Quazii reacts to “The Numbers Behind FFXIV’s Explosive Growth” by Bellular Gaming.
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I'm thinking a lot of people don't know how to play the FF14 style MMORPG. Remember, a lot of newcomers thought you have to do 'all the side-quests' before moving on in a zone (the WoW mentality). Maybe they see a new job so they wanna try it out before they continue with the MSQ. So much content unlocks as you go through the MSQ. People wanting to try new things (Crafting/Gathering/New Jobs/Raids/Maps/Free Companies/Housing/Hearing people play music/Gold Saucer/Deep Dungeons/Relics). The horizontal content makes you go off the MSQ path so much.
That spike in the beginning of Stormblood is UCOB.
I don’t finish the .X MSQ until I need to do them to unlock raids. So even if I don’t show up on the metric because I don’t have the title for finishing the last current MSQ, I am logging on everyday and farming/raiding.
Heavensward had a bigger gap between the 3.0 and 3.1 patch and also the raid sucked story wise till the .4 patch lol. And also WoW legion came put mid 3.0 cycle that definitely pulled ppl away
I've been through all the expansion launch including the beta testing of ARR. Believe it or not, the meme of story skipping hadn't caught up until way later into the life of FF14. It was actually 50/50 during the ARR. The both Praetorium dungeons cutscenes were skippable back then and was used for farming our very first tomes. We told eachother to skip the story and rewatch it at the inn. During the leveling process, the only way to level was to join the FATE train. The Duty and Party Finder wasn't a thing until later patches. So we either sat in front of the instance dungeons or joined the train. You were also forced to keep up with the train or otherwise you were left behind. This encourage many of the veterans to skip the story.
During Heavensward, there were many things that were wrong with the system. Such as Ranged DPS became a caster-like job. Crafting had a high ceiling during progression and also trying out for BIS was very long and difficult process. The artifact weapons were also not casual friendly. Believe it or not, Titan was the biggest wall when it came to relic weapon progression. And of course the infamous raiding scene was also became difficult. There was a meme going on that raid in Heavensward were raid breakers. So despite how well the story was, the system in Heavensward was terrible. Also, the party finder was limited to server wide. Meaning if you were in a low population server, you had a bad time getting a raid together. And the raid itself didn't help incentivize more people to do them.
I'm one of those 50% who didn't finished ShB MSQ. I'm still in post-ShB. I mostly grind, as I enjoy the game with the current content I have access to.
I started playing on 5.2 in shadowbringers, so I guess I was part of the covid wave. I played it bc pleople said it was good and I was bored with a lot of time in my hands so I said: why not? And 200~300 hours later I finishied the story and all the 8 mans raids, trials and the 24 man available except eden. Then I took a break and did not do 5.3 until 5.4 was out, and then took another break and did not do 5.4 and 5.5, I waited to do it 1 month before endwalker. Idk why but this game brings me back every time, I love it!
Those that were around for HW would know that it was the expansion that basically killed a lot of raid groups, and the content they did release were received poorly because they were trying to design things to be hardcore and grindy, which only pissed off most of the player base. The Alliance Raids were unusually hard and had a lot of people just vote abandoned most of the time. The endgame almost killed the game since people just stopped doing those contents which kinda left a lot of players stranded in not having a raid group or not able to participate in certain content because no one was doing them and we didn't have cross world queing, so some servers just died from little active players.
Work kept me busy from MSQ. Maybe can finish it during the National Day weekend.
I don't know about people "returning" at the end of expansion. Why would people think that? It feels to me that it is simply accumulating players due to word of mouth and advertisements for the next expansion. The numbers at the end of expansions simply carry over and remains so it's just not a quit and return pattern.
One thing that worked against 5.3 is the longer patch cycle due to covid. I remember that the patches were delayed for a few months causing longer content drought for active players who kept up with end game.
https://youtu.be/h2X4fuv6CFU
Since you love numbers here is another one that it's interesting to look at 🙂
Feel like people give Asmongold way too much credit. He rode the wave that was already happening. The expanded free trial did more coupled with Shadowbringers excitement and people talking about it. That copypasta about the free trial was literally everywhere.
30:40 Digital Extremes have the same mentality with Warframe too, they said that other games are your mistresses but theirs is your wife :p
I believe the reason why they dropped players during heavensward was because of the patches, where the raids were to impossible to complete. Because of that the lead up to SB was skeptical to most people. Also didnt help that people where not actually hyped when it comes to a 'Japanese themed' expansion.
To me the quiet in-between patches are a upside. Because this is when I can play other games even more. I don't want to play only FFXIV. I'm not Zepla lol
I never finish the MSQ, i just unlock expert for daily, and log in for raiding. savage is not locked behind msq so im part of that % of player that play but dont finish msq.
Naoki's first mmo played was Ultima before EQ and others.
After the launch of heavensward, they introduced crafting and gathering grinds called specialization and lorefolk and diadem then soon after but then they abolished them as the lorefolk was frustrating and specializations were underused and also frustrating while diadem had some issues they could not iron out in time. also brd/mch had a cast bar from 3.0 to 3.4
I am taking my sweet sweet time, I've been in Stormblood 6.0 for months now.
I'm guessing everyone coming back at the tailend of an expansion are all returners that took a break from expansion launch, and waited for all the content to release to binge.
No stress on rushing content, to me it felt unlike other MMOs that have to chase the content to play catchup.
Quazii, the ARR's Starting point was @ 2.4 and 2.5, not 2.0.
All the while, Heavensward had all the patches 3.0 -> 3.5.
I started a few weeks after FF16 first trailer I wonder if im alone or it also had an impact on new subs
Keep in mind that players under level 60 were not included on the survey because of the free trial
Heavensward, content wise, really wasn't a great expansion. it was an early expansion so there was almost nothing to do and the 2 tier raiding system wasn't great for accessibility. the normal mode was too easy and the savage was too hard for most of the playerbase. creator made it much easier but that was towards the end of the expansion. without raids and expansions of content to fall back to really there was nothing keep those players around. On top of this, most of the patches were seemingly experimental so people either loved it or hated it. content wise i personally felt the last expansion was the most enjoyable and it seems the numbers would agree. at the end of the day, no matter how social the game is if theres nothing to do most people will get bored and leave
With all this server/game upgrades I have fealing we are heading into Xbox (maybe Switch) release
The big factor of HW's dip could be the fact that Heavensward was when Legion hit. Obviously it won't be just one reason but the other comments I've seen focus on internal factors. Perhaps just as relevantly, Stormblood came out during Legion but HW came out during Warlords.
you may have heard that Alexander: Midas nearly killed FFXIV. 3.3 was that patch. You can tell who the old raiders are by mentioning Pepsiman, because of how stupidly overtuned that boss was. Yes, even FFXIV nearly fell down the same path as WoW in tuning the savage raiding to the highest level of raiding. And that's why we have Ultimate tier now.
Its so nice to see this game get success it deserves
It's a really strong marketing strategy, to be respectful of your customers, to the point that they say nice things about you even when they can't use your product/services. These days, good word of mouth and social media conversations are one of the best advertisements, and being ignored/boring is worse than generating outrage. It's an odd predicament, where being bad is better than being mediocre, but being respectful of your customers' time and priorities can create long-term brand loyalty, and essentially create an entire grassroots marketing team making memes as promotions and recommending you to everyone they know.
I feel like its a little misleading because so much changed in each patch i mean the free trial wasnt always how it is now, they made a lot of edits to older content that made it more appealing to a wider audience too and even had free login events mid patches
My personal theories on the spike at the end, is that the more cautious fantasy players are buying in once reviews are out and people are raving about how good the expansion was.
I'm the sort of person who never preorders and rarely day 1 purchase so I understand the mentality.
Another idea is that if Heavensward scared off players perhaps they were waiting for things to get ironed out, or for their suspicious about Heavensward to be dispelled.
Given that ARR was a fresh reset apprehension would still be there.
HW would be a sign that the changes are permanent and longlasting or at least signs of a positive future – kind of like how people are viewing Dragonflight for wow right now, in that the changes are a good sign but people are apprehensive because of things in the past. We all know that even if DF is a good expansion, they have to continue to deliver on another good expansion next time to seal the deal and regain fan trust. The same i can imagine could be said about FF14 fans after ARR and HW.
Then there's also that there is no waiting for the next patch;
It's all just lined up for you, so you just quest through a consistent story rather than racing through and having to stop and wait for the next patch.
Everyone keeps saying how HW was a great expansion… it wasn't. Not when it was fresh content. The story and aesthetics were fine. But the games content was completely different from the content we have now. 3.0/3.1 was a disaster and the lowest point of FFXIV. The games content was terrible. Gearing was terrible and one of the core expansion features Diadem was the only content they ever put out that just flat out failed. They even put it back into conceptial developement and didn't release it again till the end of the expansion and by then it was already too late. People only praise HW now because they can play it with the modern FFXIV philosophy with all the features that eventually saved that expansion already released. It wasn't until 3.2 and 3.3 that heavenward actually started to hit it's stride. Content wise HW was the worst FFXIV expansion by far.
Heavensward was super grindy in the patches, had extremely difficult raid content that had yet to be standardized into its modern form nor did it have most of the current QoL/streamlining for classes (like party finder)
HW was also when FATE GRINDING was still in full force, it wasn't until later in the expansion where they implemented the massive exp reward spikes for the dungeons modern players are used to. I remember having to run fates in the hundreds to level additional classes. Crafting got complicated specialization mechanics that did not seem to be useful generally and accompanying stat scaling made things annoying.
Side content/additional weekly content was only starting to be established back then and relic grinding was extremely time consuming comparative to current relics. Furthermore the raid mechanics were complex and dragged out to a point that it roadblocked many players, even on the normal modes for casual players, where you could still consistently wipe weeks into a patch cycle.
Additionally bots were also rampant in significantly more numbers (frontlines were comprised of 80% bots because of how exp lucrative they were), and anti bot measures for resource collection such as putting major distance between the trio of nodes didn't seem to stop bots and made it a headache for actual players.
Stormblood suffered from that as a result, ontop of rumors spreading about Rauhbahn's Wall and Pipin Savage (the two instance bits that chokepointed the entire playerbase for days, I got a character to cap through PVP before they fixed it). There was also the WEEBGAME bit, along with a couple of broken classes (both OP like Sam and functionally broken like monk), and discussions about how the story was weaker compared to HW (no fault of it since it was a worldbuilding style expansion rather than a region focused one). It wasn't until the tail end of SB where everything suddenly ramped up and the modern form of FF14 started taking shape.
Stormblood has a terrible launch because the games servers were under heavy DDoS for 3-4weeks straight. The duty finder was so congested that people just flat out couldn't progress in the MSQ. It wasn't until after they fixed the server issues and stopped the DDoS'ing that the game stablelized and started growing again.
With Heavensward, the first two patches were pretty weak. We had a raid in Gordias that was very poorly received, particularly since it had gear gating. Worse, they put a lot of effort into their first open world zone, Diadem, and it was complete rubbish. Simply put, people didnt have much to do so they went off to play other games. Things only really seemed to pick up towards the end of the expansion.
I figure we'll see a downturn when dragonflight releases. A lot of people will be returning to World of Warcraft. I think that's fine because final fantasy 14 will still be here and playable when they come back. If World of Warcraft allows them to come back.
The odd number patches are always the catch up patches. That is why they are usually drop off points. This is where FFXIV content drops happen. .1 .3 and .5. The .5 patch usually has some growth due to expansion hype and people coming back to catch up on things they may have missed etc. But expansion launches .2 and .4 are usually the high points because those are the start of the new tier.(think of it like WoW seasons.)
One thing also. I always… ALWAYS have my sub ticking even when I'm not playing the game. And I know alot of people who also do the same. You might be thinking why would I do something that dumb… because I don't think it's dumb. To me the game is worth it. I continue to pay my sub continously since 2014 because I know when I come back into the game I'm going to have a ton of great content to go through…. that I actually enjoy.
the big factor in HW drop was the battle content. Raids were much harder with crazy DPS checks and the raid community lost a lot of players. although they made it more accessible by the end of HW, tier 1 and tier 2 definitely had a drop.
SB was the redemption arc for raiding, but early on players were cautious into getting back in. but once tier 1 in SB came out, the players loved it and the Raiders started coming back. Then add the 2 ultimates and the raiding scene was back to being healthy again.
HW also didn't have a lot of extra content, yes POTD, but that wasn't something most of the population gravitated to either. SB certainly added a lot of content which by the end of its cycle, it helped itself to setup the explosion of ShB.
SB wasn't the strongest story, but it was the strongest content wise at that point and I will even say it beat out ShB in terms of content, as well.
Also, odd patches in an expansion are typically considered "casual" content so you will see a drop off on battle content players on those patches.
And finally you have the story heavy players and they tend to play the launch of expansion and then leave and come back by the x.4 or X.5 patches.
For myself I did play Stormblood on the launch of the expansion, but "Raubahn EX" sort of ruined my motivation to play and although it did eventually get fixed so I could progress the MSQ, but I ended up reaching max level by pvping so I did end up going thru the Stormblood story and ended up stopping as I suppose I was one of the players who left after completing the MSQ like Matt was talking about.
I didn't really come back until recently probably around the same time that Asmongold started playing. Although I didn't really play because of Asmongold, but it was around that same time and was nice to watch him playthrough the MSQ. But I haven't stopped ever since experiencing Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Still playing & still subbed to this day.
One of the reason FFXIV is the most active at the end of an expansion is because they never make any of the content of the expansion irrelevant. So there are some people that would take 6-10 month breaks and come back just before the next expansion launch and they have a massive amount of content to churn through. Shadowbringers alone had 4 raids in Bozja… eden promise normal and savage… the Diamond Weapon… you had 3 ultimates in the game which most of the raiding community are still progging some of those… the relic grind…. and litterally hours of MSQ. When you take a break in FFXIV you don't fall behind in gear and end up having to grind dailies and shit to catch up. No you fall behind in content you have to do… and non of it is phased out. No fear of missing out means you can come back to the game whenever you want and enjoy the content when you want… and usually in FFXIV that happens when the hype of a new expansion starts beating like a drum in your chest.
Obviously the reason why stormblood didn't do well at first was Raubahn (Extreme).
Endwalker is like seasoning and shadowbringers is the meat its the best part of the product
Always interesting to see the numbers. For my own personal stats I started in 2.0, left in 2.1, came back 2.4, left 3.1, returned 3.3, left 4.1, returned 4.5. Haven't left again since then.
I know this is just a personal anecdote – but I had no clue who Asmongold was and didn't care. I'm one of a big group of older non-traditional gamers that was tired of not getting a good chewable story with my gaming. We don't always play for pew pew, although we like it if it makes sense to the tale. I heard about FFXIV from Mica Burton – gaming show host with ties to Critical Role and Star Trek. She tweeted at length about the game, posted screenshots, talked about the STORY of the game – talked about how incredibly engrossing the tale was – and then let us know about the free trial. All of that came about around the same time in Spring 2021 right when Endwalker was announced – And if you notice the numbers – they start to increase THEN, it wasn't all Asmongold – it was the idea that the story arc was coming to an end, and every FFXIV player was talking about it.
I was desperate for an MMO with story being the driving factor, not grinding to get gear. This game GIVES you the gear you need to survive the story. I have a couple thousand followers too, and MANY of us tried this game and it was the answer to our MMO prayers. I don't care about min-maxing – I care about having fun and feeling like my character is an integral part of the world. In STO and LOTRO my character is a side player, in this game my character is the lead role. SO – I tried it and it became my goal to finish MSQ before Endwalker was released. I subbed in April 21 and I've been at home ever since.
29:00 – I'm not all that surprised a large number of people haven't finished the MSQ, honestly. Look at the achievements for any video game, no matter how popular it is, and compare the difference between the number of people who got the very first achievement the game gives you for doing something in the main story vs the achievement for beating the final boss and you'll find this happens in basically every game that exists.
Also, like, the MSQ is insanely long. Even if you stick to one job for the entire thing and only do the MSQ until you complete it, you're still looking at hundreds of hours to do it.
I believe Yoshi-P's first mmo was Ultima Online (he did play Everquest and I believe Dark Age of Camelot was his favorite MMO). That's at least what he wrote in his recap letters that came out prior to Heavensward.
5.3 is a interesting case, newer players might not know ,but due to Covid we got 5.3 later then usual and honestly the wait time felt like forever. 5.2 dragged on for far too long like we didnt even have Bozjan yet, Relic weapon step was literally to buy one item for Poetics, we didnt have unreal yet and so on and I think then was also announced around the 5.25 time that Ultimate was delayed to 5.5 which demotivated a lot of raiders (which later got further delayed to 6.11). I know many of my friends from the FC bounched off in 5.25 becuz they got bored. Most of them came back around late 5.35 when first 5.4 live letter came out.
I personally take my break from the game around x.1 patch becuz to me the first major patch of a expansion is usually very layed back and honestly lackluster.
Having experienced the downturn of Heavensward, the excruciating difficult raiding scene of the first tier of Alexander, on top of not much side content in-game at launch nearly spelt the death-knell of FF14.