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#1 Apr 22 2016 at 3:25 PM Rating: Decent
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These lists obviously show characters, or alts above level 21 who have had any changes to their profiles over the last month. These aren't subscriber numbers, you have to make an educated guess to those. I would guess 2/3 of the numbers would be subscribers but it's just a guess.

January 9th 2015: 771,103 active characters
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/409tbr/lucky_banchos_eorzea_census_updated_jan_9th/

April 20th 2015: 639,585 active characters
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/4fnvnr/unofficial_census_time/

Seems they lost 131,518 characters over the last 3 months, which mirrors the last large drop in players noted in the progress report.

Would be interesting to know the actual subscriber numbers, guess we will never get those though. If I were to take my guess of 2/3 then it would be just over 426k subs, which is pretty good still.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2016 5:27pm by Runespider
#2 Apr 22 2016 at 3:34 PM Rating: Good
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I'd guess around 500k subs give or take about 20k.
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#3 Apr 22 2016 at 5:27 PM Rating: Excellent
Yeah, I'd also guess around 500k subs right now, especially as we're entering the patch lull where most players have had enough time to deck out a job in tome gear.

And wow, look at those low clear rates of A4S... not even 100 people cleared it on my server of nearly 14,000 people. Is it really a surprise the population fluctuates so much with each patch cycle?

This game needs an endgame that players can actually get engaged in.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2016 4:31pm by Thayos
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#4 Apr 22 2016 at 9:36 PM Rating: Decent
Balmung is just as bad with a 0.006 clear rate, man it's pitiful. To get the subs going upwards, I think it needs better end game along with a not so predictable release schedule. I'll for sure check out an expansion again simply cause it's a guaranteed 40-50 hours of gameplay. Beyond that though, it'll be awhile.

PS. I can already see where this thread is going...
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#5 Apr 22 2016 at 9:37 PM Rating: Good
double post apparently.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2016 11:42pm by Montsegurnephcreep
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#6 Apr 22 2016 at 10:00 PM Rating: Good
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I don't know if "number of people who've cleared the hardest available content" is a great indicator of endgame participation or interest. I agree that XIV needs more mid-core content, but pointing to one stat and saying "this is why you're losing subs" is silly.

For reference, slightly over 3% of all WoW guilds worldwide have killed Mythic Archimonde as reported by wowprogress (wowprogress tracks most guilds but not all, so there's a margin of error on that number for sure).
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#7 Apr 22 2016 at 10:42 PM Rating: Good
I don't think anyone is saying the sub loss/gain is based on hardcore end game content alone. I just think the variation of end game, whether it be hardcore or midcore needs to significantly vary. Short of the relic quest line, there's no real long term goals, and even then, that weapon is obsolete within a few months. For me personally, I got to the point of, why bother, I'll just be doing the same thing with a new skin in 2-3 months.
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#8 Apr 22 2016 at 11:26 PM Rating: Excellent
I guarantee the game's participation rate would be more consistent if endgame wasn't aimed at such a small percentage of the playerbase.
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#9 Apr 23 2016 at 1:24 AM Rating: Good
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Thayos wrote:
I guarantee the game's participation rate would be more consistent if endgame wasn't aimed at such a small percentage of the playerbase.

Yeah. In the current endgame everything is either incredibly easy or incredibly hardcore. The problem is that the vast majority of players are looking for a middle ground that doesn't exist. Us "casuals" who still want a challenge but don't have the time, inclination, or skill to do savage level raiding are pretty much out of luck.
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#10 Apr 23 2016 at 11:22 AM Rating: Decent
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Thayos wrote:
Yeah, I'd also guess around 500k subs right now, especially as we're entering the patch lull where most players have had enough time to deck out a job in tome gear.

And wow, look at those low clear rates of A4S... not even 100 people cleared it on my server of nearly 14,000 people. Is it really a surprise the population fluctuates so much with each patch cycle?

This game needs an endgame that players can actually get engaged in.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2016 4:31pm by Thayos


Most people that does end-game didn't bother with a4s because a3s was such a slap in the face (and stated by Yoshida to not be properly tested) most people who did raids (Binding Coil) just flatout didn't bother, as stated numerous times. So the clear rates are mostly multiple "world first" runners since they have 2-3 groups within their FC that clear it. (e.g Elysuim, Lucrezia etc.)

So even these days people still don't touch it and definitely wouldn't with it in the duty finder since people still have trouble with the easy A1S. (it's literally the same fight with obvious changes.)


Thayos wrote:
I guarantee the game's participation rate would be more consistent if endgame wasn't aimed at such a small percentage of the playerbase.


You mean like Binding Coil and Ex Primals? Just saying; Participation levels were far higher when they cycled Ex primals and Binding coil to work with each other and "Savage" was completely optional. The problem is, the introduction of Story Mode/Normal Mode for new raids threw a wrench in the balance, so now they have to heavily nerf the fight (Story mode) and give us sometimes untested brick walls as the actual version.

Since people seem to complain when something has even SLIGHT difficulty. (Steps of Faith for example.)

Oh and the numbers are actually skewed because the way they parse is it takes into consideration the number of mounts and minions in circulation as the main "clear" point, which you get only 1 per clear, which means it's largely counting the amount of people who have the beetle and faust minion.

Edited, Apr 23rd 2016 10:43am by Theonehio
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#11 Apr 23 2016 at 1:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Thayos wrote:
I guarantee the game's participation rate would be more consistent if endgame wasn't aimed at such a small percentage of the playerbase.

This genre really needs universal terms with generally accepted definitions.

Endgame to me is anything available only to max level(whatever the current cap is) players. I reserve 'hardcore' for the part of that content that is tuned for more skilled play. Most endgame is aimed at the general population. Hardcore content is aimed at a part of that population who should already know that the difficulty is proportional to time invested, skill required, ect.

We all know that Yoshi and his team are incredibly talented, but knowing that they're still struggling to support the content they have; why would we expect them to be able to develop a 'midcore' content without sacrificing time needed elsewhere? Besides, from everything I've heard a 'midcore' player simply wants alternative content that's easier and more accessible than hardcore raiding but they wanna keep the hardcore rewards. That wouldn't work well.
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#12 Apr 23 2016 at 2:52 PM Rating: Default
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Not to mention if you've played the game for even a year now you realize Yoshi works on a VERY VERY Give & Take with this game, so even if they created a "middle ground", guess what happens to either side of equation?

"It doesn't matter, I have content to do now so I don't care how it affects other players, especially those "hardcore players" that shouldn't even be in this game to begin with because "hardcore raiding" is a dead concept in MMORPGs..yes XIV is the only MMO I play.."

Honestly though, if they have so little resources, they need to stop with the alliance based content and fluff content like Lords of Verminion and stick with what worked before (Ex and Binding Coil type content working together)..or....

OR....

Make alliance based content worthwhile in terms of both difficulty and rewards. They already ****** up by making Void Ark the SAME ilvl as weekly tome gear unless you upgraded it, so at this point everything is out of whack, so no point in keeping alliance based content setup to where 8 people have to carry 16 others because they're the kinds who refuse to learn how to play.
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#13 Apr 24 2016 at 2:31 PM Rating: Decent
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Montsegurnephcreep wrote:
PS. I can already see where this thread is going...


Yeah, seems like we've gotten the, "Casuals ruin EVERYTHING!" out of the way.
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#14Theonehio, Posted: Apr 24 2016 at 9:53 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) When you develop for a lower standard, it actually does hinder the game's progression, especially when the person in charge is already on a strict "don't want to/can't do" type of mindset. Any other MMO they'd just offer the same content with multiple routes, however it seems XIV can't "afford" to do what the standard MMORPG of 2016 does.
#15 Apr 24 2016 at 11:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Do we really need to rehash the whole conversation about you looking at the game through the hardcore lens? Because there's a good chance your perception of standard is going to wildly differ from those who at least mentioned midcore content.

What I was more abjectly ribbing at was what Filth said:
Quote:
Besides, from everything I've heard a 'midcore' player simply wants alternative content that's easier and more accessible than hardcore raiding but they wanna keep the hardcore rewards. That wouldn't work well.

The bolded to be met with a simple question of, "Why wouldn't it?"

Okay, let's dance again.

- People who don't like raiding, but want the loot are no longer forced into it.
- Those who do like raiding lose bodies, potentially making it harder to field the content they do enjoy. Yet this has the effect of truly determining who actually likes the system as is.
- I would argue that turning a game into an obligation with the whole scheduling and politics that follows is both not for everyone and implicitly unhealthy for the community at large. A bunch of little cliques, what MMOs tend to be within the games themselves, does not a true community make.
- We can mention minority completion rates of the hardest content, introducing the question of why it's a focal point of development, and a costly one at that. Too late there, I suppose.
- We then deflect to mini-game shenanigans, when they're not really the root of what MMOs are: Combat systems and generally unrelated to the midcore of intelligent casual's desires. Being artistically minded, I'm not going to call people who like vanity content or things like housing dumb, either. I just acknowledge they're not directly tied to combat.
- More on rewards, however, people wind up being labeled undeserving, lazy, underskilled, lowest common denominator, entitled whiners, or whatever if alternatives came to be. Ergo, casuals ruining everything because how DARE they get stuff doing what they like even if what they like doesn't match some nebulous standard of worth that should ideally require 20+ people minimum who meet a few nights a week for a number of hours. At the very least, we're attempting to link combat to combat-related rewards.

Whatever standard you believe in at the moment, however, the current MMO scene of 2016 is crap. What we have are a bunch of games out there where roughly 10% of their given populations like to lord their so-called skill and knowledge over the remaining 90%, both to influence their behavior (read a guide, watch a vid, follow instructions, don't deviate or else you're noob) and that of the devs (we don't need X because we're the more "important" demographic). This comes at the cost of accessibility, imagination, and bluntly, good will. MMOs shouldn't be caste systems, but that's pretty much been the "standard" for over a decade now. Some try to dress it up, but when you peel away the layers, the ugliness is still there. Why? Well, I guess we've convinced ourselves bad things would happen if we strayed.

Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. Maybe we've all got a bit of ********* in us. I dunno. Me calling out the MMO scene isn't to implicitly knock on anyone who does like a given game. I'd just hope they stop to think, "Could this be better?" and if they answer yes to that question, would the how be rooted in selfish whim or for the overall benefit of their peers? A little greed isn't bad, mind, but we really need to stop trying to keep players from things solely to elevate the worth of said things. MMOs simply aren't a proverbial Round Table in their current iterations.
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#16 Apr 25 2016 at 12:20 AM Rating: Excellent
Just because content isn't hardcore doesn't mean it can't be engaging.

I wonder if any former xi debs are working on this?
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#17 Apr 25 2016 at 1:49 AM Rating: Decent
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Seriha wrote:
What I was more abjectly ribbing at was what Filth said:
Quote:
Besides, from everything I've heard a 'midcore' player simply wants alternative content that's easier and more accessible than hardcore raiding but they wanna keep the hardcore rewards. That wouldn't work well.

The bolded to be met with a simple question of, "Why wouldn't it?"

FFXIV is a progression based game.

Your characters power in FFXIV comes directly from the item level of your gear.

Higher level gear should come from content that requires a high level of execution.

I honestly don't care that the gear comes from outside of raiding. My major issue in all of this is that the gear is a reward for having a heartbeat. We used to have to work for nice things and it made us appreciate the effort we all put forth. It was rewarding in more ways than just a higher number on your armor and a stat buff. Most people I know have more respect for things they worked hard to get. It's a rather simple concept.

Actually **** it, you're right. Loot pinata sounds much more interesting Smiley: jester
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Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#18 Apr 25 2016 at 6:14 AM Rating: Default
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Seriha wrote:
Do we really need to rehash the whole conversation about you looking at the game through the hardcore lens?


Player does the quest that takes him to the entrance of Alexander Midas.
Player unlocks Alexander Midas.
Player loads up Alexander Midas.
"Would you like to Enter Alexander Midas (insert floor)?"
"Story/Normal (No loot, purely for the storyline
Hard Mode (low tier drops)
Savage (High tier Drops)
Exploration (Special Midas based glamour/Gear but enemies aren't scaled low or high therefore may end up too easy or too hard depending on participation level.)

What's hardcore about that? I swear to god people love to hang on the "hardcore" when they have nil argument. I don't look at the game through a "hardcore lens", people who don't touch this game's content simply finds anything "hardcore" that goes against their playstyle.

By the way, just about every MMO that released in the past 5+ years offered "midcore" and "scalable" content and none of the were designed for "hardcore players" aside Wildstars, which not even "hardcore players" liked because it was designed stupidly.

Edited, Apr 25th 2016 5:16am by Theonehio
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#19 Apr 25 2016 at 6:18 AM Rating: Good
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Thayos wrote:
Just because content isn't hardcore doesn't mean it can't be engaging.

I wonder if any former xi debs are working on this?


The only senior staff I know it's working there from XI is Komoto (CoP director, 1.0 pre-yoshida story director as well as 1.0 Producer). As for other staff, there may be.
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#20 Apr 25 2016 at 11:00 PM Rating: Good
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Theonehio wrote:
Player does the quest that takes him to the entrance of Alexander Midas.
Player unlocks Alexander Midas.
Player loads up Alexander Midas.
"Would you like to Enter Alexander Midas (insert floor)?"
"Story/Normal (No loot, purely for the storyline
Hard Mode (low tier drops)
Savage (High tier Drops)
Exploration (Special Midas based glamour/Gear but enemies aren't scaled low or high therefore may end up too easy or too hard depending on participation level.)


Can you at least acknowledge that doing things is more complicated then clicking yes to an entry window? If so, that degree of complication arises with both the actual content difficulty and manpower requirements, including the mixing of newbies and vets.

Otherwise, when you cite other MMOs dropping midcore content, what you're likely alluding to is content a tier or more behind the raiding counterparts (which also means inferior gear). And there's a high possibility said content is also just dungeon spamming in some form. While we can sit here and say people usually don't need the best of the best gear or party formations to beat MMO content, the PUG scene is not kind in that regard. They want people with good gear. They want people who know the fights in and out. Basically, they don't want to waste time teaching and/or failing. And a lot of people are sick of this environment because the power to succeed, or even try in some cases, is out of their hands.

Filth is unsurprisingly misinterpreting my whim in thinking I'm asking for loot pinatas. Pragmatically, difficult solo or duo/trio content isn't something I can comfortably say any MMO I've played has tried. People trying to do full-group things with less isn't the same thing. Of course, it is easy to fall into that loot pinata trap if you consider any and all drops have to be wearable items. This is where my desire to make crafting mean more in these games comes into play, but this isn't new commentary from me.
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#21 Apr 26 2016 at 8:48 AM Rating: Good
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A side note too, following along the lines of content you enjoy vrs content you are forced to do.

Let's go back to that 0.6% completion rate on Balmung.
I want to recall an important point - Balmung is FFXIV's top Roleplaying server, it effectively the unofficial RP server of the game. This is perhaps the largest reason for the disparity, between alts never touching the content, and players who are more interested in easy-to-complete content that does not conflict so heavily with their RP time.

If we are to take this into account, this is further evidence that more players feel that they enjoy content other than hardcore raiding, than the hardcore crowd. SE has one of the largest populated servers in their game with next to no interest in raiding as it's displayed now.

I'm on a patient but cautious wait and see for the new Deep Dungeon. But if it's done decently, it could easily overtake raiding as popular content, save for the continuing to deplete numbers of hardcore raiders who will snuff their nose at the lack of BiS gear.
#22 Apr 26 2016 at 9:00 AM Rating: Excellent
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Let's go back to that 0.6% completion rate on Balmung.


Hyperion is also on the bigger side of SE's servers, and it has less than a 1 percent completion rating for the hardcore raids -- hence my example of one party having 14 people and the other having 1,400 people. Sadly, that's not me being dramatic -- that's an actual statistically accurate example.

Full disclosure, I've also taken a bit of a step back from the game -- might just stay back until the next patch. I was looking forward to grinding on Thordan Ex and Sephirot Ex with a static, but my efforts to find members during the one time slot that works for me were unsuccessful. And without a viable endgame activity, I'd simply prefer to take a break for now (though I did log in last night and mine while watching a basketball game, so I'm not completely gone).

My gut feeling on Deep Dungeons is SE isn't creating this to be a form of endgame -- more like side content in the same way PvP is. Note that PvP also has its own progression system of sorts, so I wonder if Deep Dungeons will be like that.

I still think Diadem has been the game's biggest missed opportunity, and that fixing the Diadem would be the best way to solve the game's endgame problem.

I just hope SE realizes that the game's biggest problem is its lack of endgame for casual/midcore players. People like me who really enjoy the game shouldn't be stepping back because we lack larger goals than grinding tomes.


Edited, Apr 26th 2016 8:03am by Thayos
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#23Theonehio, Posted: Apr 26 2016 at 9:41 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) This game's biggest problem is the lack of a reason for your players to actually do better, and continuing to coddle that by shoving solo/4 man content rather than adjusting the raid content to a proper difficulty level won't help much either.
#24 Apr 26 2016 at 11:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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I mean I know it goes against a particular.... mentality around here, but...


You're going to throw a fit about me directing a pot joke at you, but now you're going to imply that people around here are being dismissive of another culture and expect to get away with that? Dude, grow up. You're being an idiot.

That said, let's look at the actual clearance rate of the Chocobo server, because that part of your post raised a valid point.

The server has an estimated 12,991 active players and 1,410 clears of A4S. That's a clear rate of 10.85 percent -- waaaaaaaaaay better than the typical NA server. But is that high clearance rate really typical of the average JP server, as you claim?

Fortunately, we don't have to argue this... we can just look at the numbers. Bolding the servers with more than 10k estimated active subs.

Carbuncle - 5.4 percent
Ifrit - 5.04 percent
Mandragora - 4.18 percent
Garuda - 5.38 percent
Bahamut - 4.95 percent
Tiamat - 5.04 percent
Atomos - 4.81 percent
Titan - 4.12 percent
Alexander - 4.62 percent
Ixion - 3.28 percent
Tonberry - 2.59 percent
Gungnir - 3.38 percent
Asura - 1.86 percent
Hades - 3.5 percent
Pandaemonium - 1.92 percent
Shinryu - 2.5 percent - LARGEST JP SERVER
Yojimbo - 1.68 percent

To save time, I left out several smaller servers with clear rates obviously below 5 percent.

So, here are the facts:

1. The high clearance rate on the Chocobo server is a statistical outlier. Its clearance rate is more than double the clearance rate of the next-best server, which is Carbuncle (which doesn't even have 10k active subs).

2. The most popular JP server (by approximately 3k subs) has a clearance rate of 2.5 percent.

3. The vast majority of JP servers have clearance rates below 5 percent, and many are around 3 percent.


But let's ignore those facts and pretend that the Chocobo server really is representative of the JP endgame community. Even if that were true, why would we praise developers for burning significant resources on content that's only completed by 10 percent of the population?

And remember, we're not even talking about CURRENT content. We're talking about A4S. Even now, with that content being nerfed through iLevel increases, the clear rate among the game's most prolific endgame server is still ONLY 10 PERCENT. It's laughably worse when looking at clear rates on the current tier of raiding, even on the outlying Chocobo server.

Hio, do you honestly believe that SE should continue investing heavily in this system of raiding because one outlying server has a 10 percent clear rate on outdated content?

/em drops the mic.



Edited, Apr 26th 2016 12:44pm by Thayos
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#25 Apr 26 2016 at 1:12 PM Rating: Good
Smiley: popcorn
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#26 Apr 26 2016 at 1:30 PM Rating: Decent
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You shush, Thayos. We're just idiot gaijin here!
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