Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

[KizuyaKatogami]

Except WoW rarely catered to casual players and removed alot of said content or made it invalid. They instead chose the high end playerbase that was raiding and they listened to the raiders remarks above the rest.

The state of WoW is as is because they listened and overly bent over to the same types of players complaining on these forums now. WoWs issue is its complete and utter lack of casual content, something FFXIV has plentifully. The population of WoW has been decreasing for years while XIVs has been increasing. So it looks like the direction of XIV is just what the market wants.

Do we have exact figures on the population? I’ve heard that EW had the biggest drop off in history after the main surge came.

[Havenchild]

Do we have exact figures on the population? I’ve heard that EW had the biggest drop off in history after the main surge came.

Well you have the fact that as of Feb 2022, over 800k characters completed the MSQ at least. That's up from previous expansion numbers, which were about 560k for SHB and 616k in SB in the same timeframe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._2022_release/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tails_are_out/


You have a more accurate comparison that Lucky Bancho's site offers every few months:

Heres the report from Janurary: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/56364034.html

Heres the report from April: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/56584369.html

Jan 2022: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...3/e3af7fb0.png
April 2022: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...2/d20b09dd.png

Rough Translation of the numbers:

The number of active characters is about 1.7 million, an increase of 350,000 from the previous (1.35 million).
The number of new characters increased by about 250,000 from the previous 180,000 to 430,000.
The last time inactive was 160,000 returning characters that were active this time, up 40,000 from the previous 120,000.
The number of active (return?) characters since the last time has increased from 1.04 million, up 60,000 to about 1.1 million.
The moon started at 1.33 million (up 300,000). The Dawning Level Cap reached 970,000 (up 330,000). The moon clear is 880,000 (up 310,000).


So game is definitely growing. They are mostly parsing data from lodestone against hitting certain quest milestones in MSQ, some side quests, Job levels, etcetc. There's a GitHub that explains how they classify the data a bit more and how they weed out and account for bots.

[Thaciscokidd]

Snip

This is one reason why i wish they would officially release numbers because from the same article you see a rise from last summer then a drop off after EW launch and returning to nearly pre summer numbers on steam.

[Havenchild]

This is one reason why i wish they would officially release numbers because from the same article you see a rise from last summer then a drop off after EW launch and returning to nearly pre summer numbers on steam.

The article is still more accurate as it's parsing numbers from all realms & platforms, directly from lodestone. So sure steam is reflecting a drop maybe, but that also doesn't account from players who stopped playing on the steam version. Even if at least it purely means steam players are leaving, that's also all its measuring; players who use the steam client. Which we know is a relatively small base against the overall playerbase. Yeah the rise and drop off are standard and has been more or less the same every expansion release. The more critical fact is that over time, the numbers steadily grow. It peaks during expansion -> levels out -> steadily grows more concurrently. That's a positive growth rate and something every game aspires to get towards.

I think a lot of these number hikes are also spill over from the launch issue. You have to remember that there are a lot of people that just quit and opted to try the game out later during the launch due to the queue times. There were players that purchased the game that were not even able to create a character due to servers being full. It would be interesting as well to see how many of those new characters are also just alts, as it seems making alts is far more popular that I would have expected it to be in this game.

Well that's why I linked Jan 2022 and April 2022. All login issues were resolved by Jan 2022. I would assume the number will increase when they do the summer analysis because 6.1 was just released to a successful PVP revamp, new MSQ, Alliance Raid, and a new Ultimate (which should engage players for some time).

[IdowhatIwant]

The article is still more accurate as it's parsing numbers from all realms, directly from lodestone. So sure steam is reflecting a drop maybe, but that also doesn't account from players who stopped playing on the steam version. Even if at least it purely means steam players are leaving, that's also all its measuring; players who use the steam client. Which we know is a relatively small base against the overall playerbase. Yeah the rise and drop off are standard and has been more or less the same every expansion release. The more critical fact is that over time, the numbers steadily grow. It peaks during expansion -> levels out -> steadily grows more concurrently. That's a positive growth rate and something every game aspires to get towards.

If you were to compare the steam charts, to the entire player base, you would likely see similar trends on the graph. If your point is to prove positive growth though, the game has been growing slightly with each expansion. That does not mean though that decisions the developers make could immediately cause a downward spiral.

The game is likely never going to die, until SE decides they are going to pull the plug. How ever, the player base can certainly plummet if they continue to cater to niche player groups, as that is all they would be left with is that niche group. The more and more you caters to specific groups the more and more you subtly shave off players from other groups.

[Jeeqbit]

The game is likely never going to die, until SE decides they are going to pull the plug. How ever, the player base can certainly plummet if they continue to cater to niche player groups, as that is all they would be left with is that niche group. The more and more you caters to specific groups the more and more you subtly shave off players from other groups.

Simplifying classes is not catering to niche groups. It's catering to the majority, because the easier things are to play, the more people can play them. A niche group is the people who want classes to be so extremely difficult to play that they go back to being the least played classes that are hardly seen in casual content or even high-end pugs. I'm not saying that some classes shouldn't be hard and cater to that niche group, but statistics show it's a niche group because the easiest classes are the most popular classes.

[IdowhatIwant]

Simplifying classes is not catering to niche groups. It's catering to the majority, because the easier things are to play, the more people can play them. A niche group is the people who want classes to be so extremely difficult to play that they go back to being the least played classes that are hardly seen in casual content or even high-end pugs. I'm not saying that some classes shouldn't be hard and cater to that niche group, but statistics show it's a niche group because the easiest classes are the most popular classes.

Not all casual players are going to want the same thing. As many of you may or may not believe, you are not magically a hard core end game raider because you stepped into savage or even if you complete savage. You aren't even hardcore if you do ultimates. Hard core is just a mentality. There are casual players that enjoy that content as well as other content. There are casual players that may enjoy this game because it has more complex class design than x game they used to play. There are casual players that feel that class identity goes away from changes so they no longer feel like an x job. So again, the more they focus on, what ever niche group they are currently trying to appeal to, it is going to slowly shave off players until what ever that niche group is remains.

I am pretty casual when it comes to FFXIV, and I do not see eye to eye with a lot of casual players. I would love to prog ultimates, which many casual players view as a stain on there perfect game. I just sadly don't have the time or schedule to prog ultimates with a group of people, and I accept that I can't do it. But I definitely think it looks fun.

I think there is a large group of casual players that are far more extreme about how casual this game needs to be, and a large group of players that believe every aspect of this game needs to be 100% solo friendly. Now we just revamped PvP and we are getting all these demands about PvP. There's to many directions the player base is trying to pull the game, and eventually something will have to give to relieve all the pressure and it will end up dropping a large group of players when it does happen.

[Havenchild]

If you were to compare the steam charts, to the entire player base, you would likely see similar trends on the graph. If your point is to prove positive growth though, the game has been growing slightly with each expansion. That does not mean though that decisions the developers make could immediately cause a downward spiral.

The game is likely never going to die, until SE decides they are going to pull the plug. How ever, the player base can certainly plummet if they continue to cater to niche player groups, as that is all they would be left with is that niche group. The more and more you caters to specific groups the more and more you subtly shave off players from other groups.

Highly depends on you and what you consider specifically catering. 6.1 is a patch that had a little for everyone. MSQ ( Everyone), Crafting Gear + New Items (Everyone), Alliance Raids (Everyone benefits), New EX Trial (Midcore?), Ultimate Raid (Hardcore Players) , PVP Revamp (Everyone). Hell you could argue, the hardcore playerbase might have benefitted more exclusively from 6.1 (so far). If you count pre 6.1, you include Savage Raiding as well for Hardcore players. SE hasn't notoriously catered to one group in FF and the situation is more contrary than these forums would have you believe. There is alot of challenging content to do in game, but not everyone engages the same content.

Palace and HoH titles are hard to get for example. I would say that's a harder challenge than beating most savage tier fights purely because the RNG of it all can mess you up bad, not to mention floor 180 in Palace, which essentially needs to be played perfectly with no errors.

[Lauront]

Do we have exact figures on the population? I’ve heard that EW had the biggest drop off in history after the main surge came.

Nothing but the steam figures at present, which Lucky Bancho alluded to as well during his last survey. The figures he puts out just show a maximum of unique characters based on activity subject to the criteria it sets out during the timeframe it's undertaken, so whilst useful in that regard, they don't really give an accurate reflection of where subs sit at any given moment. They are not a substitute for a live sub count, which only SE can provide... the steam figures are the only available proxy in that respect.