So Mateus is the smallest server again? Not surprising.
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So Mateus is the smallest server again? Not surprising.
Wow, yeah, you are completely correct. That make it even worse that last patch cycle's content has only been cleared by under 4% of people in all servers.
http://puu.sh/qEizI/e1b2d975af.png
What this consensus tells me is many people may get their wish of a return to Coil difficulty. I strongly feel the last stage of Alexander will be significantly easier than Gordias and Midas were. Hard to argue whether that is a bad thing though, what with how low the clear rates have been.
To be fair, Gordias was helped by the long delays between 3.0 to 3.2, and the fact Thordan EX was the only real alternative for endgame, especially with Diadem and LoV being flops. Sure, neither was meant to appeal to the raider crowd, but it still meant you didn't have a whole lot to do besides Gordias and Thordan. Add to that plenty of people went back into Gordias after getting either lore gear or beating any of A5S through to A7S and that likely accounts for the differences. Not to mention A3S getting hit with a pretty hard nerf.
Putting all other arguments seen in this thread aside, the quoted text is the takeaway from all of this.
I'm still going to chalk it up to the fact that raiding has only two difficulties and the "hardcore" raids themselves are corridors leading to a boss (and said raids having only 4 bosses).Quote:
Perhaps the inverse method deserves an attempt - making the gearing and preparation process for raiding to be quick and simple and focus on execution and teamwork, and have the reward focus for raiding not centered around a self-depreciating progression system. However the details of executing such a thing would be a murky discussion to have.
Well RIP, next year I will be playing solo I guess.
They jacked the difficulty of raiding WAY up at the same time as removing a ton of the incentives to do it. Not surprising at all that no one is completing it. Even though Midas is easier than Gordias it's still way too punishing.
Not that I disagree with the idea of multiple difficulties, or exploration based raiding; it should be noted that Savage difficulty does fit with the metrics of the highest difficulty raid in most MMOs. This could indicate that the formatting of FFXIV's raiding isn't indicative of its clear rate, but rather the problem is systemic to raiding and raid tuning itself at highest levels.
The question that would be posed to the player base is: Are we ok with a difficulty mode of content wherein only ~1% of the base will see it completed?
but we are counting full clears right? im sure there are tons of ppl working on A8s (slowly because summer D:) , my static included , but true be told , yeah endgame fails for raiders in FFXIV , i will repeat my self again
4 bosses 4-5 phases is BAD DESIGN , 8 bosses 2-3 phases = good design ....why?
more bosses = more content (or illusion of content at least)
less phases = less frustatation , wiping on P1 until learn , wipe on P2 until learned (repeating P1) , wipe on P3 repeatin P1, P1 and so on.....by the time u are learning the last phase u HATE the boss already that u want the pain to be over....
Memeurl still has no clear
unsurprising
p.sure we were 2nd to last to clear gordias as well
also i love how we have 6k active but only abound 1k at current patch
luv my quiet dead server
The only thing that requires SOME effort in this game is Savage raiding. Evything else is mindnumbling easy. I just can't imagene person, who can't beat Final steps of Faith.Quote:
Finishing 3.3 requires clearing Final Steps of Faith? Yeah, I know some people who won't be clearing that until echo is added. Final Steps takes SOME effort.
Quote:
Could be people like me getting all jobs to 50 brfore starting HW MSQ.
90% of people I know (and I know around hundred) were 60-all (combat, gathering, crafting) 2 months after expansion release. So, what leveling? I'm not saying end-game is the only thing that matters, but what else is there to do? You can complete all other content in a few weeks, except maybe pvp, and be done with it. I honestly don't understand how some of you people play the game and still have stuff to do.Quote:
A bit of a fun fact for you: Endgame players are a minority in all MMOs. You will always find more people leveling than anything, and that has always been the case, in this game especially.
The thing before the hate, is how SE spends its limit resources and what players are completing. At what X% is it best not to implement certain content or low completion rate what turns the player base off. As other people have said they aren't interested in the progression gear grind. But they still pay each month. If they are a larger part of the population content should be more focused in a direction that they enjoy and less new patch new gear grind.
SE would not have to say how many subs they have. But X% of people have finished certain content. Also before another Live letter/fan fest and fluff questions maybe another questionnaire about the state of the game and allow the number of created accounts answer and not just active. My concerns might not line up with the majority of the player base, but if I see large percentage of players want more tacking on new content to old content I guess I could accept that.
I didn't cap tomestones for most of ARR in spite of playing every day and being caught up with the patches.
Endgame grind just isn't something that interests everyone all the time.
Are you seriously bringing this as an argument? Even if we ignore the part aesteval already pointed out (a handful of endgame raiders you are friends with are not representative of the majority of people in the game), it is still ridiculous if you actually consider that to be the norm.
Even just playtime-wise. I can guarantee you that most players do NOT have that amount of playtime available every week to get every single available class to 60 in 8 weeks.
And that's not even considering that people have very varying interests. I actually AM interested in getting all classes to 60 and I've been playing since early 2011, and I still only have an average level of 49 over all the classes.
Now think of how common it is for people to NEVER level anything outside of the few classes they enjoy playing...:rolleyes:
@Census:
Well I like by how much Ragnarok is winning over Shiva now :o
Last time it was still a race between Shiva and Ragnarok for the most densely populated EU server with the most people at 60 and with the most alex clears;
now I can tell the new players who come to my server and ask if they are on the right server that yes, we are the greatest! Muhahaha! :cool:
Ok, serious now:
In general, those numbers are in line with what I've been expecting.It's natural for the active player numbers to drop that late in the cycle, and no, the 6 million cumulative players SE announced lately were never said to be "active"; the basic meaning of the word cumulative already means "added up", as in "all players who ever registered an account past the free trial".
- We are nearly 3 months into 3.3,
- and it's been 6(!) months since we last got a new raid.
- 14 months since the last expansion.
So screaming "Eeh, where are your 6 million players now, SE? You lied!" just means you don't know how English works :p
All that said, I think the numbers on the Alex Clears are worrying.
Yes, it has always been normal for only a fracture of the playerbase to be interested in raiding, but not THAT few :confused:
I still think having a normal mode for Alex at all is killing any will to do Savage. Because why should you if you get the story, the glamours and everything from the Normal Mode just fine and Savage only gives you better stats which you won't need anywhere else but IN Savage? :eek:
To end on a lighter note:
Heh, so I was right when I thought nobody would bother with the freaking ugly Manjimutt, the boring Blizzaria weapon and the equally ugly Robonyan :p
Personally, I still think the difficulty of savage is killing any will to do Savage. Far more people are willing to do NidEx than Savage for less rewards to boot, despite it having the same template as Savage - story content cranked up.
But then again, in our unofficial player poll 50% of the people weren't even interested in NidEx, so...yeah. If that's remotely representative, it doesn't take a genius to figure out hard content in general is just not considered fun by many.
Meanwhile I know upwards of 200 people on this game and only like, 5 who are 60 in everything.
Heck I log in every day almost and have for 2 years and I still don't have 3 or 4 of the classes at 60. Not everyone wants to grind everything out as fast as possible. I spend most of my time crafting, raiding savage, or just being social, personally.
I find it really silly to grind everything out that you can in 2 weeks and then complain that there is nothing to do.
Neither here nor there though. I was just pointing out that it's obvious and should be expected that the majority of the playerbase won't be at endgame.
I like hard content but not the way it's done in this game
And IMO having scripted fights that just take memorization and trial and error for crap glamour isn't worth it. Yes dungeons are scripted too, but at least the esoteric armor looks good.
Not everyone hates hard content. I like hard content. Imo it's the wrong kind of hard so I don't bother. That doesn't auto mean I hate hard content.
Midas is actually easier then gordias until A8S which is just a cluster F of overlapping mechanics. Even T9 which a lot agree is the hardest floor of the old coil is still easier then A8S. IMO
Anyone paying a sub and doing so just to play LoV or hanging out in the GS playing minigames exclusively is still an active player. You don't have to be current on "endgame" content. That's the point of all the fluff content, if you don't want to raid you can do a million other things and still be considered part of the game. The game gets a lot more enjoyable when you realize that being on the bleeding edge of difficult content isn't necessary. I'm really enjoying just leveling all the jobs right now and seeing their stories :o
There's not an exact parallel, because neither BCoB nor SCoB awarded a minion or mount and FCoB awarded a minion to everyone who cleared it (rather than one minion per group per clear).
That said, in the April 2015 survey, there were ~36k T13 clears with an active population of ~730k characters, so a clear rate of ~5% after about six months.
It's pretty consistent from one survey to the next that the most recent MSQ segment sees a significant drop off.
Here's the comparable data from the April census:
http://67.media.tumblr.com/1bea5c915...qqvpo1_540.png
From the 5th through 8th Vana'diel Censuses:
You can quibble over the term "daily numbers" if you want to, but we don't have that data for either game.
- 2005: "Based on data compiled at the end of March 2005, we conducted research on the main job levels of over 1,550,000 characters belonging to over 500,000 registered users."
- 2006: "There are over 500,000 players logging in to FINAL FANTASY XI from all over the world, with the main player base located in Japan, North America, and Europe."
- 2007: "FINAL FANTASY XI has steadily grown over the months and years into a thriving community of more than 500,000 users. [...] During any time zone, a significant percentage of the 500,000+ player base will be logged into the game."
- 2008: "FINAL FANTASY XI's thriving community has grown to more than 500,000 users."
I don't think there was ever really a significant number of people who wanted something as difficult as even Midas Savage, especially compared to the number of people who were happy with Coil's difficulty.
They just spoke up about it, in some cases at length, while the people who were satisfied with Coil just went about doing Coil.
Yep, I know my static got at least eight mounts (I can't remember if we took other people through) from A4S some time after 3.2, so we're certainly bumping that number up.
I think that once MMOs go to multiple raiding difficulties, the developers tend to intentionally design the hardest one so that only a small percentage of the players can beat it.
Definitely. I never did A4S without using the sac method or Savage SCoB, so I can't judge on those, but A8S is certainly more difficult than all of non-Savage Coil and all the rest of Alexander (including A3S and sac-method A4S).
I love A8s (have not cleared, @robo dance#2) and think its difficulty is perfect, it's the (currently) last turn and should be hard... and it's really fun :D
Too easy content is worse than too hard content imo, cause there's nothing left after clearing it. Gordias was much harder but mainly because of its DPS checks.. i still loved it (A3s).
Midas DPS checks are MUCH lower but more mechanic based, players asked for that .
Raiding fails because players don't want to join a static imo... We need to be able to join those fights without being in a static, Raid finder was a good idea but nobody uses it.. i hope a datacenter-wide party finder function will help once its implemented
Of the subscription MMOs that still exist I think it's actually second or third. 500k subs is actually really REALLY good for an MMO. Prior to WoW's existence the previous top-dog (Everquest) was hovering around the same number. WoW's success was a complete fluke simply due to making the genre relatively 'mainstream'. It's success will never be repeated, yet people continue to use it as a benchmark.
Honestly anything above 200k subs is fine for a healthy MMO if that number is relatively stable. People really need to stop thinking of WoW as the model of success. Business execs thinking like that is precisely why subscription MMOs have been struggling; they commit too much money during development expecting millions of subscribers that don't exist.
Uhm...In the table you provided, I see a total drop of about 7% for the latest step and 8% for the step before, with an even bigger drop off before that. I don't see any exceptional outlier at the latest step, but maybe I'm just blind.
In the census, the biggest total player drop is at 3.3 with 78350 difference. The biggest drop before that is between 2.55 and 3.0c at 61444.
In the table you provided, the difference is 13% for 2.55-3.0c and only 7% for 3.1-3.2. It's rather hard to compare since one is total numbers and the other percentages, but yeah...
(*Does some quick math*)
Okay. About 44% clear for 3.3. About 60% clear for 3.2. 63% for 3.1. It's even worse in percentages... don't do percentages people!
Two people leveling alt jobs, collecting glamour and doing GS stuff together are very much relevant to each other and actively using their subscription time. Amazing how the game doesn't revolve around you, your friends and your interests. The reason why all the people you know are end gamers is because you consider everyone else irrelevant and nonexistent. Birds of feather flock together, but not every bird is a jackdaw.
Ty for posting this. The numbers match what I thought of the state of the game. There is a drop in active characters now that we are nearing the end of an expansion. The numbers will probably shoot up before the next expansion like they usually do for MMOs. Still quite healthy numbers and nowhere near the death of this game.
Yeah, the game is fine. These numbers show what I see in the game -- a healthy playerbase. I'm not at all surprised.
Hm, you and I read these numbers very differently. I see that we're down to 507,000 characters (so sub 507,000 players) from 639,000 only 4 months ago, and 824,000 almost 1 year ago. This shows a pretty steady decline.
11-08-2016 507,000
20-04-2016 639,000
09-01-2016 771,000
09-08-2015 824,000
19-04-2015 730,000
24-12-2014 574,000
16-09-2014 650,000
Then looking at my server, there are a total of only 4,000 people who have completed the 3.0 story and 2.5k who have caught up fully in the story. As you need the story unlocked to access things like the new expert dungeon + nidhogg, that shows a pretty small pool of players on my server who have access to that.
All of that said, I think there is some reasoning behind this. Most notably, we are rather far into the expansion at this time. I think that is the general pattern associated with expansions - where it starts off high and gradually decreases throughout the expansion. Then there is also some competition from other games (i.e. Legion launching soon, GW2 had an expansion some months back, other MMO's launched like BDO, Blade and Soul etc.)
I am not sure if I'd say we are near the 'end of the expansion'. From the announcement of Heavensward to launch was 8 months, and we don't have an announcement of a new expansion yet. With this information, we can expect that we have roughly at least 8 months more - we're 14 months in. So, we're 14/22(or greater) meaning we're more than likely less than 64% of the way through the expansion. I'd call that mid not end, personally. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
This is exactly why I don't see these numbers as negative. Of course the numbers were much higher after 3.0 launched, and they'll be much higher again once 4.0 launches. That's just the ebb and flow of this game's population that we've seen since 2.0.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaurie
Now, if you were to compare trend lines from 2015 vs. 2016 (in line with the cycles of 2.x and 3.x), I'm guessing you'd see there are slightly less players overall right now, and SE definitely needs to address that. But the population is still healthy enough that I'm not at all worried.
This seems very reasonable.
We know we're getting patch 3.4 before Fanfest (per this interview) and then the expansion announcement at the NA Fanfest in October.
We also know that Heavensward was originally planned to be a Spring launch, and though the end of June technically qualifies, we know it was later than they planned.
In terms of the calendar, we're about a month ahead of where we were in the 2.x patch cycle: 2.3 and 2.4 were early July and late October respectively, 3.3 was early June and 3.4 will probably be late September. Assuming things proceed in roughly the same manner (and given everything that's happened so far in 3.x, it's a reasonable guess that they will), our best estimate for the next expansion would be some time near the end of May.
That would give Heavensward a total life span of 22.3 months, with us currently at 13.8 months through (61.8%).
Even without looking at actual dates, we can guess that we're roughly half way through the fourth of the (likely) six patches of the expansion (58.3%).
They've retained my sub, and kept me playing fairly actively ever since ARR launched. It doesn't mean I've completed 3.3 (or even 3.0). I'm still finding plenty of other things to do.
Of course, I'll eventually get through 3.3, but it's not likely to happen before 4.0 or possibly even 5.0 are out. If I ever reached the point of completing the last of the story quests that have been released, that's probably when I'd decide I've finished the game and it's time to move on to something else.
Yeah, like on famfrit we have 2 people that cleared on other servers and 1 group which has cleared (this is their 3rd week now) so eventually we'll have 10 here as long as they don't leave.
I have noticed after 3.2 a lot of people stopped playing here and now after 3.3 PF is almost completely dead. It is so bad that everyone but me has quit my FC and either stopped playing or left the server so now I am going to do the same and transfer off. It's pretty disappointing.
One thing to keep in mind, is that A4S in gordias is a total and complete joke of a raid floor and you can be half asleep and still clear it now with echo + ilvl boost so the gordias numbers are probably a bit inflated.
It is very hard to find raid members on my server at least. My old raid group could not get a last member for 2 months so I quit and I know another group with the same problem.
From these, you can see that about 50% of the Japanese community is engaged in the Yokai event, against the 25% in the NA and EU community.