18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

[Jojoya]

Lucky Bancho survey for patch 5.45: 900k active characters over level 60

Lucky Bancho survey for patch 6.45: 1.13 million active characters over level 60.

If this expansion was truly as bad as some want the public to think, shouldn't the 6.45 numbers be lower than the 5.45 numbers considering the praise that Shadowbringers garnered?

The game isn't releasing a whole lot of worthwhile content. And its trending to become more solo friendly. Everyone knows this. There are far better solo games than this one thats for sure. Therefore, the solution would be for this game to become an ever better MMO but nope. It's trying to be a better solo game and because of its MMO roots its always going to be subpar at that.

My guess is they're aiming for solo game play with an immersive social experience. It's really hard to say.

[Supersnow845]

Lucky Bancho survey for patch 5.45: 900k active characters over level 60

Lucky Bancho survey for patch 6.45: 1.13 million active characters over level 60.

If this expansion was truly as bad as some want the public to think, shouldn't the 6.45 numbers be lower than the 5.45 numbers considering the praise that Shadowbringers garnered?


My guess is they're aiming for solo game play with an immersive social experience. It's really hard to say.

As usual jojoya missed the point so they can defend small indie company

The point isn’t that EW has overall higher players than ShB (which is to be expected because EW had the hype from ShB and WOW’s premature collapse while ShB came off the relatively flat SB), it’s that EW patches aren’t holding the playerbase like previous expansion patches are, people are unsubbing quicker and for longer

[Atelier-Bagur]

As usual jojoya missed the point so they can defend small indie company

The point isn’t that EW has overall higher players than ShB (which is to be expected because EW had the hype from ShB and WOW’s premature collapse while ShB came off the relatively flat SB), it’s that EW patches aren’t holding the playerbase like previous expansion patches are, people are unsubbing quicker and for longer

did you just...ignore the fact that the numbers are supposed to be "active" as in...they're still subbed?

[LittleImp]

did you just...ignore the fact that the numbers are supposed to be "active" as in...they're still subbed?

Tbh Lucky Banchos methodology is flawed when it comes to trying to determine the types of things people are discussing in this thread. He looks at player activity over a span of multiple months, which sometimes varies in duration. This makes it difficult to gauge if those people are actually remaining subscribed, or simply logging in to do the patch content and then unsubbing.

It also is looking at active characters rather than accounts, and there has been an absolutely massive surge in the popularity of playing alts over the last two years that seriously cannot be overstated. There are tons of individuals that register anywhere from 2-7 times in that 'active characters' statistic.

It's reached a point where even Steamcharts probably provide a more solid overview of at least the broader trends. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the highs and lows of the last two expansions, proportionally.

[Rolder50]

Tbh Lucky Banchos methodology is flawed when it comes to trying to determine the types of things people are discussing in this thread. He looks at player activity over a span of multiple months, which sometimes varies in duration. This makes it difficult to gauge if those people are actually remaining subscribed, or simply logging in to do the patch content and then unsubbing.

It also is looking at active characters rather than accounts, and there has been an absolutely massive surge in the popularity of playing alts over the last two years that seriously cannot be overstated. There are tons of individuals that register anywhere from 2-7 times in that 'active characters' statistic.

It's reached a point where even Steamcharts probably provide a more solid overview of at least the broader trends. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the highs and lows of the last two expansions, proportionally.

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

[LittleImp]

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

People have their reasons. The RP/Clubbing/IMVU scene like to roll them to employ socially, and often end up boosting or maxing them out so that they can run content with them or obtain various items/glamours. Housing is another big reason iirc.

Among raiders, people use them for split raiding (allows groups to obtain gear more quickly), cross-region raiding, or to help other players outside their primary group without denying them loot. Split raiding groups can have 8 players with anywhere from 1-7 additional alts each!

I personally have 2-3 alts I use for marketboard stuff and very very occasional raid-helping. I barely actually use them, but would end up getting counted as 3 people in Lucky Bancho's stats. I can't imagine playing alts daily tho, it's not for me.

[Rolder50]

People have their reasons. The RP/Clubbing/IMVU scene like to roll them to employ socially, and often end up boosting or maxing them out so that they can run content with them or obtain various items/glamours. Housing is another big reason iirc.

Among raiders, people use them for split raiding (allows groups to obtain gear more quickly), cross-region raiding, or to help other players outside their primary group without denying them loot. Split raiding groups can have 8 players with anywhere from 1-7 additional alts each!

I personally have 2-3 alts I use for marketboard stuff and very very occasional raid-helping. I barely actually use them, but would end up getting counted as 3 people in Lucky Bancho's stats. I can't imagine playing alts daily tho, it's not for me.

For RP/Clubbing, there's also little practical reason, considering you can use mods to completely change your appearance, and the mods to sync the appearance to other people is rather widespread at this point.

[TheOperator3712]

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

There doesn't need to be a plethora of reasons to make an alt, just one or two very good reasons. The most compelling reason being savage lockouts. Having a ton of alts means that you can do splits with a static for faster overall gearing. Taking it to the extreme, you can funnel loot to everyone's main by having 7 alts each. Most statics stick to one alt though. Having alts also allows you to get geared up on more than one gear category, allowing you to hop into more PFs as ilvl reqs go up.

It's also not that hard to level alts if you're skipping cutscenes. 80-90% of the MSQ is cutscenes, so if you don't stop to unlock trials and raids along the way you can burn through the MSQ fairly quickly.

[Avoidy]

It's reached a point where even Steamcharts probably provide a more solid overview of at least the broader trends. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the highs and lows of the last two expansions, proportionally.

Steamcharts have been showing a pretty steady decline for several months but nobody wanted to believe it because they're used to Steamcharts being used by bad actors to show them just the small player count and not the actual player trends. It's reasonable to assume that trends among steam's players are affecting regular-launcher players as well, barring some freak accident with the steam launcher that ruins their ability to play or something. I'm glad Bancho has put out their own similar results, because it lets us finally get on the same page about the current situation.

I actually think that dude on page 1 is right though. In ShB I recall it being pretty deadish until EW got announced, and then it picked up again. Loads of people just drop the game during the lengthy in-between periods where nothing's happening. The real issue though, is EW was hyped as the finale to a 10 year old story so it saw a LOT of people coming back to see how things wrapped up. Whereas 7.0 is some new chapter entirely, and the story building up to it has been hit or miss. Whether or not people will return for more of that, especially after the poor taste post-EW left in so many mouths, is anyone's guess. I think the devs might seriously freak out if they announce 7.0 and the game continues to lose players due to how they've bungled and mismanaged post-EW at every turn. Like, yeah, go ahead and keep putting obvious content items in the cash shop while the base game grows cobwebs, act more and more like ActivisionBlizzard and this is where it gets you. On the bright side, if that happens, the fear of failure might push them to actually churn out some quality content instead of chilling and being content. But with how their roadmap works, the bulk of the content's already been made by now so it's too late to change course anytime soon.

idk, idk. If I'm being real honest, I'm betting a shit-ton of people will come back for 7.0 just out of habit. The current MMO landscape is so barren that XIV can basically be mediocre and still be better than most, which is really all they need to do to keep players and make money. Eh.

[SturmChurro]

idk, idk. If I'm being real honest, I'm betting [...] people will come back for 7.0 just out of habit. The current MMO landscape is so barren that XIV can basically be mediocre and still be better than most, which is really all they need to do to keep players and make money. Eh.

Oh they will! Even people who have seriously criticized it. 7.0 is apparently going to be the "make it or break it" for a lot of people. I do think they will be disappointed, but they will still be back for it.