18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

[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.

[Elissar]

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.

I agree with everything.
Another interesting source is twitchtracker. FFXIV never had such attention like happened in Endwalker. I believe that a new beginning will bring the population somewhere between Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

Personally, as long as my queues keep popping in less than 5min as DPS and i find people to do stuff in Party finder... i won't worry. It's a problem that SE need to worry later on.





Here the pattern is clear, almost like a cluster

[Koros]

I agree with everything.
Another interesting source is twitchtracker. FFXIV never had such attention like happened in Endwalker. I believe that a new beginning will bring the population somewhere between Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

Personally, as long as my queues keep popping in less than 5min as DPS and i find people to do stuff in Party finder... i won't worry. It's a problem that SE need to worry later on.





Here the pattern is clear, almost like a cluster

how can anyone see this and think ff14 succeeded lmao

it's like someone just giving you 5 million gold bars and 2 years later they're all already gone with nothing to show

you'll never get this chance again, ff14 had its shot and failed. sad

[Elissar]

you'll never get this chance again, ff14 had its shot and failed. sad

I know you are trolling but i will take your bait and see if i can contribute with some useful info if anyone is honestly interested.

TwitchTracker and any stream platform is a mean to analyze AUDIENCE (e.g: people that probably is not playing the game right now for multiple reasons).

We can say that is a indirect way to measure hype. Keep in mind that our community is weird and the same person may watch multiple streamers just to see reactions to a specific scene (me included).


World of Warcraft




ESO



Lost Ark



New World

[Elissar]

We can consider those lines as supply/demand for attention: A content creator see a demand (green), create a channel or stream the game (blue, supply). As you see. for Lost Ark and New World we have a weird peak where the supply and demand are almost equal. Such hype never came back. We can see the same behavior on steam charts (steam charts in our case can be see as residual analysis).

The crazy yellow line is New World, blue line is Lost ARk, green line is FFXIV...if we isolate our timestamp as later of the peak, we will see it like this:




If we remove distortions...

Green line is FFXIV, blue is ESO.

Interestingly, both MMORPG has the same appeal: offer a single player experience inside an online environment, however, ESO is unable to create the same amount of hype and attention of FFXIV. Worse, if we compare ESO with other games we will see a weird discrepancy between supply x demand. Comparing Guild Wars 2 and ESO is weird too.

GW2 = Blue, ESO = Green

[Elissar]

IMHO, Guild Wars 2 is a better game than ESO in multiple aspects and is not generating the same hype. I would blame: marketing, lack of visual fidelity and introduction is childish for some races. Open World exploration and progress is great, but after a while is boring. GW2 has a loyal community and is way better than Lost Ark and New World in terms of stability. ESO positive aspects: the name Elder Scrolls (marketing), immersive quests and multiple choices. Negative: paywall everywhere and most expensive sub (premium) system available.

Talking about FFXIV, FFXIV has the potential to create hype and draw attention, the name (brand) is strong like Elder Scrolls or Warcraft and the audience plots (TwitchTracker) shows the same behavior as World of Warcraft - a game 19 years old. That's all we can say with our superficial data. Anything beyond this is a mere speculation. We can combine lodestone data and XIVCensus but only SE knows the truth.

Based on my daily experience, I see sprouts everywhere all the time and my queue times are lower than ShB days. We can't measure our retention. For now, i would say that any decline isn't a big surprise for Yoshida, he said it himself multiple times. However, as the hype/audience graphics are showing, it's a constant build up and decline. If Guild Wars 2 is active as a flatline in steam charts and survived for years before steam and even WoW still receive some attention after everything weird going on... i can't see a dark future for FFXIV. They need to make 3x the effort they did in ARR to ruin this game.

[SturmChurro]

We can say that is a indirect way to measure hype. Keep in mind that our community is weird and the same person may watch multiple streamers just to see reactions to a specific scene (me included).

That does seem to be the dynamic people who watch FFXIV like. Many people want to see if others react (or cry) the same as them, or just in general, rather than just generally watching the game.