FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Supersnow845]

People seem to ignore the fact that a downwards population trajectory in an MMO is self perpetuating

You personally may think an exodus is just “clearing out the trash” but an exodus encourages other people to leave which then itself pulls away other people till you are left with basically a hollow core of people who absolutely refuse to give up the game no matter what; basically a RuneScape 3 situation where the game is held up by a core of about 100-200k people who won’t leave the game for any reason and because of it the game doesn’t move very fast

If the game doesn’t course correct the population will dip far lower than just “what it was before the WOW exodus” and then you reach a point where the game may struggle to justify putting out even the meagre content it puts out right now. Are you willing to lose people who annoy you because they complain if it means square starts gutting content. This freefall in population is already concerning enough

[Shurrikhan]

People love to complain about player numbers when it suits them to bolster their own argument but really what difference does it make if there are 1 million or 2 million or 500,000 people playing the game? Does that make the game more fun for your personally to know that there are 1.9mil other people player over only 499,999 thousand?

The number matters for the people at square tasked with making money, but doesn't really matter to players unless it drops to the threshold where the game isn't profitable at all.

It's almost like the enjoyment of multiplayer game depends on having a multitude of players sufficient to play its multiplayer content with, and the chance of accessing said content with a sufficient group in sufficient time scales with the availability of said players.

[RinaB]

As a Dynamis player there are quite a few sprouts who are genuinely new to the game and my queue times aren't really that bad...unless I want to do a raid or alliance raid. I have to go to aether for that. At the start of Dawntrail, dynamis was hopping and I was getting queue times of 3 min as a SAM. Now, that's to be expected at an expansion release but it has gotten noticeably quieter especially the last couple of months. Is Dynamis good for new players? Not sure...I could see extra long queue times while you're leveling as a big deterent for new players and LOT of players on Dynamis didn't start there so it's a weird thing. I'm not even sure why they created Dynamis instead of just increasing the Data Center capacity on existing realms. The only reason I havent left is because I know some nice people and I reeeeeally don't want to pack up and move my housing lol.

[Striker44]

Exactly. Square Enix was handed a golden goose, and instead of spending the most miniscule amount of energy to nurture it to lay golden eggs they ignored it, made NFT games and Forspoken and just let it fly away lmao

Look at the style of WoW. Look at the style of FFXIV. They may both be MMO's, but they are very different games generally designed for very different people. Those participating in the "WoW Exodus" were by and large never going to stay, period. SE would have had to radically and fundamentally change the game if it wanted any hope of "keeping" them...and not only would they probably still have left, anyway, but it would have alienated much of FFXIV's actual core base on top of that. They were handed an illusion, and they properly recognized it as such and stuck to what makes their game successful (as others have noted, the "decline" people are mentioning is just us returning to pre-exodus levels).

People seem to ignore the fact that a downwards population trajectory in an MMO is self perpetuating

Practically every MMO population in existence is cyclical, and again, we're right where we were before the artificial inflation from the WoW exodus.

Yes, most players don't use Steam, but there is no reason to believe that those who are not on Steam feel any different about XIV than those who are.

There is. The question is whether there is a different "profile" for the kind of person more likely to sign in through one service vs. another. Now, my evidence is only anecdotal, so it can't "confirm" anything, but everyone I know that plays FFXIV and is primarily an MMO gamer doesn't use Steam. Likewise, everyone I know who plays FFXIV through Steam primarily plays other types of games (mainly FPS). What we would need is some kind of proof that the typical Steam gamer is in fact sufficiently similar in "profile" to the typical player who uses other methods to log in.

Clearly these people haven't taken many statistics classes. A sample size of roughly 1000 random people is enough to be considered a reasonable sample size in most situations. I'm not sure why they believe 95,000 doesn't.

If you're thinking the sample you're pointing to is what's meant by statistically random, I would suggest taking that statistics class.

No, but generally, the more fun a game is, the more people want to come and play it. Which was part of the reason behind the "WoW exodus" to FFXIV in the first place.

Except people didn't come to FFXIV because of "fun." They left WoW because of a mix of things, some of which was WoW destroying much of its own lore, some of which was company-related things that had nothing to even do with the game itself. They only came to FFXIV because it's the other "hot" MMO and certain streamers moved over.

Back to the OP, the claim of "we lost 75% of the playerbase" also isn't even remotely close to accurate. If you're looking at data for that purpose, you need to look at the average number of logins, not the most anomalous data point representing the peak during that time. The actual drop in average logins is only around 40%. By comparison, 8 months after the release of EW, average Steam logins were down 48%. Likewise, 8 months after the release of ShB, average Steam logins were down 39% (almost exactly the same as DT).

We're also ignoring that pre-2020, it was rare for FFXIV to go over 10k average daily logins per month. If we considered the game "awesome" and "healthy" back then, the playerbase today would be ~70% larger. It's funny how people seem to ignore that data...

[Wasselin]

It's almost like the enjoyment of multiplayer game depends on having a multitude of players sufficient to play its multiplayer content with, and the chance of accessing said content with a sufficient group in sufficient time scales with the availability of said players.

That number isn't 2 million players. It's not even 1 million players. Lots of MMOs survive and are fun to play with way less players than that.

[Rithy255]

I'm not going to deny that theirs been a decline in player numbers. Theirs been a pretty big one for good reason, it's certainly not as bad as this post tries to make it out though

But It's not really fair to compare peak numbers at expansion launches (or when SHB had lots of players come in), to current where theirs actually nothing going on... which people tend to flow in when patches come out. saying we lost 75% of the player base is a exaggeration, considering lots of people only sub in for small amounts of time, this sort of comparison really does not work though, even if ff14 had a lot more to do we'd still see some people go off after a while as people get bored, burnout or want to play a different game, though I agree that theirs been a massive mishandling of the game.

I don't want to come across like I'm defending here as I disagree with a lot of the recent decisions such as job design, 4.5 months waiting time between patches, lack of content on release I do think a lot of poor decisions have caused players to not play at the moment.

[Clockworks]

People love to complain about player numbers when it suits them to bolster their own argument but really what difference does it make if there are 1 million or 2 million or 500,000 people playing the game? Does that make the game more fun for your personally to know that there are 1.9mil other people player over only 499,999 thousand?

The number matters for the people at square tasked with making money, but doesn't really matter to players unless it drops to the threshold where the game isn't profitable at all.

Yeah god forbid people want more people to play with in an MMORPG.

You know the majority of players for FFXIV don't use steam. Yes it reflects an average but isn't the majority.
The current patch cycle means players are taking longer breaks each patch.

The "majority of players doesnt use steam" argument makes no sense, that's exactly how you make statistics. You use a sample, except if you have evidence that players on other platforms play the game differently, if that is the case, feel free to prove me wrong.

[Shurrikhan]

That number isn't 2 million players. It's not even 1 million players. Lots of MMOs survive and are fun to play with way less players than that.

They survive on "far smaller" numbers only when enough of them are playing the same things at the same time.

[Kes13a]

Yeah god forbid people want more people to play with in an MMORPG.

except.... thats not entirely true. there have been many threads over the years about people wanting more solo content. why? because they dont want to play with others. thats part of the reason we are in the state we are in. Trusts didnt just spin themselves out of the aether. they were asked for because of the "trauma" of playing with others, plain and simple. they KNOW they signed up for an MMORPG... but dont really want to play it as one.

[Clockworks]

except.... thats not entirely true. there have been many threads over the years about people wanting more solo content. why? because they dont want to play with others. thats part of the reason we are in the state we are in. Trusts didnt just spin themselves out of the aether. they were asked for because of the "trauma" of playing with others, plain and simple. they KNOW they signed up for an MMORPG... but dont really want to play it as one.

Then perhaps if people are only able to play solo in an MMORPG they would be better off in different types of games, they shouldnt be catered to in a multiplayer game. I get what you mean, but FFXIV catering to solo players and encouraging them to keep playing solo in a multiplayer game was and still is a mistake.