Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Bourne_Endeavor]

What this consensus tells me is many people may get their wish of a return to Coil difficulty. I strongly feel the last stage of Alexander will be significantly easier than Gordias and Midas were. Hard to argue whether that is a bad thing though, what with how low the clear rates have been.

Wow, yeah, you are completely correct. That make it even worse that last patch cycle's content has only been cleared by under 4% of people in all servers.

To be fair, Gordias was helped by the long delays between 3.0 to 3.2, and the fact Thordan EX was the only real alternative for endgame, especially with Diadem and LoV being flops. Sure, neither was meant to appeal to the raider crowd, but it still meant you didn't have a whole lot to do besides Gordias and Thordan. Add to that plenty of people went back into Gordias after getting either lore gear or beating any of A5S through to A7S and that likely accounts for the differences. Not to mention A3S getting hit with a pretty hard nerf.

[StrejdaTom]

Well RIP, next year I will be playing solo I guess.

[Brannigan]

They jacked the difficulty of raiding WAY up at the same time as removing a ton of the incentives to do it. Not surprising at all that no one is completing it. Even though Midas is easier than Gordias it's still way too punishing.

[LDR]

Memeurl still has no clear
unsurprising
p.sure we were 2nd to last to clear gordias as well

also i love how we have 6k active but only abound 1k at current patch

luv my quiet dead server

[aesteval]

So, only 225k players finished 3.3 story, eh? Which can be done actually in 1 day and takes no effort at all.

So, where are those 5 millions accounts registered / 2.7 millions playing game / 700k active players?

Looks like doomsayers were right after all, the game is dead.

Finishing 3.3 requires clearing Final Steps of Faith? Yeah, I know some people who won't be clearing that until echo is added. Final Steps takes SOME effort.

[aesteval]

I would say capping tomestones each week until you get full set of patch gear is also requiered to be called active player.

You know what, I lack interest in continually capping tomestones just to get a full gear set so I guess going forward I won't be an "active" player by your standards even though I'll be buried in things in game that I find more interesting.

[aesteval]

I have not fnished the story, I play near everyday.

I have made the choice to only progress the story while I'm playing with my sister, we're doing it together.

Thus, my character has only just barely gotten into ishgard.

That's a good way to go. I tried doing something similar with my brother, but our play time has been too difficult to match up to be able to keep doing.

[Vantol]

Finishing 3.3 requires clearing Final Steps of Faith? Yeah, I know some people who won't be clearing that until echo is added. Final Steps takes SOME effort.

The only thing that requires SOME effort in this game is Savage raiding. Evything else is mindnumbling easy. I just can't imagene person, who can't beat Final steps of Faith.

Could be people like me getting all jobs to 50 brfore starting HW MSQ.

A bit of a fun fact for you: Endgame players are a minority in all MMOs. You will always find more people leveling than anything, and that has always been the case, in this game especially.

90% of people I know (and I know around hundred) were 60-all (combat, gathering, crafting) 2 months after expansion release. So, what leveling? I'm not saying end-game is the only thing that matters, but what else is there to do? You can complete all other content in a few weeks, except maybe pvp, and be done with it. I honestly don't understand how some of you people play the game and still have stuff to do.

[Atoli]

90% of people I know (and I know around hundred) were 60-all (combat, gathering, crafting) 2 months after expansion release.

Are you seriously bringing this as an argument? Even if we ignore the part aesteval already pointed out (a handful of endgame raiders you are friends with are not representative of the majority of people in the game), it is still ridiculous if you actually consider that to be the norm.
Even just playtime-wise. I can guarantee you that most players do NOT have that amount of playtime available every week to get every single available class to 60 in 8 weeks.
And that's not even considering that people have very varying interests. I actually AM interested in getting all classes to 60 and I've been playing since early 2011, and I still only have an average level of 49 over all the classes.
Now think of how common it is for people to NEVER level anything outside of the few classes they enjoy playing...

@Census:
Well I like by how much Ragnarok is winning over Shiva now
Last time it was still a race between Shiva and Ragnarok for the most densely populated EU server with the most people at 60 and with the most alex clears;
now I can tell the new players who come to my server and ask if they are on the right server that yes, we are the greatest! Muhahaha!

Ok, serious now:
In general, those numbers are in line with what I've been expecting.

• We are nearly 3 months into 3.3,
• and it's been 6(!) months since we last got a new raid.
• 14 months since the last expansion.

It's natural for the active player numbers to drop that late in the cycle, and no, the 6 million cumulative players SE announced lately were never said to be "active"; the basic meaning of the word cumulative already means "added up", as in "all players who ever registered an account past the free trial".
So screaming "Eeh, where are your 6 million players now, SE? You lied!" just means you don't know how English works

All that said, I think the numbers on the Alex Clears are worrying.
Yes, it has always been normal for only a fracture of the playerbase to be interested in raiding, but not THAT few
I still think having a normal mode for Alex at all is killing any will to do Savage. Because why should you if you get the story, the glamours and everything from the Normal Mode just fine and Savage only gives you better stats which you won't need anywhere else but IN Savage?

To end on a lighter note:
Heh, so I was right when I thought nobody would bother with the freaking ugly Manjimutt, the boring Blizzaria weapon and the equally ugly Robonyan

[Zojha]

I still think having a normal mode for Alex at all is killing any will to do Savage.

Personally, I still think the difficulty of savage is killing any will to do Savage. Far more people are willing to do NidEx than Savage for less rewards to boot, despite it having the same template as Savage - story content cranked up.
But then again, in our unofficial player poll 50% of the people weren't even interested in NidEx, so...yeah. If that's remotely representative, it doesn't take a genius to figure out hard content in general is just not considered fun by many.