Can Square Enix stop gate-keeping mid-core contents behind Savage ILvl on release?

[Jeeqbit]

Based on the actual mount reward obtained from Criterion, they are not too far off the percent of people with the "current" Savage mount at any moment in time, so although people did not rush to clear them immediately, in the long term they got cleared all the same. So I disagree that they were a flop.

However, you may have a point about item level because it took time for people to do Criterion and get round to it and item level could have been a reason.

I did do them at a much lower item level and it was fine. All being max item level seemed to do was just make it a breeze, like it always does in this game.

[TakumiHarada]

Based on the actual mount reward obtained from Criterion, they are not too far off the percent of people with the "current" Savage mount at any moment in time, so although people did not rush to clear them immediately, in the long term they got cleared all the same. So I disagree that they were a flop.

However, you may have a point about item level because it took time for people to do Criterion and get round to it and item level could have been a reason.

I did do them at a much lower item level and it was fine. All being max item level seemed to do was just make it a breeze, like it always does in this game.

If you're using mount as the measurement, those mounts don't have the same rate.
Savage mount (P12S) has a 4% registration rate while the mount from two Criterions in the same tier are both at 1.3%. FFXIV Collect
It's less than half, even though the mounts from Criterions are literally purchasable off the market board.
Of course, not everyone who finished Criterions would decide to get the mount either, so it's not necessarily a good metric.

Edit:
A more accurate way would be looking at the achievements.
Another Aloalo was cleared by 3.5%. Savage was 1.6%.
P12S was cleared by 10%.

Omega protocol back in 6.31 was also 3.5%, the same as Another Aloalo.

Yes it's a flop. Criterion Savage was less popular than Ultimates by more than half.

Edit 2:
Chaotic's clear rate is, guess what? 3.7%. Basically the same as the legacy Ultimates.
FRU is at 1.3% right now.

[Jeeqbit]

Savage mount (P12S) has a 4% registration rate while the mount from two Criterions in the same tier are both at 1.3%.

I was using the current savage mount (M4S). Because I believe that as soon as it's old, more and more people unsync it and skip mechanics. Clearly the % for M4S is so low on FFXIVcollect because any percentage higher than that typically unsyncs things, and it gets higher for the old savages because they unsync. Since they can't unsync criterion, it won't grow much with its associated old raids.

A more accurate way would be looking at the achievements.

I agree. When I looked at the achievements for Savage a while back, it actually showed that the clear rate was a little higher than the mount was indicating to me (by about 5% extra percent), but it was close enough that it showed achievements are relevant data despite only being enabled by "collector" types.

When I did M4S as a percentage of people who cleared the normal version of M4, it was a super high percentage: 29.8% (probably higher now, since it's been 4 months). According to Lucky Bancho, 50% cleared in JP and around 30% on Aether at that time (again, 4 months ago). Now it's more like 55% in JP, 35% on Aether, 20% on Crystal (20% is the lowest most worlds get), and the lowest is 11% on Kraken.

So the tiny percentages like 1% or 3% on FFXIVcollect are deceiving. If you get the raw figure and do it as a percentage of actually active players, it's super high. If it says M4S is 3% and Criterion is 1.2%, both of those are large percentages when you consider that only, say, 10% of the players registered on there are actively playing.

The interest is obviously lower than for Savage and Ultimates, but as I explained, it's still over 10% of active players doing it which is a significant amount of players. Yoshi-P also said he didn't see a need for people to rush and do it and that it can be done any time. As far as I saw, the statistic was slow to grow (it was initially 0.1% or 0.2%), so people took that advice.