We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[Iyrnthota]

There's some really neat data in that steamchart graph for all time tbh.

It's interesting seeing a steady growth over time, with each new expansion having a greater and greater peak comparative to it's baseline player base.

Then you have the aberrant peak July 2021, which I think is that Summer where we had that perfect storm of Covid, lockdowns, and that WoW exodus shining a spotlight on the game.

In fact, it's almost an expansion level growth in player count.

Coming in late, so I expect someone's already ran the numbers, but I ran up some back of the envelope stats myself that I thought were interesting so I figured I'd share.


Percentage drop off from Expansion release to 1 month before x.4 release (assuming 6.4 May release):

HW - 43% drop off
ST - 60% drop off
ShB - 42% Drop off
EW - 65% Drop off

Percentage increase in player count between Expansion releases:

HW > StB - 215%
StB > ShB - 161%
ShB > EW - 231%


If you count that summer peak as an "expansion" then the numbers look like this:

ShB > Summer Peak - 163%
Summer Peak > EW - 142%

So that Summer influx of players was actually a larger increase than the player count from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.


On a personal note, I think the player count look pretty good here if we're being honest.
There's been a clear upwards trend since Shadowbringers release, and it looks like we've actually managed to retain quite a significant amount of the new players that have joined since then due to EW release and pandemic factors, given that those things do tend to have quite a significant drop off in returning players after the "trend" has died down.

[R041]

On a personal note, I think the player count look pretty good here if we're being honest.
There's been a clear upwards trend since Shadowbringers release, and it looks like we've actually managed to retain quite a significant amount of the new players that have joined since then due to EW release and pandemic factors, given that those things do tend to have quite a significant drop off in returning players after the "trend" has died down.

I mostly agree with you - The main problem is we're stretched so thin right now that DC Travel is necessary to even play. I don't agree with how SE has handled server and housing expansion, they're playing the long game and looking at numbers, but it seems like they don't really understand what that feels like for a player who doesn't have a Home World on a popular DC. It's just an overall terrible experience for a lot of players.

Not much can be done there, they waited too long for QoL changes and then decided to give that DC even more housing. I just wish they would've put more effort into infrastructure, seamless instancing, and better housing a long time ago, it feels so archaic now and nothing ever happens. Stretching players across 300 hours of MSQ and requiring a you to do all dungeons and trials also doesn't help, if we keep this up it'll only get worse and it'll be necessary to run content with NPCs. We're expecting Roulette and Duty Support to carry the whole game at this point.