#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tyintheron]

despite crafting and gathering being very hard to penetrate

Anecdotally, though, I can say that I know multiple people who found the Ishgardian Restoration a really simplified in-road into crafting - something they wouldn't have tackled otherwise.

And it certainly seems to me like that's an example of them greatly simplifying a system that, on the surface, seemed to bring in a lot of people who may otherwise have never touched the 1-80 crafting and gathering professions (though, granted, I doubt anyone started playing the game for crafting!).

Just to be clear - I think you're bringing up a bunch of good points about how what they think they know could be wrong! But I also think that in an example like crafting and gathering, they can certainly look at how having a simplified path for the player to follow has increased the usage of those systems across the entire playerbase.

The same is probably true of player jumps in something like, say, the introduction of Crystalline Conflict and the levels of overall participation in PvP. "We made this easier to get into, and now 75% of people play at least some form of this mode semi-regularly, as opposed to the 20% before" (he says, pulling those numbers ouf of thin air) probably isn't that hard to see as a win.

I think if we're talking about the overall userbase, there's certainly an argument to be made that it was some combination of COVID, the WoW-pocalypse, and probably 20 other small factors that led to the userbase growing so quickly. But when you get down into the details of participation in specific features, "more players playing this mode/using this feature after simplifying it/adding new x reward stream" can be pretty statistically clear-cut.

And that might be the whole point - they're likely interested in participation, because participation equals retention. If one healer quits due to system simplification but another ten people start raiding for the first time because they "get it" better or even just flat-out prefer a simpler system, the math becomes pretty clear.

That's what I'm assuming is going on behind the scenes, anyway.

[HighlanderClone]

I think if we're talking about the overall userbase, there's certainly an argument to be made that it was some combination of COVID, the WoW-pocalypse, and probably 20 other small factors that led to the userbase growing so quickly. But when you get down into the details of participation in specific features, "more players playing this mode/using this feature after simplifying it/adding new x reward stream" can be pretty statistically clear-cut.

Of course. But let's just take SMN as an example.

SMN is very popular in EW. The change to SMN is obviously the cause.

But there isn't one single change to SMN. There are multiple.

It was made much easier.

It was given much flashier animations.

It was given more utility and made its ability to resurrect more robust.

Can you isolate any of these factors individually?

And there are also factors beyond changes to SMN itself that interacts with the factors of SMN's changes.

For example: what about the lack of a new caster job in EW? Did people gravitate to SMN because it's as if there was a new caster?

Or what about the raid design? Did the raid design incentivize people to pick up SMN?

Did people pick up SMN because they were leveling Arcanist?

I do not think Square Enix has the data or the tech to determine which exact factor caused what. In fact I don't believe it's even theoretically possible because the SMN changes are a package of factors that cannot be disentangled.

This becomes worse when it's data on stuff like Eureka participation. You have no way of knowing why people did Anemos:

(1) Is it because they found Anemos fun?

(2) Is it because they had nothing else to do in 4.25?

(3) Is it because they wanted the relic glams?

I won't hide my dissatisfaction of poor analysis by amateur statisticians in places like /r/ffxivdiscussion: there are people who argue that Island Sanctuary was a bigger success than something like Bozja.

They use the completion rates of IS vs Bozja to show their point.

That's complete idiocy, since the biggest determinant of completion is the time required to reach completion when it comes to IS vs Bozja.

These are three examples that hopefully explain why I am extremely skeptical SE is able to deduce any cause from the data they have.