LuckyBancho data shows that FF14 is in decline

[Noumenon]

Thank you Macchi for sharing with us this data.

Has anyone seen this? Lucky Bancho is showing that the "unsub and play other games" faction is winning hardcore. This graph shows the number of people who have gotten a single new achievement in the past month. In other words, active players. Notice how Endwalker compares with the other expansions.



Is this really a good thing, and are we still supposed to like it?

https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57775035.html

What was the first impression I had when I saw that graph? It was this graph from WoW:



How eerily close to Cataclysm Endwalker is.

But far more concerning is the number of "terminated" players. An explanation of the graph is in order.

The three colors of each bar add up to the number of active players. Active players are defined by having at least one achievement being registered during the data collection period.

Active players are then split into multiple categories: new, continuation, and terminated.

New means their first achievement was registered during the bar's period. Continuation means they have at least one achievement from the previous period. Terminated means there is no new achievement in the next period.

Please ignore the terminated count for the last quarter. Anyone who focuses on that is promoting hysteria. Why? Because of course, no one has an achievement registered in 2024 since it's in the future.

However, look at how the green part of the bar has grown prior to the latest period. While it was barely noticeable in Heavensward by proportion, look at how large it is in all of Endwalker. People will say: Endwalker has more players total. Yes, but by proportion, percentage of players far more people are turning inactive in Endwalker than in any prior expansion. The much loathed (according to some circles) Heavensward expansion that was apparently the bane of players had barely any termination. The bar corresponding to Gordias had next to no termination. Nor was there much termination in the 3.0-3.1 drought. Or the failure of Diadem.

In Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers you actually notice a horizontal crescent shape in the data instead. The expansion launch bringing massive number of active players in, the slight dip, causing the graph to curve slightly downward, and an increase once again starting from the middle of the expansion's life cycle. No such crescent can be observed in Endwalker. It's a straight line down and we should be seeing an increase by now if the crescent shape is to occur.

An alternative explanation may make sense, though it is unlikely to portray the game in a good light either: perhaps those who are labeled as terminated have not actually stopped playing. They simply do next to nothing in the game and do not participate in much content at all in order to get any achievements (not even something simple like clearing Orthos to F20). We all know what these people might be doing in the game (at Quicksand) instead. So to Square Enix, these players are the same $13 to them as anyone who actually bothers to do some content.

Also, this is yet another piece of data that showed that the massive influx at the end of Shadowbringers was a fluke. The number of new players dropped sharply again in Endwalker.

We're now facing a massive decline in this game. We need CBU3 to shape up.

[Snorky]

DOOM! DOOM! Okay okay but I did go read that website they are basising this on achievements and I am going to drop this little blurb I just copy pasted from the website here also.

Although the recent decline is worrisome, if you look at the overall number, you can see that the active character population is basically increasing, albeit in waves.

You can go read it yourself

[Noumenon]

As usual CBU3 defenders have nothing of substance to contribute to any debate beyond memes and mockery.

I mean...that's not "memes and mockery"

Last edited by Snorky; Today at 06:07 PM.

The previous version:

DOOM! DOOM!

[ZephyrMenodora]

This is what happens when you spread out content beyond it's shelf life...especially in a year with a lot of amazing games to compete for your money and attention.

Also FF16 probably cannibalized XIV with overlapping audiences in Q2 2023.

XIV needs to get back to a quicker release cycle for sure.

[Sindele]

Deriving anything from the color breakdown seems effectively impossible due to the quality of the data - that description of termination just doesn't mesh with the data you see in HW-SB especially - but the overall trends of the totals seem about right.

That said, I'm hesitant to put too heavy a point on it before we see what Dawntrail release looks like. It's clear that the EW post-release content structuring was a mistake, of course, but I can't stop focusing on when did that mistake happen? By all accounts, the planning and structure for production for post-release content starts really taking shape around .25-.3-ish.. right in the middle of COVID ripping up and down everything and throwing every other production into disarray at the same time. We can certainly argue about why they don't seem to have pivoted very well and re-established capacity once it was clear there was a problem, but, well, SE has never been very agile and CBU3 is not much of an exception.

By the same token, the last 9 months have been increasingly tight for the average player in terms of time on top of money - jobs pulling formerly remote workers back in, commutes returning to their "normal" abhorrence, rolling layoff waves... the lockdown boom was always going to come with a bust. Far from the only factor at play, but how do you untangle it from the general decline from the anemic state of the content, or the people who feel 'done' now that the narrative's concluded and took a while to wrap up? The data's just so messy and there's not quite enough details being surfaced here - granted, there's a limit on what you can surface from scraping like this, but still, if you can see achievements you can at least pull some dates and try to get a representative sample...

Dawntrail's first couple quarters will be what really sets the tone. If that number stays flat or is only a short one quarter spike, the day has come.

[Rolder50]

Hardly a surprise when there is nothing to do in the game past the first week of when a patch drops.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Hardly a surprise when there is nothing to do in the game past the first week of when a patch drops.

Unfortunately EW seems to have had the weakest post-expansion offering of content - none with very much lasting interest at all. Along with the extended amount of time it takes for them to release this poorly received content...and...here we are.

Data is data, and while we can try to explain away some of this - what the graph shows as a trend makes a lot of sense all things considered. Very curious what Q3's financials look like. I'm thinking they will have dropped, and we don't have much pre-Dawntrail hype at all at this point in time to make up for it.

If there isn't much to do until June 2024....this game is going to suffer in the meantime.

That's a very interesting graph. But who is this thread for? Who is OP trying to convince?

((Out of posts))

Well, people like me. I like data, and this is some data. The trends were "fine" and the financials were good, but this is showing a troubling trend. I respond well to data like this, far more so than various posts that get heated.

[Saucy_Jack]

I hate these threads because they don’t actually say anything of substance. The negativity idgaf, but at least use a brain cell and talk about specifics of what endwalker did right or wrong instead of a massive wall of nothing that boils down to “endwalker bad because look at graph”

Have you considered that expecting to maintain the sharp increase in player numbers from the conclusion of a 10-year long story, along with Covid and WoW having an exodus after SL at the same time, was never realistic to begin with? This is why you need to actually use your brain and look at context when you interpret data, instead of just looking at data in a vacuum. We all knew this was what was going to happen during the pre-DT content drought

The horribly botched interpretation of the data would be forgivable if you talked about what endwalker is lacking, and thoughts on improving it, but you don’t.

I’ll do you a favor and make the thread worthwhile myself, with actual points of discussion about where endwalker was weak and what should’ve been done. The main problem with endwalker is that the hardcore content came out on too compressed of a timeline for the difficulty of the fights, and for casual content the lack of an open world zone was a mistake. That’s what it boils down to. The rest of the expansion wasn’t bad though - in terms of story, or systems, or content quality. All that was fine.

Hardcore content being too compressed comes down to the ultimate release schedule. DSR and TOP were problematic because they’re the hardest fights ever introduced to the game by a noticeable margin, but they released in two back to back tiers. People burned out doing one or both, if they cleared at all, and the ones that tried to do everything did them back to back with savage tiers in between for “breaks”. This was a mistake. TOP should’ve been delayed until post-anabaseios to polish up the quality more, which would have cut down on the burnout, probably fixed a lot of the bugs we saw on release, and would’ve helped with player retention during the content drought as it’s a fight that’s a several week to several month long endeavour for most players who attempt it.

Casual content wise, the problem is a lack of an open world zone. Island sanctuary alone doesn’t provide enough content to match previous open world zones, eureka and bozja. It’s also a lot less interactive. There should’ve been more work put into it to make it a long term social grind that people could do as filler, and not having this was also a mistake. Even if it’s just relatively casual mindless grind, giving people a setting and excuse to socialize and play together in game during the content drought would have been nice.

[Saraide]

That's a very interesting graph. But who is this thread for? Who is OP trying to convince?

[Sindele]

If caring about who you were trying to convince was a criteria for posting around here, we'd hardly have any posts at all. One must simply imagine Sisyphus happy.