FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[celi85]

let's face it the combat in ffxiv is lacking and replayability is at an all time low.
the only players who keep playing are modders who turn their characters into abominations and cheatmaxxers who auto mark sim and cactbot their way through all remotely difficult content. pvp is full of cheaters, everyone who crafts and gathers uses glorified bots that are freely available on the you-know-what plugin software. what does it tell you about the game if everyone who plays it has to modify the vanilla experience beyond recognition. vanilla gameplay is nearly unheard of, WoW has more integrity when it comes to third-party tools and that's an incredibly low bar.
dont get me started on the cash shop, the sheer size of it gives p2w korean mmos a run for their money and those games don't demand a $15 sub fee every month. it's insulting that 80% of the new headwear they add to the game isn't wearable by hrothgar or viera, they can afford to update the cash shop every few weeks but can't afford to make the hat that comes with the $20 costume compatible with those races let alone most of the gear that gets added each patch.

just trust the plan guys, 8.0 will totally definitely fix the game for sure. yoshi p went on stage at fanfest and said the content is too repetitive and makes him sleepy at times, he's a regular guy just like you (if you ignore his $3000 designer shirts and rolex watch that costs more than your car)
he encourages you to take breaks so feel free to take one, just don't take too long of a break or your house will get demolished lol

[Dorito_Burrito]

let's face it the combat in ffxiv is lacking and replayability is at an all time low.
the only players who keep playing are modders who turn their characters into abominations and cheatmaxxers who auto mark sim and cactbot their way through all remotely difficult content. pvp is full of cheaters, everyone who crafts and gathers uses glorified bots that are freely available on the you-know-what plugin software. what does it tell you about the game if everyone who plays it has to modify the vanilla experience beyond recognition. vanilla gameplay is nearly unheard of, WoW has more integrity when it comes to third-party tools and that's an incredibly low bar.
dont get me started on the cash shop, the sheer size of it gives p2w korean mmos a run for their money and those games don't demand a $15 sub fee every month. it's insulting that 80% of the new headwear they add to the game isn't wearable by hrothgar or viera, they can afford to update the cash shop every few weeks but can't afford to make the hat that comes with the $20 costume compatible with those races let alone most of the gear that gets added each patch.

just trust the plan guys, 8.0 will totally definitely fix the game for sure. yoshi p went on stage at fanfest and said the content is too repetitive and makes him sleepy at times, he's a regular guy just like you (if you ignore his $3000 designer shirts and rolex watch that costs more than your car)
he encourages you to take breaks so feel free to take one, just don't take too long of a break or your house will get demolished lol

Wow I think you hit every beat with this one.

[Red-thunder]

hop on lost ark

Lost Ark gameplay BTFO's this game but the P2W shit is just insane and having to do dailies and weeklies on six chars just to be able to hit min ilvl for w1 raids just means you have to treat it like a second job.

At least it's actually fun while it lasted. Whereas FF14 is not even fun even if you unsub and come back after four months every patch.

[DPZ2]

And once again, you have yet to provide any logical reason why Steam players are different enough as a cohort to render them statistically irrelevant.

All one can gather from the Steam Charts is that fewer people are actively playing at the same time. How do you equate that with "losing 75% of the playerbase"?

And what is meant by the term "losing"? Because last time I checked, Steam does not report subscription numbers for online games. Those numbers are more important to Square Enix's bottom line. I don't count 17.3 billion yen in profits as "losing".

[DPZ2]

Using operating income is one of the worst measures to discuss population

You're actually asserting that profits for a subscription-based game are one of the worst measures to determine whether the base of paying subscribers cratered?

[Supersnow845]

You're actually asserting that profits for a subscription-based game are one of the worst measures to determine whether the base of paying subscribers cratered?

Yes specifically because as a comparative example

OSRS and RS3 make the same profit per year

OSRS has TEN times RS3’s playerbase

You’ve basically pointed out that EW sold DT and that profit went up in the year DT released over the flat EW drought the year before and claimed that’s evidence the population didn’t collapse after DT released

[BigCheez]

All one can gather from the Steam Charts is that fewer people are actively playing at the same time. How do you equate that with "losing 75% of the playerbase"?

And what is meant by the term "losing"? Because last time I checked, Steam does not report subscription numbers for online games. Those numbers are more important to Square Enix's bottom line. I don't count 17.3 billion yen in profits as "losing".

Occam's razor.

Steam's average player numbers dropping significantly without the total number of players being affected would require a very strange set of circumstances in which everyone had continued to play the game, but less regularly, and were also somehow managing to coordinate when they play the game to avoid being online at the same time. Logically, you would expect there to be times like the evenings and weekends where people's play time would naturally overlap, resulting in more concurrent players.

When you combine this with the data from the Lucky Bancho report, reduced number of logs on FFLogs, reduced engagement in online communities, YouTube and Twitch, reduced PF activity in game, longer queue times and anecdotal evidence that literally everyone I know has stopped playing the game (there are 76 players in my FC, 50% have been offline for more than 2 months. 60% have been offline for more than 2 weeks. 90% have been offline for more than a week), it's pretty obvious that a majority of the playerbase is not actively playing at the minute.

Trying to suggest otherwise would be a fairly impressive level of cope.

[DPZ2]

...

Where, exactly, did you obtain financials for Old School Runescape and Runescape 3? The last good set of financials from Jagex was 2022. The February 2024 purchase by CVC Capital Partners means that anything Jagex does specifically no longer has reportable numbers. Jagex's only Legal reports at this time are the Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement (2023) and Gender Pay Gap Reports (2022-2023). A quick peek at CVC Capital Partners acknowedges Jagex as part of their acquisitions in 2024, but nothing more.

I can easily [Reddit post] find numbers for 2021 (120 million pounds in net sales), and an estimate of a total of 1.1 million players, but not the 10 to 1 playerbase numbers you pulled out of ... where?

To be fair, you tried to obfuscate the actual question asked by performing a meaningless comparison to another set of MMORPGs for which you weren't asked. And, of course, OSRS and RS3 make the same profit because that profit is a single number for the company, rather than two separate numbers. No "Squirrel!" for you.

[Supersnow845]

Where, exactly, did you obtain financials for Old School Runescape and Runescape 3? The last good set of financials from Jagex was 2022. The February 2024 purchase by CVC Capital Partners means that anything Jagex does specifically no longer has reportable numbers. Jagex's only Legal reports at this time are the Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement (2023) and Gender Pay Gap Reports (2022-2023). A quick peek at CVC Capital Partners acknowedges Jagex as part of their acquisitions in 2024, but nothing more.

I can easily [Reddit post] find numbers for 2021 (120 million pounds in net sales), and an estimate of a total of 1.1 million players, but not the 10 to 1 playerbase numbers you pulled out of ... where?

To be fair, you tried to obfuscate the actual question asked by performing a meaningless comparison to another set of MMORPGs for which you weren't asked. And, of course, OSRS and RS3 make the same profit because that profit is a single number for the company, rather than two separate numbers. No "Squirrel!" for you.

https://find-and-update.company-info...history?page=1

Here’s the separated financial statement of the games if you were interested, current playerbase of the game is public knowledge as the game doesn’t hide its server status

Regardless I simply used that as an example of operating revenue not telling the story of the playerbase

You yourself have yet explain why high sales from DT’s initial release is somehow evidence that the game didn’t crater AFTER DT released

[DPZ2]

Occam's razor.

Through Occam's Razor, increased sales over 3 quarters from a previous year should indicate the company is making more money this year than last. Since money earned through subscriptions is a good chunk of those profits, a significant downturn in the playerbase should result in a decided drop in those profits.

Your 'average players' still says nothing about the actual number of subscribers.

There are problems with the Lucky Bancho report. The biggest is that it drops players leveling from 1 through 70 because it cannot discern between free to play and paying subscribers. The second biggest is that it does not report on subscriptions, because those numbers are not present. The third biggest is that it inflates the number of active players based on the number of characters in the game, not the number of accounts paying a subscription. Go ask the alt-aholic contingent whether they have more than 1 character on their account.

The only report I've read recently indicates a drop from 1.4 million characters to about 1.03 million characters in the latest report, decidedly not anywhere near the click-bait of 75%.

If the argument is that Steam Chart numbers drop off between patches, or that that 95k concurrent player mark will never be reached again (that occurred one month before Endwalker released, mind you), or that the release of other games is as likely to attract a Steam player as this one, you've got my acknowledgement.

The use of terms like 'crater' and 'catastrophic' do not yet apply.