Thread: 18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

it’s that EW patches aren’t holding the playerbase like previous expansion patches are, people are unsubbing quicker and for longer

Absolutely the case for me. This expansion has been a massive let down. I've been playing since ARR and was always super active until this expansion. Now I only have a sub to maintain ownership of my house. I don't play it. Every now and then I try to get inspired to do some content, work on things...it lasts for a few hours and then I don't touch it for months again.

Just to add on to it from someone with a different perspective. I am a house hunter. I have been trying to get a large house for a couple years. Getting a house I want is the only reason I play the game and lottery made it so much worse. I literally only login to put a bid down on a large and then log off for another week or two. So add that to growing dumpster fire the game is turning into.

Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

Just to add on to it from someone with a different perspective. I am a house hunter. I have been trying to get a large house for a couple years. Getting a house I want is the only reason I play the game and lottery made it so much worse. I literally only login to put a bid down on a large and then log off for another week or two. So add that to growing dumpster fire the game is turning into.

All you had to do was go to Dynamis and you'd have gotten it on the first round, but hey, guess you just like the suffering eh ?

This reminds me of the arguments around wrestling TV ratings, both in the late '90s and in the past couple years. People with a tenuous grasp on statistics, human behavior, or the completeness of their data nonetheless trying to read the tea leaves and blaming basically anything that they don't like.

We're most certainly in a lull, that's obvious and incontestable. No way to know the magnitude accurately. It's probably sharper than previous ones, but Endwalker as a whole represented a somewhat unprecedented population surge, and we don't have any good analytic data on what that shift meant in terms of population segments, which means there's no real good way to accurately map out where the decline is coming from. Hardcores dropping off without content? Casuals finally wrapping up their four expansions worth of MSQ and dropping off? Something in between?

We can look at a couple interesting tea leaves of our own to look for trends that don't fit the argument - and upon evaluation of the number of Anabaseios parses uploaded in 6.4, it certainly doesn't appear to be significantly far behind the totals for Asphodelos in 6.0 or Abyssos in 6.2. Account for the fact that we're still in the middle of the 6.4 cycle and the rate of uploads, and the small gap that exists seems very likely to close in the coming weeks. This is kind of a surprise to me, actually - I really didn't expect the numbers to be as close as they are. To see basically zero observable decline in what is generally considered the flightiest segment ("clear the tier and unsub") raises some interesting questions about the prevailing narratives.

(As an aside: one could certainly argue that stagnancy in this case is an effective deficit since you should expect those numbers to be growing over time as people 'graduate' into the endgame, but when we're talking about 'lost players' that discussion feels like a bit of a tangent.)

Love it when the source of data that often gets refuted suddenly gets quoted when it suits the narrative, by the same group of people

Originally Posted by Aword3213

Love it when the source of data that often gets refuted suddenly gets quoted when it suits the narrative, by the same group of people

Every time.....
It would be neat to get ""Official"" Information and stats straight from the Company, which would have ALL of the Data, and not a "Trend" ....but I know that just wont happen.

It's dying it's going to die! I am not gonna be surprised if the number goes up 40% when 7.0 gets announced. Just look at every game, it follows the same patterns.

Originally Posted by Rolder50

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

As someone who currently has 4 alts. It's because people enjoy playing different characters without resorting to fantasia addiction. There are gameplay reasons sure like getting past weekly tome cap for gearing alt jobs but most people I know have alts for rp