If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Lauront]

Actually according to the latest census its just gone up again..

They're lagged figures in nature, so I wouldn't expect them to show any downward trend just yet as a result of changes coming in 6.1... He notes this himself (google translate so some clumsiness) - note the bolded:

The number of active characters is about 1.7 million , an increase of 350,000 from the previous time (1.35 million) .
The number of new characters is 430,000 , an increase of about 250,000 from the previous 180,000 .
The number of returning characters that were inactive last time but became active this time is 160,000, an increase of 40,000 from the previous 120,000 .
The number of characters that have been active and continuing since the last time is about 1.1 million , an increase of 1.04 million to 60,000 .
The start of Akatsuki is 1.33 million (up 300,000) . Akatsuki level cap reached 970,000 (up 330,000) . Akatsuki clear is 880,000 (up 310,000) .

The number of active characters was 1.7 million, which was a record high of 1.62 million just before Akatsuki.
The previous survey interval was one and a half months and half of this three months, and after the release of Akatsuki, the official starter pack and complete pack will be suspended from December 16, 2021 to January 2023. Due to the influence of the event held until the 25th, new players were sluggish.

However, new players are not the only factor in this increase. It is 430,000 more than the 560,000 increase when the number of players increased significantly just before Akatsuki. It can be seen that the player base has consistently increased steadily because the number of continuous players that had been maintained while the number of active players was decreasing in the previous time was further increased and the number of new players increased on top of that.

Oceania DC, a new physical data center, has less than 40,000 active characters. There are 5 worlds under it, so about 7700 per world. In Japan, it was about this level before it was jet black, but it is quite rare in overseas DCs. A little less than 40% of the return and continuation are new due to the relocation from the existing data center.
I think that many people who really started from the beginning have not yet reached Lv60 or higher, which is the free trial cutoff, but since a certain player population is required to turn the content, there remains anxiety as the start of the new data center. ..

Speaking of anxiety, if you look at the Steam connection that can estimate the trend of the number of players in real time, the decline after the release of Akatsuki is remarkable.
Steam connection
The number is around May 2021 before the big overseas streamers started FF14 last year.
This graph shows the number of simultaneous connections, so if the story of Akatsuki calms down and the login frequency decreases, it will decrease as it is. If you log in any of the time during the aggregation period and acquire the character's growth, minions, and mounts, it will be judged as an active character in the Lodestone census aggregation, and the login frequency is irrelevant.
The number of active characters of Lodestone will decrease when the login itself during the period disappears, such as the number of players increasing in Akatsuki will be suspended until 7.0 next time,
so it will be the next time how many players will continue to play after 6.1 I would like to pay attention to this in the survey.

I am more interested to see where these figures will be in 3-6 months, especially when the chunk of players who joined newly prior to EW have fully caught up etc and their 6.0 content model becomes clear.

[Demetri_Delethorn]

Actually according to the latest census its just gone up again..

Significantly higher than the highest it has ever been. The people spouting doom and gloom are so far off base it's almost comical.

Remember: button bloat =/= skill

[Nekokaori]

Significantly higher than the highest it has ever been. The people spouting doom and gloom are so far off base it's almost comical.

Remember: button bloat =/= skill

again there has never been and isnt any button bloat... if ur having button bloat well maybe learn to get better organization skills because im on controller and its perfect and doesnt have enough buttons to make things completely enjoyable

beside large amount of this buttons have long cds so u can rlly only use one at a time per pull

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

again there has never been and isnt any button bloat... if ur having button bloat well maybe learn to get better organization skills because im on controller and its perfect and doesnt have enough buttons to make things completely enjoyable

beside large amount of this buttons have long cds so u can rlly only use one at a time per pull

And yet, most openers have multiple sets of double weaves.

Your hotbars are for a level 72 dark knight...


Try a lvl 90 dps that isn't smn or dnc.

SAM has 3 spots left out of 36 slots on kb. DRG has something like 4.


And I use most of them every pull.

[Nekokaori]

And yet, most openers have multiple sets of double weaves.

Your hotbars are for a level 72 dark knight...


Try a lvl 90 dps that isn't smn or dnc.

SAM has 3 spots left out of 36 slots on kb. DRG has something like 4.


And I use most of them every pull.

this isnt my first character and believe me i played in stormblood when ast, when blm and when summoner had way more bars lol ive never once had issues of button bloat because i have basic reasoning skills on how to set up a bar based on when and how u use ur skills you organize it in that way even if i had 400 abilitys i could organize it and make it work with no issue

[LittleImp]

Significantly higher than the highest it has ever been. The people spouting doom and gloom are so far off base it's almost comical.

Remember: button bloat =/= skill

If you read Lauronts post above, you would know that those numbers were collected over a 3 month continuous period starting shortly after the release of the expansion. They have nothing to do with the current playercount, and are really only interesting in that they show what is likely the peak playercount.


Even the person who released those stats specifically said they couldn't be used to make conclusions about retention rates, and went on to refer to the plummeting steam charts as 'anxious'.

[Nekokaori]

know what heres some math for u and u cant agrue with math

there are 13 action bars for controller
each action bar has 16 buttons

we can easily have 208 buttons so long as we have decent basic knowledge and common sense along with organization skill just fine. If you cant handle that its a personal issue not a button bloat issue

[Lauront]

If you read Lauronts post above, you would know that those numbers were collected over a 3 month continuous period starting shortly after the release of the expansion. They have nothing to do with the current playercount, and are really only interesting in that they show what is likely the peak playercount.


Even the person who released those stats specifically said they couldn't be used to make conclusions about retention rates, and went on to refer to the plummeting steam charts as 'anxious'.

Yep, what this thing is showing, as I understand it, is distinctive character activity meeting its criteria between this and the prior census.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

know what heres some math for u and u cant agrue with math

there are 13 action bars for controller
each action bar has 16 buttons

we can easily have 208 buttons so long as we have decent basic knowledge and common sense along with organization skill just fine. If you cant handle that its a personal issue not a button bloat issue

There is no way anyone can handle 208 buttons. Please.


And there are less for keyboard.

[Nekokaori]

There is no way anyone can handle 208 buttons. Please.


And there are less for keyboard.

um with the cool downs the way there are ya we could lol and keyboard honestly has methods it could with shift,tab cntrl, shift l and shift r not even counting we could f1 -f12 the buttons for more lol