Player numbers?

Is there a way to track player numbers across the various platforms, maybe over the next couple of months?
It will be interesting to see how the varied vocal reactions translate to playing/financial ones.
July will of course have seen a rise with 7.0 launch, prior to the playerbase experiencing the expansion. But Aug thru Oct?

Iono but here's hoping people put their money where their forum whining mouths are so I can get a world transfer hehehe

The only people with any way of knowing would be SE, but they aren't exactly putting the numbers up anywhere.

I think the only thing that's currently available for tracking player count is Steam, but that's only a small fraction of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Teraluna

Is there a way to track player numbers across the various platforms, maybe over the next couple of months?
It will be interesting to see how the varied vocal reactions translate to playing/financial ones.
July will of course have seen a rise with 7.0 launch, prior to the playerbase experiencing the expansion. But Aug thru Oct?

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You can try the census, I think it gets updated twice a year now?

Otherwise Steam is probably your best bet to at least see a percentage of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

You can try the census, I think it gets updated twice a year now?

Otherwise Steam is probably your best bet to at least see a percentage of the playerbase.

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Steam is indeed a really good trend indicator if you just take the percentage and not the raw numbers.

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Originally Posted by Syln

Steam is indeed a really good trend indicator if you just take the percentage and not the raw numbers.

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Except that didn't work most of Endwalker, where players kept going "Look at the Steam numbers, the game is dying!" just for statements from SE to come out showing that FFXIV was the one area of solid growth for them.

People should stop worrying about how many others are playing a game, and just worry about whether or not they like it themselves. There are plenty of games with much larger player bases than FFXIV and I don't touch them because they're not games I like.

they only show off how many accounts there are out there every few years.... which is a kinda pointless number

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Except that didn't work most of Endwalker, where players kept going "Look at the Steam numbers, the game is dying!" just for statements from SE to come out showing that FFXIV was the one area of solid growth for them.

People should stop worrying about how many others are playing a game, and just worry about whether or not they like it themselves. There are plenty of games with much larger player bases than FFXIV and I don't touch them because they're not games I like.

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That is a sensible approach. However if players aren't happy with the direction the game has taken they will be hoping for change, and that will only be driven by a fall off in players.

https://steamcharts.com/app/39210

I second Jojoya's advice, but since I know that some folks will still pursue this, I'll add this warning:

Throughout patch cycles there is a natural flow of more/less players relative to content drops. So be sure to compare any changes in player counts to changes in player counts at similar times in previous expansions' patch cycles.

It's difficult to tell through Steam because so much of the playerbase isn't on Steam. I'm personally curious how much the new Eureka/Bozja will mitigate people leaving/taking a break. As the lack of one had a lot of my friends nope out until Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

they only show off how many accounts there are out there every few years.... which is a kinda pointless number

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they do say its registered accounts, but every census/lodestone scraping has shown that its just how many characters there are on the lodestone.. which means if you ever created an alt character, you count as "a new account"

Lucky Bancho is what people usually use. The figure remained stable throughout Endwalker, despite what everyone said about it.

SE also said that Dawntrail had the most pre-orders ever for an expansion. Which says a lot.

As of 12th June, Lucky Bancho reported 1.22 million active characters.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Except that didn't work most of Endwalker, where players kept going "Look at the Steam numbers, the game is dying!" just for statements from SE to come out showing that FFXIV was the one area of solid growth for them.

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That wasn't what happened. People were cherry picking a small period of time post patch as proof of the game dying. Others actually also used steam numbers to show an overall growth over time to counter "the game is dying" threads.
Steam numbers can be used to see trends but yeah, serve nothing when it comes to knowing the overall count.

I agree with your last point. As long as there's enough people to play with, who cares how many more there are.

Just leveled my WAR through 91-9X dungeons and most of the groups were heavy on mentors. Few had first-timers but still, it looks like within Dawntrail we have mostly seasoned players, this isn't Sproutbringer anymore. Plotwatchers as always are quickly gone after release but it's curious if the MSQ quality has influenced when they cut their sub. On the other hand mid-EW or alike there were apartments in Gridania plots and now those are gone, only some in Ishgard remained. The game gained seasoned players post Sproutbringer but that doesn't mean people aren't taking breaks and that now the breaks may be longer or on a higher % of the player base.

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Originally Posted by sharknado

Just leveled my WAR through 91-9X dungeons and most of the groups were heavy on mentors.

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Duty Support.