Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Remus]

snip.

I won't deny that casuals outweigh raiders because your right. With that said though they have been appealing to casuals for awhile and the population is still going down with each patch so is appealing to only casuals really working? They have been doing it for 3 years and quite a few casual friends of mine have left or are tired of tomestone -> Farm tomestone -> Get gear wait till next even patch and repeat.

it's costing the game subs it can lose as, once casuals start actually jumping ship we will see real numbers drop.

They have already dropped. Throughout the patch cycles. Also no matter what kind of player you are hardcore or casual you are still a sub in the end and if Raiders leave they are still losing potential money they could keep. They have already said they plan on making changes to how Savage is when Yoshi-p got asked about it from the Level -5 CEO saying how Savage has no incentive and they should fix it on a Live Letter so clearly they care about Raiders and not just Casuals.

[Musashidon]

Well, we lost over half the raiding community within a year, I think it's time to start examining why raiders keep leaving this game. As much as you want to believe it, the incentives are not there and it's costing this game subs.

it's costing the game subs it can lose as, once casuals start actually jumping ship we will see real numbers drop.

I won't deny that casuals outweigh raiders because your right. With that said though they have been appealing to casuals for awhile and the population is still going down with each patch so is appealing to only casuals really working? They have been doing it for 3 years and quite a few casual friends of mine have left or are tired of tomestone -> Farm tomestone -> Get gear wait till next even patch and repeat.

no idea if it is actually working as SE won't post real numbers how who players or doesn't.

[Vantol]

but look atm raiding is only gets you 5ilvls on your weapon and everything is fine.

The reason for those threads to pop every once in a while is exactly that nothing is fine. We are on the train into oblivion, but for some reason people seem to enjoy the ride.

[Zojha]

What's wrong with exclusive content when you put so much time and work into getting it?

From a developer point of view:
What's the point of putting effort into content only a fraction of the playerbase will ever see? That's like making a product for a tiny market at the same or bigger cost you could make a product for a big market - with the same payout per product, the sub fee.

[Thayos]

it's costing the game subs it can lose as, once casuals start actually jumping ship we will see real numbers drop.

We'd have a more honest discussion if we stopped throwing around the word "casuals."

The real danger is losing the scores of players who want to be more engaged in FFXIV but don't enjoy hardcore raiding. These players run the gamut from casual to hardcore. SE needs to do a much better job of retaining these players, and the way to do that is by diversifying endgame. Don't make raiding the be-all, end-all route for upper-echelon progression.

It really has nothing to do with whether people are casual, midcore or hardcore. The data shows that not many people are "progression" raiders, and we can see in other games that better rewards only drive participation to a point.

The goal shouldn't be driving participation in raids; the goal should be driving participation in endgame.

We need more diverse endgame to make that happen.

[zosia]

now sub wise yes casuals will always greatly out weigh hardcore/raiders so appealing to them will always get you more subs and that is what se is doing.

Not true, while raiders are a smaller part of the population, the raiding community is a lot like the backbone of a game. We write the guides, we fill up the party finder for primals, we help the community thrive. Raiders are the ones who stream and give the game free publicity. This notion that you can forsake your HC players as a good move for sub retention has to be one of the weirdest arguments I have seen yet.

This is a sandbox MMO, there are plenty of non raid activities. The model that we have now is not working. This game bleeds end game players. This model of time gear ilvl == raiding ilvl is not working.

We'd have a more honest discussion if we stopped throwing around the word "casuals."

The real danger is losing the scores of players who want to be more engaged in FFXIV but don't enjoy hardcore raiding. These players run the gamut from casual to hardcore. SE needs to do a much better job of retaining these players.

Well, what do you expect to happen when SE always caters to the lowest common denominator? This is why the casual attitude is at the heart of these problems. For some reason, we NEEDED dungeons to be face roll. For some reason, raid rewards cannot be top tier despite mimicking a wow raid model. The world has to be toothless, so every mary sue can prance around the world danger free.

The casuals wanted this game to be a convenient danger-less tome grind for gear and now that we that such an environment does not retain subs, people are here still trying to defend it.

[Musashidon]

The reason for those threads to pop every once in a while is exactly that nothing is fine..

actually i wasn't talking about raids itself i was talking about the game, with raiding so *dead* as you say it is and how raiding is everything we still have a good amount of people playing.

[Vantol]

What's the point of putting effort into content only a fraction of the playerbase will ever see? That's like making a product for a tiny market at the same or bigger cost you could make a product for a big market - with the same payout per product, the sub fee.

Honor maybe? That ancient thing of past noone seems to care about nowdays.

how raiding is everything we still have a good amount of people playing.

5'000'000 account registered, 225'000 people playing (500'000 logging once in month). Is it good emount? I don't think so.

[Alym]

Here is the problem though, It may have the highest item level for 3.2 but people already know they can get the highest by just waiting until 3.3 which makes people not bother for savage. The weapon might be 5 ilvl higher but people are not going to go through A8S just for 5 ilvl when that is just 1 weapon damage.

But this is the exact way that Coil worked and there were no complaints then about the reward structure. As Vantol mentioned, his friends did Coil and enjoyed it but with Alex, because everyone can see the story and get weaker and undyeable versions of the same gear, the reward structure is poor. This means that exclusive glamour and story are what he and his friends were after. If not having exclusive access to those things means that raiding is horrible now, all it says is that they didn't actually find the raiding enjoyable. The looting, glamour, and story are available in normal and can be made available in even more content that would still be fun even if it didn't have the looting, glamour, and story. That's my point. Maybe raiding isn't failing because of the rewards, but because Alex Savage is not fun and, by extension, maybe raiding isn't actually that fun.

This is the heart of the matter. Alex Savage is not fun, but it's not because Alex Normal exists, in my opinion.

You say Raiders lost nothing but your incorrect they lost exclusive story for raiding. Some people enjoyed raiding and progressing through coil to enjoy the story. Also if people are happy with just story why not just have Savage release first with story but then release normal mode in the catch up patch because that is all they care about.

Semantics, I guess. To me, this is like saying you lost air because someone else started breathing. Raiders didn't lose the story, it's just that more people now have access to it. As for when they release normal, I have no opinion on that. You'd have to ask SE why they release normal and savage at the same time. My guess is that they don't want to leave the largest portion of their playerbase behind - the non-raiders, but who knows?

[Thayos]

Not true, while raiders are a smaller part of the population, the raiding community is a lot like the backbone of a game. We write the guides, we fill up the party finder for primals, we help the community thrive.

And if we had a more diverse endgame scene, then that community of extremely helpful players would be expanded even further as more players find ways to be fully engaged/invested in the game.

What you speak of isn't confined to just raiders. Or, at least, it shouldn't be, because this game should have more diverse endgame content.