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

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Originally Posted by Luca_

That's exactly what I mean by "perpetual." I can't think of another game that markets its expansion features by saying "by the way, we're going to dripfeed all of this to you and 75% of it won't be available until a year or two after launch." I think it's only now becoming a real sore spot for a couple reasons:

1. The players that swapped over from WoW have long since reached endgame and had a few years to catch up on the backlog of available content, and are now finding that new content drops are few and far between.

2. FFXIV's main draw has always been its story and having such an excellent narrative let players forgive a lot of questionable decisions elsewhere, but Dawntrail's MSQ was divisive at best. When there's a constant lack of things to do and people don't like the MSQ, there's nothing to fall back on.

3. And finally, patch cycles are now just SO. LONG. They take twice as long to push out half as much content as other MMOs while having the most stringent and predictable formula of all.

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They also just don't know how to design long-lasting content that isn't just [Collect 5000 Accursed Hoards from PotD].

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Originally Posted by Luca_

It's a joke that people still defend FFXIV's perpetual content drought at this point.

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About 15 content creators covered this thread and called us crazy and wrong.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

About 15 content creators covered this thread and called us crazy and wrong.

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Who cares, they're the biggest white knights of the game.

Arthars especially. Talks a huge talk about how he will confront Yoshi P and talk about major issues of the game and demand an answer. Then actually meets him and smiles and fanboys over him like a loser.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

About 15 content creators covered this thread and called us crazy and wrong.

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Using Steam as a metric on a game that is multi platforms, what do you think?
Even I am a PC user, I wouldn't want to buy Steam version of FF14
The nightmare of deal with Steam and SE helpline with FF11, yea, no thanks
Also, non EU/NA FF14 players are mostly on console

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Using Steam as a metric on a game that is multi platforms, what do you think?
Even I am a PC user, I wouldn't want to buy Steam version of FF14
The nightmare of deal with Steam and SE helpline with FF11 was a nightmare
Not to mention most of none EU/NA regions are mostly playing consoles
PC is not a "master race" outside of EU/NA.
Especially Japan is a console only market because of narrowed living space

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Checks out you are about approximately as smart as a content creator

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

Checks out you are about approximately as smart as a content creator

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Oh you are saying you are smarter than most of people because of Steam metric?
Are you one of those flat earth believer?
Or type of people thinks only EU/NA matters?
Is it type of the personality if any one that disagree with me, they are wrong and should forever be silent?

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Oh you are saying you are smarter than most of people because of Steam metric?
Are you one of those flat earth believer?
Or type of people thinks only EU/NA matters?
Is it type of the personality if any one that disagree with me, they are wrong and should forever be silent?

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I see the lights are on but no one's home

As someone who loves the game and is subbed since years... its true lol.

The fact alone that we dont get new pvp stuff every patch or even mid patch. It might be pointless but having different maps for pvp modes like CC does would at least spice things a bit up... Rivial wings does exist as well. Small scale mech pvp would work too...

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Oh you are saying you are smarter than most of people because of Steam metric?
Are you one of those flat earth believer?
Or type of people thinks only EU/NA matters?
Is it type of the personality if any one that disagree with me, they are wrong and should forever be silent?

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What is the variable that makes Steam users quit but not PC launcher users? Lol

You can't name one

https://steamcharts.com/app/39210

February 2025 16,385.4 -713.8 -4.17% 24,540

We're literally in 2020 territory now lmao

Every single month from 2021 to 2024 was higher than 16385.4.

4% down from the previous month? D:

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

What is the variable that makes Steam users quit but not PC launcher users? Lol

You can't name one

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To be fair, we should be seeing the same kind of drop percentage wise in the LuckyBancho surveys. We don't. It shows a decline yes. But once you factor out changes made to privacy settings on the Lodestone.

To preface this; I'll be using two iterations of the Dawntrail numbers for this from LuckyBancho's surveys. I've translated the images for this thread for reader convenience. I've linked the originals as well.

These numbers cannot by definition go down, as you cannot "unclear" Dawntrail or "unown" the Dawntrail Early Access bonus.

LuckyBancho Numbers as of August 27th, 2024 (https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/58615522.html) :

https://i.imgur.com/zEhsLZa.png


LuckyBancho Numbers as of December 29th, 2024 (https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/58883226.html):

https://i.imgur.com/ud2dHHE.png


The data isn't 1:1 comparable however, due to changes to how the Lodestone changed privacy settings in 7.0 (according to LuckyBancho). Thankfully, we can adjust for this. We see a drop in players who had Dawntrail Early Access or had cleared Dawntrail between the surveys taken on August 27th 2024 and December 29th 2024.

On August 27th, 2024,

1,092,592 people had Dawntrail Early Access. On December 29th, only 785,035 people had Dawntrail Early Access. I doubt Square Enix gave out 300k refunds of Early Access between 2 months after expansion release and 6 months after expansion release. It's pretty safe to assume these were changes in privacy settings. I would assume this would mean a change in a default for these settings, though, as I also find it hard to believe that 29% of the playerbase changed their privacy settings.

That being said, with the recent things about the account ID third party tool could explain why more people than you'd expect changed their privacy settings.

In total, we see a 28.16% drop in Early Access numbers being counted. As Early Access was long over by August, this number should be constant.

Percentage Drop = [(1,092,592 - 785,035) / 1,092,592] * 100

Percentage Drop ≈ (307,557 / 1,092,592) * 100

Percentage Drop ≈ 28.16%

Ratio = 1,092,592 / 785,035 ≈ 1.39177488902 - This is the factor that we'd need to multiply the December numbers with to get somewhat comparable data.

And sure enough, if we multiply 1,092,592 with 1.39177488902, we get 1,092,592.

So, multiplying the Active player number from December 29th with the factor gives us

1,003,091 * 1.39177488902 = 1,396,076.87 ≈ 1,396,077.

And let's compare this to the August number: 1,440,997.

That is indeed a slight drop. But it's only by 45k players. That's a 3.12% drop. Not a 75% drop like the OP would suggest.

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Originally Posted by Davixxa

....

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Maybe you'll fool amateurs but while 75% is an exaggeration and is more about player activity as it measures concurrency, your method basically rests on a correction factor that assumes every single movement between two samples all boil down to the privacy settings change, which is completely absurd and a nonsensical assumption.

While we probably did not lose 75% of the playerbase, the loss is still much higher than pointed out by LuckyBancho. Their post is old now, and FFXIV did not release any content since then.

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

your method basically rests on a correction factor that assumes every single movement between two samples all boil down to the privacy settings change, which is completely absurd and a nonsensical assumption.

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It doesn't really. Even if we didn't perform the correction at all, we're looking at a ~30% drop. Not 75%. And on top of this, Dawntrail's early access number should be entirely unchanging. If Square Enix were giving refunds for Dawntrail out in the magnitude that the drop in privacy settings, or even 10% of that, and more than 3 months *after* there would have been an announcement.

I STRONGLY doubt they gave out over 100k refunds over the course of a month (data from November 4th)

https://i.imgur.com/XwozXdS.png

Do you really think it's realistic that in 7 months, they gave out 300k refunds? That's ~43k refunds a month. Even half that sounds absurd.

There's three ways this number can change:

1. More people preorder Dawntrail (physically impossible given that both samples were after the Early Access period - also won't ever cause a decrease)

2. People get a refund of Dawntrail - and thus also get Wind-Up Zidane removed from their account. This is unlikely, as this would mean at least a €8,400,000 loss in revenue (assuming a 70/30 split between publisher and platform - at Square Enix's size, they probably get a better cut, meaning even more money lost). And this is assuming nobody among those refundees bought the collector's edition, and nobody bought it from the Square Enix store. To be frank, that estimate is a low ball, and quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised if that would be an existential level threat to CS3 if not Square Enix as a whole.

3. People change their privacy settings en masse. Normally, I'd also count this as unlikely, but considering there have been aggravating circumstances for this as of late, I'd feel pretty confident in attributing the majority of the drop to this.

Just to remind you what Occam's Razor is: "of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred."

The first explanation is the simplest, but it is also one which does not pertain to decreases, and as such, would be cut by the razor.

The second relies on the assumption that Square Enix is willing to give out refunds to Dawntrail, that people actually want to refund Dawntrail (tbf, sentiment does suggest yes), and that 100s of thousand players actually did that.

The third relies on the assumption that hundreds of thousands of players changed their privacy settings of which there are aggravating circumstances to suggest to be true.

Don't get me wrong, but even 10% of the players getting a refund would represent a large loss in revenue for CS3. I just don't see the same company known for releasing multiple gacha games refunding millions of euros worth of sales or even close to a million.

Honestly, if money is the only thing they listen to, I hope it keeps dropping.

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Originally Posted by Davixxa

It doesn't really

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Is this the first time you're using LB? They revise their figures retroactively all the time, and the most recent period often gets retroactively adjusted in the neighborhood of 20-30%.

Look on the bright side. 75% player loss might mean the housing situation might open up to people that want it, right? Right?

And we will lose more, They ain't learning.

The "GreatCommunityBtw" players are still coping, Hurr de durr! Steam doesn't even have 1% of the playerbase DURR DEE HURRRRRR

And where do you get those numbers from? Cause SE doesn't publicly release active playernumbers whenever requested. When they do you get the highest number they can get away with.

Aside from exploration zone and new crafting they're forcefeeding more of the same stuff nobody wants from Dawntrail, And forcing the Dev Self Insert OC into story even more, Lamat from Dawntrail alone has equivalent voicelines to Alphinaud from ARR -> Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Manamaru

Look on the bright side. 75% player loss might mean the housing situation might open up to people that want it, right? Right?

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I wouldn't even care that we were bleeding players if SE got off their butt and fused Dynamis into Aether or Crystal. You can't sell anything on Dynamis unless you severely undercut and even then you're at the mercy of someone just popping in to find a good deal.

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Originally Posted by Manamaru

Look on the bright side. 75% player loss might mean the housing situation might open up to people that want it, right? Right?

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Doubt it. There always seems to be another IRL disaster to keep auto-demo turned off.

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Originally Posted by Manamaru

Look on the bright side. 75% player loss might mean the housing situation might open up to people that want it, right? Right?

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Transfer to world I'm on and you will be able to buy a house with no problems. Thats if you don't mind long queue times.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Transfer to world I'm on and you will be able to buy a house with no problems. Thats if you don't mind long queue times.

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Transfer to any Dynamis world aside from Kraken or Seraph and you'll have same issue, I'm on Halicarnassus right now and it's DEAD. Trying to sell anything i need to severely undercut the lowest price otherwise it sits for 6 - 24 hours or more. I'm not selling stuff that only sells once a week either, This is ore, ingots, whetstones, cotton, fleece, crystals, ETC

I also have Max retainers possible (Cash shop) and all of them are sitting at 20/20 20/20 20/20 (ETC) and only sell at 2 PM - 7 PM if it doesn't sell during that time i know i'll have zero sales till tomorrow.

Dynamis needs to be fused if this is the continued player number or enable Cross DC Marketboard usage, You shouldn't need to hop worlds if you can talk to people on Seraph from Hali using Yell or Shout.

People saying "Just transfer" are part of the problem too, Why should I pay extra to move my character? This is an SE problem that needs to be addressed. Dynamis failed, Fuse and move on.

Lol last 30 days is now 14,515.8, there wasn't even a bump in the month for 7.25 lmao

I don't need exact numbers. People on my friend list do not log in anymore. That sucks.

FCs feel it, but most importantly even Field Ops are feeling it.
There's barely any players in Eureka, bar maybe 5-10 at one time if you're lucky [Chaos EU].
Even Occult Crescent feels more empty than usual, the past few weeks I've seen players all over the phantom village just idling and full instances, now instances are barely half full and the phantom village is literally its name, phantom :(

Guys its okay the game is booming with players aether is congested !!! it's so full its at capacity they had to stop people from travelling there !!!

/s

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Originally Posted by yesnt

I don't need exact numbers. People on my friend list do not log in anymore. That sucks.

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Yeah, this is the sad reality of it. 85% of my friend list haven't been on in months. Our FC has maybe 8 people logging in somewhat regularly? It used to be over 20. I know of multiple people who are letting their subs lapse soon, too.

Monthly steam charts are not looking pretty. It's only a matter of time until we're back to 2017 numbers.

It doesn't help that the patches are longer now. What are people going to do in July? Following Stormblood's timeline, we should be in 7.35.

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Originally Posted by brinn12

Monthly steam charts are not looking pretty. It's only a matter of time until we're back to 2017 numbers.

It doesn't help that the patches are longer now. What are people going to do in July? Following Stormblood's timeline, we should be in 7.35.

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That far behind, huh? And its not like they are delivering more content. Eureka is the largest field op in the game (and feild ops are likely the biggest development effort of expansions) and had 4 zones. OC will only have 2. I still don't understand the justification of the longer patches.

During endwalker the time between patches got lengthened by two weeks and the devs did the ususal crocodile tear skit on a live letter about it.
They then proceeded to take even longer than those two weeks between patches and deliver less content.


Because of this I have a hunch we're in for another Crocodile tear session given all the content promised we have left, of which 7.3 doesn't seem to have much of it, meaning 7.4 and 7.5 have going to have to be gigapacked (or the devs lied to us)

For reference we have been promised:
-BLU Mage Update
-Beast Master
-A Deep Dungeon
-Variant Dungeons
-Criterion Dungeons
-A 2nd Ultimate
-A 2nd Chaotic Alliance Raid
-The other half of Occult Crescent, probably with its own version of Forked Tower
-More Phantom Jobs
-3(?) More planets for Cosmic Exploration
and theres more I'm probably forgetting, on top of the usually scheduled formula content like Alliance Raids, MSQ, Extremes, Savages.

This is more content than the game has gotten since Stormblood, from a dev that just told us that a Forked Tower normal mode wasn't possible due to the budget.
Yeah I'm not getting my hopes up here.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

For reference we have been promised:
-BLU Mage Update
-Beast Master
-A Deep Dungeon
-Variant Dungeons
-Criterion Dungeons
-A 2nd Ultimate
-A 2nd Chaotic Alliance Raid
-The other half of Occult Crescent, probably with its own version of Forked Tower
-More Phantom Jobs
-3(?) More planets for Cosmic Exploration
and theres more I'm probably forgetting, on top of the usually scheduled formula content like Alliance Raids, MSQ, Extremes, Savages.

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Won't be gigapacked if 8.0 is released in 2027 /hj

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Originally Posted by Oizen

For reference we have been promised:
-BLU Mage Update
-Beast Master
-A Deep Dungeon
-Variant Dungeons
-Criterion Dungeons
-A 2nd Ultimate
-A 2nd Chaotic Alliance Raid
-The other half of Occult Crescent, probably with its own version of Forked Tower
-More Phantom Jobs
-3(?) More planets for Cosmic Exploration

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Deep dungeon was in the Live Letter so should be in 7.3. I don't remember being promised a second chaotic this expansion; they aren't sure how many or of the schedule yet. I agree that the last patches are likely to be packed due to the fact we haven't had a single variant/criterion yet, and are set to get 3 as far as I know.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Deep dungeon was in the Live Letter so should be in 7.3. I don't remember being promised a second chaotic this expansion; they aren't sure how many or of the schedule yet. I agree that the last patches are likely to be packed due to the fact we haven't had a single variant/criterion yet, and are set to get 3 as far as I know.

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Thats because ffxiv players like to make things up. We still were never promised a second chaotic and we were also not promised a second ultimate. All they said was that they are working on an ultimate. It'l LIKELY to release in 7.5 but we were never promised it.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/dawntrail/contents/

Literally everything we were promised is on that site. Only one ultimate is listed. The chaotic was the only real surprise so far and a second one is not guaranteed.

Were we ever promised a new Criterion? The website only mentions Variant. Was it on that Fan Fest slide?

We generally consider Variant and Criterion two halves of a hole but the fact they've only mentioned one of them sounds like we might only get Variant since it was played by more of the community due to its ease and rewards.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

That far behind, huh? And its not like they are delivering more content. Eureka is the largest field op in the game (and feild ops are likely the biggest development effort of expansions) and had 4 zones. OC will only have 2. I still don't understand the justification of the longer patches.

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The official excuse waffles between "It takes time to create such an overwhelming amount of content" and "We're busy or whatever, please give us money".

Whenever the developers say anything, some people always treat it as a promise. As if they're children being invited to a birthday party. You have to understand the difference between a promise and a roadmap.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Whenever the developers say anything, some people always treat it as a promise. As if they're children being invited to a birthday party. You have to understand the difference between a promise and a roadmap.

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Exactly. People need to stop expecting something for their money.

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Originally Posted by yesnt

Exactly. People need to stop expecting something for their money.

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If you paid money for something you knew wasn't even in the game yet, you made a very silly financial decision.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

If you paid money for something you knew wasn't even in the game yet, you made a very silly financial decision.

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Exmo upset I didn't fall for bait, Exmo upset and tryin harder.