18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

[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.

[Supersnow845]

14 is a hard game to measure from a streamers hype perspective

The MSQ story is good but the gameplay itself is trash tier (especially based on what class you play on), exploratory zones are repetitive and BA/DRS require a caller which can get messy on stream (I hosted, ran and called a BA run that mr happy was streaming, let’s just say the chat had some colourful opinions on how I ran my run of BA of which many included my overtly gay sounding voice, not that I particularly care but it does look bad on the developers part) and savage makes no sense to an outsider with how bright and flashy it is

I guess looking at retention numbers on “hype videos” may be more useful but 14 is 100% not a streaming game

[TheOperator3712]

The last tier of the expansion always sees the biggest drop in XIV. The only reason ShB blew up the way it did before EW was because the WoW crowd was pissed off and XIV has a really generous trial.

This is completely normal.

The sample size isn't big enough for there to be a normal. XIV has had a total of five x.45 patches to date. We have census data for the x.4-x.45 period for three of those five patches. All three of those periods also had uncontrolled outside factors that impacted them to unknown extents. An 18.5% drop could be the same as, better, or worse than previous x.45 patches, but without a control there is no way to know for certain.

"Case in point, there is no such thing as a normal pattern, because we don't live in a vacuum with normative conditions. Events outside the game are important driving factors to the game's population that prevent accurate comparison to supposedly similar points across time."

And on the note of the generous free trial, free trial players did not and do not count in the LuckyBancho Census. So any WoW Refugees that did not convert over to paying players would not have been reflected in the ShB Census data that I pulled up to make my first reply.

Forgive my ignorance but isn’t the significant contribution to the number loss players that are not maxed?

Isn’t the loss rate for maxed players something like 3%?

Seems like to me that it’s more the casual player who isn’t as invested is going to play other games like Zelda, ff16, Diablo, armored core when it comes out and continue xiv at their own pace.

Is this just a cope?

The census is specifically designed to check for that, and it also doesn't count most characters that are below level 60 to filter out free trial characters.

Using Google Translate you can see that the relevant statistics to answer your question were provided:
"The number of active characters decreased by 260,000 from the previous game (1,390,000) to about 1,130,000 .
The number of new characters is about 80,000 , down about 20,000 from the previous 100,000 .
The number of returning characters who were inactive last time but became active this time is 160,000, a decrease of 270,000 from the previous 430,000 .
The number of characters that are active and continuing from the last time is about 880,000, an increase of 30,000 from 850,000 .
Akatsuki starts at 1.01 million (down 100,000) . The Akatsuki level cap reached 850,000 (down 40,000) . Akatsuki clear is 780,000 (down 30,000) ."

Akatsuki seems to be what the Japanese name for Endwalker translates to when put through Google Translate.

[FrogDog]

Just resubbed after not playing for 7 months, and I had been mostly inactive for almost a year prior to that. Anecdotal, but I honestly don't know how this game could be growing and it certainly doesn't feel like it whenever I do try to play it.

There's not the benefit of the lockdowns that Shadowbringers had. Endwalker wasn't very good and the cadence and quality of content has been very hit or miss since Stormblood ended (imo it mostly trends downward). And it seems like most of the community communicates outside of the game, so the result is like walking through spaces of mannequins.

[WeissTuna]

Just resubbed after not playing for 7 months, and I had been mostly inactive for almost a year prior to that. Anecdotal, but I honestly don't know how this game could be growing and it certainly doesn't feel like it whenever I do try to play it.

There's not the benefit of the lockdowns that Shadowbringers had. Endwalker wasn't very good and the cadence and quality of content has been very hit or miss since Stormblood ended (imo it mostly trends downward). And it seems like most of the community communicates outside of the game, so the result is like walking through spaces of mannequins.

See and that last bit is where I feel like the biggest problem is as well. Endwalker feels like it's actively worked to keep players further apart rather than bring them together. Like everyone else has been saying, it's turned into a more solo game.

[Theodric]

See and that last bit is where I feel like the biggest problem is as well. Endwalker feels like it's actively worked to keep players further apart rather than bring them together. Like everyone else has been saying, it's turned into a more solo game.

The new PvP mode is an excellent example of that. I was looking forward to it as something to do with my partner but we can't queue for either the ranked or casual mode as a duo. It's a real shame, though the game has long since decided to double down on catering to players who really seem to despise the idea of actually interacting with other players in any meaningful capacity and so those of us who aren't against it end up getting less and less content aimed at us.

[Catwho]

I'm usually one of those 20+ hour a week players that strives to finish the challenge log, runs a FC, raids with friends, tries to max achievements, etc - and even I've slowed my roll this summer because of XVI, vacations, and a wholly unrelated family crisis that has taken up a lot of my mental energy and caused many a sleepless night.

Lots of people took this patch or the summer off. TotK, Diablo 4, XIV - other things required their attention.

They will resub for patch 6.5 or come back for the new expansion depending on how cool it looks.

Or not! Sometimes you outgrow a game and realize it's time to move on. I did with FFXI.

Or you are burnt out and need a longer break. That's okay. Life happens.

[Eastwall]

Didn't l see a similar post like this recently?

[Atelier-Bagur]

Didn't l see a similar post like this recently?

Yeah but we gotta have these threads once a month. Every MMO there's always that one quiet kid in the classroom who shouts the game is dying, don't come to the raid tomorrow and all that

[Moebious]

Can understand why, with no content like Eureka and Bozja, there's not much of anything in the lulls between patches.

6.45 was just such a letdown, a confirmation that the devs didn't listen to any form of feedback or concerns being presented to them.

Hopefully they'll wake up and realize content they set up to fail, still has potential if they just listen to the concerns/feedback given to them, through their early inception to now.

On a bright side it cured me of my fomo to stay subbed for my house, I do wonder though, how many will find the next couple of months from 6.45 as an ending/unsubbing point, since there's no form of interesting ongoing content like Bozja in Shb or Eureka in SB with more fulfilling relic farming attached.
The EW relic will likely be seen as the worst in hindsight, until/unless 7.0 somehow manages to disappoint players even more.