My Proposed Solutions to Improve Player Retention

[OrganizationXIll]

I think that's your major issue rather than anything else. Are you sure your server is well crowded at all in the first place ? Or are people waiting for 2.2 to come back ? Because on Balmung there are a lot of ifrit/titan parties, and a few Garuda ones, mostly for learning.

Also, if you stay in the cities (especially Gridania) or mor dhona (even wineport), you'll see a lot of end game players because they tend to gather there. The new players are either in dungeons, quests or fating somewhere.

As I wander a lot from not using the teleport, I see a lot of people everywhere, like around 30 to 100 per map. Some levelling areas are less crowded for obvious reasons (no point going in western thanalan or central thanalan besides the storyline for example. also, no point going around limsa except wineport/costa and maybe aleport), but the south shroud, east shroud, north shroud, Coerthas, southern Thanalan and Northern Thanalan are never empty.

Goblin is a fairly small server yes, but where are the endgame players that used to be here? For example: the leader of the largest FC on the server quit because he was bored. Handed the leadership down to someone and they quit. Endgame players regardless of how many there are are leaving. Also, Duty Finder looks for players on many different servers and again didn't find 8 people for Ifrit Ex in over 2 and a half hours.

Also, just ran through all of the shroud (bar Gridania) and counted 28 people in total. I seriously doubt that many are in dungeons.

Not really. I was talking about retaining players like me, casual players who most likely make up the bulk of any MMO.

Oh. Sorry. Yes casuals are more numerous, however, they aren't reliable subs because casual means you aren't serious about it by definition. If you aren't serious about it you may not resubscribe for a couple of weeks leaving a gap in SE's money. Hardcore players are the ones who pay the bills. They subscribe every single second and play all day and push the content to the max. Honestly you need to keep both happy and Hardcore players are apparently not happy if they quit playing until the next patch or permanently.

[Musashidon]

GOh. Sorry. Yes casuals are more numerous, however, they aren't reliable subs because casual means you aren't serious about it by definition. If you aren't serious about it you may not resubscribe for a couple of weeks leaving a gap in SE's money. Hardcore players are the ones who pay the bills. They subscribe every single second and play all day and push the content to the max. Honestly you need to keep both happy and Hardcore players are apparently not happy if they quit playing until the next patch or permanently.

casual doesn't mean unreliable sub. and hardcore doesn't mean reliable sub.
it's all up to the player themselves.