Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Musashidon]

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

yes but if you then shun the casual players (its the general term i am using) you will see those numbers much much lower as they would have even less reason to play.

raiders aren't going to keep those numbers.

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.

yes they dropped but the number of players is still pretty high (not compared to WoW but wow is in a completely different league of every other game out there)

i never said yoshi p hates raiders or doesn't care about them i simply said they are currently not focusing on them and giving more to the casuals.

If casual jump ship because all raid gear is 5 ilvls higher, then maybe they should leave the game? That seems something pretty petty to plant your flag in when you consider how hard raiders work for their gear.

people play for different reasons telling people to quit because they can't get gear you don't want them to get is pretty petty itself, not all games have to be about end game giving you the best (but i said that already haven't i? :P)

[zosia]

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

If casual jump ship because all raid gear is 5 ilvls higher, then maybe they should leave the game? That seems something pretty petty to plant your flag in when you consider how hard raiders work for their gear.

[Thayos]

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.

Actually, I never saw anyone ask for any of these things. Don't confuse what people want with SE's poor design decisions. Most of us were happy with the final cut of 1.x, and ARR was a surprise for everyone. Those player polls... never forget.

My point stands that "casuals" is not interchangeable with players who don't like raiding.

Take FFXI for example. I didn't like camping ground kings, and I never farmed sea, but I was a Dynamis demi-god. Farmed that twice a week, full sessions, for like three years. Wasn't a ls leader, but was pretty high up in the chain of command.

This game needs a more diverse endgame so players who would be midcore or hardcore can find where they belong. Not everyone wants to do hardcore raiding, and that really shouldn't be a surprise.

[zosia]

yes but if you then shun the casual players (its the general term i am using) you will see those numbers much much lower as they would have even less reason to play.

raiders aren't going to keep those numbers.



yes they dropped but the number of players is still pretty high (not compared to WoW but wow is in a completely different league of every other game out there)

i never said yoshi p hates raiders or doesn't care about them i simply said they are currently not focusing on them and giving more to the casuals.

This game is primary servicing casuals, do you really see a small bump in ilvl in raiding gear a "shunning the casuals"? Is 5 ilvls such a big difference to you that it would hurt the ego of so many casuals? It's literally five ilvls, the power difference is on the order of 0.5-3% depending on the slot and itemization.

[Remus]

snip

I see quite a few people say that Alex Savage is terrible because the exclusive story is gone, the rewards are not very great because catch up patch pretty much gives you the same ilvl so whats the point and SE some reason for it would be a good idea to listen to people only at fanfest to increase the difficulty of raiding to the point where midcore can hardly do it. Then they released a fight where they couldn't finish the fights and properly test them playing out how the players would do it and only done certain parts of the fight and A3S and A4S were born and killed the raid community.

[Vantol]

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.

In this context exclusivity is that air. Let's say you have, I don't know, a plane. You get fame, you ride friends on it, tell stories, take selfies with it and stuff. And tomorrow morning everyone has plane. So now your exclusive plane is just everyday garbage. Same with exclusive story and glamour. I used to stand in Mor Dhona every night with new Coil gear so people could admire it and take screenshots and also give small hints on TS about story. Now there is no point, the value of raiding is zero.

yes but if you then shun the casual players (its the general term i am using) you will see those numbers much much lower

If person drops game because he can't get everything he wants, there is something wrong with that person, not with the game.

P.S.

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.

It actually adds value to reward if you suffer and cry and taer your hairs trying to get it. It's just human psychology.

[zosia]

Actually, I never saw anyone ask for any of these things. DoMy point stands that "casuals" is not interchangeable with players who don't like raiding.
n't confuse what people want with SE's poor design decisions. Most of us were happy with the final cut of 1.x, and ARR was a surprise for everyone. Those player polls... never forget.

Take FFXI for example. I didn't like camping ground kings, and I never farmed sea, but I was a Dynamis demi-god. Farmed that twice a week, full sessions, for like three years. Wasn't a ls leader, but was pretty high up in the chain of command.

This game needs a more diverse endgame so players who would be midcore or hardcore can find where they belong. Not everyone wants to do hardcore raiding, and that really shouldn't be a surprise.

This game won't have a midcore, ever. You can hope for it, you can pray for it, but it's never happening. Yoshida killed midcore raiding when he left the coil model behind for gordias savage. The midcore players are not coming back, the HC are one foot out the door. This game is going to die because the dev team does not know how to create impactful and meaningful content.

Everything outside of savage is just a cheap two week trick to get people subbed for a month. Since you seem bent of differentiation, a lion's share of casuals wanted the best gear in the game to come from tome grinds. Wow walked away from that model because they understood valor points were boring. Now valor is just used to upgrade gear, like tomes should have been used for. This is what most of the causals wanted, and when this game dips below 300k subs, they can have the game all to themselves. At least the cash shop should make up the difference in lost subs.

Quality MMO!

[MihaelB]

It's really a null argument for both sides when you get to the crunch.

Non-raiders do not need high level gear as current gear is faceroll for content. Raiders if they loved the 'raiding' aspect, don't need better incentives as the raid is there. Considering how few people amongst the subscribers want to raid, shouldn't you be thankful it exists as an option? What people seem to want is exclusive content for their time, which is again null if less than 2% of the game can receive it.

Fluff content seems to be the age of modern games as most people don't have time to play and from the <0.5% clear rates, Western culture gamers do not have the skill nor discipline to participate in the DEV designed difficulty.

I mean, our world revolved around Pokemon Go and Angry Birds at points, what does that say about modern age gaming?

[zosia]

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 tha tmore 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?

I don't think you get how much more awesome a story is when you have to work week after week to get all the cut scenes. With midas normal, you get all the cut scenes day one. There is no epic build up. There is no epic feeling of triumph. There is literally a troll bard telling you it was harder than you remember.

When people say they lost the story, they lost all that I described. Midas normal is just like watching the cut scenes on youtube. It does not feel epic, it does not feel earned. It feels like some cheap trick, just like with HM and EX primals. Why even bother with a raid story at all at this point? That's what we lost.

There is a reason why LFR always had a late release in wow, blizz did not want to spoil the story or the raid for raiders. SE took a big steamy one on the raiding community going from coil to alex and there was never any concessions made to the raiders for it.

[Alym]

I don't think you get how much more awesome a story is when you have to work week after week to get all the cut scenes. With midas normal, you get all the cut scenes day one. There is no epic build up. There is no epic feeling of triumph. There is literally a troll bard telling you it was harder than you remember.

When people say they lost teh story, they lost all that I described. Midas normal is just like watching the cut scenes on youtube. It does not feel epic, it does not feel earned. It feels like some cheap trick, just like with HM and EX primals. Why even bother with a raid story at all at this point? That's what we lost.

I do. I raided and cleared all of Coil before echo. The difference is Coil bosses were better tuned for the majority of raiders, the fights and bosses were more interesting, the music was better, and the story was leagues better. Alex Savage isn't awful because normal exists, it's awful because it's awful.