No, that is not engaging in pointless debate. That is only the steam version which released not long ago. Most people don't use steam for it as it's a different client. You need a new account for it. What you have a chart of is of Steam users that never played FF before until recently and didn't bother using the official channels. You do not in fact have even an estimate towards the game population.
Actually, you don't even have an estimate of the PC population. This game is on PS4 and PS5 as well.
Even looking at your charts, we can see the game had a 40-50% retention rate, which is amazing. But, i am sure you see something else on that.
Last edited by Swnem; 2021-10-16 at 11:50 AM.
Steam version was launched in 2014, i'd say that is fairly long ago. Steamcharts is the only thing we have to to make some calculations on people playing the game but it counts concurrency while wow has always came in the form or subs or MAU's.
Technically speaking, concurrency can drop 50% but not effect subs or MAU's at all so it's something worth keeping in mind. There is a casual relationship with concurrency and total amount of players ofcourse but it's not 1:1 and it constantly shifts depending on multiple factors.
The best use of it will be to compare ShB launch peak to the upcoming Endwalker launch peak to see how much the game has grown as a rough % as that is when everyone who has an interest in the game plays more or less at the same time. But you still can't make any definitive conclusions about actual amount of subs or MAU's beyond a minimum level.
can i ask a really dumb question?
Why are the warriors of darkness the literal 1.x/2.0 canon? I missed something, right? Its been bugging me since... er... 2.4? Theyre literally the same teleported wols riding chocobos. Im not exclusively memeing. This legit bothers me (currently at the start of 5.5 and dont remotely expect this to be answered in game).
Last edited by ippollite; 2021-10-16 at 01:19 PM.
Don't confuse the Warriors of Darkness with the characters in the cinematics. The cinematic characters are supposed to represent you, the player (hence why they're the default hyur midlander male). The WoD just looks like that character but that's it. They didn't face Bahamut or anything, or Nidhogg nor were they in Doma like in the cinematics. The canon is your story and everything you see in-game not the xpack promotion cinematics they are just there to promote the xpacks.... and realm reborn
There isn't any meaning behind it.
The characters in the ARR cinematic (also the 1.x ending cinematic) are the players, who are teleported 5 years into the future.
If you had a legacy account (played 1.x) then you had a different intro than the rest of the players in ARR. It showed you teleporting outside of your chosen city state, instead of arriving with a carriage or ship.
I suspect the New World release has chipped into everyone's numbers as people are interested in checking out the newest MMO on the scene.
I would've been one of them if I hadn't spoiled myself with ShB. There was very little I enjoyed about ARR and what I did enjoy was the 1-20 (specifically Ul'Dah) MSQ, it went downhill from there for me. The parts where people say it picks up, like after the horrendous 'wine & cheese' chain, did not for me. I think it was around that time I decided to 'skip to the end'.
I have a lot of thoughts about how completely unnecessary the bulk of ARR is even after the streamlining. Regardless, it's a huge barrier of entry that I imagine has cost them no small number of players who might've enjoyed HW+.
5.0 spoilers, I guess? The WoDs were supposed to be mirrors of the WoLs just like the First is a mirror (of sorts) of the Source.
"We must now recognize that the greatest threat of freedom for us all is if we go back to eating ourselves out from within." - John Anderson
Indeed.
I actually thought the steam version released more recently, but i guess i confused it with swtor.
Still the max concurrent players ever on steam seems to be 62k and the current one around 30k. If it launched in 2014 i would say that is not a bad number. Will be interesting to see Endwalker numbers but tbh i will probably be too busy playing to care. XD
Last edited by Swnem; 2021-10-17 at 04:06 PM.
Based on the wording of some of the recent interviews, it seems that Yoshi-P isn't against further tweaking where ARR is concerned. Everything after it has less filler, but a lot of ARR could probably be shuffled over into side quests and still cover the broader plot points. I'd also like to see the final ARR MSQ dungeons to have a bit more...weight behind them. They're embarrassingly easy and don't make for a satisfying show of the antagonist's power.
Problem with that is, multiplayer content cannot scale to individual skill, unlike a singleplayer game possibly could. So when you have a good tank and a bad dps, the game cannot be tuned for both at the same time. The normal versions kinda "have" to be easy, so the majority of people can actually play and finish the story and the harder versions are for people that want the challenge.
Also, they cannot make the fights as cinematic as they could do in a singleplayer game (unless they surprise us with whatever is the final fight of Endwalker) simply due to it being an MMO. If the fight drags on for like 5 phases with each being 10-20 minutes, it would be too much for an MMO, unlike in a singleplayer game, where bosses that take 30+ minutes are not unheard of, but you can also usually pause in those.
I was glad to hear his thoughts on it, but it sounds like it's not a priority. Seems to me that 7.0 would be the ideal opportunity to address not only ARR, but new players having to go through ~200 hours of MSQ to be caught up, especially since 6.1 is supposed to usher in a new adventure. I'm sure they have metrics that show how many people never make it through ARR, maybe it's not a big enough number for them to feel it's a cause of concern.
I think the MSQ dungeons should be duties or trusts and the Praetorium encounters broken up individually. They would at least need to separate the Ultima Weapon from Lahabrea for the latter to truly be challenging otherwise it'd just be too much back-to-back.
"We must now recognize that the greatest threat of freedom for us all is if we go back to eating ourselves out from within." - John Anderson
I may be depraved, but I actually found the ARR patch content more interesting than most of the plot up until level 30-35 or so.
I definitely think that MSQ and "plot-gating" is a good idea, though. I think about ways that WoW could incorporate this, even to the point of re-redesigning the leveling experience through the full history of the game (to me, the worst parts of this are the dopamine-free patch content of old expansions, but not because of the story, but the rewards.
I think it would be "unhealthy" for the game's playerbase if the story content is not "mandatory" the way it is.
They just don't really want people to skip it. Maybe in there eyes that creates a more loyal fanbase and I'd say I agree.
For sure some things can be cut. But it would never work like it does in WoW where the story is nearly completely irrelevant to whatever happens next.
The game's setup is already different.
Honestly, the game would probably benefit more from voicing more of ARR and updating the quests, than cutting them away entirely.
Last edited by KrayZ33; 2021-10-17 at 10:57 AM.
The issue is that the media tour is inherently picking winners, which is terrible for both inclusivity and design. It's the shitty part of 1995-era game development, where blessed "game journalists" who had a track record of being kind with scores to a company would be invited to play a game before release, resulting in articles that likely did more harm than good for you and me, the customers who want information. To us, the vastly superior method of determining if you want to play a game aside from word of mouth is playing a short 20-30 minute demo, which is precisely what a PTR represents in the MMO world.
Those picked are established creators, not top players, and not people who want to test things out themselves. New people and people who would do a much, much better job at in depth analysis than established creators can't get access and test things, and have to theorize based on incomplete information, which leads to speculation. This approach also leads to things like leaks that need to be dealt with which is more resources not going towards the game, not to mention all the effort that went into setting up this remote playing thing, cutting video/images, etc.
No matter how good their internal testing is (it's not that good, it just exists, unlike Blizzard's), there will always be issues that will not be apparent until the game releases and people are analyzing things and trying to break the game. This doesn't happen in a 6 hour stint from 20-30 people. This is the purpose of betas and demos. Which means this approach essentially guarantees that there will be issues going into the first raid. It also means that a lot of people will need to re-learn their job after the patch which takes attention away from the game and story, where it should be. Just because they couldn't run a dungeon with the changes and get used to them ahead of time.
A PTR doesn't need to spoil anything, and it doesn't need to be indefinitely available or treated as a staging environment where no real changes happen except fixing major bugs (Blizzard-style). It would be far superior to what they're currently doing.
There wasn't any issues with the past first tiers, why would there be any now?
The media tour lasted only two weeks, it wasn't really meant for testing, if it wasn't for it then there would be nothing.
It's not a big deal, you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
Also, the dungeons are really easy, it's not taking away from the game and story to just play the game normally while you level up lol. I've done it multiple times each expansion. You really are making a massive deal out of this. It's not.
The way it works is, you level up and do the msq at the start, you don't need to really know your job, because if you find dungeons hard then there's no hope for you doing normal raids and savage. After you finish the msq then you got two weeks before the raid is unlocked, plenty of time to learn and level whatever job you want.
Last edited by Xilurm; 2021-10-17 at 05:37 PM.
If only there was some sort of... free trial, where people were free to make that kind of decision. It's kind of funny you mention people wouldn't have the brain capacity to understand the story and some minor new job changes/additions, but you somehow think those same people are going to watch in-depth analysis videos from actual theorycrafters on how to play their job. If those are the examples you're going to use, then the information from the media tour would probably suit them best.
It's a media tour to get the information out there, and they pay people in-house to do all of their testing. They make adjustments shortly before Savage release, then 2 weeks after they make any needed heavier changes. There will be no "issues" going into the first raid because anyone doing so is either going to be a casual and not affected, or a week 1, world first level raider, and those people do not walk into Savage with one job. Sure, sometimes they have some issues, but they more or less get worked out eventually.
*Insert every single ridiculous PC parts detail here that no one cares about*
What makes you say that? Considering we are like 4 expansions in and there wasn't any significant problem up until now that is of any importance what so ever with the raids.
Their internal group can beat the savage content just fine. That's all there is to test.
FFXIV isn't as complex as WoW when it comes to mechanics and spec/class interactions.
And who the heck does need to "re-learn" his class after an expansion has released? Wtf. That's a whole lot of nonsense.
Neither the quest nor dungeons require you to even remotely play good/correct. You can probably get by with 1-2-3-1-2-3.
We will probably be able to go with Trusts again anyway.
Last edited by KrayZ33; 2021-10-17 at 07:34 PM.