Tired of contemt creators making clickbait videos about the game being dead

[Boblawblah]

Meanwhile, ALSO Lucky Bancho:

https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57887970.html (tl don't speak Japanese, FFXIV is doing fine)

[Connor]

That graph is specifically for people with achievements enabled on the lodestone ie. achievement hunters enable these for collection websites, who are usually veteran players. So yes, it is fair to say that veteran players are taking breaks or quitting due to a perceived lack of content. But it doesn't change that the general active player count is stable, even if that is due to casual new and returning players replacing the veteran achievement hunters.

I feel like the graphs aren’t quite as definitive as they seem either because they’re only showing one side of the picture. Endwalker has seen a huge drop off, but that doesn’t really matter long term if the majority of those players resub at Dawntrail release, right? The graph only shows us who left; we don’t know who’s coming back yet lol. The only thing we can really conclude is ‘there may be a possibility that the game is dying’.

I mean if we get to Dawntrail and suddenly none of those people return, then sure, one can reasonably conclude ‘the game is probably dying’ lol. But I don’t think there’s any point in trying to draw that conclusion currently, especially right at the end of an expansion when the game is usually ‘dead’ lol. I mean, it’s by design. Play some ffxiv, let sub lapse, play something else, repeat cycle. It’s worked for them so far I think.

[Jeeqbit]

I feel like the graphs aren’t quite as definitive as they seem either because they’re only showing one side of the picture. Endwalker has seen a huge drop off, but that doesn’t really matter long term if the majority of those players resub at Dawntrail release, right?

Exactly, we don't know for sure that all those veteran achievement hunters won't just resubscribe at some point. The data does not distinguish between "took a break to play other games" and "quit".

What we do know is that many people who claim they are quitting tend to say they'll "return at Dawntrail to see if it's better" or "just to do MSQ". We also know from WoW that players deeply invested in an MMORPG, such as achievement hunters, struggle to quit despite what they claim. They keep going back and after 10 years invested in this game, there is likely to be a similar effect here.

[NekoMataMata]

As a matter of fact, the numbers for july 1 to September 30 have been out for a few days, and as they state on page 2, section digital entertainment, 8th line, the net sales of the mmo division (which is mainly FFXIV) fell. I didn't find any outside analysis (and I'm not able to do it myself) for those numbers, as I had for the april june period and its 22% fall, so I can't say how big the fall is. But no, FFXIV is not stable. It certainly isn't dead, but it's obviously on some kind of decline. The real question is how big this decline is.

I can see that.

The first link is a consolidated balance sheet though, which means it's not telling the full story. The first link provided within the article you linked is also not particular specific as it's more of a slide show that you present to outside analysts and investors.

Anyways, the drop off in sales is expected. You don't have to understand the financial sheets to realize that people only buy expansions once. This means that logically after the burst from an expansion's release there will be a drop off in revenue.

Something to also take note of is that FF14 isn't Square's only active MMO represented by the statements. Dragon Quest X which seems to be a JP only MMO is also represented on there.

Anyways, I scanned through some other statements found here:
https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...financial.html

It looks like they're not satisfied with the drop off in sales themselves, but I don't think that's a reflection on the game itself. Companies want to make money, and consistently profit. Even if they're profiting by a good amount already the investors are always going to be pushing them to raise the profits.

This is from March earlier this year:

(4) Business and financial challenge calling for priority action
The Group recognizes the need to prioritize the expansion of stable recurring income as a means of creating
sustained earnings growth. As the digital entertainment industry undergoes significant structural changes,
the Group is being called upon to develop and distribute new content designed to suit diverse customer
needs and content distribution methods, which requires significant investment. To date, the Group has
primarily worked to stabilize earnings by expanding recurring subscription income from massively multiplayer
online games (MMOs), games for smart devices/PC browsers, the Amusement segment, and the Publication
segment. Going forward it will further bolster these efforts while also expanding them to other businesses.
Establishing a stable base of recurring earnings will enable continued investment in content with a focus on
the development of HD games. The recurring income generated from that content will expand the Group’s
overall earnings, thereby allowing the Group to achieve sustained earnings growth.
On the distribution front, streaming may accelerate the transition from sales of traditional disks to digital
sales, and business models may change through the offering of subscription services, for example. In
addition, the overall gaming market may grow as it becomes possible to provide content to emerging regions
where traditional home game consoles have not been widely adopted. The Group will respond flexibly to
these changes and work to translate them into future growth. It has identified AI, the cloud, and blockchain
games as focus investment areas under its business strategy and will engage in aggressive research and
development efforts and investment in these areas.

It doesn't sound overly panicked to me. It's just the usual nothing is ever really good enough.

Anyways, I could probably run through the rest of the data but that's time consuming. The in-depth finances for 2022 is 43 pages long for instance. Someone else can look through all of it if they want though.

[Tlachtga]

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

[Swordsman]

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

Lmao, true. Every content creator that says something I don't like is clickbaiting, and every statistic that doesn't support my narrative is made-up. We see this a lot here on the official forums.

[Reap00]

every content creator that says something i don't like is clickbaiting

Like it or not the vast majority of what they say is clickbait.

[Boblawblah]

Like it or not the vast majority of what they say is clickbait.

eh, for the big names, sure, but if you make it a habit to "don't recommend channel" for anyone that uses a shocked pikachu face for their thumbnails (only relevant to youtube obviously), you start to weed out the awful ones and can get decent channels. Anyone that covers drama or only makes reaction videos is a safe ignore as well. Which yes, you've effectively blocked 100% of the really big channels, but for me, that's kind of the point

[RitsukoSonoda]

Without ad revenue they'd have to work a normal job. Hence the spamming of clickbait videos or those videos where they "react" to someone else's video.

[Hyperia]

I believe the biggest issue is the content gap creep. We went from 3 months to 3.5 months and then 4 months to 6 months for the final leg. Had they kept to the original 2 year schedule, we would all be in hype phase as we would have a new expansion in a few weeks but instead, we are 8 months away from the expansion. This more than anything else is hurting subs, well and letting the junior teams run the game since 6.1 and onward. Loosing the veteran devs who made everything from the start through 6.0 hurts.