Tired of contemt creators making clickbait videos about the game being dead

I got tired of the nonsense about FFXIV being in its dying breaths, so I resubbed.

I’m glad I did, because I experienced the Hippo Riders

I typoed on mobile and I can’t find an edit button, so it’s staying like that

https://i.imgur.com/4OXbKdmg.jpg

contempt creators

You're right. This game is not dead at all. Lucky Bancho's statistics are as stable as they have been throughout the entirety of Endwalker and higher than in prior expansions except immediately prior to Endwalker when the game went viral among big streamers.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You're right. This game is not dead at all. Lucky Bancho's statistics are as stable as they have been throughout the entirety of Endwalker and higher than in prior expansions except immediately prior to Endwalker when the game went viral among big streamers.

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https://media2.giphy.com/media/64doz...wKtA/giphy.gif

The game aint dead nah, but to call it stable is comical

also to OP, cool, I'm not sure why you felt the need to announce that you came back to the game, but nice I guess ? People come and go every day.

It's not dead but it's going to feel dead as they stretch the limited amount of remaining content until next expansion.

As is tradition.

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Originally Posted by Komoritane

I got tired of the nonsense about FFXIV being in its dying breaths, so I resubbed.

I’m glad I did, because I experienced the Hippo Riders

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This is standard behavior for their ilk. You will also watch them jump right on the bandwagon when Dawntrail is getting close. Suddenly XIV will be the best game in existence. Bottom line is as long as they rake in their viewers cash they will spew whatever is necessary. Don't believe their lies.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You're right. This game is not dead at all. Lucky Bancho's statistics are as stable as they have been throughout the entirety of Endwalker and higher than in prior expansions except immediately prior to Endwalker when the game went viral among big streamers.

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It's stable, people just aren't doing anything. The stats for achievements are down. The OP is talking about doing content that's been out since 6.15. I'm sure they've been away from the game for a while but I think it shows that most of the NA community is easily satisfied.

And I mean, I'm satisfied chasing older content and playing catch up right now, but I'm sure people who've played for more than a couple of expansions have nothing to go after unless they want to go full completionist.

https://files.catbox.moe/31voxv.jpg

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

https://media2.giphy.com/media/64doz...wKtA/giphy.gif

The game aint dead nah, but to call it stable is comical

also to OP, cool, I'm not sure why you felt the need to announce that you came back to the game, but nice I guess ? People come and go every day.

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Well, MMO's by their very nature are better described as "cyclical" perhaps rather than "stable," but stable's still a reasonable word to use describing how EW has been following the same regular cyclical numbers it's had throughout its existence (which in turn continue to grow steadily from expansion to expansion).

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

https://files.catbox.moe/31voxv.jpg

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I don't know the source of this graph, but, wow that's an incredible drop in the continuing activity trend.

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Originally Posted by Niroken

It's not dead but it's going to feel dead as they stretch the limited amount of remaining content until next expansion.

As is tradition.

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True. In fact it already feels kinda dead.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

I don't know the source of this graph, but, wow that's an incredible drop in the continuing activity trend.

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It is a chart a content creator put together on stream one day when he was bored. People will believe anything they read regardless of the source.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

I don't know the source of this graph, but, wow that's an incredible drop in the continuing activity trend.

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Were you not here for the massive thread that got spawned by this graph? Did you get banned or something?

It happen's each expansion cycle, at end of ARR, HW, SB, and now EW the forums, youtube, and discussion subreddit were filled with doomers trying to one up each other about how dead the game was and how bleak the future was. Then the next expansion comes out and we get more people than previous expansions launch. It's common across all MMOs, population yo-yos with content cycles, with biggest drop being leadup to the next expansion. The main indicator being if during each expansion's life cycle, if compared to the same point of previous expansions, if the population, and engagement are higher or lower. So far EW has shown to be retaining most of it's growth compared to previous expansions, with only expansion beating it being Shadowbringers, due to the WoW exodus, but that shouldn't be considered the norm for any expansion, since we can't always count on our biggest competition doing so poorly it drives over a significant amount of it's players to us.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

It is a chart a content creator put together on stream one day when he was bored. People will believe anything they read regardless of the source.

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I know you love this game, but Lucky Bancho is a fan site, not a content creator. It's somewhat accurate census data, and you're free to translate the page and read everything here.

It's based on tracking achievements.

Also, side note but this is from that data as well:
"Although the recent decline is worrisome, if you look at the overall number, you can see that the active character population is basically increasing, albeit in waves."

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

I know you love this game, but Lucky Bacho is a fan site, not a content creator. It's somewhat accurate census data, and you're free to translate the page and read everything here.

It's based on tracking achievements.

Also, side note but this is from that data as well:
"Although the recent decline is worrisome, if you look at the overall number, you can see that the active character population is basically increasing, albeit in waves."

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Welp, there ya go. Unless proven otherwise, I'm going to accept this data as true for now.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

It is a chart a content creator put together on stream one day when he was bored. People will believe anything they read regardless of the source.

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Wrong. People will really just believe whatever they want to fit their own perspective huh? The source is Lucky Bancho, thank you Google Image Search!

https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57775035.html

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Welp, there ya go. Unless proven otherwise, I'm going to accept this data as true for now.

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It's not accurate for raw numbers, but does indicate a good portion of endgame playerbase, and is useful for tracking trends since they've been tracking these numbers using the same method for years and also useful to get a sense of what percentages of playerbase engage in certain types of content.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

It's not accurate for raw numbers, but does indicate a good portion of endgame playerbase, and is useful for tracking trends since they've been tracking these numbers using the same method for years and also useful to get a sense of what percentages of playerbase engage in certain types of content.

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They mention that.

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• New is the number of characters whose first achievement was recorded during that period.
• The final number is the number of characters whose achievements after that period could not be confirmed.
• Continuations are characters whose achievements were confirmed at that time, excluding new and final characters. However, if the same character is counted as new or final within that period, it will be double deducted from the continuation, so it is given +1.
• Data for legacy characters will not be created in Lodestone unless they log in after being born, so data for characters that were suspended during the old FF14 period is not subject to observation.

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I don't know what their margin of error is but it's probably not too much. Anyways, the game isn't in decline via subscription numbers. Just more so feels bad because it feels like a lot of the NA playerbase doesn't really play the actual game.

Meanwhile, ALSO Lucky Bancho:

https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57887970.html (tl don't speak Japanese, FFXIV is doing fine)

They are content creator of course they need clickbait. It's part of theyre job to get views. FF14 is such a stale game to make content, they need to scratch it

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

It's stable, people just aren't doing anything. The stats for achievements are down. The OP is talking about doing content that's been out since 6.15. I'm sure they've been away from the game for a while but I think it shows that most of the NA community is easily satisfied.

And I mean, I'm satisfied chasing older content and playing catch up right now, but I'm sure people who've played for more than a couple of expansions have nothing to go after unless they want to go full completionist.

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As a matter of fact, the numbers for july 1 to September 30 have been out for a few days, and as they state on page 2, section digital entertainment, 8th line, the net sales of the mmo division (which is mainly FFXIV) fell. I didn't find any outside analysis (and I'm not able to do it myself) for those numbers, as I had for the april june period and its 22% fall, so I can't say how big the fall is. But no, FFXIV is not stable. It certainly isn't dead, but it's obviously on some kind of decline. The real question is how big this decline is.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

The game aint dead nah, but to call it stable is comical

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Lucky Bancho is what is saying it is stable. It has remained over 1 million active characters for the entirety of Endwalker. It would have to dip below this to return to Shadowbringers levels. So it is very stable.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

I don't know the source of this graph, but, wow that's an incredible drop in the continuing activity trend.

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That graph is specifically for people with achievements enabled on the lodestone ie. achievement hunters enable these for collection websites, who are usually veteran players. So yes, it is fair to say that veteran players are taking breaks or quitting due to a perceived lack of content. But it doesn't change that the general active player count is stable, even if that is due to casual new and returning players replacing the veteran achievement hunters.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

I don't know what their margin of error is but it's probably not too much.

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Lucky Bancho was able to compare their information to subscription numbers twice due to information accidently released to shareholders. At first they estimated 15% were alts and the second time they estimated 20% were alts. This was before Data Center Travel, which significantly reduced the need for alts to play on other data centers.

Regardless of where this puts the real numbers, it has still remained stable above Shadowbringers levels and it would have to dip down around 900,000 to show a decline to Shadowbringers levels.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That graph is specifically for people with achievements enabled on the lodestone ie. achievement hunters enable these for collection websites, who are usually veteran players. So yes, it is fair to say that veteran players are taking breaks or quitting due to a perceived lack of content. But it doesn't change that the general active player count is stable, even if that is due to casual new and returning players replacing the veteran achievement hunters.

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I feel like the graphs aren’t quite as definitive as they seem either because they’re only showing one side of the picture. Endwalker has seen a huge drop off, but that doesn’t really matter long term if the majority of those players resub at Dawntrail release, right? The graph only shows us who left; we don’t know who’s coming back yet lol. The only thing we can really conclude is ‘there may be a possibility that the game is dying’.

I mean if we get to Dawntrail and suddenly none of those people return, then sure, one can reasonably conclude ‘the game is probably dying’ lol. But I don’t think there’s any point in trying to draw that conclusion currently, especially right at the end of an expansion when the game is usually ‘dead’ lol. I mean, it’s by design. Play some ffxiv, let sub lapse, play something else, repeat cycle. It’s worked for them so far I think.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I feel like the graphs aren’t quite as definitive as they seem either because they’re only showing one side of the picture. Endwalker has seen a huge drop off, but that doesn’t really matter long term if the majority of those players resub at Dawntrail release, right?

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Exactly, we don't know for sure that all those veteran achievement hunters won't just resubscribe at some point. The data does not distinguish between "took a break to play other games" and "quit".

What we do know is that many people who claim they are quitting tend to say they'll "return at Dawntrail to see if it's better" or "just to do MSQ". We also know from WoW that players deeply invested in an MMORPG, such as achievement hunters, struggle to quit despite what they claim. They keep going back and after 10 years invested in this game, there is likely to be a similar effect here.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

As a matter of fact, the numbers for july 1 to September 30 have been out for a few days, and as they state on page 2, section digital entertainment, 8th line, the net sales of the mmo division (which is mainly FFXIV) fell. I didn't find any outside analysis (and I'm not able to do it myself) for those numbers, as I had for the april june period and its 22% fall, so I can't say how big the fall is. But no, FFXIV is not stable. It certainly isn't dead, but it's obviously on some kind of decline. The real question is how big this decline is.

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I can see that.

The first link is a consolidated balance sheet though, which means it's not telling the full story. The first link provided within the article you linked is also not particular specific as it's more of a slide show that you present to outside analysts and investors.

Anyways, the drop off in sales is expected. You don't have to understand the financial sheets to realize that people only buy expansions once. This means that logically after the burst from an expansion's release there will be a drop off in revenue.

Something to also take note of is that FF14 isn't Square's only active MMO represented by the statements. Dragon Quest X which seems to be a JP only MMO is also represented on there.

Anyways, I scanned through some other statements found here:
https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...financial.html

It looks like they're not satisfied with the drop off in sales themselves, but I don't think that's a reflection on the game itself. Companies want to make money, and consistently profit. Even if they're profiting by a good amount already the investors are always going to be pushing them to raise the profits.

This is from March earlier this year:

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(4) Business and financial challenge calling for priority action
The Group recognizes the need to prioritize the expansion of stable recurring income as a means of creating
sustained earnings growth. As the digital entertainment industry undergoes significant structural changes,
the Group is being called upon to develop and distribute new content designed to suit diverse customer
needs and content distribution methods, which requires significant investment. To date, the Group has
primarily worked to stabilize earnings by expanding recurring subscription income from massively multiplayer
online games (MMOs), games for smart devices/PC browsers, the Amusement segment, and the Publication
segment. Going forward it will further bolster these efforts while also expanding them to other businesses.
Establishing a stable base of recurring earnings will enable continued investment in content with a focus on
the development of HD games. The recurring income generated from that content will expand the Group’s
overall earnings, thereby allowing the Group to achieve sustained earnings growth.
On the distribution front, streaming may accelerate the transition from sales of traditional disks to digital
sales, and business models may change through the offering of subscription services, for example. In
addition, the overall gaming market may grow as it becomes possible to provide content to emerging regions
where traditional home game consoles have not been widely adopted. The Group will respond flexibly to
these changes and work to translate them into future growth. It has identified AI, the cloud, and blockchain
games as focus investment areas under its business strategy and will engage in aggressive research and
development efforts and investment in these areas.

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It doesn't sound overly panicked to me. It's just the usual nothing is ever really good enough.

Anyways, I could probably run through the rest of the data but that's time consuming. The in-depth finances for 2022 is 43 pages long for instance. Someone else can look through all of it if they want though.

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

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Originally Posted by Tlachtga

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

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Lmao, true. Every content creator that says something I don't like is clickbaiting, and every statistic that doesn't support my narrative is made-up. We see this a lot here on the official forums.

Without ad revenue they'd have to work a normal job. Hence the spamming of clickbait videos or those videos where they "react" to someone else's video.

I believe the biggest issue is the content gap creep. We went from 3 months to 3.5 months and then 4 months to 6 months for the final leg. Had they kept to the original 2 year schedule, we would all be in hype phase as we would have a new expansion in a few weeks but instead, we are 8 months away from the expansion. This more than anything else is hurting subs, well and letting the junior teams run the game since 6.1 and onward. Loosing the veteran devs who made everything from the start through 6.0 hurts.

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

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

They are content creator of course they need clickbait. It's part of theyre job to get views. FF14 is such a stale game to make content, they need to scratch it

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If it is your job to create content and you are using a stale source as you suggest perhaps you should look for another source or different work entirely.

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Originally Posted by Tlachtga

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

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Like it or not the vast majority of what they say is clickbait.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

I believe the biggest issue is the content gap creep. We went from 3 months to 3.5 months and then 4 months to 6 months for the final leg. Had they kept to the original 2 year schedule, we would all be in hype phase as we would have a new expansion in a few weeks but instead, we are 8 months away from the expansion. This more than anything else is hurting subs, well and letting the junior teams run the game since 6.1 and onward. Loosing the veteran devs who made everything from the start through 6.0 hurts.

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So true... it was so nice to have some quicker patches and ive never minded if they went "hey we need some more polish so patch in two more weeks" ...at least not if its not two more weeks every patch added like we did end up.

Personally i hate how we lost the 2nd ex dungeon. Yes its just "more of the same" hallway, yet, it was always fun and having EVERY dungeon for 2 patches just sucks.
And its not just the roulette... stories suffer too. We nevermore get some side stuff that gives us updates like sohm al, pharos, gubal... Fractal - i always loved that one, even if its faceroll.

No more relic or side trial based dungeons either. You take your story dungeon and youll like it!
-it was so neat to use the extra dungeons to catch up gear for fc mates... and the X0 Roulette was not as stale, now its 70% Meteion or the current last story one that got moved there >_>

And ive felt those dungeons were best for new teams to practice.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

Like it or not the vast majority of what they say is clickbait.

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eh, for the big names, sure, but if you make it a habit to "don't recommend channel" for anyone that uses a shocked pikachu face for their thumbnails (only relevant to youtube obviously), you start to weed out the awful ones and can get decent channels. Anyone that covers drama or only makes reaction videos is a safe ignore as well. Which yes, you've effectively blocked 100% of the really big channels, but for me, that's kind of the point :)

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

the net sales of the mmo division (which is mainly FFXIV) fell. I didn't find any outside analysis (and I'm not able to do it myself) for those numbers ... I can'tsay how big the fall is. But no, FFXIV is not stable. It certainly isn't dead, but it's obviously on some kind of decline. The real question is how big this decline is.

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What your source actually says is that net sales dropped for the MMO sector from the same time in the previous year. If you look at actual presentations for 2024/Q1 and 2024/Q2, you will see a rise in net sales, from 11 billion yen to (23.9 - 11 = ) 12.9 billion yen. It's still down for the 1st half of FY2024 (23.9 billion yen) by about 17% from the same period in FY2023 (28.6 billion yen).

[Fiscal Year (FY) runs from 1 April to 31 March. SE is now in FY2024/Q3 ... which began on 1 October 2023]

The decline is similar to that of other "Year 2 of expansion, toward the end before the next expansion hit" numbers.

There are prettier charts to be found here, https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...planatory.html, if one is interested.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I feel like the graphs aren’t quite as definitive as they seem either because they’re only showing one side of the picture. Endwalker has seen a huge drop off, but that doesn’t really matter long term if the majority of those players resub at Dawntrail release, right? The graph only shows us who left; we don’t know who’s coming back yet lol. The only thing we can really conclude is ‘there may be a possibility that the game is dying’.

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Graphs are a representation of data. They are as true as the data they collect. And while this seems kind of redundant, the point is they can be used to verify or rebut perspective. For me personally, it really does 'feel' like the game peaked with ShadowBringers and the graph provided validates this assessment. However, what the graph cannot tell you is that while ShB was the peak of the game's popularity, the game's strongest gravitational pull was a result of the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions. Another great example of this is the MCU franchise and the Avengers. Infinity War could not have been as lucrative or garnered the same kind of success without the strength and pull of the previous movies. But those movies needed be good and continue to raise the bar. The same holds true for FFXIV and its expansions.

Unfortunately, the effort and passion is not sustainable. It always peaks. ShB was this franchise's version of Infinity War, and Endwalker is like Endgame in which numbers are still high, but you 'feel' and 'know' the sun is setting. I have no doubt the playerbase will really feel this come Dawntrail. Nostalgic players wanting for days past will seek it in Dawntrail, and it will come up short. Dealing with aging is very difficult, and the novelty and era of youth for an MMO during its lifecycle can only be experienced once. My honest advice is to just hold those moments and memories close to your chest, because they will only increase in distance through the passing of time.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

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

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Everybody loves Nickelback. :)




Cheers

I'm sick of hearing about it for sure, but I don't watch any of them anyway. From what I gather, most of the ones doing it only started playing this expansion and don't realize how the content feed works for the game. XIV is far from dead and anyone saying otherwise is just clickbaiting. Ignore it and move on, they'll get bored of it when it stops working.