Time to Quit

[Theodric]

You...can't be serious, can you?

Why wouldn't I be serious? A significant number of people playing this game are present on Twitter and they're openly advertising that their primary use of the game isn't to actually play it but to mod and lewd it.

It's been a problem for a while, escalating in recent years. Even when I roleplayed in this game, there was always this sleazy portion of players trying to pressure people into engaging in ERP even if they declined. That portion of players has grown emboldened over time to the point where many threads have been made regarding the number of venue adverts filling up the party finder (some of which are outright adult in nature).

You could also look at the amount of players casually advertising their deepest, darkest fetishes in a carrd profile linked to their search info.

One thing that is consistent, however, is that whenever any of this is pointed out it is always downplayed.

Just the other day there was a thread here where someone was defending pedophiles. It's past time to stop pretending that this game doesn't have a growing number of genuinely unsettling players who aren't here for the actual game as intended but as a Second Life simulator.

Furthermore, where did I say the game is 'dying'? I doubt it'll die, much in the same way as World of Warcraft isn't going to die. It doesn't mean the game can't go in a completely different direction and screw over the original target audience, though.

[Renathras]

Why wouldn't I be serious? A significant number of people playing this game...

And what is that "significant number"?

What is the "number" there? Is it 50? 500? A thousand? A million?

[Theodric]

And what is that "significant number"?

What is the "number" there? Is it 50? 500? A thousand? A million?

I'd say the fact that - as another poster so kindly pointed out - at least 20000 players are using a specific lewd mod counts as a 'significant number' when there is content designed to appeal to a far lesser number of players.

I think it'd be quite the interesting experiment for Square Enix to ban mods altogether as of 7.0 and prevent them from being launched, if only to see how many players actually stick around to continue playing the game as intended.

[Ath192]

And what is that "significant number"?

What is the "number" there? Is it 50? 500? A thousand? A million?

Why does a hard number matter? Do you actually mean to dispute that a lot of ppl use this game for ERP, lewd mods and random venues. Because surely you have common sense and know that is the case.

[Deo14]

You...can't be serious, can you?

1) There are no numbers with "what the FFXIV tag brings up on Twitter". "a lot"? How many? 1? 50? 500? 1,000? 1,000,000? How is this "data"?
2) "anecdote is not data".
3) Can you offer evidence that the majority of FFXIV's playerbase is even on Twitter?
4) Can you show the number of them that post on Twitter?
5) Can you show the number posting "Second Life" on Twitter, and what percentage that is of the playerbase?
6) Twitter, in general, represents only a small segment of society, and studies have shown that around 80-90% of posts are made by only around 2% of Twitter users to begin with. Did you know that?

No?

Then that's not data. That's not useful to a discussion. "A few hundred" - in a game played by between 1 million and 3 million people? 100 is 0.01% of 1,000,000. 500 is 0.05%. You need 10,000 to get to even 1% of the playerbase. Can you find 10,000 individual FFXIV posters on Twitter all posting Second Life topics? I doubt you can. And even if you could, that would be at best 1% of the playerbase, hardly a majority. And that's if we lowball the playerbase at 1 million instead of 2 million or 3 million (I think around 1.7-1.8 million is the general ballpark of active player by various estimates.)

In short, you contest data with "look at Twitter".

That's like contesting serious policy debate with "Read the President's Twitter rage takes".

Just some quick maff. FFXIV has supposedly roughly 1.3M of active players daily. GW2 has about 3x less than that (it's a little bit more complex than that, since GW2 doesn't have such an insane drop off in patches like FFXIV does). None the less, GW2 has in game a number of currently logged in players. This number at any given time is over 100K.

GW2 daily players = very roughly 500K
GW2 active players at any given time = 100K
FFXIV daily players = 1.3M
FFXIV active players at any given time = 1.3M / (500K/100K) = 260K

Mare active players at any given time = 20K afaik (maybe some degens could correct me if I'm wrong)

20K/260K = 7.7%

So 7.7% of players are high tier degens using mare. There is also mid tier degens not accounted here, of course.

Obviously half of these number are rough estimates, but even in better cases, we will end end up with more than 3% of players being absolute degens who use mare.

If you don't believe significant part of this community is into ERP, just look at all the mod websites, and follow the rabbit hole into 10s and 100s of 10K+, or even 100K+ ERP discords.

[Lauront]

If that 1.3m figure is from the LB surveys, they measure as little as a single login, for a character, meeting its criteria within the survey period, which is acknowledged to be susceptible to bloat by free login campaigns. It's more that it's a high point/maximum during the survey period as opposed to anything that could be used as an active daily figure, which I'd strongly doubt is anything like 1.3m. There's some other sites (not talking about ones which actually record live player metrics) that claim to estimate the numbers for it but I doubt it's based on anything reliable.

I'd say the fact that - as another poster so kindly pointed out - at least 20000 players are using a specific lewd mod counts as a 'significant number' when there is content designed to appeal to a far lesser number of players.

I think it'd be quite the interesting experiment for Square Enix to ban mods altogether as of 7.0 and prevent them from being launched, if only to see how many players actually stick around to continue playing the game as intended.

Yeah I'd be interested to see how that'd go as well, including in terms of their accounts...

[Deo14]

If that 1.3m figure is from the LB surveys, they measure as little as a single login meeting its criteria within the survey period, which is acknowledged to be susceptible to bloat by free login campaigns. It's more that it's a high point/maximum during the survey period as opposed to anything that could be used as an active daily figure, which I'd strongly doubt is anything like 1.3m. There's some other sites that claim to estimate the numbers for it but I doubt it's based on anything reliable.

Yes, unfortunately, there's not many reliable sources. From multiple sources, it seems that GW2 is roughly 1/3rd or 1/4th the size of FFXIV. That 100K active players is reliable number, so this should put FFXIV at around 200K-500K active players at any give time.

Which would get us at around 4% - 10% of players using mare. In case that mare statistic meant daily active players, and not active players at any given time, that would make it 0,8% to 2%. But just as others mentioned, exact numbers are not relevant, you just need to look in and outside the game to see what's happening.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

You know that you can play other games besides FFXIV to avoid burnout? I don’t play any other MMO besides FFXI at times. I play games on my Switch, too. But really, take a break and try not to play FFXIV 24/7/365.

[Heavenchild]

People forget that the avarage videogameplayer today is 30+.
Of course adults think about such things. And they do also when they are online. I am not into this scene but I don't care if adults enjoy their erotic chattings.

[ElysiumDragon]

I burned out on Savage raiding due to P8S, but I haven't quit the game and announced it on the forums several times. All that's changed is that I'm not logging in the second I wake up, or every day, but instead playing other games, like Baldur's Gate 3 or Persona 5 Royal. I'm several weeks behind on my gearing, and I honestly couldn't care less. When the urge to no-life the game comes back, I'll do so then.