn't what I'd consider a fun activity, but being able to hang out with a bunch of strangers all doing the same thing you are adds so much to an otherwise boring activity, and I definitely think they missed the mark this time around.
Ff14 will always have a special place in my heart. I meet my husband playing ff14. I am by no means giving up on the the game.
For me things are becoming more homogenized. I feel like a lot of the classes seem similar. The base game is just too easy now. I want a struggle with new content. I can’t get a group for the hard content. I also think the solo content has hurt the community. I remember doing more with my guild and talking more in the past. It feels almost impossible to get a group together anymore. Maybe making more guild base content might bring people together. Idk but communication is what makes the game special.
I think it's fair to say that launch Endwalker was fairly exceptional, but post-launch Endwalker was really not. It really does feel like the devs took a bit of a vacation with this expansion and the post-expansion story is easily some of the weakest we've ever had by a good margin. And the content, while experimental and I appreciate that, just wound up flopping repeatedly. And then they didn't really innovate and improve on that content, it was pretty much just left to die. Pretty much my entire friends list has been offline for more than a year and the only reason I came back was for the anniversary event/it's been a while.
MMO Players: There's nothing to do, I'm quitting.
Also MMO Players: OMG there's too much grinding and content lock, I'm quitting.
I loved this game, but now i hate it, and i want everyone to hate this game too
I personally take breaks and quit for a w hile because…this expansion sucked. Straight up, it wasjust bad. And there's many many reasons for it.
The story was rushed garbage. Despite this, I did like the story they
triedto tell, but they told it so poorly it made me fall asleep a couple times because of how bad it was. They wanted to wrap up the tale of the Ascians and whatnot in 6.0, I get that, but it was stupid of them to do that. And made zero sense, and fell flat on it's face. What we got was a mess of plot that had tempo issues, quality issues, and just a bunch of other issues. (Don't get me started on the idiotic choice of Live Launch. You can't Live Launch an mmo…it never works.) And that's just to start. If they took their time and did the RIGHT choice, and lengthened out the story of 6.0 into the whole story itself of the game cycle? They could have ended this tale BETTER and moved on with the next expansion being a fully brand new story. Such as, the endwalker Post-Game story and not be literally shafting some of the most known and popular characters with this Post-Patch garbage.The story, and zones, were so lazily made it was painful. We were promised all through the end of Shadowbringers that this expansion would be one heavily built around Garlemald. That we'd go to the grand empire we've fought for so long. And what we got? Felt like a slap in the face. Thavnair, and Garlemald, felt more like pit stops, detours, than actual stories themselves. Nothing like they hyped us up with all through the end of Shadowlands' cycle of patches. That personally killed me because I felt the Garlemald story was such a let down, because I LOVE Garlemald and the garleans, I've rped one for two years for that reason because I love everything about them. Including their Magitek and military design.
And then…there's been no good content this entire expansion. I didn't think the Variant Dungeons were good, they were pretty boring to be quite honest. I could only do them twice and can't bring myself to do them again just because they weren't fun. Interesting sure, but not fun. And don't get me started on the headache that is Eureka Orthos, which is not playtested at all and unfair in every way possible. I've seen friends' runs entirely ended without any control or skill curve to overcome it just because haha rng go boom. Which is…dumb. PotD, and HoH, at least if you're good, can be salvaged all times something bad happens. Eureka? You can't.
Bozja, to me, was one of the best things we've gotten in years. Bozja was Eureka Pagos but perfect, not awful. The grind for Eureka Pagos sucked, just because the system wasn't put together well, but Bozja WAS, and it was phenomenal. And yet the reason that they didn't give one? Is only to do with the XIV community as a whole. So many people hated it, and bitched and moaned about it, and outright ATTACKED the devs over it, that they didn't even give us the ending like they planned. They cut it to black and put the 'ending' in the notes you could collect, and that was it. Gone. And everyone bitched about the grinds of the relic weapons (granted SHB had absolutely outrageous amounts and droprates were terrible) so they went 'okay just do quests and give us the tomes then' and now people bitch about that.
Now? Relics mean nothing. They're uninteresting, the designs are pretty bland and boring. The lore behind the weapons is 'we made them' and there's no depth to that. Resistance was the best by far because of the lore as we built them.
But despite all this, the main reason I quit often? The end game is nonexistent. There's nothing to do once you finish story. You log in, do your daily roulettes, farm out your cap weekly of tomes, log out. There's nothing to do, and then the roulette system is a pathetic, absolutely horrendous excuse of laziness.
Expert is two dungeons, which you have to be a 90 class for. 90 you have a few dungeons, but the true issue is? Roulettes are boring. Wastes of time. Once you do a dungeon, you've no reason to do it again because it's the same thing over and over. It's boring, and at least if…there was, I dunno, some sort of modifier, or scaling, or anything to freshen the dungeons up? We'd have more fun with the roulettes. Or at the very least, REMOVE THE DAMN RESTRICTIONS FOR YOUR WEEKLY TOMESTONES. Whoever thought that is smart, should be FIRED because it's NOT. We shouldn't have to choose either leveling a new class we want to learn, or play our level 90 class to farm our tomestones. It's ridiculous, and truly AWFUL design.
Then we get to island sanctuary and that…was just terrible. There's no reason it should have fell flat on it's face. But it did. Because they refused to look at how the hundreds of other games do it, and screwed it up horribly.
Trust system, OH MAN this is the worst thing in the game hands down. Any time I hear someone has done nothing but trusts, I want to leave the dungeon or trial and accept the leaver debuff. Because this is terrible. It's an mmo, you signed up to play an mmo, you signed up to at one point PLAY WITH OTHERS, and I have had too many times where people don't know mechanics like stack, or use their eyes, because they just did trusts the whole time and never learned the basics of playing with others. Or ignore playing with others entirely and just…u g h. It's atrocious. At the very least, having it in Shadowbringers and beyond? Fine, you bit the bullet, you ran dungeons, trials, raids, etc with other players until the 3rd expansion. Have a break and run with the npcs. Fine. But starting now in A Realm Reborn? I dont even want to dungeon because people then get defensive if you try to help them because they didn't learn in the first place. It's a nightmare. And I say this as a mentor who ENJOYS teaching new players things.
Mmo's need solo content so you aren't held back if you don't have friends, sure, but the amount of 'solo play' they are putting into this game, by removing aspects of socializing so everyone 'can play no matter if they do or dont have friends' is absolutely awful for the game being an mmo. Might as well just make it into an rpg for console and pc and call it a day because that's what it FEELS like lately.
I love XIV, I have 31 characters, have thousands of hours in gameplay since when I joined during the last two patches of Stormblood, and it's easily my favorite mmo due to it's gameplay at end game, it's glamour system despite it's terrible making, it's looks, world, lore, so much. But they keep making steps backwards, not forward. I actually haven't personally felt nor seen a single good step forward this expansion, and it kills me. At best? We've had 'passable' moments, but nothing like Shadowbringers or Heavensward. I still always come back because I love the game.
I want this game to one day take the crown of top mmo / most concurrent players, but it never will, because it just has too many issues. Hell, the time it held 'the crown' was not deserving it. It was just because of the drama with Blizzard, and Shadowlands was doing terrible. XIV was doing mediocre, but mmo market is so dry and dead, no one else could hold the crown. The game could be the best, it could deserve it's crown one day, if they just. Fixed. A lot of the issues that people point out on the forum, in interviews, messages, constantly. If they listened to the community more. Also dropped their ridiculous and stupid stance on modding…
That's such a stupid TOS rule that it's laughable. And so easy to fix. Also something they can't enforce cause the modders are literally the lifeblood of the game now. IF they did a major enforcement of that, they'd lose well over half their playerbase and — yeah it'd be a nightmare they don't recover from lol.
FF14 focuses a lot on the social aspect. Combat is not that fun. I play mmorpg games for some years now. And i think it has a great story, but definitely had more fun with other ones like Tera for example. DC Universe online, DFO… This game gives you no incentives at all, to make hard content or to grind, other than glamour or collectivity. Always weak always can't use your skills in earlier dungeons. Problems only a new FF mmo can solve. Don't think any improvements can be made in this one. Also monthly subscription is something a lot of people don't like. People are busy. And they don't know when they have more or less free time to plan when they will pay for a videogame so their money won't go to just 5 days out of 30.
First Thank you Avy for the great video! ♥
I just leave that here so everyone please take it with a grain of salt. My issues:
Getting less than half the amount of content per patch then back in Storm Blood & Shadowbringers, spread and stretched thin over long periods of time; Bad Reward structure; Gear stat being nonsensical; Insufficiently stepped Vertical progression; Non-Existent Horizontal Progression; No Alternatives to earn rewards; Rewards not feeling Rewarding; Support for the Social Aspects could be so much better (Housing, Glamour, Mounts, Minions, etc.) if updated properly; Developers have not the flexibility to truly upgrade something; Healers are all 1.15 button DPS which are on the brink of as getting as homogeneous as the tanks; the tanks are homogeneous;
Am I Salty, yes I am – Why am I not leaving then? Because I am still very passionate about one of the grandest experiences in gaming — and it deserves so soooo much better, than having to exist on a fraction of a necessary budget while the money, that is being raked in is used to Subsidize 6 years of failed corporate endeavors (or to butter "the investors").
"As a proud foodplate myself" – that killed me 😀
6:54 caught me off guard lmao
Well before I get into why I'm not play FF14. 1. I love your voice. 2 I love your outfits on your character. But ya, I never bought the new expansion simply because i can't afford it right now, nor can I afford the monthly fee. So i'm stuck playing WoW, don't get me wrong on that game i love it to but I would rather play FF14. But WoW gives me a way to keep playing. I use their token system to pay not only for the expansion but the game time as well. if it where not for the tokens I would not be playing wow either. And befor anyone talks about me getting a job. Right now my job is taking care of my husband, who is in the hospital right now due to his condition. That being said. I may not have that much time with him. So please keep people keep your get a job comment to yourselves. thank you
I felt this way fir a while. Ever since shadowbringers, i have noticed one especially glaring issue, the zones are big, empty of people, and have virtually no draw to them. I can walk all over mare lamentorum and count on one hand the number of semi-interesting landmarks, ehile the rest of it just seems baren. Even radz at han is mostly just wide open soaces filed mostly with colourful surfaces
Meanwhile in old ARR areas i can walk around each zone in la noscea and STILL find the environment interesting, with winding pathways architecture and ruins and natural features that tell a story on their own, and even tonnes of NPCs that are doing normal stuff that they don't feel placed there just to meet the npc quota
Nevermind the lack of content,endealker just feels Physically barren….
It's the first time in 9 years that I'm taking a break from FFXIV, and it's primarily because I just need the change. Endwalker is a bit redundant and formulaic as far as content release goes after 6.1, and well, Baldur's Gate 3 is a breath of fresh air in my gaming life right now. I'll be back, I just… don't feel like I need to want to get everything in the game at present. I don't have to grind gear, I can play just fine with gear I've crafted, I have all the housing I need, I don't need gil anymore… Felt like it was break time!
I just finished Endwalker and I still enjoy playing it. To each their own 🤷♂️
The class design and relic weapons has been the two biggest problems i have with the game right now. Making every class a burst class has made me not bother with hard content. Relics should of been variant and crit dungeon related completely agree.
I left all mmorpgs and will never join any anymore. People are 🤮
The content roll out is slower because of COVID
I quit ff14 when i moved servers just to be able to get a house.. only to figure out the server i was now on was dead as hell. So yeah had a house… but now had nothing to do. Couldnt even transfer back due to pop caps and the massive investment loss on the property I would take would of made it feel like shit anyway. So meh.. lost everything and people to play with so quit.
You hit on the issue I am having. I love the social aspect and it has just been missing during this patch cycle. Even my friends aren't logging on much.
Not everything needs to be grind hell. There's already plenty of it in the game. It's one of the main reasons I stopped playing WoW.
I don't feel like resubbing anymore until the new expac drop. I'll just watch the cutscenes through Youtube and save money instead of paying for max a day worth's of content.
People are leaving because the devs have gotten lazy since Shadowbringers.
I havent really quit FFXIV, I've just took a break cause I've been playing WoW. Though I need to balance the two.
2 reasons. Game is slow and clunky, and every quest has 3 hours of scenes. Aint no one got time fo dat. 😂
They arent
As someone who played since the beta, im just kinda burnt out with the same old endgame loop and the overall job/class and raid designs. I really dont know if ill be able to take another bite of this on the next expansion unless they move out of thier comfort zone.
Most times I forget Criterion dungeons exist. Only ran them 2-3 times. Need to at least get them run once. Same with deep dungeons. Can't even get into the second one because I've not done the first one far enough. 🤷
Bozja was annoying because I'm not a streamer with a dozen viewers waiting to party up. 🤣
Yeah, people going back to warcraft is definitely a thing. For relic, It needs to be more complicated than this, but l just hope solo would be an option for 7.0 relic. It was a pain to put up a pf for delebrum So l can get timeworn artifacts for shadowbringer relic. No, if you do potd, you got to go beyond floor 100 to have decent drop chance. soloing That isn't exactly an easy thing to do.
Its peaked storywise, we stopped the literal end of the universe and about to put the 13th to rest. Anything after that is going to be dull and boring in comparison. Oh we're going to the New World to solve a succession problem? Waste of our god damn talents…
The reason is they finished Endwalker and are waiting for the next xpac (or are done with the game since it’s been a very long journey till Endwalker). That's normal.
The hair dye everywhere! 😉 XD
Cat!
PS: i do really hate grinding and thankfull for it is right meow
Idk about that cause aloot players still hanging out at limsa or other places. Even my 2 old friends returned and more fc is on opposite of yours, strange.
A buddy of mine once told me the reason why relic items glow, and why each subsequent evolution glows more vibrantly than the previous; it's because of all the grinding. When a player grinds for their relic item, some of their soul seeps into it from real life. The soul transcends the barriers between reality and fantasy, able to travel between dimensions as long as there's a pathway – this pathway is created during the grind. It's those painstaking hours and days, sometimes weeks, that a player spends running a specific content over and over again. That time spent creates a sort of bridge that allows a small portion of the soul to travel to the relic item.
For the craftable weapons that glow, the principle is similar but not exact. You still have to reach certain DoH and DoL requirements, then gather the materials. But most of that glow is inherent – there is some of the player's soul in there, but not much. Of course, not all weapons (and armor) will glow no matter how hard you grind. Those items must have the capacity to accept the player's soul, first. But when those relic items glow, the player feels a sense of accomplishment – that heavy sigh of relief (probably dopamine) that all their hard work paid off.
This is the experience that should not be taken from MMO gamers. Granted, there are always those who want their hit of dopamine as quickly as possible, so they want their glow sticks immediately. I feel sad for those types.
Hey I survived an entire expansion where it took place in a boring, horribly colored world without a single character or setting I cared about just to get to come back to Eorzea, I am not leaving now.
Shadowbringers was a dreadful slog under a nauseating skybox with an awful soundtrack, so while Endwalker is a bit boring, I know how bad it could be. I am not expecting another Heavensward or even Stormblood, but anything that’s not Shadowbringers set in the First is a huge improvement
Videos like these pop up like clockwork at the end of every expansion it seems.
I wish people would stop saying Asmongold caused WoW players to move to FF14.
It’s the reverse, if anything. He was one of the last big WoW personalities to come over, and the movement was already heavily underway before he caved and joined it.
The Artifact Weaoons are a Joke … We Needed to Grind … And now? … Yeah collect 1500 token wow
I loved Endwalker I just believe they're doing the Expansion a disservice with lack of greatness in the patches. I could personally play endwalker over and over. I just wish the patches had a bit more excitement to them.
everyone who played WOW, had add-on, which is another form of cheating. 3rd party mods, always has the risk of malware and spyware. with G-shade, there were multiple malware attach to the download. many people who used g-shade, had their account and bank account hacked. 3rd party mods also cause problems ingame networks. but, people still use them.
This isn't a bad expansion. Talk to wow players. They will tell you stories