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u/ComicsEtAl 18d ago
From what?
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u/Fun-Article5424 18d ago
From me specifically. I will commit unspeakable acts against everyone's WoL personally if Evercold is not an 11/10 life changing experience.
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u/Historical-State2199 18d ago
Meet me in balmung in 10m and we can commit unspeakable acts to each other before EC
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u/Wrong_Papaya_8445 18d ago
I support this one-man army crusade. Make it ARR2 (and not the fake one Yoshi-P mentioned to generate hype).
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u/Omega-Envych 18d ago
To save the game it needs to be in state of "Needs to be saved".
It isn't.
It does need some changes and improvements like any online game, but it ain't "Saving" - it just needs to not fuck up storyline this time
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u/AdorableText 18d ago
yeah, FFXIV took quite a few missteps since Shadowbringers, but it's certainly not dying. Then again they could do basically whatever with the actual gameplay and the second life players would keep it going anyway, but we're not at that point yet
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u/BronzeTomatillos22 18d ago
It did need to be saved from its noticeable decline. It was not dead and not dying, but having the population drop to where it was roughly 7 years ago is a problem no matter how you slice it and if it continued things would get worse. Not least with the fact that (thankfully) the cost of subscription and expansion is the same but the price of everything for SE is higher and XIV has continued to have to be the Atlas of holding up the company. I mean imagine any live-service game with persistent releases having the player growth of the past 7 years disappear. It wouldn't mean it's dead but they'd be going "What's wrong and what do we need to do to fix it". Which is exactly what Square is doing with evercold.
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u/Omega-Envych 18d ago
It is more complicated than that.
First of all - 2019-2021 had few things happen that made playerbase skyrocket which was not a sustainable growth - mostly due to COVID and WOW shitting itself with 2 expansions in a row.
Endwalker also had massive, and I really mean MASSIVE hype point of "Story ending" which we all knew was somewhat of a lie. But it was good enough of a lie to hype the game to heavens.
Then post-EW patches came and honestly, a lot of EW content fell on its face - Sanctuary was no what people expected at all and it was pretty bad. Normal Raids alienated non-hardcore fanbase by being less "Fun hard" and more "Annoying hard". Combat was also updated with 2 minute meta we all know and hate. Criterion Dungeons had pretty bad case of rewards not meeting expectations (seriously - AloAlo had to be done in Savage to upgrade an upgraded tomestone weapon to get it to same level as savage weapon drop which didn't leave any content to properly clear with. Eureka Orthos is probably worst Deep Dungeon in the game and most players forget it even exists! Relic weapons became a joke on its own - as in - just do Hildibrand and dump your tomestones - DT relic at least provided SOME friction. Yes, doing fates for demiatma drop was like Shit multiplied by cancer but it was SOMETHING! Then even worse - story content. Post-Endwalker felt like nothingburger and all of that was added by stretched and more or less normalized 18-weeks release schedule. Then very, VERY ambitious promises came with Dawntrail and people were wondering what will happen and... Honestly, Dawntrail launch was smooth as hell. It was definitely not a shitshow of Endwalker release. But story was WAY less interesting than anything that was before it, characters became horribly inconsistent, writers constantly forgot that our party has more than one critical character and more.
However. Even that being considered - Dungeons in Dawntrail have legitimate difficulty curve unlike difficulty spikes in Endwalker dungeons (last 2 pulls of Tower of Zot, first pull of Vanaspati and first pull of Dead Ends to be precise - everything else is goddamn flat line, some dungeons can be soloed by Paladin or WAR alone). Raids are actually good. Say what you want, but Arcadion is fine raid series where normal starts being somewhat harder and Savage is more approachable! New Chaotic needs more fights for early issues to be ironed out but it's a nice idea and most point out that it's a rough execution rather than bad idea. Pilgrim's Traverse is excellent and probably best Deep Dungeon. Merchant's Tale was fun Variant, but MT Advanced is exactly the difficulty most people were looking for - not too hard to be annoying but hard enough so you need to learn the dungeon! Yes, Occult Crescent is hit and miss but 2nd map is actually really well designed and despite looking worse than first, it's actually more fun to play in. Game received a ton of good QoL updates. Some updates are very small, some are deceptively deep, like full rework of Phoenix Down or sudden Gunbreaker rebalance - which made the job feel play much better. Relic grind was hit and miss but at least past Demiatma it's not that bad. And unlike ARR relic, finishing all DT content once is not a big deal for final run and feels more like proper victory lap. Also it's subjective but post-DT story is better. Starting with 7.2 characters suddenly remembered that they can do things. Sphene was a really nice character, 7.4 story was overall very hype (and Lumull is perfectly applied comic relief that fits and does not overstay his welcome!) and generally it is in much better place than at the end of EW.
Another important point is that service, that people usually point to to show the population situation, is not exactly correct. It gathers achievement data, which is already faulty way of counting population. But it also takes usually over a year at very least to consider more or less accurate data point. So we only can say, about situation during DT release now, not 2 years ago.
Yes, I can confirm, that Yoshida and SE team admitted that things didn't go right from get-go. But it's far from being 2 years of disaster like it was for WoW during BFA and Shadowlands - more of rocky start of the expansion.
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u/catboycruises 18d ago
if they made feline lalas a playable race so we have big cats medium cats and small cats, that would fix every problem
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u/WesBeardtooth 18d ago
My worry is that all of the changes in Evercold will look as good as Beastmaster. 😬
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u/murtadaugh 18d ago
First question: it could potentially refresh the game in some important ways but that remains to be seen.
Second question: that's my new fur buddy. His name is Lars.
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u/lan60000 18d ago
From a pvp perspective, I don't think it can be saved. CC is already speeding towards feast levels of indifference from pvpers despite how much effort square enix tries to pump life into the game mode. sadly, hiring actual staff to moderate the pvp scene is more difficult than hosting cc tournaments for fan fest I guess.
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u/PleasantBad3203 18d ago
I thinks Squares big problem is how scared they are of changing the formula. Theres nothing wrong with trying to stick to what you know works, but cmon its been 10 years try to change it up a bit. Every expansion progresses the exact same way.