FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

And people shouldnt forget one thing we are currently at the same situation as in every expansion before, the time between Expansion Release and x.2 where the Content drops was always dry as hell, now with a bad Story and the fact that long term player already did every old content the playernumbers drop even more, give us 7.2 and you see how much the playerbase starts to get up again

its the same in every damn expansion, when do people finally understand it?

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You know what’s different

The story was trash so the playerbase cratered and the longer patch cycle means it craters harder

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You know what’s different

The story was trash so the playerbase cratered and the longer patch cycle means it craters harder

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yea thats why i said the story is bad and we are now at a point where even old content is done, so the playerbase drops even more

take me as example, i did so much stuff with my main even the damn triple triad mount (which was such a huge pain) i even finished the choco breeding etc etc etc

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

its the same in every damn expansion, when do people finally understand it?

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**It's been the same since Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

I’m here because I believe FF14 can always improve.

Those with little faith and lesser fire won't be. I'll be here shielding the last spark from going out.

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It's actually a cult at this point.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

We were going to lose WOW refugees

That’s only a given if you do what 14 did……..absolutely nothing at all

If a competitor dumps half of thier customers in your lap for free you move heaven and earth to keep them not throw up your arms without even trying.

Not trying is just the name of the game at the moment

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No. It's a given that you're going to lose them unless you seriously change major things about your game. By the time of the "WoW Exodus", it's population had dropped from an all-time high of around 12 million active players during WotLK to about 1/6 of that. That's still a ton of people, but it was well after they went all-in on the e-sports scene with M+, Arena Tournaments, and the like. The kind of player that was still around to be part of the exodus has a very different gaming profile than the kind of person that FFXIV was designed for (consider how widespread toxicity is in random groups in WoW compared to being very rare in FFXIV). To "keep" those people, FFXIV would have needed to change what it is at its core to be sufficiently similar to WoW, because most of those "refugees" still enjoy playing WoW-style games at heart. Again, they didn't come here because they loved the design of FFXIV; they came here because they were protesting something about WoW and we were the only other "hot" game on the market (plus had a few streamers come over - again a big difference).

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The story was trash so the playerbase cratered and the longer patch cycle means it craters harder

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I'll ask again - how has the playerbase "cratered"? Someone posted the Steam charts. At this point (8 months after expansion release), the average number of daily logins has declined by ~40%. At the same point in EW, it had declined by ~49%. At the same point in ShB (largely considered the "best" expansion the game has had), it had declined by ~39%. I see nothing outside the normal cyclical nature of the population occurring.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

No. It's a given that you're going to lose them unless you seriously change major things about your game. By the time of the "WoW Exodus", it's population had dropped from an all-time high of around 12 million active players during WotLK to about 1/6 of that. That's still a ton of people, but it was well after they went all-in on the e-sports scene with M+, Arena Tournaments, and the like. The kind of player that was still around to be part of the exodus has a very different gaming profile than the kind of person that FFXIV was designed for (consider how widespread toxicity is in random groups in WoW compared to being very rare in FFXIV). To "keep" those people, FFXIV would have needed to change what it is at its core to be sufficiently similar to WoW, because most of those "refugees" still enjoy playing WoW-style games at heart. Again, they didn't come here because they loved the design of FFXIV; they came here because they were protesting something about WoW and we were the only other "hot" game on the market (plus had a few streamers come over - again a big difference).



I'll ask again - how has the playerbase "cratered"? Someone posted the Steam charts. At this point (8 months after expansion release), the average number of daily logins has declined by ~40%. At the same point in EW, it had declined by ~49%. At the same point in ShB (largely considered the "best" expansion the game has had), it had declined by ~39%. I see nothing outside the normal cyclical nature of the population occurring.

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Everything is fine I see nothing wrong here - Striker44

https://media.istockphoto.com/id/497...KvHwl-GM6_5ks=

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Originally Posted by Nadda

But I digress back to Maelstrom Negativity. Constantly dwelling on what’s wrong fails in achieving good results - because once the complaints are known, complaining about it more doesn't change anything.
You stop being constructive in critique and you start forming a tumor in your own community that kills off all enjoyment of the game in good faith. Listen to some of these comments, oozing in bad faith.

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The beatings shall continue until the quality improves. You want to know why? Because critics are often the most ardent fans of the game. You may not agree with the quality of their criticism or their wishes, but they are interested in improving the game. And most of the complaints are not new. Speed of content release. The length of content. The amount of content being released. The customization of races. The user interface. Even buying of the game is a quest, unclear to whom it is necessary. But when criticism continues year after year with no reaction or response, people become apathetic. And apathy is the death of the game. Not fierce love, not ferocious hate. Apathy.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

FF14 became popular and we received a lot of WoWfugees during the pandemic.
We were going to lose them eventually.

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Now ask yourself the question, why did we lose them all? If the game is great, why didn't this horde of people stay in it for long? Yes, of course any game loses its audience, it's inevitable. But for single-player games it's natural, since it's a one-time purchase. MMOs are supposed to keep people engaged. Maybe not literally every day for a year, but at least most of that year. The number of potential new players is not infinite. And having lost this huge influx of players almost completely, I honestly don't know where this game will continue to get new ones to replace the departing veterans. Games rarely die in one fell swoop. But if players feel that they are dissatisfied with the game and the game doesn't want to change, that's the beginning of the end. Why do you think criticism has become such a popular opinion in this particular expansion? Because complaints about the quality of the story were added to the criticisms that were already there. And the story is practically the only piece of content designed for casuals, the largest category of players~

The problem with Steam statistics is that they only report the number of active players at any given time that access the game through Steam.

What they don't report:

How many Steam players remain subscribed but are not logging in every hour of the day?

How many of that "average number of players" are the same players every hour of every day.

How many Steam players with active subscriptions were off playing Black Myth: Wukong during their "average number of players" time slot on any given day.

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Originally Posted by Xrono_Amber

words

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The question is what is the constructive use of your negativity spiral?

You're not being constructive anymore - Constructive critics want to see the game improve and offer solutions.
The Criticisms are known what are you bringing new to the conversation out of all this stamping of feet and gnashing of teeth?

All you're doing is cultivating a group of like-minded negative thinkers stewing in the juices of an impudent rage, killing all joy and good faith like a tumor.
Malicious negativity festers, creates an echo chamber, and drives people away.

The potential for new players is infinite and you're killing them off with self-fulfilling dread. You are the toxic seed of all Apathy.
When a community is flooded with people repeating the same doomsday rhetoric, it doesn’t inspire change—it just makes people stop caring altogether.

The issues with the game are known to me. I just have more faith and patience that's the only difference.

I did the valentiones event on Crystal-goblin the FIRST DAY it came out. I couldn't believe how few people were in old gridania. A lot of people are getting bored with the game.
In my case, if I had actual friends to play with, then i wouldn't want to quit all the time. I've played this game a LOT..since end of 2019. taken a lot of breaks.

I always love how logging on, you get the "server congested" message. You know none of the servers are congested.

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Originally Posted by AnotherHighlander

https://i.ibb.co/sdhtgrLy/Screenshot...-08-143939.png

The last month in which the player count was below 17100 was January 2021, which was Patch 5.45.

https://i.ibb.co/PZ9zTC1m/Screenshot...-08-144341.png

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Chicken little, the sky isn't falling. Using steam charts might help with potentially checking a trend, but it's really always been a small fraction of the playerbase. Like lets say there is 500,000 active users right now, which factors in the steam chart numbers. That is 5.2238% of the playerbase. This is only made more evident it is a small fraction of the playerbase when the game was riding higher at it's peak and had more players than WoW for awhile. As the all time peak on steam charts for FFXIV is just 95,102 across a full 10 years. Lets say we had 2 million players across all platforms when it was beating out WoW, well 95,102 is 4.7551% of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Clockworks

Then perhaps if people are only able to play solo in an MMORPG they would be better off in different types of games, they shouldnt be catered to in a multiplayer game. I get what you mean, but FFXIV catering to solo players and encouraging them to keep playing solo in a multiplayer game was and still is a mistake.

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I completely agree. except that SE tries to cater to everyone.. and really pleases no one... well, except for the corporate koolaid drinkers

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Chicken little, the sky isn't falling. Using steam charts might help with potentially checking a trend, but it's really always been a small fraction of the playerbase. Like lets say there is 500,000 active users right now, which factors in the steam chart numbers. That is 5.2238% of the playerbase. This is only made more evident it is a small fraction of the playerbase when the game was riding higher at it's peak and had more players than WoW for awhile. As the all time peak on steam charts for FFXIV is just 95,102 across a full 10 years. Lets say we had 2 million players across all platforms when it was beating out WoW, well 95,102 is 4.7551% of the playerbase.

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Just tell us you dont know how statistics and samples work.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I completely agree. except that SE tries to cater to everyone.. and really pleases no one... well, except for the corporate koolaid drinkers

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Pretty much yeah.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

I always love how logging on, you get the "server congested" message. You know none of the servers are congested.

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That's more due to the strange way their login servers work where they login people in batches. When you are sub 100 login queue you're really just waiting for the next batch.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

People love to complain about player numbers when it suits them to bolster their own argument but really what difference does it make if there are 1 million or 2 million or 500,000 people playing the game? Does that make the game more fun for your personally to know that there are 1.9mil other people player over only 499,999 thousand?

The number matters for the people at square tasked with making money, but doesn't really matter to players unless it drops to the threshold where the game isn't profitable at all.

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Hmmge well low player numbers could have impact on daylie life you know, if you spread 500k across all data centers and servers, theres not much left, Queues will pop slower, cities will start looking less and less alive, Dynamis kinda scenario just use your head

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

I wonder if the game having a WoD moment is a bad thing?

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I mean, if WoW's Warlords of Draenor moment was bad for WoW, then... presumably XIV having the equivalent would, yes, be kinda bad for XIV.

That said, what we have right now feels less like a WoD moment...

• that is, overpromising and then having a few fundamental errors atop reeling back in said promises that then cause people to be skeptical of future promises, reducing sub numbers such that it's no longer financially incentivized to provide as much content in that expansion, instead cutting losses and hoping to win people back next time

than a Shadowlands moment...

• that is, doubling down on recent trends of how the devs have been doing things / content has been mapped out despite increasingly greater boredom, annoyance, and/or apathy from the playerbase, with a general "we know better than you" attitude towards any well-formed criticism...

...but with a sixth the content and no reconsideration in sight.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

The question is what is the constructive use of your negativity spiral?

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In indicating the Square Enix that these demands exist. Because without it they will convince themself they don't have to do anything or even keep it in mind. It's easy to say the story is bad, for example. But to say why and where it's bad takes time. And discussion. A lot of discussion. Including the repetition of these discussions, especially if these are issues that have been voiced for years. The simplest and most obvious example, hats for hrothgars and vieras. How many years have people been asking for this problem to be solved? Everyone knows it's here. But a solution is still not on the horizon. And it is not certain that there will be one. But I would rather constantly and annoyingly remind them of it than hide my head in the sand and pretend that everything is fine.

I don't have to hope for the best in some future. Because I'm paying for the present. And if a game wants me to praise it, it should do its best, rather than having me lower my already relatively low standards.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Chicken little, the sky isn't falling. Using steam charts might help with potentially checking a trend, but it's really always been a small fraction of the playerbase. Like let’s say there is 500,000 active users right now, which factors in the steam chart numbers. That is 5.2238% of the playerbase. This is only made more evident it is a small fraction of the playerbase when the game was riding higher at its peak and had more players than WoW for awhile. As the all time peak on steam charts for FFXIV is just 95,102 across a full 10 years. Let’s say we had 2 million players across all platforms when it was beating out WoW, well 95,102 is 4.7551% of the playerbase.

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lol, FFXIV has NEVER been beating out WoW. Even their lowest of 5 million concurrent subs is more than double the estimated peak FF14’s numbers.

I'm wondering what their backplan plan is if the new Bozja is not well received? Radio silence for 2 months?

I'm glad that the people who unironically hate the game have finally learned to unsub.

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Originally Posted by AshtonCrowe

I'm wondering what their backplan plan is if the new Bozja is not well received? Radio silence for 2 months?

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More items for the Mogstation.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

I'm glad that the people who unironically hate the game have finally learned to unsub.

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"I'm glad that the game I'm white knighting for lost 75% of the playerbase because their criticisms have gone unheard for so long that they finally gave up and left in apathy".

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Originally Posted by AshtonCrowe

I'm wondering what their backplan plan is if the new Bozja is not well received? Radio silence for 2 months?

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They will probably just go on about "Guys just wait TWO MORE YEARS till next expansion and we TOTALLY PROMISE that the game will finally get something to actually do!"

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Originally Posted by CapaxInfiniti

They will probably just go on about "Guys just wait TWO MORE YEARS till next expansion and we TOTALLY PROMISE that the game will finally get something to actually do!"

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Wondering if they'll try to blame covid again LOL

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Originally Posted by Ranhansha

More items for the Mogstation.

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Hey, If they have an insistence on it i'd like to just put out there . . Put Regalia on there.

You already put the Anniversary bird on Mogstation just put Regalia on there and charge the price of whale and make it account wide, My Ps4 acc has it my PC acc doesn't everytime it reruns i'm either not active or don't have the time to dedicate to FFXIV.

That being said, I do see why people are mad at Mogstation a specific haircut that's been begged for is Paid only, All the recent emotes aside from events are from shop. Even the limited time pizza one.

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Originally Posted by Clockworks

Just tell us you dont know how statistics and samples work.

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You hate what I say because its been the truth. We've had millions of players at the peak. But oh yeah let's cite the steam charts as somehow being this sign of the 'endtimes' where during Endwalker launch when FFXIV was at it's peak, 53,729.2 for the month of December on steam chats. I have more trust in LuckyBancho as a sample size, as during endwalker the sample it had more than 350,000 players. Anyone who uses the steam charts as a proper sample taker is fooling themselves. Like congrats, the steam charts tells you the player count declined, so does LuckyBancho with still a far larger sample size.

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

"I'm glad that the game I'm white knighting for lost 75% of the playerbase because their criticisms have gone unheard for so long that they finally gave up and left in apathy".

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Yeah? Nothing happens if you just keep complaining but keep paying. If the game improves because people unsub and they get off their asses to improve it, great. If the game shuts down, oh well. If the game keeps going as it is because it manages to stay profitable then that's fine too.

This doesn't surprise me. My content for this game has just been doing the same stale hallwa-I mean dungeons over and over while mashing 11111 because queueing dps takes 50 million years and parking myself in the Gold Saucer. That's basically been my regular content cause nothing else of substance is happening. Not only are we in a horrific content drought, we also have no fun gameplay to make up for it. Even when Warframe had droughts the gameplay loop and build mechanic was fun enough to play around with to fill the gap. Here, if you want to grind anything fun, you can't because you're locked out of rewards after one playthrough...

Me: "Wow! That FFXI raid was pretty fun and chaotic! I wanna go again so I can have fun and get more rewards for my main job and other jobs!"
Yoshi P: "No."
Me: "Oh, well what do I do now?"
Yoshi P: "Play other games."
Me: "..."
Also me: "HOW THE HELL IS THIS A SOUND BUSINESS PRACTICE!!?"

But hey, I did just get a double mini cactpot so I guess that's neat.

It would definitely help content longevity if job design wasn’t so laughably terrible

Healers especially are designed for people who don’t play them. That doesn’t mesh well with “the only content to do is the same content you’ve done 1000 times already”

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It would definitely help content longevity if job design wasn’t so laughably terrible

Healers especially are designed for people who don’t play them. That doesn’t mesh well with “the only content to do is the same content you’ve done 1000 times already”

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I've always said this but When job design is good it enhances the casual content and even savage encounters.

Currently playing through content once is really the only unique experience you will get with that form of content, take savage raids for example once you do it on one job theirs no real point doing it on another, especially if they are in the same category of tank/dps/healer.

picking a different job should feel interesting and unique, maybe even challenging, but instead it feels pretty much the same because job design is so one note.

Healers like you've pointed out are a great example of this, but in general they cannot design anything other then a DPS role in this game (even this is becoming questionable), they have to give tanks absurd defensive kits that get stronger each expansion, they have to bloat healers with extra heals that doesn't get used because encounters still design around healers who only use gcd heals lol, this also results in no evolution in DPS kits, I guess people complaining made them add one skill dps you use to in 2minute windows.. enjoy?

Support roles (tanks/healers) need a massive overhaul with how they interact with the game, but my bet is 8.0 will mostly only focus on dps, because I have a feeling that they have no idea what they are even doing at this point with tanks or healers.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I've always said this but When job design is good it enhances the casual content and even savage encounters[…]

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I’ve said the similar since forever, too.

There’s no doubt that casual contents are the most populous in the game. Players from all facets—casual to HC—touches them at some point in their weekly routines. So why not push the effort to actually make that process more fun?

I.e. I’ll probably stop bailing from CT raid and groans far less if I get one from roulette, IF the buttons are actually engaging, well designed lv50 kits. Not only that, this will also help any other lower level pops, too. But as of now, they just don’t. Design deems that all the fun stuffs should be shoved to close to cap level & frankly I find this overtly silly.

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Originally Posted by Clockworks

The "majority of players doesnt use steam" argument makes no sense, that's exactly how you make statistics. You use a sample, except if you have evidence that players on other platforms play the game differently, if that is the case, feel free to prove me wrong.

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You have a biased sample. You're trying to make assumptions about the entire playerbase but only look at numbers for one segment of the player base. If you wanted a truly unbiased sample, you would need a sample of players from each available platform.

What you guys are doing is if I said I interviewed 1000 people in New York and they all agreed on X, but I only talked to people who lived in one specific area.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You have a biased sample. You're trying to make assumptions about the entire playerbase but only look at numbers for one segment of the player base. If you wanted a truly unbiased sample, you would need a sample of players from each available platform.

What you guys are doing is if I said I interviewed 1000 people in New York and they all agreed on X, but I only talked to people who lived in one specific area.

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What is it about steam players that you believe is more or less likely to act significantly different to the rest of the playerbase

It’s more likely interviewing 1000 people for x then dismissing that as a biased sample because the 1000 people are far more likely to have a living grandma than grandpa but without providing a reason as to why the sample being biased on the grandma/grandpa front makes it biased on x

Great news for an MMO hater like myself.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

The question is what is the constructive use of your negativity spiral?

Malicious negativity festers, creates an echo chamber, and drives people away.

The potential for new players is infinite and you're killing them off with self-fulfilling dread.

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You answered your own question. If negativity has the power to drive away new players, then negativity is a way to damage the company until our demands for improvement are met. The people who still care should complain even harder in that case.

If the company still refuses to make the game better, well ... they are losing revenue, the white knights are losing people to play with and the people complaining lose nothing, not even a sub fee since they allow people to complain on the forums for free.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You have a biased sample. You're trying to make assumptions about the entire playerbase but only look at numbers for one segment of the player base. If you wanted a truly unbiased sample, you would need a sample of players from each available platform.

What you guys are doing is if I said I interviewed 1000 people in New York and they all agreed on X, but I only talked to people who lived in one specific area.

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Yeah because its a very common fact that steam players are different types of human beings than console players or standalone players. (/s)

Please explain to me how console players or standalone players would be any more different than steam players ? I'll wait for your response.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

What is it about steam players that you believe is more or less likely to act significantly different to the rest of the playerbase

It’s more likely interviewing 1000 people for x then dismissing that as a biased sample because the 1000 people are far more likely to have a living grandma than grandpa but without providing a reason as to why the sample being biased on the grandma/grandpa front makes it biased on x

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We know the Japanese player base is predominantly console, for one. The console numbers could be completely different because of regional behaviors. All that can really be assessed from looking at Steam numbers are the behaviors of those who use the Steam platform. And that has gone down after they started making us tie our accounts to our Steam accounts. So it's an even smaller amount of players to base behavior for the entire player base on now. Not to mention XIV is on XBox, so you have two consoles adding to those numbers.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

We know the Japanese player base is predominantly console, for one. The console numbers could be completely different because of regional behaviors. All that can really be assessed from looking at Steam numbers are the behaviors of those who use the Steam platform. And that has gone down after they started making us tie our accounts to our Steam accounts. So it's an even smaller amount of players to base behavior for the entire player base on now. Not to mention XIV is on XBox, so you have two consoles adding to those numbers.

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So you are still willing to die on that hill that people on console or standalone somehow are different human beings with different behaviors and ways of playing games

Interesting.

But no, that's not how samples work, you dont need statistics from every platform to have a sample of the game's health.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

We know the Japanese player base is predominantly console, for one. The console numbers could be completely different because of regional behaviors. All that can really be assessed from looking at Steam numbers are the behaviors of those who use the Steam platform. And that has gone down after they started making us tie our accounts to our Steam accounts. So it's an even smaller amount of players to base behavior for the entire player base on now. Not to mention XIV is on XBox, so you have two consoles adding to those numbers.

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Yes so the game is on 4 platforms. So in order for a sample of one of the 4 platforms to not be broadly relevant there needs to be a defining feature or features that means that said platform is likely to act significantly differently to another platforms players. There is no defining feature that separates steam players

Or are we going to start segmenting PC players by what GPU they play on