Final Fantasy 14is in a bit of a rough spot at the moment. We’ve had promising updates that haveadded massive time sinks like Occult Crescentand Cosmic Exploration, and even more stuff coming in Patch 7.3, but even Yoshi-P himself recently admitted that the team has taken its eye off the balland become a little complacent in recent years.
That’s been made clear via the game’s falling player numbers ever since Endwalker, as while we don’t have any confirmed stats, Lucky Bancho has claimed thatthe game’s active character count has been on a downwards spiral for quite a while. Final Fantasy 14 is clearly hemorrhaging players, and for the first time, Square Enix has acknowledged the problem.
Final Fantasy 14’s Player Count Is Falling, And Square Enix Is “Aware”
In a recent shareholders meeting (translated by Reddit user Dixonjt89), Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu was asked whether he knows that there has been a decline in game quality and player numbers since Dawntrail, and his response was rather to the point.
“We are aware,” says Kiryu. “Ever since Endwalker brought a sense of closure, Final Fantasy XIV has been shifting toward the next ten years with Dawntrail (7.0) as the starting point. The development team is fully committed to making sure players can continue to enjoy the game beyond 8.0.”
A bit of a non-answer, and no real comment on how Square Enix is attempting to fix the problem, but it’s at least confirmation that the company knows Final Fantasy 14 is sliding backwards at the moment. Interestingly, Kiryu also brings up Final Fantasy 14 director Yoshi-P’s recent workload, as he’s been juggling various projects for a couple of years now.
Completely unprompted, Kiryu acknowledges that there are “concerns” among fans that Final Fantasy 14’s quality is declining due to Yoshi-P’s involvement in games like Final Fantasy 16 and the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics remaster. However, Kiryu states that these other projects will “ultimately serve as valuable experience” when working on Final Fantasy 14, so nothing is going to change there either.
I do think that these particular concerns are somewhat overblown. It takes more than just one man to keep Final Fantasy 14 going, and Yoshi-P has said in the past thathe’d like to direct more Final Fantasy games, which I don’t think he’d say if he felt he was stretched too thin. In any case, it’s interesting to hear a Square Enix higher-up actually acknowledge worries about FF14, but we’ll have to wait and see if this translates into actual improvements in the future.
