Discuss : is ffxiv in trouble

[Kewitt]

This thread again, It happens so many times.

We are currently in a low content point.
But balmung has a login queue of 10-40 everyday at nearly anytime of the day.

They keep adding servers. Once they start merging servers is the only time you should think the game is slowing down.
God how are they going to deal with housing when they merge servers!!!

[Supersnow845]

This thread again, It happens so many times.

We are currently in a low content point.
But balmung has a login queue of 10-40 everyday at nearly anytime of the day.

They keep adding servers. Once they start merging servers is the only time you should think the game is slowing down.
God how are they going to deal with housing when they merge servers!!!

10-40 login queues aren’t queues, they are just bunching logins

[Absurdity]

10-40 login queues aren’t queues, they are just bunching logins

This. You get queues at 3am on EU servers which are utterly dead at that time, because the login servers work in bulk.

Does that say anything about the population? No, but the myth that servers are so packed you get queues in the middle of the night needs to die.

[Striker44]

One thing unique to EW is it’s uniquely awful retention rate, all expansions see a drop off in their later patches, especially the lull between x.5 and x+1.0 but usually that dip is in the realm of 10-20%, according to the recent census data even though the WOW exodus affected the 6.0 launch 14 has lost close to 70% of its 6.0 playerbase numbers

That is not a healthy drop no matter how high they were coming down off

I'm confused. You're acknowledging that the WoW exodus anomaly grossly affected the data, then...immediately proceed to use that data? The % you cite is "unique" to EW precisely because the "WoW exodus" is unique to EW. It occurred at the tail end of ShB, but its impact first showed up in the 6.0 numbers. Most of those players were never going to stay. They weren't coming to FFXIV because they had taken the time to learn about it. They came here because they were "fleeing" WoW and FFXIV was another very popular MMO, so it became a "natural" destination of sorts. But FFXIV's popularity comes precisely from focusing on a different audience, a different type of gamer. While there will always be some overlap among different games within a genre, people who had never even touched FFXIV before and only played WoW were highly unlikely to be the target audience.

What you really need to do is remove that anomaly and either use pre-exodus numbers as the starting point, or use post-6.1 numbers once the population spike had already resolved itself. Do either of those and you'll see EW's retention rate is nothing other than the natural rate it (and every MMO) experiences. There's nothing special about EW's retention, and certainly nothing to scream the sky is falling over.

[strawberrycake]

I mean, it already had 'bad' expansions. For gameplay, it was HW and its raiding situation, for story it was StB, seen as 'the low'. The real question remains on whether DT will be bad or good. Frankly, so far, it seems to be setting up to be another reiteration of ShB formula, just like EW was, but this time with everything that wasn't there being brought back. It will have field zone, unlike EW, it will introduce new limited job, it will introduce a rework to Deep Dungeons (basically new content as a result), it will have all the other normal things expected of expansion content. Frankly, content-wise, DT is setting up to be the richest expansion yet so far, potentially better than StB was.

HW still had consistent player retention, Stormblood was the peak of gameplay for XIV. Both maintained consistent player growth and is what lead to the raid scene being as nuanced as it was prior to the 2 min meta.

So when i say bad, I don't mean gripes that can be handwaved away for what the rest of the game offers. I mean bad where it's just all irredeemable trash no one wants to touch, or the devs have lost player trust and have to earn it back. So far people are frustrated, but we all still trust them, and DT is looking good, but we havent seen the new systems in play, we do not know how much content per patch we're getting and we do not know if the job and content balance will be similar to EW, which is very possible. And if it is, a LOT of people will be mad and may lose trust for the first time.

[Supersnow845]

I'm confused. You're acknowledging that the WoW exodus anomaly grossly affected the data, then...immediately proceed to use that data? The % you cite is "unique" to EW precisely because the "WoW exodus" is unique to EW. It occurred at the tail end of ShB, but its impact first showed up in the 6.0 numbers. Most of those players were never going to stay. They weren't coming to FFXIV because they had taken the time to learn about it. They came here because they were "fleeing" WoW and FFXIV was another very popular MMO, so it became a "natural" destination of sorts. But FFXIV's popularity comes precisely from focusing on a different audience, a different type of gamer. While there will always be some overlap among different games within a genre, people who had never even touched FFXIV before and only played WoW were highly unlikely to be the target audience.

What you really need to do is remove that anomaly and either use pre-exodus numbers as the starting point, or use post-6.1 numbers once the population spike had already resolved itself. Do either of those and you'll see EW's retention rate is nothing other than the natural rate it (and every MMO) experiences. There's nothing special about EW's retention, and certainly nothing to scream the sky is falling over.

1) if I use 6.1 data then between 6.1 and 6.5 the game has lost 45% of its playerbase, still not remotely a good number

2) I still have no idea why people just automatically assume the WOW players were a lost cause, 14 did absolutely nothing to even try to retain them (sure sure different game different crowd……) but if your competitor dumps 1 million players into your lap you try to hold onto them, not just do the same thing you’ve always done then go “nothing we could have done so sad”

[strawberrycake]

1) if I use 6.1 data then between 6.1 and 6.5 the game has lost 45% of its playerbase, still not remotely a good number

2) I still have no idea why people just automatically assume the WOW players were a lost cause, 14 did absolutely nothing to even try to retain them (sure sure different game different crowd……) but if your competitor dumps 1 million players into your lap you try to hold onto them, not just do the same thing you’ve always done then go “nothing we could have done so sad”

Yep, only the people who couldn;t keep up with the content or people who madethemselves hate wow stayed in XIV, and they were looking for a reason to finally leave, most WoW players went back to WoW.

[Jeeqbit]

The average active characters increased each expansion by around 200,000. It's no different in EW. It grew a lot more in EW but at the bare minimum stats we've seen (recently due to patch lull), there are 200,000 more persistently active characters than throughout Shadowbringers.

[Gordita]

I mean, it already had 'bad' expansions. For gameplay, it was HW and its raiding situation, for story it was StB, seen as 'the low'. The real question remains on whether DT will be bad or good. Frankly, so far, it seems to be setting up to be another reiteration of ShB formula, just like EW was, but this time with everything that wasn't there being brought back. It will have field zone, unlike EW, it will introduce new limited job, it will introduce a rework to Deep Dungeons (basically new content as a result), it will have all the other normal things expected of expansion content. Frankly, content-wise, DT is setting up to be the richest expansion yet so far, potentially better than StB was.

Um akshewally SHB was the bad story, sb was the good story

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

1) if I use 6.1 data then between 6.1 and 6.5 the game has lost 45% of its playerbase, still not remotely a good number

2) I still have no idea why people just automatically assume the WOW players were a lost cause, 14 did absolutely nothing to even try to retain them (sure sure different game different crowd……) but if your competitor dumps 1 million players into your lap you try to hold onto them, not just do the same thing you’ve always done then go “nothing we could have done so sad”

Because a lot of those players got caught up in the moment of "blizzard devs bad, boycott", and that just didn't last. They weren't looking for new games, they were looking for wow but not blizzard.





Turning XIV into wow to keep the wow players would have likely alienated people who play XIV because they enjoy it and don't want to play wow.