#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Evergrey]

People keep saying that quitting is better to send the message.

Maybe explain why quitting the game (-1 healer in queue) is better at sending a message than doing DF as a different job (-1 healer and +1 tank/DPS) while not resorting to "hit them in the wallet"?

Because if you actually read the OP, you'd know that "hitting them in the wallet" isn't the end goal, the end goal is disrupting their metrics so they actually do something.

If people quit SE will notice how the active players drops, indicating that more and more people are finding FFXIV not up to par when it comes to choices of other games.
Where if people keep playing but another job it'll show that people still finds the game itself good enough to keep them playing.
And depending on actually how many people change a job or not the numbers might not shift enough for SE to take it as a sign of "something wrong with this job".
Where if people just stop playing it's a clear sign that "people are leaving" and might try find solutions to make the game "better" to keep people from leaving and bring more players.

This is my take at least.

And the phrase "vote with your wallet / hitting them in the wallet" probably comes from how SE is still a company and the main goal of a company is to earn money.
So money might speak louder in those situations.

[Tyintheron]

despite crafting and gathering being very hard to penetrate

Anecdotally, though, I can say that I know multiple people who found the Ishgardian Restoration a really simplified in-road into crafting - something they wouldn't have tackled otherwise.

And it certainly seems to me like that's an example of them greatly simplifying a system that, on the surface, seemed to bring in a lot of people who may otherwise have never touched the 1-80 crafting and gathering professions (though, granted, I doubt anyone started playing the game for crafting!).

Just to be clear - I think you're bringing up a bunch of good points about how what they think they know could be wrong! But I also think that in an example like crafting and gathering, they can certainly look at how having a simplified path for the player to follow has increased the usage of those systems across the entire playerbase.

The same is probably true of player jumps in something like, say, the introduction of Crystalline Conflict and the levels of overall participation in PvP. "We made this easier to get into, and now 75% of people play at least some form of this mode semi-regularly, as opposed to the 20% before" (he says, pulling those numbers ouf of thin air) probably isn't that hard to see as a win.

I think if we're talking about the overall userbase, there's certainly an argument to be made that it was some combination of COVID, the WoW-pocalypse, and probably 20 other small factors that led to the userbase growing so quickly. But when you get down into the details of participation in specific features, "more players playing this mode/using this feature after simplifying it/adding new x reward stream" can be pretty statistically clear-cut.

And that might be the whole point - they're likely interested in participation, because participation equals retention. If one healer quits due to system simplification but another ten people start raiding for the first time because they "get it" better or even just flat-out prefer a simpler system, the math becomes pretty clear.

That's what I'm assuming is going on behind the scenes, anyway.

[Aravell]

If people quit SE will notice how the active players drops, indicating that more and more people are finding FFXIV not up to par when it comes to choices of other games.
Where if people keep playing but another job it'll show that people still finds the game itself good enough to keep them playing.
And depending on actually how many people change a job or not the numbers might not shift enough for SE to take it as a sign of "something wrong with this job".
Where if people just stop playing it's a clear sign that "people are leaving" and might try find solutions to make the game "better" to keep people from leaving.

This is my take at least.

Except, again, you're not asked why you're leaving. If they see subs drop and try and take action, it's a shot in the dark because people who have unsubbed aren't asked for feedback and cannot provide feedback through official means.

But if people simply just don't play healer in queues instead, it becomes very obvious that the problem lies with healers. They then have a clear point of reference when taking action.

Unsubbing is only valid if the end goal is to attack the wallet. You do not need to unsub to attack the metrics, in fact, attacking the metrics is easier if you are subbed.

Take relics for example, if someone unsubs over it, they are taken out of the maximum of the participation numbers, but if someone is subbed and doesn't engage with it, they're taken out of the number of participants. The latter is more damaging to the metrics while the former helps the metrics look better.

It's also worth noting that it's a lot harder to entice people who leave the game to come back than it is to hold onto people who are dissatisfied by appeasing them.

And the phrase "vote with your wallet / hitting them in the wallet" probably comes from how SE is still a company and the main goal of a company is to earn money.
So money might speak louder in those situations.

Here you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the strike. We do not care about the company, we do not want to engage with the company, we want to engage with the DEV TEAM, and hitting their metrics is the best way to get there.

[Supersnow845]

They also don’t collect data when you quit

If I quit now to send a message how do we know they won’t just pass it off as “someone quitting as the HZ saga is over and DT isn’t roping them in” or “win trading on PVP is getting worse” or anything else

Quitting doesn’t send a defined message about healers and even if enough quit to actually make them panic how do we know one of the ways they would try to bring people back would be to fix healers

[HighlanderClone]

I think if we're talking about the overall userbase, there's certainly an argument to be made that it was some combination of COVID, the WoW-pocalypse, and probably 20 other small factors that led to the userbase growing so quickly. But when you get down into the details of participation in specific features, "more players playing this mode/using this feature after simplifying it/adding new x reward stream" can be pretty statistically clear-cut.

Of course. But let's just take SMN as an example.

SMN is very popular in EW. The change to SMN is obviously the cause.

But there isn't one single change to SMN. There are multiple.

It was made much easier.

It was given much flashier animations.

It was given more utility and made its ability to resurrect more robust.

Can you isolate any of these factors individually?

And there are also factors beyond changes to SMN itself that interacts with the factors of SMN's changes.

For example: what about the lack of a new caster job in EW? Did people gravitate to SMN because it's as if there was a new caster?

Or what about the raid design? Did the raid design incentivize people to pick up SMN?

Did people pick up SMN because they were leveling Arcanist?

I do not think Square Enix has the data or the tech to determine which exact factor caused what. In fact I don't believe it's even theoretically possible because the SMN changes are a package of factors that cannot be disentangled.

This becomes worse when it's data on stuff like Eureka participation. You have no way of knowing why people did Anemos:

(1) Is it because they found Anemos fun?

(2) Is it because they had nothing else to do in 4.25?

(3) Is it because they wanted the relic glams?

I won't hide my dissatisfaction of poor analysis by amateur statisticians in places like /r/ffxivdiscussion: there are people who argue that Island Sanctuary was a bigger success than something like Bozja.

They use the completion rates of IS vs Bozja to show their point.

That's complete idiocy, since the biggest determinant of completion is the time required to reach completion when it comes to IS vs Bozja.

These are three examples that hopefully explain why I am extremely skeptical SE is able to deduce any cause from the data they have.

[Evergrey]

Except, again, you're not asked why you're leaving. If they see subs drop and try and take action, it's a shot in the dark because people who have unsubbed aren't asked for feedback and cannot provide feedback through official means.

But if people simply just don't play healer in queues instead, it becomes very obvious that the problem lies with healers. They then have a clear point of reference when taking action.

Unsubbing is only valid if the end goal is to attack the wallet. You do not need to unsub to attack the metrics, in fact, attacking the metrics is easier if you are subbed.

Take relics for example, if someone unsubs over it, they are taken out of the maximum of the participation numbers, but if someone is subbed and doesn't engage with it, they're taken out of the number of participants. The latter is more damaging to the metrics while the former helps the metrics look better.

It's also worth noting that it's a lot harder to entice people who leave the game to come back than it is to hold onto people who are dissatisfied by appeasing them.

People keep saying that SE has ignored feedback for years.
So if people, like right now, show how upset they are about it and then the numbers of active players starts dropping around the same time.
Maybe someone could put 1 and 1 together and figure out that "Maybe people are so unhappy that they rather find something else to spend their money and time on."

[ForsakenRoe]

because it’s probably between me, Ty and Aravell for “has provided the most feedback on healers” across the entire forums and I’m tired

top 10 anime betrayals /s

[Turtledeluxe]

If critics are so confident this movement will fail then why are they so threatened by it? The truth is that it has already succeeded as bargaining with the dev team has begun. Streamers have unwittingly brought the message to the forefront and aided us in mainstreaming it to wider audiences. Whether or not healer participation drops is kind of irrelevant because the team tends to respond to public outcry regardless (see the benchmark for example). People saying to unsub obviously aren't of strategic mind since unsubbing would block us from the forums, which is the only real launching point for this kind of thing despite people memeing the forums constantly. It goes from the forums to everywhere else. So yeah, you're wasting your time at this point.

[Kazmarek]

Here you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the strike. We do not care about the company, we do not want to engage with the company, we want to engage with the DEV TEAM, and hitting their metrics is the best way to get there.

Who do you think is in charge of the dev team?

[Evergrey]

Here you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the strike. We do not care about the company, we do not want to engage with the company, we want to engage with the DEV TEAM, and hitting their metrics is the best way to get there.

I never misunderstood the purpose of the Strike.
I simply answered your comment of "Maybe explain why quitting the game..." and then further gave my own thoughts of why people might bring up the "Vote with money".
"My take" is simply how I look at what people might mean.
Everyone has a take on things, like just now how your take was that I had misunderstood things.