cashew | Why GW2 can't get to FFXIV popularity (Reply)

So, I was trolling around to see some people in the GW2 community (and content creators) bemoaning that GW2 isn't getting a fair shake and that it's an under rated MMO and it deserves to be more popular. But...does it?

I think the GW2 community is truly confused why FFXIV, something they deem to be a far inferior MMO (subscription fee, simple mechanics, tab-target combat system, slow pacing), has become the WoW killer. Many MMO had tried to carve out their niche in the market, but only FFXIV managed to topple the giant. And all these WoW evacuees, for some reason seem to refuse to come to their beloved GW2 and fled to FFXIV instead. Why? How is this a thing? And how does FFXIV go from being a complete mess of an MMO with a launch so bad that they had to shut down the servers and start from scratch to becoming the only WoW killer in the MMO genre?

No, it's not because of the filthy casuals, are you kidding me. We're talking about how a subscription MMO killed another subscription MMO. It has nothing to do with casuals.

Before I start, I want you to take a look at the active population graph comparison between GW2 and FFXIV. I've highlighted 500k line so that you can properly compare between the two different axis:

(Source: Data from MMO Population)

GW2 has 16.6M accounts and averages an active playing population of ~630k.

FFXIV has 39M accounts and averages an active playing population of ~2.2M.

In other words:

GW2 has 42% of FFXIV's total population, however...
GW2 has only 29% of FFXIV's active population

If GW2's retention rate is as strong as FFXIV, then GW2's active population should also be around 42% of FFXIV's population. And yet, it looses roughly 30% more players over time than FFXIV.

What is FFXIV doing to retain players better than GW2?

And no, it's not a subscription fee. WoW has a subscription fee and yet it's bleeding players away like crazy. It's not the subscription fee that brings the players back month after month.

It's not the lack of endgame content

I've seen a lot of hot takes, including WoodenPotatoes, about the lack of endgame content in GW2. But I don't think that's quite it. Sure, GW2 has fewer raids, but that's assuming the 30% difference between GW2 and FFXIV is purely from raiders.

There's multiple problems with this reasoning:

GW2 raids are difficult and very few people do them. Only a very, very small percentage of GW2 population bother getting into raids. If the lack in raids is what's failing to retain players, then shouldn't more of the population have attempted to do raids in the first place? As in, most players should've completed the existing raids and clamor for more new stuff. And yet, ANet's internal statistics have shown that raids just aren't a popular feature.
Raids only make up one vector of endgame content. In any MMO, there's only ever three types of endgame as players wait for a new update: collections, roleplaying, and raids. So no, I don't think raids alone can explain the terrible retention rate. (Some might add in PvP, but honestly, in modern gaming, the PvP crowd tend to avoid MMOs and go for MOBAs or Battle Royale games instead.)
While it's not untrue that FFXIV has a lot more raids...when you listen to the FFXIV fans who praise the game, they're not praising the raids. They're praising the story. That's always the selling point. Which means, based on how FFXIV players advocate for the game, raids aren't the main reason they stick with the game.

In terms of the other vectors of endgame content (collections and roleplaying), well, the roleplaying community tend to be a small one and very rarely impact the overall population. There's not a lot of features that would dissuade or promote roleplaying, so that population is unlikely to be affected by game design. As long as you have emotes and a chat box, then the roleplaying community is gonna go organize themselves. (They've been roleplaying since ye olden days of MUDs, they don't need much.)

And in terms of collection...let me clarify collection a bit.

By collection I mean the completionist player. The person who, after finishing the story, wants to chase down all the shiny, be it mini-pets, collectible cards, fashion accessories, dye colors, do all the sidequests, achievement hunting, whatever. The point is, they want to check off a ticky box and chase after stuff.

And GW2 has a lot of stuff to check off. People can collect minis, or level alts to spec new classes, or collect all the armor skins, or do the new expansion collections to get new stuff, etc.

But I think the problem with GW2's collection is that the chase itself is unfun. Let's take GW2's weapons collection tracks in HoT: The chak weapons are downright ugly. No one wants to use those weapons, because they're yellow weapons (thus not even second BiS), so all they are good for is salvaging for ecto. But you do it because you want the title or the mini or need more achievement points to get the next achievement reward.

Or let's look at map completion: What drives players to 100% complete maps? Is it because they find heart quests just so interesting? Do they enjoy running from PoI to PoI? Or do they do it because they want...no, need the map completion reward so that they can make that legendary weapon?

...You see the problem now? GW2 devs knows that achievements in of themselves are not rewarding. They have to lock a special reward at the end of it to make the grind worth it. They don't trust that the content they've created can stand on its own without a carrot enticing the player to chase after it. (Yes, I know the whole level system is already a reward system, but I'm talking about how leveling isn't rewarding enough that you have to add an extra layer of incentives.)

Meanwhile, compare that to FFXIV's philosophy.

Project director Yoshida Naoki (known as Yoshi-P to the fandom) famously told gamers to stop playing the game if they're not having fun. He is that confident that you are playing not because the game mechanics are arm twisting you into playing, but because you just wanna play.

Now, I can't say this for all of the players in FFXIV, but I can say that my experience with FFXIV so far as been extremely smooth sailing. I never felt like I need to participate in an event I hate just to get the reward (Triple Triad grind not withstanding, but it's like 10 minutes a week of my game time, so I'm not super resentful). I actively enjoy Gold Saucer and go back to play just for the fun of playing. And because I want to breed chocobos. Because apparently FF7 have left its mark on me and I end up liking that stupid sidequest.

I'm progressing the story because I'm curious about the next event. There's a lot of mysteries thrown in at the start of the game, dangling plot threads that hints at something more and you're watching the plot slowly unveil itself. And unlike GW2 which forgets that it had mentor characters and companion characters who should be closer to your PC, FFXIV keeps the cast with you.

And FFXIV is pretty clear: Story is the reason you're here. You will enjoy the story, and if you don't, you're welcomed to go do something else. And honestly? There's actually a lot of stuff to do elsewhere, but you're not going to progress very much (except at the Gold Saucer) until you experience the story. And you can do as much stuff as you want, but other than giving you an achievement, the designers don't feel the need to tempt you into completion with an additional reward. Doing the completion, be it buying minis or fashion or leveling new jobs, is the reward.

There is an entire subreddit dedicated to putting together fun outfits. That's it. That's the endgame. Make clothes and put them on and dye them different colors. And most of those items are easily obtained in game items, be it from the auction house or from crafting it yourself. Enjoy the crafting system? Great, level a crafter. Hate it but want the crafted items? Buy it off another player by doing something else you prefer. Missed the event? Buy it off of the cash shop instead.

And the game absolutely throws gil at you. Even though I hear that things go for millions of gil in the marketplace (as a free player I can't access the market), I'm easily getting 100k gil every few days (even though my MSQ progression has ground to a halt as I get distracted by five billion other things), so millions in comparison isn't even that bad. Not to mention the slew of glamour items you can purchase directly from NPCs. Which means, yes, it is completely viable to spend all of your in game time just buying clothes and putting them on, then taking pretty pictures. (OK, you still have to play a little bit of the game, but the point is it isn't onerous, so you can quickly get through the chore part and get to the fun part.)

I mean, I'm leveling a third job right now because I'm curious how each of the jobs play. I might end up ditching the bard, because it's not really clicking with me right now, and try the ninja a bit later and see if that feels better. The whole point is, I'm not leveling these jobs because I have to. I'm literally doing it because I want to. I'm happy with how things are working, so that's that.

Now, to be sure, I'm not actually anywhere near endgame in FFXIV. However, even at this early stage, I can see how endgame can be entertaining even without raids. Housing, for example, exists for people who want to make furniture and do interior decoration. And raise their companion Chocobo levels. The crafting jobs all feed into one another. When you craft, your MP bar is replaced with a CP bar and you need to strategize using CP effectively to successfully craft. Omnicrafting (maxing out every crafting job) is a huge chase many endgame players go after because the system is deep and fun. Again, nothing makes you do it, it's literally cheaper to just buy the item you want off of other players, yet most people still want to craft just for the sake of playing the crafting job.

Compare that to the crafting strategies GW2 puts out to help you grind your crafting classes up as fast as possible so you can get to making end game gear. Yeah. That's real fun...not.

GW2 is not actually alt friendly

Back in the day, when everyone was still comparing each new MMO to WoW, GW2 seemed to be alt friendly by comparison. After all, you can share items across all the characters in an account. You can share achievements, so you can work on different achievements on different classes. Collections are counted account wide. Etcetera, etcetera.

But in reality, the only reason you're making an alt is because you want to try a different profession (or have storage mules because the game squeezes you so hard on bag space). And every time you make a new character to test a new profession, you'll have to progress through the story again. You're back at zero in terms of progress unless you purchase direct to 80 skip. (Yes, I know birthdays give out auto levels to 20 or 40 now? But the point is you still have to put in a ton of work to get to 80.) And it's not actually enough to get to 80, because at this point, the base professions simply aren't competitive anymore. If you want to actually know how a profession plays, you'll need to go grind the expansions again to unlock your elite specializations. Then hunt down the correct gear. Spend a bunch of much more difficult to get gold due to the controlled economy to either a) purchase the materials to craft or b) purchase the actual gear.

All just so you can play a different profession.

In reality, alt creation happens not because people wanted to experience the game again, but because people just wanted to test out a build or they wanted more storage space. In FFXIV, there is never a squeeze on storage space and you can swap jobs with a single button click, so you never need a second character.

And yet, the game allows you to make 40 characters on a single account without extra purchases. (8 characters for a free trial account, which is still 3 more character slots than paid GW2 and 6 more than free GW2.) FFXIV gives you the freedom to make new characters if you want and people make new characters because they want. I mean...I don't know what else to say. People literally create brand new characters that can't share inventory or anything with their main character, just so they can start from zero. That is how much they enjoyed the journey.

I mean, at this point, what is there left to say, really? FFXIV retains players because it is fun. It's a friendly place that doesn't make you "work" while making it feel like you've "earned" your stuff. It turns out most players don't want to be a "gamer", they just want to play.

Finally, I think GW2 needs to reconsider its "free" account. Part of the reason FFXIV is able to grow so big is because it's so generous with free account limitations. Compare the two side by side:

Characters: GW2 - 2; FFXIV - 8
Map content: GW2 - base game; FFXIV - base game + first expansion
Bags: GW2 - 3 + bank NPC (1 tab); FFXIV - 4 + Chocobo saddlebag (2 tabs)
Classes: GW2 - 8; FFXIV - 13

I get that GW2 free trial has less stuff because the paid GW2 account also starts off with less free stuff. But that just exasperates the problem. Paid accounts should have always started with 8 character slots instead of 5. Every expansion purchase should have given veteran players an extra character slot (compared to new comers). Or at least add a new bank tab for vets who have stuck with the game for longer to help retain older players.

Instead, GW2 has taken the clear and obvious route of "If you don't pay, we don't want you." For a "buy once play forever" game, that's pretty depressing. At least FFXIV never pretends like they were going to let you play indefinitely without paying, and yet plenty of people have logged thousands of hours into the free trial. Every time, FFXIV met and went beyond the player base's expectations. Meanwhile, GW2 has let the player base down again and again.

And the toxic protectiveness of GW2 players isn't helping. Anyone who dares to say a bad thing about their game will get told that they should be thankful they can play at all and that the community doesn't need this negativity. Well...guess what? It might be that your game isn't retaining players because it's not fun and the devs aren't responding. If you keep telling people to be satisfied with what they have or GTFO...then you're going to keep losing players.