KyrenXIV: - Don't use untrained/amateur writers on the story-heavy game keeping your company alive.

- Fix the netcode

- Instanced player housing in addition to community housing

- Start the relic grind by X.05 or X.1, let people have something to grind early

- Modernize the UI and menus (e.g. what the mobile version devs are doing)

- Modernize the character creator to include 300-500% more customization options.

- Update/redesign the FATE system to be interesting

- Modernized glamour system that doesn't rely on inventory slots and can be used outside inn rooms

- Updated dye system to include a ton more colors, or introduce a palette system.

- Let retainers be summoned like chocobo companions.

- If something's wrong, don't take two years to turn the ship to gradually fix it.

- Right now the biggest problem is just how streamlined and standardized everything is. You can predict almost exactly when a patch will come out and 90% of the features that will be included. You can look at previous fanfests and know exactly what they'll announce at the next ones in exactly what order. Jobs are all largely interchangable within their roles. Cutscenes still use the same tracks created in ARR, so you know exactly what type of scene you'll be getting as soon as it starts. And now even the MSQ is largely just trying to follow the same beats as previous expansions but with different window dressing. It's all just so predictable now that it's become boring.

Played this game since beta, love it to death, hate seeing it trying to rest on its laurels and drip feed any content that might be considered "exciting."

ats882: Unfortunately, I don't think FF14 will get any better until Square stops draining it's earnings to make other games. FF14 really needs a new game engine to handle what's needed for a mmo. The engine can't handle dots, remember Odin in 2.0?, housing, inventory space issues. I can only hope for the best.

Calios: Yoshi P: How can we fix this? We lost half a million players!

Kate: Add more Wuk Lamat scenes, everyone loves her!

Yoshi P: BRILLIANT!

25xxfrostxx: We used to have 3 and a half months between patches. Right before the Endwalker release, they announced they were increasing the patch cadence to 4 months, adding two weeks, because the whole team was being given an additional 2 weeks of vacation per year. Cool, they earned it. Then after Dawntrail, they snuck in another 2 weeks. So now we're at 4.5 months between patches. I don't raid so that means between 7.0 and 7.2 when we start seeing casual content, there is a 9 month dead zone.

I log in periodically to check retainers and then log out. Dawntrail has a ton of promised content but it's all back loaded to the last half of the patch cycle. It's so odd to me that they're apparently planning to release cosmic exploration and Shade's Triangle in the same patch so anyone who crafts and does exploration content has to pick which one of them they get to miss out on the new content rush on.

Something seems off with CBU3.

RobbinnDaHood: My input on falling population is this: the game never feels like an RPG or an actual world. It’s full of BS fetch quests with nothing REALLY going on to keep you playing outside of endgame content. Yeah endgame is king in MMO’s, but at time that’s ALL FFXIV feels like: a queue simulator.

HonestPhil: every element of ff9 felt shoehorned in . the way how they slapped the music in was so fucking cheap it just pissed me off more. ff9 is my favorite final fantasy game too and i didnt even expect too much from them.

christopherbailey3547: I like how when Zepla made a video with her concerns and criticisms people were flaming her , and here we have everything she was concerned about happening. It’s time for more people to be open to square about this game , they doing the same bare minimum formula and expect it’s gonna keep working .

BaithNa: Yeah, I think we all saw this coming and happening since the launch of Dawntrail. It was horribly recieved, some people still haven't finished the MSQ and we've all seen/felt the population drop over the last few months due to the lack of content and the terribly written MSQ.

They need to drastically change their plans for the rest of the 7.X release cycle. Move the relic weapon, Beast Tamer and the exploration zone releases up in the patch cycle so more people have a reason to play beyond the 10% of raiders in the community.

They also have to change the story so there's less Wuk and more interesting things going on. At this point, Wuk is just the face of Dawntrail's failures and they need to get rid of her before she becomes the face of Final Fantasy XIV's downfall.

There are 4 months before the next patch and that might be the last chance to either get players back or lose them until 8.0. Only having 2 patches instead of the 3 that they used to has had a toll on the community too. The down time between patches is ridiculous for a subscription based game.

Firing writers would also go a long way to bring some faith to the community but Japan is a dumb country built on loyalty so we're stuck with these crap writers smh.

1337penguinman: Story wise, Heavensward was one of the best expansions they've put out and it was basically a self contained story with basically no build up. During the EW patches it was all "wait for 7.0!" Now we've shifted to "wait for the patches" and even "wait for 8.0." I shouldn't have to wait 4 years for a game I pay a monthly sub for to actually be good.

noahbuster4333: Dawn Trial and Wuk Lamat is all you need to know. Fire those writers please

nestor-martinez: I remember running around in this game looking for dynamic things to do and there was just nothing. Empty, lifeless maps.

octoleech: If I didnt own a house I wouldnt be subscribed to the game right now.

Why in the holy mother of god do they think that waiting a year into an expansion is an acceptable time to release the expansions content? I get not having it directly at launch, MSQ, class leveling and gearing and all that, but the relic grind needs to come out at x.05 or x.1 at the latest.

yatorenegade9524: Congratulations SE its hard to make people who put hundreds of hours into a game quit but you nailed it.

OizenX: Its interesting to me that the FFXIV MSQ was basically the load bearing krusty poster that kept everything from falling over. People put up with so much because the world and characters felt alive to them, strip that away and honestly XIV as a game is largely mediocre.

spbrk: The game has been bad for a long time - since at least 6.2. Then the MSQ got bad on top of it. There's nothing to do that doesn't involve playing in a hyper coordinated hardcore group or spending a part-time job amount of time in PF.

RedHoodRubyRose: Biggest problem with DT for me, was how it broke every known lore from ARR to EW. No mention of final days, no mention of how they all survived. Also her line "Just believe harder" or "When you are happy everything is possible" is such a slap in the face. Like it's an insult to Haurchefant death, like he would survive if he just believed hard enough. Those writers and localizers don't deserve a single paycheck they received. And don't get me started on how our little Wukie Lamat believes everything cat be fixed with a smile.

ChannelRaznoff: I've been playing since 1.0 beta. I unsubbed after 7.0 and returned for 7.1 just to see where they were going with the FFXI alliance raid and then unsubbed again right after finishing. I think after over 10 years of playing, it's just time for me to move on. The gameplay just doesn't do it for me anymore and the story had a nice wrap up in Endwalker. I'll just forget everything after 6.0 like I do with the games that came after Parasite Eve and Dragon Age in their series.

luvpotion333: I love this game dearly, been playing for almost 4 years, I was there for the release of Endwalker and Dawntrail. I've done extreme trials, savage raids, tried my portion of ultimate too, the new chaotic etc. I have leveled all my jobs to 90 and a few to 100, I was the type of player that liked having everything maxed out, but lately I can't bring myself to login to run dailies to finish leveling them all cause it feels just SO repetitive. I keep watching gameplays and reactions of previous expansions, cause Dawntrail didn't give me anything to latch onto, I really don't care about the current state of the story. It's very sad, this game has been such an integral part of my life, I really wish the story picks up again and new exciting stuff happens. Storywise, I think we could use more ancient and Azem content, it's what made the previous expansions so amazing, the culmination of moments that led to the construction of who Azem, and therefore the WoL, is

dokdias: It is not just these last 8 months. The quality has dropped after 6.0. Relic being acquired by tomes, variant dungeons lackluster rewards, no bozja/eureka-like content.

So its actually 3 years of neglect from CBU3. Shameful

xpgainz: They should do a Dawntrail reborn, with a new director. I love yoshi p but the man needs a break, he didnt deliver with FFXVI and neither with dawntrail, he is clearly overworked

KurisuHan: As someone with 3k hours, DT really dropped the ball for me. I started as a giga casual MSQ andy with friends but then explored everything else the game had to offer. I have an FC, fully decorated house, all the glam I want, and have cleared 99% of the content in the game that I want to do. The only incentive I've had logging into DT is doing my weekly savage reclears to gear alt jobs and to do FRU which is a nightmare in PF. The battle content is really fun imo but the community being so sensitive and unwilling to receive criticism is what ruins the game for me. I come from competitive shooters so its like I have to walk on eggshells with the general playerbase for this game.

blackblizzard5771: Honestly, we peaked with Endwalker. Best expansion hands down.

julicen: Wow really? Im shocked!! How could this ever happen?

BiscuitsV2: Mediocre story at its best, insulting at its worst. Combat is still stagnant and samey. Classes are still gutted, and they continue to gut them further. Precious dev time being wasted on limited classes that will hardly be touched by the players or the devs. Huge gaps between content drops. No compelling side content or rewards. Gathering and crafting sucks harder than ever. Housing still sucks. And the dev team seems to have their priorities mixed up. Really loved seeing posts about new cash shop emotes after being told I won't see any job improvements until a completely new expansion comes out, being promised a graphical update only for it to not be finished on release, and brand new Simon Says classes when players were already complaining that the jobs were simultaneously too simple and too bloated. But oh, let's show off the new shiny mobile version. I'm sure our core playerbase that's still waiting to see improvements on the game they've invested an ungodly amount of time and money into will love that. Gee. I wonder where all the players went

jaymercury651: I don't trust SE to make any good decisions towards FF14's future or preservation.

Spartan1312: 1) Fire the Writers in charge on DT

2) Make us the central character again.... this experiment with Wuk Lamat is a utter failure.

3) Delete Wuk Lamat... Like Rome did to Carthage scrub the earth of this character, I have never had a character forced on me so much that I hated so completely to the point that the best parts of the story were the parts WITHOUT HER forced on us or even present... I have never wished for a character to die more before now.

4) Increase content cadence to no more than 2 months and double the amount for the entire expansion. This is a joke at this point, when they cut the content cadence back before it turns out they were distracted making a game called FF16... I have no doubts they are doing the same with another un-named title. If they can split focus so much they do not respect FF14 or your time.

5) Rebalance classes and be WILLING to nerf classes that need nerfed. This whole wait a full patch cycle to correct a OP class is as terrible as the solution to buff everyone BUT the OP class. This fools nobody, as this is just a nerf by omitting the OP class from getting the buff and has the terrible downside of adding yet more power creep to a MMO with next to no difficulty with anything below savage content.

Kurainuz: Yoship lied for years while cutting contend and simplifying it "for the sake of the devs" while instead of geting rest the devs were put into 4 diferent proyects including 14 and 16.

After that we have got a full expansion with almost no repeteable content, then comes the new expansion and after 8 months the only casual content is 4 trials, one aliance raid and one dungeon. No relic farm to do with friends or randoms, no exploration zone, there is no reason if you dont care about BiS or hard content to login for more than a few weeks.

Oh and the "great thing prepared for gold saucer" ended up being a temporary colab with fall guys...

While i agree that there should be no NEED to login to keep the pace of other people, in a paid live service i want reasons to pay the sub and play the game between patches, and the "go do old content that its empty and to wich is hard af to find people unless you go to dedicated discords" its not a great option

The game kept square alive and its their main stable source of income, but with each expansion less and less money and work seems to en up in the game.

Jan 08 2025

Buy FFXIV GIL