A new tactic for the dissatisfied

[Connor]

The other factor that hinders a new player's monetary value now, is the extremely generous and ever increasingly generous free trial. If they keep expanding this thing it will only be another 6 years or so before 7.0 is in the free trial. At present SE are only making money off of new players that subscribe before the end of the free trial or the sub time for the two most recent expansions. And if the game doesn't convert that new player into a long term subscriber, then SE is actually losing money on the free trial.

This is a point I forgot to consider actually but you’re right, when accounting for free trials it does mean that SE are going to end up losing money if they’re putting all their eggs into the new player basket. And as you say there’s a limit to how many people can be ‘new players’, as inevitably there will come a point where everyone who wants to play the game already has, meaning new player numbers start to dry up.

[Absurdity]

This is a point I forgot to consider actually but you’re right, when accounting for free trials it does mean that SE are going to end up losing money if they’re putting all their eggs into the new player basket. And as you say there’s a limit to how many people can be ‘new players’, as inevitably there will come a point where everyone who wants to play the game already has, meaning new player numbers start to dry up.

Iirc there was already a point, early this year, where the Lucky Bancho census showed a decrease in new characters created. Maybe it's an indication that the game is reaching it's cap, maybe people are just not making more alt characters (since it goes by active characters of which a single player could have multiple), maybe it's gonna go up again with Dawntrail (that would heavily depends on what they do with the new player experience and whether or not those people have to go through 10 years of story first), who knows.

The latest census for 6.4 showed an overall decline, Active Characters decreased by 260,000 (from 1,390,000 down to 1,130,000), Returning Characters decreased by 270,000 (from 430,000 down to 160,000), New Characters decreased by 20,000 (from 100,000 down to 80,000).
What has increased are the characters that continued to be active between the last census and this one (from 850,000 to 880,000).

Granted I used google translate so take it with a grain of salt.
https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57719554.html