Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Zojha]

It's pretty consistent from one survey to the next that the most recent MSQ segment sees a significant drop off.

Uhm...In the table you provided, I see a total drop of about 7% for the latest step and 8% for the step before, with an even bigger drop off before that. I don't see any exceptional outlier at the latest step, but maybe I'm just blind.

In the census, the biggest total player drop is at 3.3 with 78350 difference. The biggest drop before that is between 2.55 and 3.0c at 61444.
In the table you provided, the difference is 13% for 2.55-3.0c and only 7% for 3.1-3.2. It's rather hard to compare since one is total numbers and the other percentages, but yeah...

(*Does some quick math*)
Okay. About 44% clear for 3.3. About 60% clear for 3.2. 63% for 3.1. It's even worse in percentages... don't do percentages people!

[Reinha]

We are 1 year into expansion. If someone has it not bought/installed, this person brings no value to community -> his existance is irrelevant -> he can't be called "active player". Finishing story at least in 1 week of release is bare minimum to call someone "active". I would say capping tomestones each week until you get full set of patch gear is also requiered to be called active player. But this data is hard to track, so whatever.

Two people leveling alt jobs, collecting glamour and doing GS stuff together are very much relevant to each other and actively using their subscription time. Amazing how the game doesn't revolve around you, your friends and your interests. The reason why all the people you know are end gamers is because you consider everyone else irrelevant and nonexistent. Birds of feather flock together, but not every bird is a jackdaw.

This information isn't official but its nice to look at it.

Ty for posting this. The numbers match what I thought of the state of the game. There is a drop in active characters now that we are nearing the end of an expansion. The numbers will probably shoot up before the next expansion like they usually do for MMOs. Still quite healthy numbers and nowhere near the death of this game.

[Thayos]

Yeah, the game is fine. These numbers show what I see in the game -- a healthy playerbase. I'm not at all surprised.

[Kaurie]

Yeah, the game is fine. These numbers show what I see in the game -- a healthy playerbase. I'm not at all surprised.

Hm, you and I read these numbers very differently. I see that we're down to 507,000 characters (so sub 507,000 players) from 639,000 only 4 months ago, and 824,000 almost 1 year ago. This shows a pretty steady decline.

11-08-2016 507,000
20-04-2016 639,000
09-01-2016 771,000
09-08-2015 824,000
19-04-2015 730,000
24-12-2014 574,000
16-09-2014 650,000

Then looking at my server, there are a total of only 4,000 people who have completed the 3.0 story and 2.5k who have caught up fully in the story. As you need the story unlocked to access things like the new expert dungeon + nidhogg, that shows a pretty small pool of players on my server who have access to that.

All of that said, I think there is some reasoning behind this. Most notably, we are rather far into the expansion at this time. I think that is the general pattern associated with expansions - where it starts off high and gradually decreases throughout the expansion. Then there is also some competition from other games (i.e. Legion launching soon, GW2 had an expansion some months back, other MMO's launched like BDO, Blade and Soul etc.)

Ty for posting this. The numbers match what I thought of the state of the game. There is a drop in active characters now that we are nearing the end of an expansion. The numbers will probably shoot up before the next expansion like they usually do for MMOs. Still quite healthy numbers and nowhere near the death of this game.

I am not sure if I'd say we are near the 'end of the expansion'. From the announcement of Heavensward to launch was 8 months, and we don't have an announcement of a new expansion yet. With this information, we can expect that we have roughly at least 8 months more - we're 14 months in. So, we're 14/22(or greater) meaning we're more than likely less than 64% of the way through the expansion. I'd call that mid not end, personally. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.

[Kaze3434]

Sorry but even assuming players could hide their data on lodestone, you honestly think enough are (or even use/care about the bloody thing) blocking their characters to make a difference? I find it highly ... Highly unlikely.

it defaults to hidden, so there are more with hidden then not.

[Thayos]

All of that said, I think there is some reasoning behind this. Most notably, we are rather far into the expansion at this time. I think that is the general pattern associated with expansions - where it starts off high and gradually decreases throughout the expansion.

This is exactly why I don't see these numbers as negative. Of course the numbers were much higher after 3.0 launched, and they'll be much higher again once 4.0 launches. That's just the ebb and flow of this game's population that we've seen since 2.0.

Now, if you were to compare trend lines from 2015 vs. 2016 (in line with the cycles of 2.x and 3.x), I'm guessing you'd see there are slightly less players overall right now, and SE definitely needs to address that. But the population is still healthy enough that I'm not at all worried.

[Ibi]

I am not sure if I'd say we are near the 'end of the expansion'. From the announcement of Heavensward to launch was 8 months, and we don't have an announcement of a new expansion yet. With this information, we can expect that we have roughly at least 8 months more - we're 14 months in. So, we're 14/22(or greater) meaning we're more than likely less than 64% of the way through the expansion. I'd call that mid not end, personally. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.

This seems very reasonable.

We know we're getting patch 3.4 before Fanfest (per this interview) and then the expansion announcement at the NA Fanfest in October.

We also know that Heavensward was originally planned to be a Spring launch, and though the end of June technically qualifies, we know it was later than they planned.

In terms of the calendar, we're about a month ahead of where we were in the 2.x patch cycle: 2.3 and 2.4 were early July and late October respectively, 3.3 was early June and 3.4 will probably be late September. Assuming things proceed in roughly the same manner (and given everything that's happened so far in 3.x, it's a reasonable guess that they will), our best estimate for the next expansion would be some time near the end of May.

That would give Heavensward a total life span of 22.3 months, with us currently at 13.8 months through (61.8%).

Even without looking at actual dates, we can guess that we're roughly half way through the fourth of the (likely) six patches of the expansion (58.3%).

[Niwashi]

It just means while they may keep getting new players, they aren't really retaining subs the way they should be.

They've retained my sub, and kept me playing fairly actively ever since ARR launched. It doesn't mean I've completed 3.3 (or even 3.0). I'm still finding plenty of other things to do.

Of course, I'll eventually get through 3.3, but it's not likely to happen before 4.0 or possibly even 5.0 are out. If I ever reached the point of completing the last of the story quests that have been released, that's probably when I'd decide I've finished the game and it's time to move on to something else.

[enthauptet]

Once a week

You need 8 weeks to get the minion to the entire party, if everybody is adding it to their minion list.

Yeah, like on famfrit we have 2 people that cleared on other servers and 1 group which has cleared (this is their 3rd week now) so eventually we'll have 10 here as long as they don't leave.

I have noticed after 3.2 a lot of people stopped playing here and now after 3.3 PF is almost completely dead. It is so bad that everyone but me has quit my FC and either stopped playing or left the server so now I am going to do the same and transfer off. It's pretty disappointing.

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.

One thing to keep in mind, is that A4S in gordias is a total and complete joke of a raid floor and you can be half asleep and still clear it now with echo + ilvl boost so the gordias numbers are probably a bit inflated.

Raiding fails because players don't want to join a static imo... We need to be able to join those fights without being in a static, Raid finder was a good idea but nobody uses it.. i hope a datacenter-wide party finder function will help once its implemented

It is very hard to find raid members on my server at least. My old raid group could not get a last member for 2 months so I quit and I know another group with the same problem.

[Toranja]

From these, you can see that about 50% of the Japanese community is engaged in the Yokai event, against the 25% in the NA and EU community.