Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Neophyte]

And we need new players why again?

What is better, if game sells 1 million and keeps running for 10 years never getting new players but also almost never loosing old ones. Or if game sells 1 million each year for 10 years, but only 200k players stay subbed longer than month?

Well, we need new players because there is no video game with a half-life period = infinite as you imagine.

So you're asking what is better
a) a game which never gets boring and brings fun for at least 10 years (i.e. a 'perfect' game)
b) a usual game, like we know them today

Hahaha...

So we have an absolutetly unrealistic and so a very risky alternative (1 Mio. Units sold and all sub for the entire 10 years, something never happend so far in videogame history) with something like 1,85 billion € return...
But if you change something you risk losing a bunch of players you can't replace..

OR

a less unrealistic and less risky choice (10 Mio. sold over 10 years and 0,2 Mio subbed all time) with about 0,81 billion € return.
If you change something some will unsub, some will resub.

I'd take the realistic approach as a game producer.

(calculated with 45€ game // 15€ sub)

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And we need new players why again?

What is better, if game sells 1 million and keeps running for 10 years never getting new players but also almost never loosing old ones. Or if game sells 1 million each year for 10 years, but only 200k players stay subbed longer than month?

Because no game has an infinite supply of players. People inevitably loss interest for one reason or another, which in turn, means a loss of revenue with no way to replace it.

In what way are you "always behind" the older players as a new player? If you start the game off right now and play it on a consistent basis you can get through 2.0 to Heavensward in around a month or two depending on how many hours you can invest. By the time you get through HW you should be in whatever the most current patch is and then you can gear up to the latest gear. I have a friend who started around March this year and is already i230 and has a few Classes at Lv.60 now.

Um, I think you misunderstood? I said this in reference to the person I quoted implying veteran players should have an advantage over new players based solely because they happened to have purchased the game earlier. I wasn't saying I was behind or couldn't catch up.

[Istaru]

We need one of these badly:



Myself, I would be checking of a number of them.

[Claymore65]

An important thing to keep in mind, when discussing Player Retention, is that there is no "magic bullet" for it. Players have completely different motivations, and many of these are contradictory, though not in every case. Game designers have the (immensely difficult) task of appealing to as many of these motivations as they can while not alienating players instead.

For example, here are a some of the more common motivations, along with what content appeases these players. Keep in mind that this is also a spectrum, and players can have many of these motivations at the same time. For example, a character can love challenge, but also love lore. Not all of them contradict.

• Challenge: Some players heavily value the Challenge games can offer. Whether it be incredibly complex rotations, difficult mechanics, or punishment for failure, these players love it. They play primarily to test their skills. Content like Savage Raids appeases this kind of player.
• Prestige: Some players play for "prestige". They want to show off their incredible gear, proudly wear their titles, and have truly exclusive equipment, whether it be functional or simply visual (mounts/minions etc). Prestige players favor long-lasting, hard-won items, and hate it when it becomes easier to acquire later. These players favor games that require a lot more commitment.
• Progression: Some players desire a constant sense of progression. They always want to feel like they're getting stronger, and ideally quickly. They constantly want to feel as if they're improving, whether it be through better gear, new skills and abilities, or even improving their skills in various fights. These players prefer to get gear faster and upgrade it often. They usually don't need complicated stats, and will focus on what's "strongest" instead. The current gear progression in the game caters to these players, with high ilvl gear only lasting 3-6 months.
• Storyline / Lore: These players are fueled by a sense of immersion and a desire to learn more. They love additional storyline cutscenes, scour the world for lore in sidequests, and eagerly pursue minute, world-expanding details. These players enjoy content like the MSQ, side quests, and exploration.
• Social: Some players play the game for the community and social interaction. These players engage in Roleplay, enjoy casual discussions with others, and love meeting new people and making friends. These players enjoy new venues to meet new people with, whether it be expanded chat systems or online forums. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to truly shape a community through gameplay, so social players must usually work on their own to find what they enjoy.
• Side activities: Some players enjoy having a wealth of side, "fun" activities. They enjoy mini-games, personal challenges, and other content to the "side" of primary gameplay. This may also include houses, "glamour", and more. The Golden Saucer, for example, is content that these players love.
• Completion: Some players thrive on completing tasks in the game. They want to accomplish as much as they can, and seeing "unfinished" content drives them to play more. These players will level every class, complete every dungeon, and get every achievement. Simply adding more content is what appeases these players.
• Experimentation: Some players love to tinker and experiment in game. They love to tweak stats, character skills, and combine abilities to create powerful or creative builds. These players favor complicated gear stats that allow them to optimize, or at least create something different. Currently, FFXIV doesn't do a great job with this motivation, since gear is rather simple and there is no real way to customize your character's combat style.
• Commitment: Some players place a heavy value on commitment. This usually comes in two flavors, with some preferring a high level of commitment and others preferring lower amounts. Players who want high levels of commitment want to spend a lot of time playing the game, and be demonstrably stronger and/or rewarded as a result. Lower commitment players favor shorter grinds, "catch-up" content, and the ability to progress without investing as much time. Many "low commitment" players play other games or have real life schedules that make a heavier commitment impossible. Currently, FFXIV caters well to low commitment players, with plenty of opportunities to catch up on the gear grind.
• New Experiences: Some players play exclusively for "new" experiences. The first time running through a dungeon, the exploration of a new zone, getting a new ability, trying out a new class, discovering a new fight mechanic, and such are what this kind of player enjoys most. These types of players hate grinding or re-doing old content. Unfortunately, due to the finite amount of content in most games, these players can be the hardest to please. There is a limited amount of ways any encounter can be built, and the farmable nature of dungeons and raids (including "hallway" dungeons) gets grating quickly. Still, they can be appeased with new, innovative content and randomized content.

Even the list above doesn't cover many of the detailed player motivations that drive player retention. Unfortunately, the Devs can't produce enough new content to satisfy all of these motivations, so they have to pick and choose carefully. There is no one way to satisfy everyone, and what attracts and keeps some players pushes others away. The best they can do is come up with a variety of different content which caters to these different motivations.

We need one of these badly:
Myself, I would be checking of a number of them.

That is truly beautiful. I think pretty much every forum needs one of those.

[zosia]

No, I am not. You're just insisting only your perspective has any merit. And you're arguing in circles. Nerfs of any caliber-- according to you -- result in overall player apathy. Therefore, how can any be reasonable? Say they left mount drops at exactly the same rate. A person waiting several patch cycles will always have a far easier time because those bosses are going to melt. Look at Garuda. No one does her mechanics anymore. You have premades with a single tank, a single healer and six DPS who utterly annihilate her in a few minutes tops. You really don't even need a healer nowadays if the tank can handle it. Good luck trying that back in 2.1.

For starters, yes you were missing the point by virtue of the yokai watch example. You also further missed my point where I said no one has problems with reasonable nerfs, yet you claim my point is nerfs of any caliber result in player apathy. You are probably still missing the point. Let me be as simple for you as possible....

Big nerf bad

Many Big nerf really bad

SE, should try a different nerf style to preserve reward impact across all aspects of the game

Hmm, going out on a limb here but I suspect that $65 price tag might be a good deterrent. You're acting like the Lightning Event, or other like-minded, were monumental. I guarantee you the players unsubbed now, would still be unsubbed even if every piece of event content remained lost in time. They unsubbed because they were bored. Running Ravana a hundred times would likely contribute to said boredom not alleviate it.

I am sorry if your life has left you thinking $65 dollars is a substantial amount of money. That is a price of a new video game after tax. You keep having to fall back to this idea of RNG, but you have yet to address other aspects where reward nerfs have hurt this game like the thavnarian set, gearing in general from a tome vendor, putting rare past event items in the cash shop like the lightning event. Your argument is a one trick pony, lol. You can only rely on how miserable it is to farm a 5% drop rate on current content. If you can't take the 5% drop rate now, why not wait until 4.0 who you could duo most of the primals that drop birds?

Your defense of the pony situation is just laughable. People would be able to get them, easily, if the drop rate had stayed around 5%. Rather than try to find a happy middle ground, you are here, defending the status quo despite the 25% sub drop over 7 months. Pathetic. This is why this game will die, people are too scared to change the status quo.

Because generally people want it now. They don't want to wait a year. Look no further than the recent delays to No Man's Sky and Final Fantasy XV. People lost their collective minds over two months. Here's the thing though, if you make so players who have played for longer have a distinct and continual advantage over those who don't, you will never see new players. I started around HW's release. Why would I continue playing if no matter what I do, someone from launch is ahead of me not because of their individual skill, but because they picked up the game before I did?

You're wrong. Wow had a decade of great sub numbers with a system that favored long term subscribers. You are offering nothing but a slippery slope argument here. A game can both be rewarding to it's long term players and welcoming to new players. Wow did it for a decade, whats your excuse for this game?

You also continuously ignore other outside factors. Legion is a massive expansion. And seeing a number of FFXIV players are either former or current WoW players, this will inevitably influence these numbers, especially when we're in a "catch up" patch-- oft criticised for not having enough to do for people already "caught up." Once again, I guarantee if by 4.0, we saw three Primals, a complete and successful overhaul of Diadem, objective and/or more dynamic based content, no more tome grinding, and just more to do in general, you'd see people sticking around longer. For some, one primal and two faceroll dungeons just isn't enough to keep them playing even with PvP and PotD. No amount of mounts, minions or gear will change that even if it lasted for years. (Mount drop rates technically last a year, btw)

Legion was not coming out 7 months ago, these sub numbers have been dropping for SEVEN MONTHS! IF you think you can pin that all on wow and legion, then I won't discuss this any further with you. The reason people are not sticking around for content like PotD is that A) it's grindy and B) the rewards suck.

You are cherry picking my posts and assuming my position solely rests on the idea that everything needs to be rare. Here, I will quote myself from another thread...

I like Housing, Minions, and glamours.



I dislike how the dev team has little to no communication with the player base. Important questions are never addressed in live letters, only silly questions no one cares about. Yoshi P had not given a good truthful answer to "what has not worked out" as it pertains to heavensward. He always dances around that question.

I dislike how the dev team implemented a4s without play testing the fight from start to finish. Some of them should literally lose their jobs over gordias. This dev team took a healthy raiding community in ARR and shattered it beyond repair with Gordias.

I dislike how the dev team invests so much of their limited resources on content like PotD, Lord of Verminion, and Diadem only to have all of those contents flop due to poor design and/or bad incentives.

I dislike how gear is worthless in this game.

I dislike how gear does not really impact your endgame gameplay, people literally get full 240 to stand around towns.

I dislike how full 240 BiS is a pointless endeavor because a ilvl 250 crafted gear set will completely outshine any 240 BiS set day one for patch 3.4.

I dislike how this dev team makes super rare items super common. (coffin lid, Thavanarian set, etc). It's like this dev team only knows 0 and 100 on the speed dial, the coffin lid went from a 1% drop to a 100% drop. How does that even make sense? Why not start like at 10, 15, or 25%? Why even nerf it at all, it's just rare furniture?

I dislike how there is no individualism in this game. Since everything is nerfed into the ground, rewards and rare items often become common place and cheap. There is very few ways to actually distinguish yourself from others. Everyone and everything feels like a giant bowl of bland vanilla paste.

I dislike how every bit of content outside of midas savage is set to the brain dead ez mode setting. I really dislike how netflix is almost mandatory for repeat clears of 90% of this game content. This game is boring af!

I dislike how there are completely unnecessary complications in this game. Why do we need five different types of glamour prisms? It takes the same mats to make any of the different grades, just standardize them FFS!

I dislike how SE is trying to bribe people with houses to stay subbed with housing demolition. Lets stop pretending that demolition makes housing wards active. People just log in once a month to preserve their housing lots.

I dislike that after three years that this game still has massive RMT issues. I dislike that rampant botting of all types is hardly punished in this game.

I dislike the clunky friends/black list UI that closes out every time you remove someone from the list.

I dislike hunts. They are no where near as cool as actual NMs. Hunts can go die in a fire.

I dislike the cash shop. I dislike the cash shop. I dislike the cash shop.

I dislike how every time there is a hotfix, the severs go down for three hours. Invest in better servers SE, Blizzard can do a hotfix in 15 mins and they only need to restart the server. Maybe use some of that cash shop money on FFXIV instead of FFXV?

I dislike the cheap reuse of monster assets and mechanics. 95% of PotD was just regurgitated environments with regurgitated monsters.

I could easily keep going on, there is so much to dislike like yokai, relics, gordias, etc. etc. etc. but why bother? The dev team is tone deaf and near incompetent when it comes to delivering new content.

I have plenty of issues outside of loot, mounts, and minions. This game is in trouble on multiple fronts. I do agree with you on the legion part. This game is losing more and more players to legion. Wow is doing what it does best, taking the best parts of other games and adapting them for better use.

For example, where do you think blizzard got the idea of the artifact weapon and guild halls from? It's going to take content misgivings of FFXIV and turn them into something amazing in wow. Have you even seen the artifact weapons yet? They even give me pause asking why I ever worked on a relic in this game.

Blizzard is going to keep snatching up more and more ffxiv players with legion. If the expansion is even half as good as it looks, FFXIV won't have another WoD flop to benefit from. This games days are numbered and the thought puts a grin of my face every time.

As said before.. you're misleaded if you think that the question ("Do I prolong my sub?") is answered either with
"Yes, because I want this or that gear and I won't get it, If I'm not subbed long enough. So I stay subbed." or with
"No, because right now I don't want any specific gear and I can get it easier in a month, so I resubb then. Or when it's released on the cash shop".



Well, what a luck I don't play this game just for the sake of progression.
And imagine that: When they at some point turn off the game/servers (or the F11 ones, with their everlasting and totally motivating progression system) your progression is down to someone who have not played the game at all and all you have now is some screenshots and memories.

And while I memorize the good times with my friends, you'll memorize the then-called "wasted" hours of progression, or what?

Ah yes, ofc I have no friends in-game, no fond memories of epic raid wins, no people I will retain friendships past this game. None of that at allllll. How shallow of me just to focus on pixels and never consider the MMO part of MMORPG. /s

lol, thank you for that.

Because no game has an infinite supply of players. People inevitably loss interest for one reason or another, which in turn, means a loss of revenue with no way to replace it.

Which is fine as long as this inequality is true


Sub lossed per year < New subs per year.


That has not been true in this game for about 10 months now. The player churn won't keep this game at 500k subs, a number Yoshi P. said is needed to maintain this game. We are already at what? 500k? I am willing to even give that a 100k buffer since it's an unofficial census. I wonder how long it will take to lose another 100k subs when legion hits

Well, we need new players because there is no video game with a half-life period = infinite as you imagine.

So you're asking what is better
a) a game which never gets boring and brings fun for at least 10 years (i.e. a 'perfect' game)
b) a usual game, like we know them today

Hahaha...

So we have an absolutetly unrealistic and so a very risky alternative (1 Mio. Units sold and all sub for the entire 10 years, something never happend so far in videogame history) with something like 1,85 billion € return...
But if you change something you risk losing a bunch of players you can't replace..

OR

a less unrealistic and less risky choice (10 Mio. sold over 10 years and 0,2 Mio subbed all time) with about 0,81 billion € return.
If you change something some will unsub, some will resub.

I'd take the realistic approach as a game producer.

(calculated with 45€ game // 15€ sub)

Well, the situation right now is that we are losing a bunch of players that are not being replaced fast enough. To put it simply, we are losing way more subs than new players joining. Yoshida said this game COULD survive with 500k subs, and already half way into the 2nd expansion we are at that number.

I am sure the quality of content is going to SKYROCKET when subs drop below 400k ^_^

enjoy that F2P P2W cash shop that is always looming behind every corner! I wonder how long it will be until this game sells character boosts just like wow, lol. Keep defending the status quo, you are doing great!

[Musashidon]

And we need new players why again?

What is better, if game sells 1 million and keeps running for 10 years never getting new players but also almost never loosing old ones. Or if game sells 1 million each year for 10 years, but only 200k players stay subbed longer than month?

this is wrong what is the point of having 200k players forever when the current model will always have more (at its lowest point aka right now) then that will ever have.

guess what when 3.4 hits the numbers jump back up for the players who come for the new patch and leave.

the game model you guys are wanting will only hold (for a long period of time) a much smaller number than what we do now.

[zosia]

this is wrong what is the point of having 200k players forever when the current model will always have more (at its lowest point aka right now) then that will ever have.

guess what when 3.4 hits the numbers jump back up for the players who come for the new patch and leave.

the game model you guys are wanting will only hold (for a long period of time) a much smaller number than what we do now.

There have been two major content patches in the last seven months and there was still a net loss of subs, about a 24% loss. In light of that fact, your proposition is to stay the course because any change could be worse than what we have now?

Great plan, lol.

[Vantol]

this is wrong what is the point of having 200k players forever when the current model will always have more (at its lowest point aka right now) then that will ever have.

The whole point of this thread actually is that this is the highest point right now and we have been only losing subs since 2.X with minor spike at 3.0 (on straight decline since then) and "to be" 4.0. This game will never surpass 500k subs / 200k active players ever anymore. We are discussing here problems, that caused it and how to prevent it from happening in next FF:Online. Because this one is done for good.

[Musashidon]

There have been two major content patches in the last seven months and there was still a net loss of subs, about a 24% loss. In light of that fact, your proposition is to stay the course because any change could be worse than we have now?

Great plan, lol.

choose the course with more players or the one with less, sounds like the better one to me.

but hey its better to just drop 70% of the current players and just accept 30% forever i mean it's better to just take the drop and accept mediocrity.

The whole point of this thread actually is that this is the highest point right now and we have been only losing subs since 2.X with minor spike at 3.0 (on straight decline since then) and "to be" 4.0. This game will never surpass 500k subs / 200k active players ever anymore. We are discussing here problems, that caused it and how to prevent it from happening in next FF:Online. Because this one is done for good.

but we are already above that, you are discussing made up problem based on what you like or dislike about the game and saying it's because of this opinion of mine.

[zosia]

choose the course with more players or the one with less, sounds like the better one to me.

but hey its better to just drop 70% of the current players and just accept 30% forever i mean it's better to just take the drop and accept mediocrity.

I don't think you really understand the problem here. This is not a casual vs hard core argument as much as some of you like to make it out to be. This is a post mortum on why this game cannot retain any type of player. Do you really think everyone complaining here is some HC special snowflake raider?

Pull your head out of your tuckus and see that this game is poisoned across ALL player skill strata. From casual tome farmers to HC raiders, no one is staying subbed for long periods of time. It has everything to do with the lack of compelling incentives. There are several reasons any rewards in this game are no longer compelling. There are several reasons why this game is not captivating people any longer.