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

[Clockworks]

I know the player base has declined, it's not 75% at all.

It's probably more like 25%.



It's nothing more than the natural course of MMO's.

We are not in 2010 anymore when MMO's were the cool thing to play.

Every MMO / live service game experiences periods of player count increases and decreases, it's natural to the type of game.



That doesn't mean I think there aren't any issues with the game because there absolutely is.


There's a lot of things XIV could do to retain players.


Shorter patch cycles and schedules (Like waiting until a .x5 for a criterion dungeon is insane)
Not time gating content behind .5 and .8 patches
Not taking nearly a year to unlock the raid tier (especially when the raid tier has an ultimate tied to it)


etc etc

As of december 2024, the game according to luckybanchos already had lost about 30% of it's population (down from 1.4 mils to barely under a million)

Your 25% estimate implies that people... came back for exactly nothing, and mind you, this was also inside a free campaign period.

As of august 2024, there were 42181 players on average playing the game on steam, as of today we are at 16481 which is a decrease of 60%. (and yes steam is a big enough sample)

[NightHour]

25% was solely a guess.

[gw1fan]

As of august 2024, there were 42181 players on average playing the game on steam, as of today we are at 16481 which is a decrease of 60%. (and yes steam is a big enough sample)

While about 95k peak players is a large enough sample to be significant, is it a REPRESNETATIVE sample? It's hard to get exact numbers, but Steam has only recently started growing in JP, mainly with Steam Deck adoption which XIV is playable on SD but not optimized. Therefore, my interpretation is Steam users are more likely to be NA players than any other region which does not match the estimated population distribution between regions. Thus, the Steam numbers are more likely to reflect the highly fluctuating NA population than an overall trend slightly more accurately depicted in the Lucky Bancho chart which displays the 28% shift

[PercibelTheren]

While about 95k peak players is a large enough sample to be significant, is it a REPRESNETATIVE sample? It's hard to get exact numbers, but Steam has only recently started growing in JP, mainly with Steam Deck adoption which XIV is playable on SD but not optimized. Therefore, my interpretation is Steam users are more likely to be NA players than any other region which does not match the estimated population distribution between regions. Thus, the Steam numbers are more likely to reflect the highly fluctuating NA population than an overall trend slightly more accurately depicted in the Lucky Bancho chart which displays the 28% shift

I think if anything, Steam is likely to be EU players because consoles, broadly speaking, are not as common here as they are over in the US, where I assume a lot more people play on PS or, recently, Xbox. Japan is only a small chunk of the playerbase, though. Most of it is the other regions. SE may not care but it's a significant drop either way.

[gw1fan]

I think if anything, Steam is likely to be EU players because consoles, broadly speaking, are not as common here as they are over in the US, where I assume a lot more people play on PS or, recently, Xbox. Japan is only a small chunk of the playerbase, though. Most of it is the other regions. SE may not care but it's a significant drop either way.

Good points. Like I mentioned, there's no real way to tell what regions those Steam numbers are capturing an in what proportions, so I will admit that it could be some combination of EU and NA that is unknown. However, I would like you to know that Japan is the second largest population of the XIV player base, so unless you were referring to Japan being smaller player base on Steam, this point I have to contest.

Looking at the raw numbers by server that includes totals per region in Lucky Bancho's data, only 40k of the estimated 437k that have been marked "inactive" were in JP servers. The largest population shifts were in NA servers, Gilgamesh alone losing 3.6k. For comparison, the first closest JP server in decline was Tonberry with a loss of 1.7k.

[Striker44]

As of august 2024, there were 42181 players on average playing the game on steam, as of today we are at 16481 which is a decrease of 60%. (and yes steam is a big enough sample)

Sample size can be relatively small (1000 people or less) and still be quite accurate at predicting general trends, or it can be relatively large (over 100k people) and be next to worthless for making predictions. What matters is whether the sample you are looking at is statistically random or not. Unless we can confirm that people playing the game truly choose the method they use in a way that would be considered "random" (and/or that the "profile" of Steam gamers matches the profile of those who use other login methods), then it doesn't matter how "large" the sample is - it's next to worthless.

[Ath192]

Sample size can be relatively small (1000 people or less) and still be quite accurate at predicting general trends, or it can be relatively large (over 100k people) and be next to worthless for making predictions. What matters is whether the sample you are looking at is statistically random or not. Unless we can confirm that people playing the game truly choose the method they use in a way that would be considered "random" (and/or that the "profile" of Steam gamers matches the profile of those who use other login methods), then it doesn't matter how "large" the sample is - it's next to worthless.

Serious question for people like you, who refuse to accept what is an obvious truth to most of us (That steam users are regular people who behave like any regular gamer), Why does the "profile" of Steam gamers NOT match the profile of those who use other login methods?

The thing is the world I live in is a world where I and most others use common sense. So if I see the store half empty, and I have the statistic of mastercard credit card holders telling me the store is half empty, even though I don't have the data for VISA and CASH users I am fairly certain the store is half empty. But here you are, arguing it's not. Thus, instead of just denying the truth we can all see, can you provide conclusive evidence that we shouldn't believe the obvious?

[gw1fan]

Serious question for people like you, who refuse to accept what is an obvious truth to most of us (That steam users are regular people who behave like any regular gamer), Why does the "profile" of Steam gamers NOT match the profile of those who use other login methods?

The thing is the world I live in is a world where I and most others use common sense. So if I see the store half empty, and I have the statistic of mastercard credit card holders telling me the store is half empty, even though I don't have the data for VISA and CASH users I am fairly certain the store is half empty. But here you are, arguing it's not. Thus, instead of just denying the truth we can all see, can you provide conclusive evidence that we shouldn't believe the obvious?

First, thank you for your question. To answer, as someone who has been watching this thread closely and crunching numbers, what we are trying to convey is while what you are seeing in-game with people being less present, particularly at endgame, is true, the exacerbated nature of the statement "75% of the playerbase" is not supported by the data when using one-to-one comparative methodology. Meaning, comparing the peak numbers at launch to peak numbers in the last month for Steam activity does show a -73% change. But peak to peak comparison only captures a singular moment in time, a single minute, when the number was reached which is not representative of an overall trend of activity because no one is playing all day every day (a statistically small amount keep the game running 24/7). Therefore, the more statistically meaningful number is the average which is calculated over the entire month, displaying a -61% change. A significant change, no doubt, but as Striker mentioned not that different from other post-expansion launch periods leading into the x.2 patch.

To address the other point, the largest factor why we believe the Steam numbers are somewhat questionable is because we don't have the data on what the regional distribution of those numbers is, and by doing some light looking around, it is likely that the JP servers are being underrepresented in that data. Combined with Lucky Bancho's raw data by server that reflects the largest fluctuations in server population are in NA and EU servers (also noted by Lucky Bancho as normal), we are reasonably alleging that the Steam data could be skewed to be largely representative of mostly NA and EU trends without the equalizing effect of JP. This leads us to the estimated conclusion that these numbers may represent the significant shift in the NA and EU player population, which was expected due to multiple factors both inside and outside the game, it is unclear that it can be used to claim that it represents the entire player base due to the lack of evidence that JP is adequately represented.

[Ath192]

First, thank you for your question. To answer, as someone who has been watching this thread closely and crunching numbers, what we are trying

...

This leads us to the estimated conclusion that these numbers may represent the significant shift in the NA and EU player population, which was expected due to multiple factors both inside and outside the game, it is unclear that it can be used to claim that it represents the entire player base due to the lack of evidence that JP is adequately represented.

Okay, at least it's thought out. I will tell you this, when I see 75% of users I take it as a figure of speech for a huge chunk of players being gone, taking anything completely literally will drive anyone insane and arguing to that level of specificity is not practical for a video game. We are not cracking out the formula for nuclear fusion around here.

Let's take your side a little bit here and take JP out. Whether JP is underrepresented or not is inconsequential to the game failing imho. If the game is not successful in NA, where I understand the largest population of this game resides, the game isn't successful period. NA has traditionally been the most lucrative market for this MMO and losing its biggest chunk of users isn't good for SE. The caveat here is that I don't believe JP players are all that happy or too different from steam users personally. But it's just a suspicion, so we'll leave em out.

More importantly, for us NA players, it's all we care about. If the game fails here we couldn't care less where else it went to be successful. It is the end for us.

So, to clarify, while yes, if you go literal and discuss this to a scientific certainty we don't know the exact numbers. But here is the catch, if you like a rational, normal, mainstream person zoom out for just a second, look around at the bigger picture, and take a common sense approach to the subject, you'll realize the game isn't doing as good, the population is dropping by an indeterminate but significant amount, and if it keeps this trajectory it will continue to shrink. And this, is what this thread REALLY is about. It's not about the 75% number being an absolute figure.

[DPZ2]

More importantly, for us NA players, it's all we care about. If the game fails here we couldn't care less where else it went to be successful. It is the end for us.

The end for us? The game will suddenly become unavailable in (let's face it) the United States, and only the United States?

Have you looked at the other numbers on the Steam chart for this game? The ones that were available prior to, say, the beginning of the so-called "WoW Diaspora"? The ones that showed the 'average concurrent player' count to be under 10,000; under 6,000; under 4,000.

The game was successful enough for Square Enix to continue creating expansions even with 5-10% of the all-time peak (for 1 sample period on one day) during Endwalker's release on Steam. What makes you think they'll stop selling the game to players in North America?