the normal content is too easy

[Theodric]

A vocal portion of the FFXIV community seems to consist of those who would unironically join a running club and beg the leader to force everybody to walk at a snail's pace only to call anyone asking to for a modicum of challenge an 'elitist'. All whilst swearing up and down that maybe a running club isn't for them.

[Ronduwil]

"Regularly?"

You mean once.

At least twice last year: Once in July and once in December. I'm guessing we're due again when the patch hits, but we'll see.

Am completely unwilling to spend same amount of time I have on past stuffs explaining why it is impossible to appeal to everyone.

Agreed. You appeal to as many people as you can, and that's what they're doing.

Soooo how do we deduce how well FF14 is doing?

The forums? Everyone states that we are small percentage but data sets are commonly small percentage of greater whole yet still valuable.

So you know enough about statistics to understand the value of samples, but not enough to distinguish between a random sample and one that skews heavily towards hardcore game enthusiasts. The forum is a great measure of how FFXIV enthusiasts feel about the game. It's not a credible representaton of the player population as a whole, however. The vast majority of casual players never even log into the forums.

Twitch?

How much money does SE make from Twitch? Zero. At best, it's cheap advertising, and at this point, they've achieved market saturation with all the hype they generated last year. They'll be just fine for a while with literally zero Twitch views. When the next content drop happens and the hype around New World and Lost Ark dies down, they'll establish a Twitch presence once more.

A vocal portion of the FFXIV community seems to consist of those who would unironically join a running club and beg the leader to force everybody to walk at a snail's pace only to call anyone asking to for a modicum of challenge an 'elitist'. All whilst swearing up and down that maybe a running club isn't for them.

It's more like we're all in a walking club, and a bunch of elitists on these forums are complaining that it's not a running club. After all, this thread started with the OP demanding that the normal raids be made harder to suit their preference for Savage and Extreme content. I don't consider players who prefer Savage and Extreme content to be elitists. However, I definitely consider the players who are demanding that Normal difficulty be increased to be elitists. If you want to be in the running group, be in the running group. Just don't demand that the rest of us who are happily walking already start running just to make you happy.

Honestly, I've seen these complaints regarding "dumbing down" for over a decade. I lost count of the number of times that WoW players in MoP recounted the glory days of Vanilla WoW with its massive difficulty. Then Classic WoW dropped and the goggles came off: Single button rotations, tank and spank raid bosses, and mechanics whose complexity often boiled down to splitting into stacked groups and standing in place while a handful of players managed debuffs. Suddenly no one complains that WoW is too easy anymore.

[LittleImp]

How much money does SE make from Twitch? Zero. At best, it's cheap advertising, and at this point, they've achieved market saturation with all the hype they generated last year. They'll be just fine for a while with literally zero Twitch views. When the next content drop happens and the hype around New World and Lost Ark dies down, they'll establish a Twitch presence once more.

Millions of dollars. The games active population doubled during the month Asmongold and other major streamers began streaming it, despite being in the midst of a major content drought.

The current population is now lower than during that Pre-EW content drought, indicating EW has a lower player retention rate than previous expansions.

It's more like we're all in a walking club, and a bunch of elitists on these forums are complaining that it's not a running club. After all, this thread started with the OP demanding that the normal raids be made harder to suit their preference for Savage and Extreme content. I don't consider players who prefer Savage and Extreme content to be elitists. However, I definitely consider the players who are demanding that Normal difficulty be increased to be elitists. If you want to be in the running group, be in the running group. Just don't demand that the rest of us who are happily walking already start running just to make you happy.

The games normal-mode difficulty has not been consistent over its lifecycle, so these types of analogy's aren't great.

Coil raids were considered base difficulty at one time. Trials like Ravana, Sephirot and Titan had perma-death mechanics in normal mode. Eden Normal raids are often significantly more difficult than Alexander raids or Pandaemonium raids. Return to Ivalice is VASTLY more difficult than Void Ark, Nier or post-ARR CT. Yoshida indicated recently that the new 24 man series is more in line with Ivalice difficulty, which would mean the difficulty has increased from last expansion.

You lump yourself in with the people who are 'happily walking in the walking club', but you yourself were supporting the idea that certain trials should be made easier in another thread. It's a much more mixed issue, where the game could really go either way and you have people with different preferences tugging at both ends.

[Illmaeran]

Millions of dollars. The games active population doubled during the month Asmongold and other major streamers began streaming it, despite being in the midst of a major content drought.

The current population is now lower than during that Pre-EW content drought, indicating EW has a lower player retention rate than previous expansions.

A couple thoughts here.

1. Asmongold and Rich, specifically, coming to the game and the influence they, and other streamers had on the population, was an anomaly. The game's had consistent growth trends from the start, but that acute spike is without a doubt an outlier. How many of the folks they brought to the game will stay for the long term? I've got no idea, but I'm guessing not a huge percent as they came from WoW and XIV's so not like WoW that I can't see it retaining a lot of those folks. Had Blizz not screwed up so badly in multiple ways in a short amount of time, I doubt we'd have seen the exodus we did.

2. "The current population is now lower than during that Pre-EW content drought...". It's normal in this game for people to sub for the start of an expansion then come back a few months before the end and get caught up on things before the new expansion hits. I've seen this in my FC and friends list regularly. We get a decent bump in active players 4 to 6 months before an expansion so we get an inflated pre-expansion population relative to the X.0-X.1 content drought. We saw this effect again, except multiplied by many times, when the streamers came in. For those of us who keep playing, it was a content drought, yes. For those returning after a hiatus or for all those new players, there was a lot of new content available/no drought.

3. EW may indeed have a lower retention rate among long-term subscribers; without more detailed data it's hard to tell. What I believe is more likely is that the Bandwagoners, for lack of a better term, came, played the game, causing a massive but short-lived population spike, then left for other things. This is less about retaining players on an expansion-to-expansion basis as it is retaining players who only came here to have something to do when leaving WoW and following their streamer of choice. Making any sort of comparison between that anomalous spike and retention 6-12 months later isn't going to work well.

4. What would be really telling would be to see year-by-year retention numbers of people who started the game pre-WoW Exodus/pre-COVID and separate retention numbers for people who started playing during the WoW Exodus/COVID. I'd guess that the pre-WoW numbers would track with long term trends and we'd see a significant drop in the Bandwagoners when Elden Ring, New World, and Lost Ark launched.

Forums full of hardcore game enthusiasts, more news at 11. Ask for the memes and this place just keeeeeeeps on giving. Kinda already know that unless I stand around polling the entire FFXIV community will get replies like "wrong sample" - "not enough sample size" "does not count because silent majority" blah blah yadda yadda.

I would LOVE to have SE's raw demographic information and a really dense survey of the population to dig into. That would be incredibly interesting to tease apart.

[MiaShino]

I would LOVE to have SE's raw demographic information and a really dense survey of the population to dig into. That would be incredibly interesting to tease apart.

Same same, perhaps I am correct perhaps am most wrong but at the least it would settle the debate. Will not hold the breath, companies almost never share this data.

[Krotoan]

The current population is now lower than during that Pre-EW content drought, indicating EW has a lower player retention rate than previous expansions.

Curious what you're basing this off? SE publishes no active playercounts, all available player counts are usually based on tangential population numbers (like reddit pops).

[MiaShino]

So you know enough about statistics to understand the value of samples, but not enough to distinguish between a random sample and one that skews heavily towards hardcore game enthusiasts. The forum is a great measure of how FFXIV enthusiasts feel about the game. It's not a credible representaton of the player population as a whole, however. The vast majority of casual players never even log into the forums.

Forums full of hardcore game enthusiasts, more news at 11. Ask for the memes and this place just keeeeeeeps on giving. Kinda already know that unless I stand around polling the entire FFXIV community will get replies like "wrong sample" - "not enough sample size" "does not count because silent majority" blah blah yadda yadda.

Anyone want some?

[Ath192]

So you know enough about statistics to understand the value of samples, but not enough to distinguish between a random sample and one that skews heavily towards hardcore game enthusiasts. The forum is a great measure of how FFXIV enthusiasts feel about the game. It's not a credible representaton of the player population as a whole, however. The vast majority of casual players never even log into the forums.

You know it was the enthusiasts that kept this game going when it sucked in 2010, so while the population as a whole matters, the small percentage of enthusiasts are to thank for the game even being alive today. You would be unwise to not pay attention to them and throw them a bone since on average they are the most profitable and reliable users of their MMO service. This is where compromises come in, but quite frankly the game is in a dire state of easiness atm.

[Ronduwil]

You know it was the enthusiasts that kept this game going when it sucked in 2010

And yet they still destroyed the entire world and started over because they acknowledged that the game couldn't survive on enthusiasts alone. I'm not saying there's no place for enthusiasts, nor am I saying that they should completely ignore them. That's why they continue to put out Savage and Extreme content, and I think it's great. I just don't think that it's a good idea to go back and fill the rest of the game with Savage-level mechanics because a handful of Extreme raiders decided that the MSQ, Normal raids, and Normal dungeons are just too boring for them. Throwing them a bone is fine. That's what Savage and Extreme content is. The common suggestion of introducing more button bloat and the OP's suggestion of putting Normal raids on steroids, however, is not just "throwing them a bone." It's screwing up everyone else's experience just to make a handful of players happier.

[Ath192]

And yet they still destroyed the entire world and started over because they acknowledged that the game couldn't survive on enthusiasts alone.

Oh believe me the enthusiasts thought the game sucked too. They merely put up with it because Square promised changes were being made. So they had nothing to do with the decision to release a bad game.

I just don't think that it's a good idea to go back and fill the rest of the game with Savage-level mechanics because a handful of extreme raiders

And this right here is the logical failure point of everyone arguing against making the game challenging. They tend to take it to extremes and radicalize and distort the intentions of the OP every time this gets brought up. Noone is arguing this should be the case. In fact, I think you enjoy making up imaginary people making this argument so you can make it sound valid. No one is asking this, so you are answering to people who don't exist.