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

[Wasselin]

Yeah god forbid people want more people to play with in an MMORPG.

More isn't always better. As more and more players stream into the game some of the culture of a close-knit community is lost. More people means more anonymity, which can lead to more toxic behavior. More players can also lead to server strain, as we have seen. If Square meets the demand with more servers and more customer service reps, that also adds to their overhead.

I'm not saying a large playerbase is bad, and certainly it can lead to more people to play with but it isn't wholly good either. And the implicit argument that many seem to have that more players equals more money for SquareEnix which would result in a better game isn't true either - they don't have to reinvest that money into the game, and more players has an increased cost as well.

[Supersnow845]

Every time I think GCBTW has hit their lowest they somehow manage to surprise me

“A small population is good actually because a larger population leads to more toxicity and increased server costs”

People will literally justify anything about this game. I’ll be sure to tell all the small MMO’s around that their small populations are actually a blessing in disguise because they have a “close knit community” (read everyone plays solo) and “well their server costs are lower so they are less likely to shut the game off”

[Wasselin]

I’m not saying a small population is always better or that all small MMOs are thriving. My point is that a larger player base doesn’t automatically mean a better game experience. A game can grow so large that its original community and culture get diluted.

And as for server costs, my argument isn’t that ‘low costs = good game,’ but rather that more players also come with increased costs, so the idea that ‘more players -> more money -> a better game’ isn’t necessarily true. That extra revenue doesn’t have to be reinvested into making the game better—it could just as easily go toward other things, like a CEO's yacht.

[Catwho]

No, but generally, the more fun a game is, the more people want to come and play it. Which was part of the reason behind the "WoW exodus" to FFXIV in the first place.




I am just as baffled. Clearly these people haven't taken many statistics classes. A sample size of roughly 1000 random people is enough to be considered a reasonable sample size in most situations. I'm not sure why they believe 95,000 doesn't.

Because that sample size is from a single population - steam players. That means all that information is telling you is about steam players. For all we know, the population of PS5 players could have had an even more drastic drop.

[Supersnow845]

I’m not saying a small population is always better or that all small MMOs are thriving. My point is that a larger player base doesn’t automatically mean a better game experience. A game can grow so large that its original community and culture get diluted.

And as for server costs, my argument isn’t that ‘low costs = good game,’ but rather that more players also come with increased costs, so the idea that ‘more players -> more money -> a better game’ isn’t necessarily true. That extra revenue doesn’t have to be reinvested into making the game better—it could just as easily go toward other things, like a CEO's yacht.

“Original community gets diluted”

What original community? 14 never had a small unified community in its early days (unless you count us banding together to universally hate legacy) we were all as fractured as we are today. This reads way too much like “I miss the halcyon days of old” (that never existed). At least with complaints about say job design you can actually point to tangible elements of old design structure

As for “a larger game doesn’t necessarily mean reinvestment” that may be true but you have a larger chance of reinvestment when you actually have enough money to invest anything at all. The only reason square forked out the money to remake legacy is because it would have sunk the company to not do it, if they were in a better financial position then legacy would have just sank with its small playerbase and 14 would be dead and gone

[NegativeS]

So, what I'm hearing from this thread is

Pros of high population:

• Dev gets money = game continues to be updated (this is good btw)
• Buffer for bad content releases (imagine where WoW would be if it released WoD with a 'low' population (spoiler: there would be no WoW anymore))
• Players of niche content can actually find groups
• Diverse community, lots of different players to interact with
• Higher likelihood there will be a clique for you to enter
• Many players -> More people talking about game -> Word of mouth spreads -> More players

Cons of high population:

• Game culture gets diluted
• Housing shortage (self inflicted by squeenix btw, time to get with the times grandpa even WoW is somehow getting it right)
• High server load? (whats a sub fee)

Pros of low population:

• More tight-knit community
• People who play the game are usually really good at it
• Houses (but nobody to show them off to)

Cons of low population:

• Long queue times/few groups
• Good luck grouping for old/niche content nobody does anymore
• One bad quarter kills the game (RIP WildStar)
• "Walled garden" syndrome (see EVE, good luck playing that game on a fresh account these days)
• Few people want to start a game that's on its death throes

I wonder if the game having a WoD moment is a bad thing?

[Nadda]

You know what doesn't help? Maelstrom negativity.

For one using Steam Charts for the game isn't an accurate bellwether but besides that.
FF14 became popular and we received a lot of WoWfugees during the pandemic.
We were going to lose them eventually.

But I digress back to Maelstrom Negativity. Constantly dwelling on what’s wrong fails in achieving good results - because once the complaints are known, complaining about it more doesn't change anything.
You stop being constructive in critique and you start forming a tumor in your own community that kills off all enjoyment of the game in good faith. Listen to some of these comments, oozing in bad faith.

When I joined FF14 I didn't have any expectations for it because it was a game that died and came back. I remembered playing 1.0 and thinking it was quite dull and that Ul'dah would melt my computer.... and half the quests were in ul'dah

This game wasn't just saved by the devs but by the people who remained and believed it could be successful.

We’re going to lose some people along the way—that’s the nature of any long-running game. But clinging to negativity doesn’t help anyone.
I’m not here just for the good times; I’m here because I believe FF14 can always improve. And from ARR to Dawntrail it hasn't been sunshine and roses.
It’s not a bad game (DT) even now the frustration comes from FF14 not living to its full potential —FF14 still has room to grow. And sometimes, growth requires struggle.

If FF14 needs to fail a bit to get better I'm here for it because all Pheonix's are reborn from the ashes. Those with little faith and lesser fire won't be. I'll be here shielding the last spark from going out.

[Supersnow845]

We were going to lose WOW refugees

That’s only a given if you do what 14 did……..absolutely nothing at all

If a competitor dumps half of thier customers in your lap for free you move heaven and earth to keep them not throw up your arms without even trying.

Not trying is just the name of the game at the moment

[Exmo]

Look at the style of WoW. Look at the style of FFXIV. They may both be MMO's, but they are very different games generally designed for very different people. Those participating in the "WoW Exodus" were by and large never going to stay, period. SE would have had to radically and fundamentally change the game if it wanted any hope of "keeping" them...and not only would they probably still have left, anyway, but it would have alienated much of FFXIV's actual core base on top of that. They were handed an illusion, and they properly recognized it as such and stuck to what makes their game successful (as others have noted, the "decline" people are mentioning is just us returning to pre-exodus levels).



Practically every MMO population in existence is cyclical, and again, we're right where we were before the artificial inflation from the WoW exodus.



There is. The question is whether there is a different "profile" for the kind of person more likely to sign in through one service vs. another. Now, my evidence is only anecdotal, so it can't "confirm" anything, but everyone I know that plays FFXIV and is primarily an MMO gamer doesn't use Steam. Likewise, everyone I know who plays FFXIV through Steam primarily plays other types of games (mainly FPS). What we would need is some kind of proof that the typical Steam gamer is in fact sufficiently similar in "profile" to the typical player who uses other methods to log in.




If you're thinking the sample you're pointing to is what's meant by statistically random, I would suggest taking that statistics class.



Except people didn't come to FFXIV because of "fun." They left WoW because of a mix of things, some of which was WoW destroying much of its own lore, some of which was company-related things that had nothing to even do with the game itself. They only came to FFXIV because it's the other "hot" MMO and certain streamers moved over.

Back to the OP, the claim of "we lost 75% of the playerbase" also isn't even remotely close to accurate. If you're looking at data for that purpose, you need to look at the average number of logins, not the most anomalous data point representing the peak during that time. The actual drop in average logins is only around 40%. By comparison, 8 months after the release of EW, average Steam logins were down 48%. Likewise, 8 months after the release of ShB, average Steam logins were down 39% (almost exactly the same as DT).

We're also ignoring that pre-2020, it was rare for FFXIV to go over 10k average daily logins per month. If we considered the game "awesome" and "healthy" back then, the playerbase today would be ~70% larger. It's funny how people seem to ignore that data...

This is all that needs to be said. We can close the topic now.

[AvoSturmfaust]

And people shouldnt forget one thing we are currently at the same situation as in every expansion before, the time between Expansion Release and x.2 where the Content drops was always dry as hell, now with a bad Story and the fact that long term player already did every old content the playernumbers drop even more, give us 7.2 and you see how much the playerbase starts to get up again

its the same in every damn expansion, when do people finally understand it?