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

[Havenchild]

True enough. But besides the 6.1 stuff you listed you also have the Housing lotto fallout that people have claimed to be the last straw for them. And by then we should know more about what 6.2 will have in it(Island Sanctuary, Criterion Dungeons, Pandemonium p2, and more). And I do worry that people are over-hyping the Island Sanctuaries to the point where it might be a problem out of the dev teams hands.

I call the bluff of alot of people saying the housing lotto is the LAST STRAW for them. If the old system that was basically auto bot clicker or bust for years wasn't terrible for them, the more fair lottery system post it's fixes, which is objectively better, won't be. Mind you, the winners of said plots regardless of any issues now, will be retained. So it's a weird flex for anyone to rage at that when the devs already informed the playerbase as such. Imagine raging off the game because of the "0" error, only to be awarded the winner of the house when the maintenance completes, only for them to miss the purchase window cause they aren't in-game to see it. That's shooting yourself in the foot.

As for Island Sanctuaries, at best it's a solution to instanced housing which would be widely celebrated. At worst, it's a minion farming simulator with a monster (minion) building element to it. It's anyone's guess how this will go.

[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]

There's to many directions the player base is trying to pull the game

Pretty sure the intention the devs have stated is exactly this. They want the game to be all encompassing, jack of all trades, master of none. Yes it is a tug of war but they clearly have a schedule of sorts on content releases for each groups of content. The odds are the game is not outright, going to drop a large group of players when it's intrinsincally being designed to Pick Up -> Enjoy-> Put Down, with their current direction. That single fact with the reinforcement from Yoshi-P that it's ok to put down the game for a time and come back when there's content relevant to you, means the game will be hard to put down for good. And if you are a player that can enjoy all levels of content, well by gosh this game is more rewarding content wise than quite literally every other MMO on the market.

[IdowhatIwant]

Pretty sure the intention the devs have stated is exactly this. They want the game to be all encompassing, jack of all trades, master of none. Yes it is a tug of war but they clearly have a schedule of sorts on content releases for each groups of content. The odds are the game is not outright, going to drop a large group of players when it's intrinsincally being designed to Pick Up -> Enjoy-> Put Down. That single fact with the reinforcement from Yoshi-P that it's ok to put down the game for a time and come back when there's content relevant to you, means the game will be hard to put down for good.

I don't think you are comprehending what I am saying as you are keeping your conversation around content releases for different groups. I may have explained it poorly as well. There are systems in this game that encompasses everyone. Again one of those systems is job design, when that starts to lean one direction to fill a certain niche group you begin to shave off players that are not fans of that direction. When dungeons become easier, something that everyone has to do in order to progress in the game, it starts to shave off players as they find these dungeons boring. Same if dungeons are too difficult people will quit as it is a struggle to progress. It's not about content that being pulled in various directions. It is when the content and systems that all encompasses all players goes in a certain direction is when it affects those various player groups and begins to taper them off.

[Havenchild]

I don't think you are comprehending what I am saying as you are keeping your conversation around content releases for different groups. I may have explained it poorly as well. There are systems in this game that encompasses everyone. Again one of those systems is job design, when that starts to lean one direction to fill a certain niche group you begin to shave off players that are not fans of that direction. When dungeons become easier, something that everyone has to do in order to progress in the game, it starts to shave off players as they find these dungeons boring. Same if dungeons are too difficult people will quit as it is a struggle to progress. It's not about content that being pulled in various directions. It is when the content and systems that all encompasses all players goes in a certain direction is when it affects those various player groups and begins to taper them off.

If you are speaking specifically on the systems and dungeons, this conversation has been repeated ad-nauseum since ARR, but the numbers have reflected the contrary, the playerbase has only grown over the years. Now in terms of design or content difficulty, that seems to yoyo every other patch (or expansion). Emerald EX was more difficult then Diamond EX, but SoS EX as harder than both for example.

[Vahlnir]

If you are speaking specifically on the systems and dungeons, this conversation has been repeated ad-nauseum since ARR, but the numbers have reflected the contrary, the playerbase has only grown over the years. Now in terms of design or content difficulty, that seems to yoyo every other patch (or expansion). Emerald EX was more difficult then Diamond EX, but SoS EX as harder than both for example.

Emerald Weapon Ex took me nearly a full lockout to clear. Diamond Weapon took me at least 3-4 days hopping in and out of practice parties, multiple lockouts. Clear parties weren't usually clear parties, just learning parties in various stages. lol And even farm parties were more hit or miss than usual at the end of Shadowbringers. I'd imagine content difficulty can be rather subjective at times. For me, Diamond Weapon Ex was quite rough to clear and farm. But like a lot of things, it's not always yourself you need to worry about. It's the other random people. They tend to make things harder than they need to be.

[Rolder50]

That single fact with the reinforcement from Yoshi-P that it's ok to put down the game for a time and come back when there's content relevant to you, means the game will be hard to put down for good.

I mean he SAYS this, but the team's actions show a different reality. Between things like the housing demolition system, weekly tomestone and loot lockouts, and the fact they delay x.x5 patches to be just over a month past the initial patch release...

[IdowhatIwant]

If you are speaking specifically on the systems and dungeons, this conversation has been repeated ad-nauseum since ARR, but the numbers have reflected the contrary, the playerbase has only grown over the years. Now in terms of design or content difficulty, that seems to yoyo every other patch (or expansion). Emerald EX was more difficult then Diamond EX, but SoS EX as harder than both for example.

I would probably argue the opposite some.
So when FFXIV claims to have 35 million active accounts, yet it only maintains an active player base of 1.7 million currently. That shows a couple various things.

1. There are possibly a lot of bot accounts for this game.
2. There is something that is causing a lack of retention for players.
3. There is something that is detracting players while attracting new players.

One key thing that has been successful for FFXIV is that is has not had very strong competition over the years. For the most part it's greatest competitor WoW, had been on a decline since Cataclysm which only got worst as time went on. With how slow the growth has actually been over the years, I would say the game is bleeding players at a slightly slower rate than it is gaining players. Assuming all data is in fact accurate. I am not sure what exactly an active account is, as SE has never defined it. Does it include banned bot accounts? Is it a total of the accounts that have been activated?

[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.

[Jeeqbit]

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.

There is always a big drop-off after people finish with the expansion. It stands to reason that a bigger surge will be followed by a bigger drop-off. It didn't help that free trials and sales were stopped.

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.

Official figures would probably not give an accurate reflection either because most companies release these to their shareholders every 3 months on a 3 month basis and the figures are referring to a quarter that happened some time ago.

I would probably argue the opposite some.
So when FFXIV claims to have 35 million active accounts, yet it only maintains an active player base of 1.7 million currently. That shows a couple various things.

1. There are possibly a lot of bot accounts for this game.
2. There is something that is causing a lack of retention for players.
3. There is something that is detracting players while attracting new players.

What you should remember is that, assuming we had 1.7 million subscribers every month, that 1.7 million may not be the same people each month. That pool of 35 million accounts could take it in turns to be that 1.7 million. A lot of people do in fact subscribe to do the story content and then play something else for months or years. Every time you see the returner flower is evidence of that.

A lot of them are obviously bots but it should be possible to go through the history of ban reports and calculate how much we need to subtract.

No online game is going to have 100% retention. Sometimes people try a game and it's just not for them or they stop having time to play.