JP: Yoshi P should step down, FF14 is a sinking ship, in response to interview

[Fawkes]

Why do y'all dismiss Steam numbers even though they are 100% a valid source and sampling of the player base? There is intrinsically no difference between those who play on Steam and those on official launcher, so there is no reason to think that they are a biased sample.

You don't have to see every single player who is playing the game to see a trend. That's not how statistics work.

Yoshi-P will not come down and kiss you on the lips for defending his honor.

It's a pretty small sample size and spiked in activity coinciding with the WoW exodus so it's entirely possible there's an unnaturally large overlap in Steam XIV players and WoW players. Prior to that most XIV players typically warned people away from buying on Steam with how your account gets locked in to Steam-only forever.

And you have no proof that Yoshi-P won't kiss me.

[Shurrikhan]

It's a pretty small sample size and spiked in activity coinciding with the WoW exodus so it's entirely possible there's an unnaturally large overlap in Steam XIV players and WoW players.

It's at least as possible there's an abnormally small overlap between Steam users and WoW players.

Why would playing a longstanding MMO game via its own launcher predispose someone to play XIV through an collective library's integrated, more constrained launcher?

What reason do we have to believe that XIV's population as a whole did not spike coinciding with the WoW exodus (as opposed to disproportionately just whatever population is forced to launch the game through Steam)?

Prior to that most XIV players typically warned people away from buying on Steam with how your account gets locked in to Steam-only forever.

And those warnings were just as prevalent also in the 2019-2022 guides for new players and in WoW-veteran-plays-X videos. Why would WoW players have disproportionately chosen not to view such guides and/or heed that advice?

[Sensui]

Long term trend looks healthy. 10 year growth is what, 300%?

[Racen]

Ok, then please provide us the official numbers, or another proper source aside from steam.

I'll be waiting.

Yall keep talking about how steam is a bad source of statistics, but provide absolutely nothing else, it's actually hilarious, so far the only attempt at proving steam wrong is "read YouTube comments lmao" which is literally not a source for statistics.

there is no official source, just like there's official source for most MMOs. the only time you get player counts for wow is when things look good for them and that's rare. the steam userbase for this game is probably less than 40% of the NA playerbase.

the better source is to look at luckybancho's surveys to see increase/decrease in population from month to month.

[Fawkes]

And those warnings were just as prevalent also in the 2019-2022 guides for new players and in WoW-veteran-plays-X videos. Why would WoW players have disproportionately chosen not to view such guides and/or heed that advice?

The bandwagoning effect of the WoW exodus. People wouldn't be reading guides or looking for advice, they'd just hear their friends were jumping ship to XIV and go and buy it too. And they're probably steam friends with their blizzard friends, most people just add their same friends on every service, so it makes sense for them to buy it there.

[rxantos]

Expansion was certainly bad. But I do think is more about bad editing than of bad story. You coulld have remove 50% of the filler and used that time to make a compelling villain.

There is also the TOO FORMOLAIC + Damaging gameplay for no reason.

Homogenization has its place. On a company. But not on a game. A game needs BALANCING not homogenization.

And for the love of Zordiark. Do you ever test your game on a bad ping? Is trivial to do. Just use a vpn to connect from the other side of the world. That way you can experience which most of your userbase experiences.

[Wayfinder3]

OP clickbait title is hilarious cause it points out who didn't even read the first line. LMFAO, internet people are ridiculous

[Tsumdere]

It's a pretty small sample size and spiked in activity coinciding with the WoW exodus so it's entirely possible there's an unnaturally large overlap in Steam XIV players and WoW players. Prior to that most XIV players typically warned people away from buying on Steam with how your account gets locked in to Steam-only forever.

And you have no proof that Yoshi-P won't kiss me.

In what world is (very conservative estimate) 40,000 people a small sample size? (the all time peak is actually 100,000 which means there is at least 100,000k people who own the non-trial version on Steam... but we'll go lower). Lucky Bancho shows that there is around 1.5 million-ish people at endgame and 40k random people is way, way, way more than you need to sample for one million people.

Also, WoW isn't on Steam so there wouldn't be any reason to think that WoW players would have a predisposition to buy the Steam version. Not that me or you could ever know, but they could also just as easily be on the client version.

I do have proof. My uncle works at Square Enix and he tells me everything about Yoshi-P. >

the better source is to look at luckybancho's surveys to see increase/decrease in population from month to month.

Lucky Bancho is also not all encompassing. It doesn't count players who haven't earned any achievements for that patch cycle nor does it count those under level 60, meaning that, for example, the hoards of Limsa Lurkers who only use the game to RP at level 1 don't show up. Neither do people who private their Lodestone.
Steam and Lucky Bancho sample the same player base and both do not sample the entire playerbase, so there is no reason to dismiss one and not the other. Besides, Steam and Lucky Bancho have never contradicted each other. Steam goes up big - so does Lucky Bancho. Steam go down big - so does Lucky Bancho.

[Catwho]

I think they made the same mistake that they made with XII. The average player of XIV isn't a teenager or a young adult. Making the "main" character of the story a young naive dummy who learns about her place in the world just has the rest of the cast, including our WoLs (some of whom are imagined to be in their 30s and 40s) to want to collectively turn around and go "SHUT UP VAN" every 10 minutes.

I didn't hate Wuk Lamat. But I completely understand why a lot of people resented her.

[Fawkes]

Also, WoW isn't on Steam so there wouldn't be any reason to think that WoW players would have a predisposition to buy the Steam version. Not that me or you could ever know, but they could also just as easily be on the client version.

Even if not WoW players, it's disproportionately new players. Outside of Stormblood's release date the steamcharts is basically a flat line slowly climbing from 5k to 10k up until Shadowbringers in 2019. And the lucky bancho numbers haven't gone up tenfold since Shadowbringers. The peaks and valleys of the steam version are significantly exaggerated by comparison, and since lucky bancho doesn't have all the data either the real numbers are likely even less so. You can't look at the steam numbers and say "We're at pre-wow exodus numbers!" when the steamcharts basically only show post-shadowbringers players. That's not even to say it's not worse, there could be a lot of long-term players leaving, but you can't see that data looking at steam.

I do have proof. My uncle works at Square Enix and he tells me everything about Yoshi-P. >:(

;_;