That Which He Does Not Play

[Saraide]

To be fair, the game is in the red more often than not compared to previous years (I took a peek at the chart for the game on Steam). You can compare January 2022-September 2022 & January 2021 - September 2021 as an example. So, that does say something. Could argue covid having an effect on things in 2021 but the lack of growth outside of patch times now is still concerning. Especially since some people act like Endwalker is God's gift to the FF community.

I wouldn't say the game is bleeding users though because the RP scene is obviously alive and well and people are still logging in to do their weekly clears/other content, but I've definitely noticed more people having issues with this expac and considering to take time off till the graphics overhaul were getting in 7.0 in the hopes that things will improve.

Yea what does it say?

[kaynide]

Yea what does it say?

The sad thing is people not willing to do due diligence on what those numbers mean and just yell doom and gloom.

If they checked, they’d see years when an expac is new, numbers swell. The lull years, decrease.

People keep trying to compare 2022 to 2021 without understanding this..making such comparisons useless. A more apt comparison would be 2020 to 2022.

No hate meant to anyone, but people gotta do that due diligence.

[LianaThorne]

The sad thing is people not willing to do due diligence on what those numbers mean and just yell doom and gloom.

If they checked, they’d see years when an expac is new, numbers swell. The lull years, decrease.

People keep trying to compare 2022 to 2021 without understanding this..making such comparisons useless. A more apt comparison would be 2020 to 2022.

No hate meant to anyone, but people gotta do that due diligence.

I actually realized that so chose to look at 2019 just now. Before the pandemic was even a thing period.
Same case applies with more months in the green than red.

The same also applies for 2020. 2022 has the lowest green (positive) months in several years so far, excluding the burst of activity when Endwalker launched which I will say was pretty intense.

Also you're more than welcome to quote me and direct your viewpoint at me. C:

[kaynide]

I actually realized that so chose to look at 2019 just now. Before the pandemic was even a thing period.
Same case applies with more months in the green than red.

The same also applies for 2020. 2022 has the lowest green (positive) months in several years so far, excluding the burst of activity when Endwalker launched which I will say was pretty intense.

Also you're more than welcome to quote me and direct your viewpoint at me. C:

It's usually the more rude peeps that are doing the more..vocal complaining-

In the case of Endwalker speciifcally though, I think it's unfair to just count the numbers, as Shadowbringers was a fairly uneventful expansion outside of the game.

Endwalker had the usual new-expansion hype, but the launch was pretty near to the WoW harassment nonsense that caused a wave of players (and youtubers) to flood the game. We obviously also have the Corona Virus which has more people stuck at home looking for something to do. It's hardly surprising the tsunami of people declined as fast as it increased, so a better figure would have been retention percentages or yearly averages.

Unfortunately, while we don't have a lot to work with, we can see the grand total up or down between expansions is pretty good. If this is truly a downturn, we'll be able to better see that once we get numbers for the 7.0 lull.

[LianaThorne]

Yea what does it say?

That this expac isn't as popular/able to keep audiences engaged in the dead periods as previous years. Could it change with future patches? Sure.

[Saraide]

That this expac isn't as popular/able to keep audiences engaged in the dead periods as previous years. Could it change with future patches? Sure.

It seems pretty similar to shadowbringers when that launched. 3 months after expansion launch, average player count hits a low and stabilizes afterwards (EW stabilizing sooner compared to ShB). There was a massive spike in july and august last year but I think we are jumping to conclusions if we just attribute that to how good shb was. July had the 5.58 patch which brought almost nothing, most notably it was winding down the savage tier and giving the option to buy the last remaining trial mount. Many wow players came to check out the game but that is more telling of how wow was doing than how xiv was doing.