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Population continues to fall with time extention
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Just shows SE's lack of confidence in their own game. They need to hide numbers to paint a pretty picture. Ignorance is bliss isn't it?
Who could have thought that WOW could bring super power like USA to its knees?
Originally posted by Arcken
To put it in a nutshell, our society is about to hit the fan, grades are dropping, obesity is going up,childhood the USA is going to lose its super power status before too long, but hey, as long as we have a cheap method to babysit our kids, all will be well no?
Im picking on WoW btw because its the beast that made all of this possible
NO, wait, don't leave yet, the UI patch just came out and it is...amazing lol. Thats right boys and girls, like we told you all is well and more patches will come. Life is good.
Congratulations on having a functioning UI. It's only taken 3 months after launch. How long till you actually get content?
Actually nevermind, I'm not going to say anything other than, the game is terrible, stay far far away if you can.
This low population before Cataclysm launch? They are so going F2P next month. Oh wait... they've already done that.
Its hillarious .. but SOE did the same kind of thing with SWG during the NGE debacle.. same old same old i guess, companies are always happy to display their success, but not so keen on people seeing things that might give the appearance of a lack of it...
Every company would do that. However it's pretty obvious sign that population is going down and that's all we need to know. Who cares about stats, when there is no point of keeping track of them
I bet Wows 4.0.3a patch caused a huge decline lol
Actually the last bit of data from a few posts above ends exactly when that patch went live lol.
While I consider most of the recent update a success, with a couple of hiccups, this one feature about having the world population and nearby player counts no longer displayed seems to have eclipsed the mostly positive update with this one change, and of course no surprise there. While I do not consider the world population to be the only important factor in deciding which server to join when starting out, I do consider it my top three. I was actually shocked myself a bit they did this considering all the positive features that were implemented to the game. If you guys think the NA FFXIV forums are rough with this change, I can tell you the Japanese are much more critical calling the move by the company cowardly and some even blaming the Chinese for it. I am part Chinese from my grand papa’s side and I have to say I am getting tired of getting blamed for everything! Blame the Canadians I say, or at least blame Matt Lauer.
For those that might try the game during the holidays, and want to join a medium to high server population I have a few recommendations. If you want try to get the buddy pass and make two characters on two separate servers to get a feel for them, maybe level each up to 5 or so and check out the starting town. I will break them up to four different categories, and those that are going to try the game in December can decide from that point on where to start. Note that these are JP peak times, but with all the forums I visit and comparing to all the population threads and roll calls, they share the same trend for the most part and as such these are rough estimates. NA and EU times are bit lower overall but close enough to their JP counterpart with a few exceptions.
This chart was last updated on the 25th and uploaded on the 26th:
http://minus-k.com/nejitsu/loader/up82484.png
I.
Population around 1750
Gysahl
This is a highly populated server and some folks might like this while others not so much and may want some breathing room whether it be for exp or more important for crafting competition.
II.
Population around 1450-1650
Cornelia
Figaro
Selbina
Mysidia
These are what I would call mid-high servers and have a little bit more breathing room when it comes to exp but crafting competition is still very high. Personally I like to join the mid-high servers. If you are going to start a new character or are thinking or re-rolling a character you might want to give one of these servers a try.
III.
Population around 1050-1300
Palamecia
Istory
Karnak
Trabia
Besaid
Lindblum
Melmond
Kashuan
These are medium populated servers and pretty much is very similar to the servers grouped in II.
IV.
Population around 850-950
Saronia
Fabul
Rabanastre
Wutai
These are what I would call low populated servers. On some of the forums, some people have stated that during NA or EU peak times during the weekdays have fallen to around 300-400 on a couple of these servers. If this is your first or second MMO, or you do not know anyone that is going to join the game with you from a previous guild, I would suggest looking at a higher populated server. If however joining a lower populated server is your cup of tea or you have several friends joining in with you then you might want to try one of these out and see if it fits you.
In my opinion I think the company should have left the population numbers up. With this update there may be chance that the population may have at least stabilized or might have even gone up. In FFXI I used the search function and world population to determine if I should try to make a party or to seek instead, see which top tier camps might be open, see which jobs and level ranges are available, and ensure if there are some camps taken to communicate with the leaders to see which locations they are at to avoid over camping them before heading out to the same area.
Granted the party search is a bit different this time around but I did find the players nearby to be very useful. I used that feature often to check if there were any players nearby and avoid a certain spot if there were several people as to not clash with them in case they were farming or exping at that spot. The thing from time to time I have lag on mobs and people to pop up on my screen, and sometimes when I think a camp is empty I start beating up a mob or two then to then realize the players pop up in the same area, so I am flying blind now so to speak.
On one last note it seems from a couple of forums have commented that there is a way to keep track of the population, but nothing else. I would take these comments with a grain of salt. If... and this is a big "if"... If somehow these folks are correct, or the Japanese find another way to keep track of the population, and if after this current update or the December update shows that the population continues to decrease with the current party population disabled, I think this would create a much bigger negative impact to the company despite the updates. I have one question out of curiosity. In the past 8 or so years, when it comes to AAA MMO titles that are P2P, besides the Star Wars MMO (never tried it just have heard of it) are there any other MMO that have disabled the population feature? I am not even sure if it was reinstated in the Star Wars MMO only that it is the only one I know of.
Wella ctually most not even have a pouplation check feature to begin with. As far I noticed in the case of WoW it si sort of calculated by thirs party programs to make a vague guess not to mention that blizzard not gives out any numbers in that direction.
Same case in otehr mmorpgs, Not sure if Age of Conan does have something like that or maybe some otehr games but the ones I played never had such an accurate feature.
Edit:
So the irony is if it would have been not around in the first place nobody would have bothered.
If their population holds at this level, and their investors aren't too greedy, they'll do fine. This is about where EVE-Online is, and CCP clearly has made a tidy profit from that game.
Remember, the average population is about 10% of the subscribed player base. So, 30K people playing means about 300K subscriptions. Not great, but it's about 4 million bucks a month in revenue. I'm sure the costs of running it are under 1 million.
The big struggle for them will be to get the game finished and polished to the point that the player base is willing to trust them again. That has to happen before the March PS3 launch, otherwise they won't get the box sales from the consoles to fuel new development.
The sad thing is, the real subscription numbers won't be visible until next year. Because of the bizzaro way they did billing, many people bought game time cards rather than dealing with fly-by-night no-name credit payment companies. So, if you got a 3 or 6 month subscription, via game time cards, you've already spent the money and will be counted as an active subscriber, even if you never log in again.
No one uses Xfire? What the F are you talking about?
Last numbers show around 24k total. That's including botters and afk players apparently. The only thing SE did through eliminating the server population data is enable people to describe the emptiness of the game in forums without a way to verify. I can see the attempt to curb data, but I think it may do more harm than good to them in the long run. They should have left the data in the game and when the population begins to rise it could have been a decent marketing tool.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
I see you still trying to promote your number as if it was a meaning full one. Let me tell you one thing. Your number means absolutely nothing if you try to use it to predict how many players are playing the game.
Do you know why?
I will tell you why. First, your numbers are not FFXIV population. It's not even close to FFXIV population. It represents concurrent online users or CCU.
Second, In many of your post where you show charts, numbers, .... you keep using the word AVERAGE. Average CCU means nothing when you try to use it to predict the game population. What you need is the MAXIMUM CCU of the game or PCU, which is Peak Concurent Users.
A common method to predict a game population is to take PCU * a multiplier (between 5 and 10 depends). An average CCU is worthless. So let's just keep that number to your self from now on, OK?
Almost every MMO games in the market removed the way to obtain direct population of the game at one point (usually very shortly after release). So, FFXIV is not the first game doing this and certainly will not be the last.
You call his numbers worthless and then give us some cryptic multiplier that I assume you conjured from thin air. I'm more concerned with the average population than the maximum potential population. The average population gives a better picture relative to server activity. Sure, a server could have a "PCU" (multiplied by 5 of course) of 8,000 players, but that hardly gives players an idea of server activity. PCU isn't a viable metric for players. Sure, you could write a script to query the lodestone with a bunch of parameters, but I'd say 24k is a more usable number than what you put forth.
In the end, it's all pointless. The only people who should care about hard numbers is SE. Players should only be concerned if populations drop in such a way that it has a negative impact on their play sessions.
PCU isn't a vieable metric for players? I would beg for differ. Let me give you an example. At current time, EVE reported to have roughly 350K subscribers, EVE record PCU is 60K (source here http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3934&tid=1). Sub / PCU = 5.8.
In this press release http://www.gamezone.com/news/item/atari_announce_contents_of_eve_online_retail_box EVE has 260K subscriber with a PCU of 50K. Sub / PCU = 5.2.
In 2007 when EVE has about 150K subscribers, its PCU was about 30K. Sub /PCU = 5.
You see where I am comming from?
The fomula is actually quite commonly used among free-to-play developers to make population educated guess. With free-to-play games or just released games the multiplier usually raise toward 10 and pay-to-play games or old games the multiplier usually hang around 5. For example, when WAR just released, its population is about 800K and they anounced its PCU reached 75K. Of course, this is just an estimate fomula, you can't expect it to tell you the exact number, just the ball park figure.
But, remember, to make the population estimate, you need the PCU which is the maximum number of concurrent users online on ALL servers. Average CCU is useless.
Oh look, someone shows up to lecture me about derivative. I think you may get the general idea of a slop or derivative but the way you apply it is wrong. Heheh. You cannot draw a relation between a derivative of an average line and a derivative of a maximum line. That's just wrong. Imagine this, the max line stay the same, but the min line drop. The result is the average of those 2 lines drop. In this case, the average number of FFXIV CCU would be calculated by a series of numbers represent the CCU of the game throughout the day. If all of them stay the same, 1 number drop would make the average number drop. If multiple numbers go up and down, the average number would become incredibly unpredictable. That's why I say it's useless.
Again, from average numbers, you cannot draw any conclusion about what the maximum numbers would look like. You just can't, m'kay?
So, what does this tell you? The population of the game does have a relation with the PCU of the game. To view an accurate trend of the game population you need the PCU number, not the average CCU number. Hell, the average CCU number could go down but the PCU may stay the same, go down slightly but not as dramatic as the average or it may even go up (although unlikely).
Actually it really looks magically different from the start to later. For example people that take free to play the game right at the start or generally play in the starting time of a game more and than lesss on a more regular basis. Not to mention that the shards that are posted not really mention an exact time when tehy were taken.
Aside of that at elast Besaid feels way more filled than before the patch currently. But hey If I want to see things negative I see them negative no matter what common sense is used I find a theory that supports my view. Ok to be fair it works the otehr way around as well, but you just should belive me that tehre is right now more activity on Besaid than before the patch.
Well, I am an engineer too. Here's the thing, you sometimes could draw an estimate conclusion from the average number but in this case you can't.
Here is the reason. The daily data are a series of number represent the concurrent users online at that particular moment. Remember the nature of FFXIV population, it includes players from all over the world, which could be divided into 3 major groups, the NA group, the JP group and the EU group. The peak and valley of these 3 groups are at different times. So, to accurately portrait the population of FFXIV you have to run 3 different analysis for 3 different groups of people because the game CCU does actually peak 3 times. You can not take only 1 peak because the 3 groups of people are independent. The average number actually mixing these all up.
You see why I keep telling that the average numbers are useless? It does not represent the trend very well. While using common sense, I agree with you that the population of the game is declining but what I am saying is you cannot tell how dramatic the game population is falling.
You cannot tell if the slop of the average line in this case is similar to the slop of the max line because you have no data points to make a guess.
Right.....
Are you aware that the chart people tend to quote is this?
You should know that this chart is made by Japanese,according to Japan's peak time?(oh NA and EU drop even harder BTW)
Until the last patch you can tell how dramatically the game population is falling by having different char on different server,log in at peak time,record the number on players on current realm through the search party feature.You can also read the forums to know the situation,and you can tell the game population is falling like a rock when the developers remove the feature that let you know the total number of players on the realm,even Aion hasn't done that.
Off - Topic Oh BTW I know this guy.He's a member of http://www.gamevn.com/(and here's the username http://forum.gamevn.com/member.php?38230-Thachsanh) where he's also known as TuSuong(Self-wank).He is (in)famous for throughly researching then wanking and defending games he doesn't even (or has never ) actually play(ed).
O hope nobody get it wrong but sometiems this palce feels like a conevntion of statistic people where one after an other throws an shard or numbers at the otehr side.
Not to mention that we have this kind of topic several times before with the same numbers moveing. Consideirng the big argumentation about this I sort of udnerstand when MMORPGs in generally keep this numbers to their own.
Edit:
I mean we have now 13 pages over this thing and probably 2 or 3 other topics about this buried in the forum.
Since I mainly be around only in this forum area is this in other game forums around here that bad as well?
When this kind of information is avaliable it's used to either support or oppose X game. So yes, when statistical information like this made avaliable, or there is a way to collect the data, it is posted on the respective forum for that game.
What do you expect? We are a bunch of nerds.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
That is what I eman, the companies sort of know us that is why they not give out the numbers in the first way normally. But somehow it feels a bit childish. Special when both sides start to throw different calculations method at each other till one side gives up confused or annoyed.
Not to mention that I allow that much own critic to say that the own side someone stands for never is wrong the other just not udnerstands the argument. My only small hope is that we end up that deep in numbers that most of us end up with eyes rolling and say : 'Oh not an other thread about statistic charts'
Hmm aside of that are the last numbers from the 25th not very helpful, we all know that the trend in suers went down even square not denied it, but all numbers after the 25th are cuurrently mainly suggestions at best, special because of the last day before the patch because lot of people do not play on the day before a patch or normally are wise enough to take a day free.
Yeah I can see a decline in this graph, but you really should probably make this a power model. Those residuals look like they are in a pattern, and you can never get a proper outlook on a graph like that. Just put a log on both the x and y axes and you should get a better estimate of what the population looks like. But yeah, there is definitely a negative trend in this graph, which isn't surprising, it's an MMO, plus it was released incomplete. Not to say it won't be a great game come PS3 release, but atm it's just simply boring.
Which let me by the way hardly wonder how someone can take information from Sankaku Complex
serious I eman aside of all their dvertisment and attitude on the page the report about all the things changed by the update was only about removeing the player count.