18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

[Elissar]

Indeed, those big games came out and players realized how bad FF14 is in comparison.

Exactly, every single one is a MMORPG.

"FFXIV is dying i swear"

[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

[Sindele]

This reminds me of the arguments around wrestling TV ratings, both in the late '90s and in the past couple years. People with a tenuous grasp on statistics, human behavior, or the completeness of their data nonetheless trying to read the tea leaves and blaming basically anything that they don't like.

We're most certainly in a lull, that's obvious and incontestable. No way to know the magnitude accurately. It's probably sharper than previous ones, but Endwalker as a whole represented a somewhat unprecedented population surge, and we don't have any good analytic data on what that shift meant in terms of population segments, which means there's no real good way to accurately map out where the decline is coming from. Hardcores dropping off without content? Casuals finally wrapping up their four expansions worth of MSQ and dropping off? Something in between?

We can look at a couple interesting tea leaves of our own to look for trends that don't fit the argument - and upon evaluation of the number of Anabaseios parses uploaded in 6.4, it certainly doesn't appear to be significantly far behind the totals for Asphodelos in 6.0 or Abyssos in 6.2. Account for the fact that we're still in the middle of the 6.4 cycle and the rate of uploads, and the small gap that exists seems very likely to close in the coming weeks. This is kind of a surprise to me, actually - I really didn't expect the numbers to be as close as they are. To see basically zero observable decline in what is generally considered the flightiest segment ("clear the tier and unsub") raises some interesting questions about the prevailing narratives.

(As an aside: one could certainly argue that stagnancy in this case is an effective deficit since you should expect those numbers to be growing over time as people 'graduate' into the endgame, but when we're talking about 'lost players' that discussion feels like a bit of a tangent.)

[Aword3213]

Love it when the source of data that often gets refuted suddenly gets quoted when it suits the narrative, by the same group of people

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Love it when the source of data that often gets refuted suddenly gets quoted when it suits the narrative, by the same group of people

Every time.....
It would be neat to get ""Official"" Information and stats straight from the Company, which would have ALL of the Data, and not a "Trend" ....but I know that just wont happen.

[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

[Jojoya]

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

So players log in, play through the patch content they're interested in, then go play other games like TotK, D4 and FFXVI that just came out so they have had the last 10 years to be playing them.

Okay. I don't see a problem with that.

I've watched that same cycle occur many times over the years in various MMORPGs, notably WoW. There are websites out there that track player activity and it's a rare online game producing regular content updates that doesn't have a lot of peaks and valleys in its graph.

When new games were getting released, players would be taking breaks to go play the new games. Sometimes they'd even skip coming back for the new patch content because they were excited about the new game and knew the patch content would be waiting for them on their return. Other times the content patches just didn't appeal to them but they'd come back either when another did or for the next expansion.

Such cycles rarely say anything about the state of a game. Those cycles say a lot more about the state of competition in the game industry. When there's no competition drawing a player's attention away from their main game, there's no reason to let their sub lapse and most will stick with the game out of habit if nothing else. When there is competition, there is reason to stop playing so they can also enjoy those other games. A drop in active players will be seen.

Personally I think it's a good thing to see people taking extended breaks to play other games. It helps prevent burnout. It can potentially expose players to new ideas that can then be shared and possibly used to improve their main game.

You guys waste an awful lot of time and effort on doomsaying when you could spend that time and effort doing things you enjoy. That may mean not playing FFXIV for a while. A decade is an awful long time to be playing the same game with almost no break.

That's fine. Enjoy other games for a change. Maybe you decide to come back to FFXIV, maybe you get so invested in one of those other games that you leave FFXIV behind. I'd be surprised if I don't end up reaching that point myself sometimes in the future though for now I'm still having fun here. Nothing lasts forever.

And that's okay. My life doesn't revolve around whether or not I'm playing a game, let alone this game in particular.

Do what is best for you. I don't think banging your head against a wall trying to convince other people who are happy with the game to embrace your doomsaying is in your best interests.

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

Some thing most of the content creators that moved over from WoW realized fairly quickly and have commented on:

Those who watch FFXIV streamers are more interested in MSQ and other major side story content reactions. Races for world firsts on Savage and Ultimate will also create minor spikes in viewership but that's about it. There's no strong PvP content that tends to generate a lot of the viewership like in other games. Viewers lose interest when all the streamer has to show is raid/trial farms.

So try mapping what was happening in game during those viewership peaks. You might get some answers.

[Stormpeaks]

So players log in, play through the patch content they're interested in, then go play other games like TotK, D4 and FFXVI that just came out so they have had the last 10 years to be playing them.

Okay. I don't see a problem with that.

I've watched that same cycle occur many times over the years in various MMORPGs, notably WoW. There are websites out there that track player activity and it's a rare online game producing regular content updates that doesn't have a lot of peaks and valleys in its graph.

When new games were getting released, players would be taking breaks to go play the new games. Sometimes they'd even skip coming back for the new patch content because they were excited about the new game and knew the patch content would be waiting for them on their return. Other times the content patches just didn't appeal to them but they'd come back either when another did or for the next expansion.

Such cycles rarely say anything about the state of a game. Those cycles say a lot more about the state of competition in the game industry. When there's no competition drawing a player's attention away from their main game, there's no reason to let their sub lapse and most will stick with the game out of habit if nothing else. When there is competition, there is reason to stop playing so they can also enjoy those other games. A drop in active players will be seen.

Personally I think it's a good thing to see people taking extended breaks to play other games. It helps prevent burnout. It can potentially expose players to new ideas that can then be shared and possibly used to improve their main game.

You guys waste an awful lot of time and effort on doomsaying when you could spend that time and effort doing things you enjoy. That may mean not playing FFXIV for a while. A decade is an awful long time to be playing the same game with almost no break.

That's fine. Enjoy other games for a change. Maybe you decide to come back to FFXIV, maybe you get so invested in one of those other games that you leave FFXIV behind. I'd be surprised if I don't end up reaching that point myself sometimes in the future though for now I'm still having fun here. Nothing lasts forever.

And that's okay. My life doesn't revolve around whether or not I'm playing a game, let alone this game in particular.

Do what is best for you. I don't think banging your head against a wall trying to convince other people who are happy with the game to embrace your doomsaying is in your best interests.

[Jojoya]

Sorry you're bored but then I wasn't replying to you.

Did you need some personalized attention?

[AwesomeJr44]

Me when I read a 13 page essay that has so little substance that it could be condensed into a few sentences: ^