Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well, the dev team has been trying the 'everyone can have everything given enough time' design philosophy for three years now and how well has it worked out sub wise? Let me save you the time of pondering over it... IT'S going TERRIBLE! This game lost close to 24% of it's active endgame player base from the last unofficial census. That's like 150k subs gone in 7 months.

There has to always be long term goals with huge carrots attached or there is no reason to stay subbed year around. Your philosophy is not playing out well in this game, the subs reflect that well enough.

I suppose that explains why Black Desert is booming with activity. After all, the game is practically designed with the slow reward ideal in mind. In fact, virtually all Eastern MMOs follow a similar model, yet none last in the West. People aren't leaving because the devs added tokens to Pigeon farming. They left for a variety reasons; drought in content, Alexander being tuned far too high, lack of a midcore or the saturation of MMOs in general. You're also neglecting the fact this survey came at a time when the current cycle is nearing its end and two major games were released; one of which includes a $15 sub.

Doing a complete 180 on mount drops or Anima grinds aren't going to bring people back nor would it have influenced their decision to begin with. Frankly, even the most vocal complaints on this forum do not align with your theory; that being gear not lasting long enough.

It does not diminish the reward, it just makes people less motivated to collect less rare rewards. Lets be real, people like using special mounts. There are several ways to make something special and keeping the item in question rare is among them. If everyone knows that primal birds will end up at the same rarity as the primal ponies, why even bother farming them now?

People can wait until 4.0-4.1, duo or trio these fights, and benefit from a much higher drop rate.

It takes the motivation out of doing content while it's current. That's why we can't keep people subbed to this game, there is no point in maintaining a long term sub.

You do realize, the drop rates on Primal mounds were increased expressly because enough people complained, yes? What also kills motivation is subjecting oneself to 200+ Ravana EX runs in DF because RNG decided to hate you. That is neither fun nor challenging. And while I'd do it because I like collecting stuff. If the game were designed around endless RNG, I can't say my interest would last.

And wait two years doing so. Most people who care about unique mounts or rewards want them now. The equivalent is my waiting to pick up FFXV because it'll be cheaper six months later. If I want the game badly enough, I'll buy it early. Most people do that.

If your only motivation to sub is rolling the dice on a mount drop... you aren't longed to stay subbed.

[Sandpark]

Then the dev team and SE are good at making some pretty daft calls. The more months people are subbed, the more they will make. Also, I doubt hundreds of thousands of players are just waiting in the wings to rush back in an resub to this game.

I dunno, this game has so many problems and there are people here still defending the status quo. Maybe this game does deserve to go F2P and die.



I meant no offense. Sorry if there was any.

None taken. Everyone is entitled to a belief or opinion and no one is always right or wrong.

[zosia]

I suppose that explains why Black Desert is booming with activity. After all, the game is practically designed with the slow reward ideal in mind. In fact, virtually all Eastern MMOs follow a similar model, yet none last in the West. People aren't leaving because the devs added tokens to Pigeon farming. They left for a variety reasons; drought in content, Alexander being tuned far too high, lack of a midcore or the saturation of MMOs in general. You're also neglecting the fact this survey came at a time when the current cycle is nearing its end and two major games were released; one of which includes a $15 sub.

Doing a complete 180 on mount drops or Anima grinds aren't going to bring people back nor would it have influenced their decision to begin with. Frankly, even the most vocal complaints on this forum do not align with your theory; that being gear not lasting long enough.

Where did I ask for a 180? You are being hyperbolic and assuming my position. Just because I believe in the notion of rarity and compelling carrots does not mean I think every last thing in FFXIV needs to be a grind like some korean F2P grindy crapfest.

There is an extreme imbalance in this game when we have no long term carrots to work on that will stay rare. The only real long term goal this game has is housing and that is not even a readily available long term goal on most servers (since there are few severs with lots left).

But, go on, keep defending the status quo. A 24% sub loss over 7 months is nothing to worry about /s

You do realize, the drop rates on Primal mounds were increased expressly because enough people complained, yes? What also kills motivation is subjecting oneself to 200+ Ravana EX runs in DF because RNG decided to hate you. That is neither fun nor challenging. And while I'd do it because I like collecting stuff. If the game were designed around endless RNG, I can't say my interest would last.

And wait two years doing so. Most people who care about unique mounts or rewards want them now. The equivalent is my waiting to pick up FFXV because it'll be cheaper six months later. If I want the game badly enough, I'll buy it early. Most people do that.

If your only motivation to sub is rolling the dice on a mount drop... you aren't longed to stay subbed.

My little cousin complains that he can't have donuts for dinner, whats your point? Just because players want something does not mean it's good for the game. Did we not learn anything from gordias savage? You can see how pointless the ponies are now every time you see a whistle drop to the ground. The drop rates were waaaaaay too high.

The only nerf to the pony grind should have been outgearing the content. When players can duo or solo primals, do their respective mounts really need an increased drop rate? I mean, lets be real, if they had stayed around 5%, anyone who wants one today could still easily get them. Buffing them to 15-20%, or w/e the number is, was completely uncalled for.

The point that you are missing is that things are made WAAAAAAAAAAY to easy. SE has never heard of the concept of a goldilocks zone. The coffin lid is another great example. It went from a 1% drop rate to a 100% drop rate. There was absolutely no reason for that. It really should have just been around 30%, similar to other crystal tower furniture.

Again, pretend that this game is not careening down the pipes, you are only hurting your own game by doing so.

[CookieMonsta]

And wait two years doing so. Most people who care about unique mounts or rewards want them now. The equivalent is my waiting to pick up FFXV because it'll be cheaper six months later. If I want the game badly enough, I'll buy it early. Most people do that.

If your only motivation to sub is rolling the dice on a mount drop... you aren't longed to stay subbed.

That being said, the last MMO had me running the equivalent of DREX prolly close to 1000 times before I got the weapon drop. Why did I do it? Because it was BiS and it stayed BiS for the good part of a year and a half. Once I got it, why did I keep running that dungeon for another 1000 times? because I could sell that same drop now that I have one for the equivalent of 100 mil gil.

The thing with Delayed rewards is that it only works with delayed obsolescence with no nerf tampering by the devs.

[Duelle]

True except some people have a skill ceiling. No matter how much they practice, they will never reach the ceiling. Be it cerebral limitations or reflex limitations.

And this goes back to how the content is tuned and the elements of the encounter. I mentioned a former guildmate that would bring his elderly mother to our 25-man raids in WoW. Sometimes she would get hit doing something like the dance for Heigan the Unclean or the eye beams for Kologarn. Her getting hit never led to a wipe (at most she'd die or take a near-fatal amount of damage). She'd apologize, we'd laugh it off and move on.

Now imagine (channeling SE in how they design Savage) if getting hit by the green geysers for Heigan turned the hit player into a bomb that exploded 5 seconds after contact and dealt heavy damage plus a potent DoT to the whole raid. People would rage and say "fuck bringing new people/non-top tier players to this".

[Zojha]

A 24% sub loss over 7 months is nothing to worry about

http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...rs-by-quarter/
http://cdn2-www.craveonline.com/asse...1066777558.png

I dunno. Should we already start working on WoW's coffin then? They managed to pull similar percentages on a much higher total sub level. And not just once, it's pretty much every expansion now. They no longer publish numbers, unfortunately - guesses are it's down to about 4-3,5 million by now. Either way, it's got a pretty consistent downward trend as well that'll likely be shortly interrupted with legion again before it returns to its course. Unless Legion becomes another surprise success, then they might retain subs for a while longer - I heavily doubt they'll be able to rebound from that trend again.

Question would be how it looks with other MMORPG and whether this is a genre-wide trend. Any MMOs currently booming and gaining players en masse? Maybe a WoW-refugee camp? Did people all wander to MOBAs? Whooo knows.

[zosia]

http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...rs-by-quarter/
http://cdn2-www.craveonline.com/asse...1066777558.png

I dunno. Should we already start working on WoW's coffin then? They managed to pull similar percentages on a much higher total sub level. And not just once, it's pretty much every expansion now. They no longer publish numbers, unfortunately - guesses are it's down to about 4-3,5 million by now. Either way, it's got a pretty consistent downward trend as well that'll likely be shortly interrupted with legion again before it returns to its course. Unless Legion becomes another surprise success, then they might retain subs for a while longer - I heavily doubt they'll be able to rebound from that trend again.

Question would be how it looks with other MMORPG and whether this is a genre-wide trend. Any MMOs currently booming and gaining players en masse? Maybe a WoW-refugee camp? Did people all wander to MOBAs? Whooo knows.

I think a lot of people feel legion is make or break for wow. I am not sure what your point is here? Since wow is doing badly we should not worry about this game? WoW was in decent shape at the end of MoP and could come back to a good state of things with legion? Who knows.

We can say this with certainty, this game is bleeding more subs at a higher rate % wise than wow. A roughly 25% sub loss in seven months is a much faster pace than anything wow is experiencing. If you think you can hide this games misgivings behind a declining MMO market, you are sorely mistaken. There are still good titles in this genre despite hard times.

If legion hits it out of the park, this game could easily lose another 150k subs. This game can survive on it's current amount of subs, but another 150k hit could easily eject this game from the sub model right into the garbage free to play market where it belongs.

[Cakekizyy]

If you think it's trash, why are you still here?

[Jynx]

If you think it's trash, why are you still here?

It's like you think this wasn't asked and answered several times in this thread alone.

Some people feel the game is lacking and feel it could be better, that's why we are here making suggestions instead of just off and quitting, that's me at least.

So if you thought you actually had something to add to the discussion...what is it? Certainly not this I hope.

There is difference between thinking it can be improved and saying it belongs in garbage heap.

Of course. There is also a difference between enjoying the game as it is and defending any and all of it's flaws without fail.

There are fanatics on both sides of the fence, you didn't seem to be speaking to anyone specifically though and just painting broad strokes about the thread and those who are posting in it.

[Cakekizyy]

There is difference between thinking it can be improved and saying it belongs in garbage heap.