Famitsu interview with Yoshi

[Cheraa]

i'm the only one bothered by the fact that Yoshida did admit that they was unable to offer enough instance of diadem?
i means with a game for 4 million + people (as they have said) isn't normal to expect high congestion and to have the hardware ready for it?

.... between the lack of manpower and hardware we can't expect them to do miracle, but still i'm bothered by the fact that every month they get more of 40.000.000 euro (and i'm sure i under estimate how much they get) even if we count the maintenance and support team for 10.000.000 (what is far too much) where go the other 30.000.000. i can understand that the society get them but don't they can reinvest a bit into the game? i means god with the cash they get per month can't we expect a better support of SE to the dev?

FF XIV don't have 4 Million active players. It is said to be 4 Million Accounts. Active player are estimated to be around 400k-500k. Means an earning of ~5.5 Million Euro. Now subtract taxes, Salary, Server leasing, services, Development of Content and Expansions, Services, Translation and ofc. profit.

[Kosmos992k]

FF XIV don't have 4 Million active players. It is said to be 4 Million Accounts. Active player are estimated to be around 400k-500k. Means an earning of ~5.5 Million Euro. Now subtract taxes, Salary, Server leasing, services, Development of Content and Expansions, Services, Translation and ofc. profit.

They say over 5 million accounts (actually I think it says 5.5 million on one of the more recent things I've seen), not 4 million. I'm not sure about the active player estimates, 400-500k might be an underestimate of the active player-base if it's not SE's own data on concurrent users. A lot of the metrics used by third parties to gauge player activity are based on progression content, which depending on the type of player may not be a good indicator of activity. They also scrape the Lodestone for the data, and data scraping from websites is not always the most reliable way to obtain information.

For example, I doubt my character counts as active on many of those 'counts' and yet I'm on almost every day for a couple of hours at least. But because I don't run progression content, I'm unlikely to trigger many (if any) of the conditions third party 'surveys' use to determine activity. I know I am not alone in this.

Also, has anyone ever tried to count up all the accounts permanently disabled because of RMT or other illegal activity? If you go through those weekly reports I'd guess that we are *well* past half a million accounts that have been listed as being permanently banned from the game. In an ideal world, I'd hope that their number of accounts that they tout would *not* include those RMT accounts that they have identified and taken action against. This is not an ideal world however, so I don't know if they exclude known RMT accounts from the number of user accounts that they claim.

Hmmm... am I the only one who thought of "Oh hey, personal housing?"

No, but it depends on how many instances within instances their architecture is designed to handle.

[Kuwagami]

snip

The counting is done with public informations one cannot hide. Levelling up, getting minions and mounts, etc... gathered on characters that are above lv20-ish over 2 month or so. This is actually way more accurate than anything else we an have actually as SE refuses to give real data.

The last estimation was about 650k players iirc.

[Kosmos992k]

The counting is done with public informations one cannot hide. Levelling up, getting minions and mounts, etc... gathered on characters that are above lv20-ish over 2 month or so. This is actually way more accurate than anything else we an have actually as SE refuses to give real data.

The last estimation was about 650k players iirc.

I know it's public data, I also know it's scraped from the Lodestone. I'm just saying that the numbers may be an under-estimate because it's difficult to gauge activity of players who are not progression minded, and take their time. I guess it depends on the kind of depth that they go to when obtaining their data. If they obtain the class page from your character summary information on Lodestone, and keep the previous record for a comparison, then they could even compare the number of XP, not just the levels. If they are going to that kind of dept than any concerns I have had in the past would be gone.

[Kuwagami]

snip

it's just easier and faster to look at big pictures (gear change, change in big numbers like mount count, minion count, levels) rather than nitpicking exact number changes.

Anyone who play the game at least a few hours in the spawn of 2 month is likely to have changed at least one piece of gear. Pretty easy stuff to use to figure out active accounts. I'd een go as far as saying that the underestimation (people not progressing on any level for the entire scan duration) is beaten by the overestimation (people can come in and out in the span of 2 month, and may not be active anymore when the numbers are compiled)

[Kosmos992k]

I'd e(v)en go as far as saying that the underestimation (people not progressing on any level for the entire scan duration) is beaten by the overestimation (people can come in and out in the span of 2 month, and may not be active anymore when the numbers are compiled)

That's a good point, I wonder whether the two 'sides' of underestimation and overestimation may simply balance each other out?

Either way, 650K active players (as mentioned in your previous post) translates to a pretty decent regular income for SE and the FFXIV 'franchise'. If it is 650K active players that averages out to about 10K per server doesn't it?

Very well written, I thank you for it. This is exactly what I feel about Haurchefant as well.

People express themselves differently in each culture. In Japanese culture it is normal to love people around you in a pure friendly way, but here in western culture you are labeled a perv, lesbian or gay very quickly.

People should stop overly using the word " perv" already and be open for more kindness. People should stop judging others so quickly.

Indeed, and thanks.

I was thinking about this and India came to mind. In India (and other nations/cultures), it's perfectly acceptable (and normal) for men to hold hands, hug, or walk with their arm around their friend's shoulder. If we had a couple of male characters in FFXIV doing that I wonder what the typical reaction would be in the western player-base? To use your quote (about Japan) "it is normal love people around you in a pure friendly way". In India (for example) two men holding hands is an act of friendship, another word for friendship is love. If someone does not in fact love their friends, then why are they 'friends' and not merely acquaintances.

Actually, now that I think about this, I would rather the localization team did not make such changes as they made with Haurchefant for a very simple, and important reason. By leaving in such things, they expose people to aspects of other cultures, something that brings more understanding and tolerance for others. I'm not saying it should be the role of this game (or any other game) to educate society. But instead of giving in to the parochial fears and intolerance of some players who need to open their eyes and minds to the world, I think that they should leave these things in the game. Instead of trying to hide it, or change it, perhaps it would be better to add a bit more context so that people can understand the character type better.

My God, can you imagine if people actually learned to celebrate their differences in culture and belief, rather than criticize and belittle each other over those differences?

[Magis]

Some number scrapped from lodestone:

Total Player Characters: 7,819,881
PCs with at least one class at 50: 1,324,414
PCs with at least one class at 60: 385,651

From https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ta_and_charts/

This doesn't include people who are leveling pre-lvl 55 of course, but it puts a dire picture on end-game if there are only 386K people to choose from (not counting the regional splits). Also one's experience on how the game is perceived at end-game may change depending on what server they roll on:

(Graph is level 60's only)



http://i.imgur.com/qupGctE.png

It is too bad SE doesn't publish proper data making us rely on the loadstone... however I do think it's accurate for the majority of players. 90% of the content is done at end-game, so using "how many level 60s are there" is a good way to judge how population numbers would effect a level 60 player.

[KarstenS]

Some number scrapped from lodestone:

Total Player Characters: 7,819,881
PCs with at least one class at 50: 1,324,414
PCs with at least one class at 60: 385,651

From https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ta_and_charts/

There is something strange with the numbers.

Just take a look at this chart released in early september.



In an interview some weeks later, Yoshida said, that around the half of the active players (no chars) have finished Alexander normal mode.

I'm pretty shure, the clear numbers have been increased more than a little bit during the census and that interview.

In my opinion there should be at least around 800k active players.

Don't know how many ppl are out there with an active account without Heavensward, but I don't believe its the majority of the active playerbase.