LuckyBancho data shows that FF14 is in decline

[Snorky]

it not about people that have most achievements its ppl that gained or didnt gain an achievement in a time period that have achievements public. its same as ppl linking steam charts when most ppl dont play steam.

You are right I mis worded it, but the statement still stands this data is not perfect

[Oizen]

i mean there's no endgame content rn beyond waiting for a pathetic few drips of story to come pissing down on us unless you're interested in savage content where you're not allowed even a minuscule amount of leeway or originality of thought without taking a billion dots, debuffs, vuln stacks and causing the entire raid to wipe.

what's the point in having HP if every little mistake causes your death. what's the point of playing if you can just make a flat list of each mechanic and how to resolve it. what's the point in having a healer if they can't save you or anyone else since a single mistake means y'all might as well start over anyway.

bozja and eureka - as much as people like to screamcry about them - were a good middle ground/introduction to savage-like content and there's now a rift between casual players and endgame content runners that's preventing new people from being introduced to it. this means there's more people leaving than people joining raid statics.

Bozja was actually amazing in that it had content where casuals and high end players could play together, and even offered ways for casuals to slowly improve their game.
DRS is a really solid place to start learning raiding fundamentals, and the ammount of horizontal progression bozja offers is really nice.

[Lieri]

Cute catgirls and Victorias secret bunnies can only help them so far.

People want to play a game in a game. I know that sounds crazy.

[ForteNightshade]

People really don't realize how big an impact the wow exodus +covid had on the games population.



We normalized with growth.

Except Endwalker didn't see growth. It's dropped all the way back to early Shadowbringer numbers, which pre-date Covid. And this is before what will be a near ten month long content lull. In layman's terms, Endwalker essentially spun its wheels and wasn't able to keep any of its massive surge of potential players. While yes, it's silly to assume those bloated numbers near the end of Shadowbringers were going to remain, it's equally silly to claim losing that same amount of players (be in WoW refugees or long time players losing interest) is just "normalizing".

That isn't to say the game is in some dire state like some are making it out to be. Just that it more or less stagnated.

[KitingGenbu]

Someone explain to me why these numbers (or graphs or whatever) are 'important'?

[Musashidon]

Someone explain to me why these numbers (or graphs or whatever) are 'important'?

they aren't important, its the normal thing where someone thinks they have something useful then wrongfully uses it and spreads it as gospel for whatever they are trying to preach.

[LittleImp]

Someone explain to me why these numbers (or graphs or whatever) are 'important'?

They, along with basically every other available statistic concerning this game, confirm that player retention has been been abnormally poor in EW.

This supports many of the common stated criticisms of this expansion; That replayability of the content offerings is poor and feels more sparse than previous expansions.

[Deceptus]

Counterpoint to everyone saying "Wait until Dawntrail"

The goal of every expansion is to end up with more subs at the end of it than you began with. That is how you grow. Right now, if the Bancho survey is any indication, subs are lower than when Shadowbringer released.

That should be concerning for any MMO company. Ending up lower than 2 expansions ago, with a solid decline after a current expansion. It is generally expected, but not at this plummeting rate.

Something needs to change at CBU3 and FFXIV. Repeating the same content schedule (and making it take longer between each patch to boot) for 4 expansions simply isn't good enough anymore

[Renathras]

So sales are up from the last non-expansion year.

Account levels are about where they were in the run up to ShB at this time during that expansion (the last time there wasn't a global pandemic driving up numbers).

I get the fear that a routine decline could be indication of a long-term decline, but the doom and gloom is overstated, especially since a lot (not all, but many) of the people saying it are people that were saying doom and gloom months ago when the Lucky Bancho numbers were showing growth. In other words, people that say the game is dying whether or not the numbers support it. While you might eventually be right doing so, it's not good analysis.

What we know is that every year in between expansions, there is a decline in players. Every time. This has happened in every odd year of FFXIV's history, even (as DPZ2 pointed out) the year before EW when the game was "at its height". The blip was smaller than normal...but there was also a global pandemic, layoffs, remote work, lockdowns, and a WoW implosion. I'm not sure how anyone can expect those numbers to remain once those effects taper off. It would be like someone saying, in 1945 "The US military is in decline! Look how many troops are leaving the service and the massive decline in active duty troops!" Except...that's perfectly logical at the end of a major world event that involves massive militaries as said event comes to an end.

The problem here is that the data is too limited.

It only counts people who have achievements public, and a lot of players do not, meaning it's almost always going to be under-counting numbers at the best of times.

Even the depressed number seems a reversion to the pre-covid number. Does that mean we're in a permanent trend down, or we just had an artificial inflation that is now coming to an end, like in Civilization games when a "Golden Age" comes to a close and production settles down to pre-Golden Age norms? We legitimately don't know which it is yet.

The overall trend seems to mirror past expansions - even the pandemic one, though it was more minor than normal ones.

We don't have the DT numbers yet, meaning we're trying to predict a trend-line based on, essentially, one point. Something you may recall from algebra: You cannot plot a line with only one point.

And even if things are down, they may NOT be for the reasons that people think. That is, just because you think the game is lacking in one area, and that's a big deal to you, does not mean it is to the greater playerbase as a while. We as individuals, or even small groups, are not a representative sample.

.

This COULD be the first data for a long term decline...but it also could not. We won't know until we get further data in DT.

[Aword3213]

Someone explain to me why these numbers (or graphs or whatever) are 'important'?

They aren't. Never were, never will. Expect to see threads like this over and over again when it's support the narrative, or the source shunned when it against the narrative

We all know only SE holds the true statistics. If our source of metric is wrong, then there's no point in discussing it under false data.

If we happen to be right. then SE already knew about it. What and how they're going to act upon that data have been decided already.