If the game was exclusively played by US citizens or just people from NA in general then I would agree without question.
The fact is that players come from all sorts of different time zones, so "prime time" depends on exactly where a particular player lives in. It isn't 100% credible to use the NA time zone as a leading reference.
Except generally 'when the US players are playing' is often a good indication of max activity levels, particularly for western-style MMOs.
I mean, I invite you to find a time when more players are playing and announce those numbers.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Except generally 'when the US players are playing' is often a good indication of max activity levels, particularly for western-style MMOs.
I mean, I invite you to find a time when more players are playing and announce those numbers.
When I get the means to track the period of total gameplay time during which each individual player spends during US prime time, even if I were to agree to use the US time zone as the only reference, I'll let you know then, because that info would hold much more water than just a snapshot view of the total number of logged in players at only that specific moment.
"Max activity levels" would mean actual gameplay time involved, don't you agree?
My numbers show that we burn through over 3000 players a week and they are not sticking around. How have you disproved that? Is there a demonstrable increase in numbers of active players on the server, in the zones, making teams, and using chats? No there isn't there.
Just out of curiosity, what's the alpha level on this 3 data point correlation you're panicking about? Your numbers are ******** - they're numbers that lack a context and that have been given no serious scrutiny other than your own eyeballing.
324 +/- 60 - that's the 95% CI based on your whopping 3 data points, as far as "normal" population goes. That means that for us to say, with only a 5% chance of being TOTALLY WRONG (which, I might add, is the standard alpha for the social sciences) you'd have to show numbers under 264 or over 384 before we'd even consider the number to be atypical, and that assumes you were careful about taking the numbers from the same time of day, same day of the week.
What about treating them as a "trend"? We can look at those THREE data points in terms of correlation based on time... oh, damn, it fails to achieve statistical significance, no doubt because there are only THREE data points.
Come back with 30 data points, not 3... and make the measurement consistent in terms of the time of day, and the day of the week, and then we'll talk.
20 New Champions super groups have been created since August 1st.
Thats 20 times 498 players or 9,9960 new accounts players have signed up in the last 26 days.
New "accounts" or new characters? Are all the characters on an account forever locked into that default group, or is it each character is plunked into one? If its the latter, what is your magic eyeballing formula for determining how many of those characters were the same people creating new toons to try a new theme, or costume, or AT, or whatever, and how may are actual new players?
So what does this data prove? There's no money comining into this game from players,
there's no long term interest in this game for the majority players, and you are not getting all the crap you cry for because it doesn't pay the developers to make it. Many things people think are the solution to this game have already been demonstrated to be failures, both here and at CoX.
It "proves" nothing because you don't have any idea how to perform actual statistical analysis, nor on how to avoid blaring confounds beforehand. Everything you state in this paragraph is personal conjecture that is NOT supported by your numbers.
Deny it all you want, I'll just keep shoving it down your throats.
Go for it. You'll keep looking like a fool for doing so, though. If you seriously want to talk numbers I'd be happy to help you do actual statistical analysis, which is not what you're doing here.. you're just waving your hands around shouting "numbers! ipso facto I'm right!"... gotta learn to use the numbers properly before they can help you.
"numbers! ipso facto I'm right!"... gotta learn to use the numbers properly before they can help you.
Because for the most part, he is, and until Cryptic releases some numbers we can't do any better than the data he's using. If you don't like it, too bad, what logically follows is the most likely answer. And nearly everything he's said makes sense within the context of what we've seen. We have a revolving door playerbase.
I could nit pick about certain things, or the way they're presented, but the message is correct so I don't give a damn. At least SOMEONE around here is capable of doing SOME thinking.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
I currently have 30 days of data tracked several hours a day.
Its tedious to pull numbers from images, even if its a days worth of images.
So generally all I need do is eyeball the current number of players to find out why zone chat has been silent for four minutes, or where I should zone in to find a team, or if a ridiculously low number of players are playing the demanded new content.
I have two years watching the population trends, since it went F2P on Steam
and had 12,000 users over each 48 hours from Steam alone for weeks.
I saw it fall off the Top 100 chart in July 2012 at 547 total Steam players over 48 hours.
New "accounts" or new characters? Are all the characters on an account forever locked into that default group, or is it each character is plunked into one?
Half a page of acting like you know what you are talking about and you dont' even know the basics.
This is how it works, a new silver account is made, when the character is completed it is placed in the New Champions super group.
The second character on the account is not, and apparently if you pay money first for gold status you aren't placed in this group. Each group will fill with 498 players before another group is created.
There are currently 726 of these groups created since January 2012.
If its the latter, what is your magic eyeballing formula for determining how many of those characters were the same people creating new toons to try a new theme, or costume, or AT, or whatever, and how may are actual new players?
This is a real issue and it only makes the population count lookWORSE.
What percentage of 360000 accounts are dead accounts due to people making doubles and triples or 100 or 200 accounts like that guy that got banned two winter events ago? Whatever that number is in reality, we must remove from our known count of 'new players' and that only makes the game look more of failure, doesn't it? We are then attracting less players. than I'm showing with the numbers we can count, but we are still losing thousands of players no matter what percentage you come up with.
Zone population counts are everything.
How can you even conceive that "players available to other players in an online game" isn't a huge factor in retaining players and an even more important factor in keeping the game from shutting down?
Ask the City of Hero refugees, most of them are still in denial about it.
gotta learn to use the numbers properly before they can help you.
My numbers help me every day when I haven't subscribed and don't feel buyer's remorse for throwing money at an MMO with 150 people in the main zone for eight or ten hours over night. Or when I zone into an area and I don't run around for a half hour looking for bodies that aren't there to team. They help me not to get all upset that new content isn't pooped out of the gamehole on my face every week.
Because for the most part, he is, and until Cryptic releases some numbers we can't do any better than the data he's using. If you don't like it, too bad, what logically follows is the most likely answer. And nearly everything he's said makes sense within the context of what we've seen. We have a revolving door playerbase.
This is entirely false. While it's possible that the conclusion is correct, the numbers do not support it just because you eyeball them and feel they do - that's specifically what statistical analysis is about, and it's more than looking at two, three, or ten numbers and saying "a-yup, this one is smaller than that one, so it must be a trend". Lots of explanations make sense when applied in a post hoc fashion - that doesn't make them any more true.
What I don't like is people trying to use numbers to support their conclusions when they have no actual idea how to use those numbers. Without proper analysis (as in, formal analysis) they are totally meaningless, and worse, they are misleading as people think, when they see numbers, that the data is meaningful. Number are NOT inherently meaningful.
I could nit pick about certain things, or the way they're presented, but the message is correct so I don't give a damn. At least SOMEONE around here is capable of doing SOME thinking.
Thats just it - you don't know that "the message is correct", it just happens to match what you already think, so you don't ask questions. Understand this: I have no opinion on the conclusion other than that it is not supported by the reported data because the data lacks proper analysis.
In comparison, it does. Star Trek has a built-in franchise following, however, and STO just got a major expansion that was actually marketed a short while back.
So generally all I need do is eyeball the current number of players to find out why zone chat has been silent for four minutes, or where I should zone in to find a team, or if a ridiculously low number of players are playing the demanded new content.
There is an entire mathematical discipline dedicated to extracting information from datasets... but damn, it turns out there are tens of thousands of people who have been wasting their lives because YOU figured out how to just look at numbers and intuit the truth! That's peachy for you to feel like you "just know" what the answer is, but that is your subjective interpretation and it is unsupported in any objective sense by the numbers, as you seem to imagine, without objective analysis.
Half a page of acting like you know what you are talking about and you dont' even know the basics.
Actually, the question marks at the end of the quoted sentences would imply, to most, that I was asking questions because I'm specifically sure that I don't know the answers to those questions.
What I do know is statistics, and how badly numbers are bent over the couch by people who don't know how to work with them, especially on the internet. Again, I have no opinion on the truth of the conclusion, only on the fact that the numbers you keep spouting do not support your conclusion until they've been subjected to formal analysis. Until then, it's just hand-waving and, in this case, misdirection because you actually feel that the numbers support what you're saying just by throwing them around. THEY DON'T.
This is a real issue and it only makes the population count lookWORSE.
What percentage of 360000 accounts are dead accounts due to people making doubles and triples or 100 or 200 accounts like that guy that got banned two winter events ago? Whatever that number is in reality, we must remove from our known count of 'new players' and that only makes the game look more of failure, doesn't it?
Where's the dividing line between success and failure, exactly? It's all very well and good to say that the reported number of accounts is artificially high (though most services that report number of accounts report total, even if they haven't been used since moses hit puberty) but these numbers are again meaningless in a vacuum... failure as compared to what? You need to set a bar and say "look, this is failing to live up to <whatever>".
We are then attracting less players. than I'm showing with the numbers we can count, but we are still losing thousands of players no matter what percentage you come up with.
Well, I'm afraid your word isn't good enough for me. It sounds like it is good enough for people who already think the same things you do, which is swell... but I'm unwilling to form an opinion based on your ranting and hand-waving. You have no baseline, no analysis (and by that I mean formal analysis, again, not your personal "take" on things) and seem to think that stating your opinion forcefully makes it more true.
Zone population counts are everything.
How can you even conceive that "players available to other players in an online game" isn't a huge factor in retaining players and an even more important factor in keeping the game from shutting down?
You're thrashing a straw man there, buddy. Nobody said population isn't important, just that your numbers don't support the idea that there is a downward trend in population. Someone accurately pointed out that the population of any game fluctuates based on the time of day... it also fluctuates based on the day of the week. More people play at 6pm EST than do at 4am EST... More people play games on Saturday afternoons than play games on Tuesday afternoons. If you take your samples at random times on random days then you'll need a whole lot more of them to look for a long-term trend than you would if you made sure to take them at the same time, on the same days of the week, which would control for those differences.
My numbers help me every day when I haven't subscribed and don't feel buyer's remorse for throwing money at an MMO with 150 people in the main zone for eight or ten hours over night. Or when I zone into an area and I don't run around for a half hour looking for bodies that aren't there to team. They help me not to get all upset that new content isn't pooped out of the gamehole on my face every week.
Awesome.... its like how some people have Jesus to comfort them in their time of need! That said, both of those things are personal, not objective, facts. When you stop pretending your numbers have any meaning yet, I'll stop pointing out that they don't. Alternatively, we could actually drag the raw data out and see if we can perform formal analysis on it and give those numbers meaning. Your call.
I do, when there are numbers to be had. Currently there's just your say so which, by your admission, is just based on your guesstimation of statistical trends. That at a dollar get you a cheap cup of coffee.
You know what bugs me the MOST about CO???? The fact that one cannot play a villain, that's what! Will there EVER EVER be an option to play a mean villainess & make a super hero nemesis? EVER???
No it has never been shown that my data doesn't prove what I've been trying to show.
Link to the proof if you aren't just adding another lie to another thread.
My numbers show that we burn through over 3000 players a week and they are not sticking around. How have you disproved that? Is there a demonstrable increase in numbers of active players on the server, in the zones, making teams, and using chats? No there isn't there.
So where is your proof that my numbers aren't showing less active players playing than even a month ago? Do you even have any numbers from last month? I do.
352 Players a month ago
]
825PM Monday August 25 317 Players. Prime time last night.
20 New Champions super groups have been created since August 1st.
Thats 20 times 498 players or 9,9960 new accounts players have signed up in the last 26 days.
Where are they? Its 156 PM Server time 306 Players
Are they playing the "new content"? Lets look. 30 players all three missions.
So what does this data prove? There's no money comining into this game from players,
there's no long term interest in this game for the majority players, and you are not getting all the crap you cry for because it doesn't pay the developers to make it. Many things people think are the solution to this game have already been demonstrated to be failures, both here and at CoX.
Deny it all you want, I'll just keep shoving it down your throats.
Even if you still assume a full, 100 body instance being hidden, that's still only 100 higher at absolute best. When you consider other games operate with a "healthy" 1000+ playerbase we're lucky if we're looking at half of that. Which is still to say absolutely nothing of third party games that sustain 10K+ on Steamstats alone, and VALVE's own titles which can break the 100K mark. All this is forgetting that you can usually see how many instances there actually are because of people going in and out of alerts constantly.
People saying his stats are flawed are too stupid to see that how accurate the numbers are is completely irrelevant when things are so bad that the margin of error is absolutely gigantic. He could be wrong by a full 500 active players at any given time and we'd still be looking pretty bad.
And yet again, all THIS is forgetting that, to be quite blunt, all it takes is a pair of eyes and some time in game to see what's going on. You'll see the same old handful of names come and go constantly, but the bulk of users you see in game you might see... Maybe a dozen times, and then never again. On top of all this, the model that they're using to develop the game almost seems purposefully designed to milk such a revolving door playerbase... Even if it's horribly designed, it's still pretty obvious what they're going for with it.
Fact is, if he was wrong about the game's abysmal population and inability to retain the majority of players who stumble upon it, we'd be in a completely different boat right now. We wouldn't be having this discussion, at all. This thread probably wouldn't be a thing. You can piss over how his numbers are wrong all you want, it doesn't change the reality of the situation CO is in.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
.People saying his stats are flawed are too stupid to see that how accurate the numbers are is completely irrelevant when things are so bad that the margin of error is absolutely gigantic. He could be wrong by a full 500 active players at any given time and we'd still be looking pretty bad.
Ah yes, good to see ol' Xao back in form writing off people with opinions that he disagrees with as being stupid! I was wondering when you were going to break after that short promising show of civility upon your return to the forums.
Those of us who are against nextname's numbers aren't arguing against the fact the game isn't in great shape. Hello strawman! We're arguing against his bogus analysis that he tries to sell as proof of how exactly bad that shape is.
Even if you still assume a full, 100 body instance being hidden, that's still only 100 higher at absolute best. When you consider other games operate with a healthy 1000+ playerbase we're lucky if we're looking at half of that. Which is still to say absolutely nothing of third party games that sustain 10K+ on Steamstats alone, and VALVE's own titles which can break the 100K mark. All this is forgetting that you can usually see how many instances there actually are because of people going in and out of alerts constantly.
People saying his stats are flawed are too stupid to see that how accurate the numbers are is completely irrelevant when things are so bad that the margin of error is absolutely gigantic. He could be wrong by a full 500 active players at any given time and we'd still be looking pretty bad.
And yet again, all THIS is forgetting that, to be quite blunt, all it takes is a pair of eyes and some time in game to see what's going on. You'll see the same old handful of names come and go constantly, but the bulk of users you see in game you might see... Maybe a dozen times, and then never again. On top of all this, the model that they're using to develop the game almost seems purposefully designed to milk such a revolving door playerbase... Even if it's horribly designed, it's still pretty obvious what they're going for with it.
Fact is, if he was wrong about the game's abysmal population and inability to retain the majority of players who stumble upon it, we'd be in a completely different boat right now. We wouldn't be having this discussion, at all. This thread probably wouldn't be a thing. You can piss over how his numbers are wrong all you want, it doesn't change the reality of the situation CO is in.
This is patently false no matter how you spin it.
Infrequently eyeballing zone populations every now and then has never been, and never will be, an accurate way to measure this game's overall player population. Next's data is inconclusive, plain and simple. inb4 xao spouts off with more ad hominem because of his inability to argue/debate without calling the other party stupid
In comparison, it does. Star Trek has a built-in franchise following, however, and STO just got a major expansion that was actually marketed a short while back.
'In comparison.' How else would you be measuring? And it's not just STO, though it's harder to get good numbers out of GW2 and Secret World and countless other games.
If you don't want to COMPARE, how about 'clearly 400 isn't a great population or they'd be spending more money on the game.' Or crowing about their numbers or...
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Me? Civil? Hah. Not on these boards, anyway. Not when people throw around logically broken internet buzzwords and backpedal so hard they could climb Niagara Falls in reverse the moment they're exposed.
People here have apparently permanently jabbed themselves blind, or at least half blind, and I really don't see a reason to be "nice" to people like that. At least the community of the OTHER "dying" game I'm part of has no illusions or reservations about the way things really are, and I'm nicer to them despite the whole lot of them being complete jerkholes just because of this.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Me? Civil? Hah. Not on these boards, anyway. Not when people throw around logically broken internet buzzwords and backpedal so hard they could climb Niagara Falls in reverse the moment they're exposed.
I back pedaled so hard once I ended up in 1955.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Infrequently eyeballing zone populations every now and then has never been, and never will be, an accurate way to measure this game's overall player population. Next's data is inconclusive, plain and simple.
How much accuracy do you need? They're decent ballpark figures, particularly when you compare to similar games (Neverwinter, STO).
And wait... is anyone seriously claiming that CO _doesn't_ have low population and difficulty retaining any players?
Or is this one of those handwavey 'I'm not saying you're WRONG but these numbers, tut-tut...'
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Infrequently eyeballing zone populations every now and then has never been, and never will be, an accurate way to measure this game's overall player population. Next's data is inconclusive, plain and simple. inb4 xao spouts off with more ad hominem because of his inability to argue/debate without calling the other party stupid
But it doesn't matter if the data is inaccurate. Using inaccurate data to back up someone's claim of facts, with that inaccurate data coinciding with whatever it is that claim is trying to prove, justifies the use of inaccurate data in general!
That is, if you believe in using somebody's fabulous logic. :rolleyes:
And wait... is anyone seriously claiming that CO _doesn't_ have low population and difficulty retaining any players?
We're not claiming that the game doesn't have a low population and has player retention problems. That's a strawman that someone is using. We're focusing on a particular faulty method of discerning exactly how low the population is statistically.
How much accuracy do you need? They're decent ballpark figures, particularly when you compare to similar games (Neverwinter, STO).
And wait... is anyone seriously claiming that CO _doesn't_ have low population and difficulty retaining any players?
Or is this one of those handwavey 'I'm not saying you're WRONG but these numbers, tut-tut...'
Something more accurate than what infrequent one-off snapshots can provide. A couple of years ago people would be laughed off the forum for presenting stuff like this as infallible and concrete proof of their claims. It's just about as bad as presenting stats from Steam or Xfire or any other third party application as similar proof of your claims.
You need to re-read this thread if you feel it necessary to ask this.
People saying his stats are flawed are too stupid to see that how accurate the numbers are is completely irrelevant when things are so bad that the margin of error is absolutely gigantic. He could be wrong by a full 500 active players at any given time and we'd still be looking pretty bad.
No, people who are saying his numbers are being used incorrectly to support a premise that they simply do not support. They're numbers, not a statistic - statistics are derived from the data, and he's just presenting raw data out of context and claiming it supports the idea that there is a drastic downward trend in use. The numbers he gives do not support that claim. Full stop.
"How bad things are" is subjective. How many players is this game "supposed" to have exactly? MMOs are not all serious comparable to each other - the required level of use will vary dramatically. WOW has many more users than any other MMO, even now... but does that mean everything else is "failing"? What's the "acceptable normal" level for online users in Champions Online that it is currently failing to meet? Or is it simply the case that you feel you'll know it when you see it, but despite being unable to name it, you know it ain't that?
'In comparison.' How else would you be measuring? And it's not just STO, though it's harder to get good numbers out of GW2 and Secret World and countless other games.
Sorry if I wasn't clear there - my point is that STO and CO are poor comparisons unless you, like xao, think all MMOs are on the same field in which case all MMOs except WOW are "failing". I doubt you believe the latter assertion, so you need to decide what you can compare the current numbers to in order to make a serious observation about the state of THIS game. The most rational thing to do would be to compare it to itself over time, and say "the game is showing a significant downward trend in use" or "the game is relatively stable at 400 users during peak hours in the USA" or whatever. Currently there is no baseline offered, and the numbers being thrown around have no meaning.
What were CO's numbers this time last year? What were STO's numbers this time last year? STO got a major expansion between now and then... are the numbers its showing stable, or are they still benefiting from the numbers boost you see when an expansion comes out and dormant users come back to play new content? Do you know the answers to these questions? I sure don't.... the difference is that I understand that I don't, and that without proper context numbers have no meaning.
Or is this one of those handwavey 'I'm not saying you're WRONG but these numbers, tut-tut...'
You may want to rethink your position there, champ. That you're not comfortable with "I don't know" doesn't actually force people to take one of two positions on the matter. We're saying "we're not saying the conclusion is wrong, we're saying the conclusion is unsupported and is no better than flipping a coin until it has objective support". I don't know the answer to this question but neither do you - with the big difference being that I know I don't know.
That's not handwaving, that's rationality. Try it sometime - I think you'll like it.
That 'it's not fair to compare to WoW' doesn't mean it's not fair to compare to any other game, that's a bad argument for someone so eager to slap down the 'not rational' flag.
CO doesn't compete with WoW. It DOES compete with most of the other MMOs for players' money and time.
Comparing to ITSELF, we have a game that hasn't been worth a big investment for some reason. The big reason is likely to be 'lack of income.'
If you only look at 'number of MC instances' and some thought, you can draw rough conclusions -- that before On Alert numbers were abysmal, that they took some degree of jump after On Alert dropped, and that population has cooled off since.
Now, it's hard to compare MC pre-alert to post-alert numbers, because of a lot of design changes: people are now often in alerts+, people are less likely to be running missions in other zones-, 6-15 is now in Westside rather than Desert/Canada+, and so on.
Yeah, claiming absolute concrete numbers is silly. That doesn't mean these numbers say nothing.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
If you actually want to communicate, drop attitude. It makes you look like a XBOX Live kid.
You're seriously comparing a single use of "Champ" to being a bad-mannered kid with an attitude problem on Xbox live constantly shouting all manner of explicit insults over voice chat?
You seriously drew 'you said champ once' as my point?
Yes, I realize that I avoided addressing the rest of your points, because all you're doing is repeating arguments that have already been addressed. Eyeballing the number of MC instances at any one time does not determine exactly how the population is fairing, due to a number of factors like different gameplay times and different time zones, and the fact that full instances do not show up on the instance window like how Brou has effectively pointed out.
That 'it's not fair to compare to WoW' doesn't mean it's not fair to compare to any other game, that's a bad argument for someone so eager to slap down the 'not rational' flag.
Ok, so which game is it "fair to compare" it to? I listed off reasons why STO would be a poor choice, especially considering the differences in the brand and recent histories. Pray tell, which game is an appropriate measuring stick?
If you only look at 'number of MC instances' and some thought, you can draw rough conclusions -- that before On Alert numbers were abysmal, that they took some degree of jump after On Alert dropped, and that population has cooled off since.
Oops, there you go again, trying to assert that eyeballing is a valid form of analysis. I'm glad that you find that kind of thing satisfying, but there's nothing objective about it... which means it has no value to anyone but you. There are people who DONT think the game is in bad shape... which opinion should I, as someone who has no firm opinion on the "shape" of the game, take more seriously? Neither side is presenting anything but shouting and handwaving in support of their opinion... you just seem to think that jotting down numbers on the page makes for support... and it quite frankly does not.
Now, it's hard to compare MC pre-alert to post-alert numbers, because of a lot of design changes: people are now often in alerts+, people are less likely to be running missions in other zones-, 6-15 is now in Westside rather than Desert/Canada+, and so on.
See, now we're getting somewhere - you've identified inherent flaws in using MC numbers to estimate population between pre-Alert and current games. That suggests that if we want to compare CO numbers using MC population, we should probably stick to post-Alert numbers.
Yeah, claiming absolute concrete numbers is silly. That doesn't mean these numbers say nothing.
It does mean they do say nothing, currently, actually. They are numbers without context. We could certainly try to give them context if people were interested in doing it, but so far its just a handful of people yelling "stop questioning our conclusions and think what we think!!!!!".
If you actually want to communicate, drop attitude. It makes you look like a XBOX Live kid.
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them" - Thomas Jefferson
Your position on the numbers makes you look like you dropped out of school in grade 8. If you don't want to communicate that'd fine: so far you've had nothing useful to provide, for all the reasons I've stated. You think something... that's swell... you can't support it in any objective fashion... and that's swell too, so long as you don't expect what you think to have any meaning to anyone else who doesn't already think the same thing.
Zahinder, stop feeding them, please. They've got nothing and as such no discussion with them will turn up anything positive. This thread ran its course about the point when nextnametaken originally dropped those numbers, anyway, as at that point pretty much everything that needed to be said on the thread topic had been said.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Zahinder, stop feeding them, please. They've got nothing and as such no discussion with them will turn up anything positive. This thread ran its course about the point when nextnametaken originally dropped those numbers, anyway, as at that point pretty much everything that needed to be said on the thread topic had been said.
Hey at least we're not insulting the intelligence of others by calling them stupid.
That's you by the way, and you have the audacity to preach about positive results in the discussion.
Zahinder, stop feeding them, please. They've got nothing and as such no discussion with them will turn up anything positive. This thread ran its course about the point when nextnametaken originally dropped those numbers, anyway, as at that point pretty much everything that needed to be said on the thread topic had been said.
Oh look, once again "troll" is defined as "people who say things I don't like"! I also notice you feel the thread ran its course once someone said something you agreed with. I assume that's how you think all threads should end - with confirmation of your existing beliefs.
Maybe you can get the moderators to roll back the thread to a point before people muddied the clear waters of agreement with questions of validity?
Bickering over statistical methods is irrelevant when Jack Emmert gets the last word:
Jack and The Architect seem to have the same attitude about growth, though, which is unfortunate for us.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Yes, I realize that I avoided addressing the rest of your points, because all you're doing is repeating arguments that have already been addressed. Eyeballing the number of MC instances at any one time does not determine exactly how the population is fairing, due to a number of factors like different gameplay times and different time zones, and the fact that full instances do not show up on the instance window like how Brou has effectively pointed out.
Full instances do not appear in the window. Correct. An instance gets full when it reaches 100 players (and then creates another one). The instance of highest number (lets say, Millenium City 5) usually has the players that couldnt fit on the previous ones when they logged on. This means that there is not a Millenium City 6 since 5 isnt crowded enough to create it. Notice how instance 5 has less players when compared to the previous ones (instance 5, in that screenshot, had just 14 players). Unless it had 100 players (creating MC 6) and mysteriously dropped to 14 players and MC 6 got 100 players enough to disappear from the list - which is extremely unlikely - that is the full list of all instances.
So yes, its true that full instances do not appear, but that isnt evidence that there are invisible instances in the list. Oh, and
due to a number of factors like different gameplay times and different time zones
This argument will only stand if we get higher number of instances in different times. You're implying that we only get 5 instances now, but in some other mysterious hour we actually get many more. But its false - i have played the game in several other times, from 3 am to afternoon to night to any other time you think, and we never make it over 5. Never.
Unless there is some secret Champions peak time during 5 am (which you would need to prove to us with screenshots), that argument is also false. You are wrong until you prove counter evidence.
Boy, i sure remember Haloween Bloodmoon two years ago with 17 instances... What happened to the game i love...?
This argument will only stand if we get higher number of instances in different times. You're implying that we only get 5 instances now, but in some other mysterious hour we actually get many more. But its false - i have played the game in several other times, from 3 am to afternoon to night to any other time you think, and we never make it over 5. Never.
When I mentioned different gameplay times and different time zones, I was refering to the player population in general and not instances. In an earlier post I talked about how tracking of actual gameplay periods that can differ from player to player would make for a better outlook of how the overall active population is like.
Even if there are only a total of 5-6 MC instances at any one time and assuming that there is a maximum of 1-2 full instances at any one time, there is still no solid indication of just how many active players are moving from one instance to another non-MC one and also how many players are logging in and out at the time.
Even if there are only a total of 5-6 MC instances at any one time and assuming that there is a maximum of 1-2 full instances at any one time, there is still no solid indication of just how many active players are moving from one instance to another non-MC one and also how many players are logging in and out at the time.
Yeah, sure, there are still people in instances and hideouts (hideouts usually go up to 7 or 8 instances) and Caprice etc... Still, i think in total those other players are somewhat of a negligible number. To be honest, i'd say there are 70 to 80 players that arent in the main MC instances. Even if there were 100, or 200...
... its still an unsettlingly low number, isnt it? To think that the entire population of the game right now doesnt even reach 1000 if you sum up all instances. It makes me sad, and worried.
Yeah, sure, there are still people in instances and hideouts (hideouts usually go up to 7 or 8 instances) and Caprice etc... Still, i think in total those other players are somewhat of a negligible number. To be honest, i'd say there are 70 to 80 players that arent in the main MC instances. Even if there were 100, or 200...
... its still an unsettlingly low number, isnt it? To think that the entire population of the game right now doesnt even reach 1000 if you sum up all instances. It makes me sad, and worried.
You're ignoring the fact that people log in and out at different times due to different gameplay times across different time zones.
Since there's isn't a way for any of us to do such tracking across all currently active accounts that haven't been inactive for a long period of time, it's not possible to determine just how huge the "entire" population is.
You're ignoring the fact that people log in and out at different times due to different gameplay times across different time zones.
Since there's isn't a way for any of us to do such tracking across all currently active accounts that haven't been inactive for a long period of time, it's not possible to determine just how huge the "entire" population is.
Oh no, i meant "current, logged population". Total population is certainly MUCH MUCH higher - people that quit the game for a week, or people that are traveling, etc etc... Oh god, this has all been a huge misunderstanding. You thought i was talking about total game population, including those who arent logged? NOOO! I was talking about how many players we have literally RIGHT NOW, like, the peak of logged players. Its impossible to determine how many players we have, logged and not.
Still, for peak time its kinda low. But Champs has never been a mainstream game.
Ok, so which game is it "fair to compare" it to? I listed off reasons why STO would be a poor choice, especially considering the differences in the brand and recent histories. Pray tell, which game is an appropriate measuring stick?
Might I suggest DCUO since that is CO's direct competitor? Although, I hear that that game isn't doing so well either apparently. At least that means the numbers will be small enough for Nextname and his fanboys to more easily comprehend.
So yes, its true that full instances do not appear, but that isnt evidence that there are invisible instances in the list.
It is, however, evidence that we do not have sufficient data to reach a meaningful conclusion.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
It is, however, evidence that we do not have sufficient data to reach a meaningful conclusion.
Reaching meaningful conclusions with limited information isn't unusual. It depends on how the numbers are limited.
Which is one reason I compared STO instances to CO. The factors that hide logged players apply to STO (if anything, even MORESO). The factors that limit logged players in CO now applied a month ago, and earlier.
It's not concrete, but it's a piece of information. And it's consistent with a general picture of a game that's not doing well, and hasn't been for some time.
The only contraindications are 'the game hasn't been closed yet.' Which ... is rather limited.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
It is, however, evidence that we do not have sufficient data to reach a meaningful conclusion.
... Extrapolating tiny pieces of missing data points does not take away from the conclusion.. Champions Online has a low population at any given time and substantially less than it used to have and the population has not grown but shrunk.
All of this can be concluded with the evidence at hand. The fact that Cryptic Studios does not release actual game meta-data (even to its shareholders?!) does not mean the other measurements that have all supported this conclusion are all "irrelevant" because the full picture isn't clear. ESPECIALLY when measuring VOLUME not composition.
Comments
Except generally 'when the US players are playing' is often a good indication of max activity levels, particularly for western-style MMOs.
I mean, I invite you to find a time when more players are playing and announce those numbers.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
When I get the means to track the period of total gameplay time during which each individual player spends during US prime time, even if I were to agree to use the US time zone as the only reference, I'll let you know then, because that info would hold much more water than just a snapshot view of the total number of logged in players at only that specific moment.
"Max activity levels" would mean actual gameplay time involved, don't you agree?
324 +/- 60 - that's the 95% CI based on your whopping 3 data points, as far as "normal" population goes. That means that for us to say, with only a 5% chance of being TOTALLY WRONG (which, I might add, is the standard alpha for the social sciences) you'd have to show numbers under 264 or over 384 before we'd even consider the number to be atypical, and that assumes you were careful about taking the numbers from the same time of day, same day of the week.
What about treating them as a "trend"? We can look at those THREE data points in terms of correlation based on time... oh, damn, it fails to achieve statistical significance, no doubt because there are only THREE data points.
Come back with 30 data points, not 3... and make the measurement consistent in terms of the time of day, and the day of the week, and then we'll talk.
New "accounts" or new characters? Are all the characters on an account forever locked into that default group, or is it each character is plunked into one? If its the latter, what is your magic eyeballing formula for determining how many of those characters were the same people creating new toons to try a new theme, or costume, or AT, or whatever, and how may are actual new players?
It "proves" nothing because you don't have any idea how to perform actual statistical analysis, nor on how to avoid blaring confounds beforehand. Everything you state in this paragraph is personal conjecture that is NOT supported by your numbers.
Go for it. You'll keep looking like a fool for doing so, though. If you seriously want to talk numbers I'd be happy to help you do actual statistical analysis, which is not what you're doing here.. you're just waving your hands around shouting "numbers! ipso facto I'm right!"... gotta learn to use the numbers properly before they can help you.
Because for the most part, he is, and until Cryptic releases some numbers we can't do any better than the data he's using. If you don't like it, too bad, what logically follows is the most likely answer. And nearly everything he's said makes sense within the context of what we've seen. We have a revolving door playerbase.
I could nit pick about certain things, or the way they're presented, but the message is correct so I don't give a damn. At least SOMEONE around here is capable of doing SOME thinking.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Sirius Sector: 225
Sol system: 200
ESD: 875
Qo'nos: 185
Beta Ursae sector: 150
Tau Dewa: 150
That's not counting a vast number of ground instances, strike forces, mission instances, and so on.
Total of around 1785.
400 SUCKS.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Its tedious to pull numbers from images, even if its a days worth of images.
So generally all I need do is eyeball the current number of players to find out why zone chat has been silent for four minutes, or where I should zone in to find a team, or if a ridiculously low number of players are playing the demanded new content.
I have two years watching the population trends, since it went F2P on Steam
and had 12,000 users over each 48 hours from Steam alone for weeks.
I saw it fall off the Top 100 chart in July 2012 at 547 total Steam players over 48 hours.
Half a page of acting like you know what you are talking about and you dont' even know the basics.
This is how it works, a new silver account is made, when the character is completed it is placed in the
New Champions super group.
The second character on the account is not, and apparently if you pay money first for gold status you aren't placed in this group. Each group will fill with 498 players before another group is created.
There are currently 726 of these groups created since January 2012.
This is a real issue and it only makes the population count lookWORSE.
What percentage of 360000 accounts are dead accounts due to people making doubles and triples or 100 or 200 accounts like that guy that got banned two winter events ago? Whatever that number is in reality, we must remove from our known count of 'new players' and that only makes the game look more of failure, doesn't it?
We are then attracting less players. than I'm showing with the numbers we can count, but we are still losing thousands of players no matter what percentage you come up with.
Zone population counts are everything.
How can you even conceive that "players available to other players in an online game" isn't a huge factor in retaining players and an even more important factor in keeping the game from shutting down?
Ask the City of Hero refugees, most of them are still in denial about it.
My numbers help me every day when I haven't subscribed and don't feel buyer's remorse for throwing money at an MMO with 150 people in the main zone for eight or ten hours over night. Or when I zone into an area and I don't run around for a half hour looking for bodies that aren't there to team. They help me not to get all upset that new content isn't pooped out of the gamehole on my face every week.
Have fun with your numbers.
What I don't like is people trying to use numbers to support their conclusions when they have no actual idea how to use those numbers. Without proper analysis (as in, formal analysis) they are totally meaningless, and worse, they are misleading as people think, when they see numbers, that the data is meaningful. Number are NOT inherently meaningful.
Thats just it - you don't know that "the message is correct", it just happens to match what you already think, so you don't ask questions. Understand this: I have no opinion on the conclusion other than that it is not supported by the reported data because the data lacks proper analysis.
In comparison, it does. Star Trek has a built-in franchise following, however, and STO just got a major expansion that was actually marketed a short while back.
There is an entire mathematical discipline dedicated to extracting information from datasets... but damn, it turns out there are tens of thousands of people who have been wasting their lives because YOU figured out how to just look at numbers and intuit the truth! That's peachy for you to feel like you "just know" what the answer is, but that is your subjective interpretation and it is unsupported in any objective sense by the numbers, as you seem to imagine, without objective analysis.
Actually, the question marks at the end of the quoted sentences would imply, to most, that I was asking questions because I'm specifically sure that I don't know the answers to those questions.
What I do know is statistics, and how badly numbers are bent over the couch by people who don't know how to work with them, especially on the internet. Again, I have no opinion on the truth of the conclusion, only on the fact that the numbers you keep spouting do not support your conclusion until they've been subjected to formal analysis. Until then, it's just hand-waving and, in this case, misdirection because you actually feel that the numbers support what you're saying just by throwing them around. THEY DON'T.
Where's the dividing line between success and failure, exactly? It's all very well and good to say that the reported number of accounts is artificially high (though most services that report number of accounts report total, even if they haven't been used since moses hit puberty) but these numbers are again meaningless in a vacuum... failure as compared to what? You need to set a bar and say "look, this is failing to live up to <whatever>".
Well, I'm afraid your word isn't good enough for me. It sounds like it is good enough for people who already think the same things you do, which is swell... but I'm unwilling to form an opinion based on your ranting and hand-waving. You have no baseline, no analysis (and by that I mean formal analysis, again, not your personal "take" on things) and seem to think that stating your opinion forcefully makes it more true.
You're thrashing a straw man there, buddy. Nobody said population isn't important, just that your numbers don't support the idea that there is a downward trend in population. Someone accurately pointed out that the population of any game fluctuates based on the time of day... it also fluctuates based on the day of the week. More people play at 6pm EST than do at 4am EST... More people play games on Saturday afternoons than play games on Tuesday afternoons. If you take your samples at random times on random days then you'll need a whole lot more of them to look for a long-term trend than you would if you made sure to take them at the same time, on the same days of the week, which would control for those differences.
Awesome.... its like how some people have Jesus to comfort them in their time of need! That said, both of those things are personal, not objective, facts. When you stop pretending your numbers have any meaning yet, I'll stop pointing out that they don't. Alternatively, we could actually drag the raw data out and see if we can perform formal analysis on it and give those numbers meaning. Your call.
I do, when there are numbers to be had. Currently there's just your say so which, by your admission, is just based on your guesstimation of statistical trends. That at a dollar get you a cheap cup of coffee.
Full instances do not appear on that window.
Perhaps the strongest reason why nextname's "data" is full of crap.
As a WoW troll I resemble that remark! No this is how a real WoW troll says it.
CN I HZ UR STFF!
I %$?& you not thats how they are saying it there these days :I
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Irrelevant to the greater message.
Even if you still assume a full, 100 body instance being hidden, that's still only 100 higher at absolute best. When you consider other games operate with a "healthy" 1000+ playerbase we're lucky if we're looking at half of that. Which is still to say absolutely nothing of third party games that sustain 10K+ on Steamstats alone, and VALVE's own titles which can break the 100K mark. All this is forgetting that you can usually see how many instances there actually are because of people going in and out of alerts constantly.
People saying his stats are flawed are too stupid to see that how accurate the numbers are is completely irrelevant when things are so bad that the margin of error is absolutely gigantic. He could be wrong by a full 500 active players at any given time and we'd still be looking pretty bad.
And yet again, all THIS is forgetting that, to be quite blunt, all it takes is a pair of eyes and some time in game to see what's going on. You'll see the same old handful of names come and go constantly, but the bulk of users you see in game you might see... Maybe a dozen times, and then never again. On top of all this, the model that they're using to develop the game almost seems purposefully designed to milk such a revolving door playerbase... Even if it's horribly designed, it's still pretty obvious what they're going for with it.
Fact is, if he was wrong about the game's abysmal population and inability to retain the majority of players who stumble upon it, we'd be in a completely different boat right now. We wouldn't be having this discussion, at all. This thread probably wouldn't be a thing. You can piss over how his numbers are wrong all you want, it doesn't change the reality of the situation CO is in.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Ah yes, good to see ol' Xao back in form writing off people with opinions that he disagrees with as being stupid! I was wondering when you were going to break after that short promising show of civility upon your return to the forums.
Those of us who are against nextname's numbers aren't arguing against the fact the game isn't in great shape. Hello strawman! We're arguing against his bogus analysis that he tries to sell as proof of how exactly bad that shape is.
This is patently false no matter how you spin it.
Infrequently eyeballing zone populations every now and then has never been, and never will be, an accurate way to measure this game's overall player population. Next's data is inconclusive, plain and simple. inb4 xao spouts off with more ad hominem because of his inability to argue/debate without calling the other party stupid
'In comparison.' How else would you be measuring? And it's not just STO, though it's harder to get good numbers out of GW2 and Secret World and countless other games.
If you don't want to COMPARE, how about 'clearly 400 isn't a great population or they'd be spending more money on the game.' Or crowing about their numbers or...
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
People here have apparently permanently jabbed themselves blind, or at least half blind, and I really don't see a reason to be "nice" to people like that. At least the community of the OTHER "dying" game I'm part of has no illusions or reservations about the way things really are, and I'm nicer to them despite the whole lot of them being complete jerkholes just because of this.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
I back pedaled so hard once I ended up in 1955.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
That's what you get for equipping a flux capacitor to your bike.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
How much accuracy do you need? They're decent ballpark figures, particularly when you compare to similar games (Neverwinter, STO).
And wait... is anyone seriously claiming that CO _doesn't_ have low population and difficulty retaining any players?
Or is this one of those handwavey 'I'm not saying you're WRONG but these numbers, tut-tut...'
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
But it doesn't matter if the data is inaccurate. Using inaccurate data to back up someone's claim of facts, with that inaccurate data coinciding with whatever it is that claim is trying to prove, justifies the use of inaccurate data in general!
That is, if you believe in using somebody's fabulous logic. :rolleyes:
We're not claiming that the game doesn't have a low population and has player retention problems. That's a strawman that someone is using. We're focusing on a particular faulty method of discerning exactly how low the population is statistically.
HUZZAH Win.
Forum argument over.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Dingdingdingdingdingding.
We have a winner Johnny. Show him what he's won!
A BRAND NEW...
...Nothing. Being right doesn't necessarily get you anything, unfortunately. Well, sometimes it gets you hate... I guess that's something?
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Something more accurate than what infrequent one-off snapshots can provide. A couple of years ago people would be laughed off the forum for presenting stuff like this as infallible and concrete proof of their claims. It's just about as bad as presenting stats from Steam or Xfire or any other third party application as similar proof of your claims.
You need to re-read this thread if you feel it necessary to ask this.
"How bad things are" is subjective. How many players is this game "supposed" to have exactly? MMOs are not all serious comparable to each other - the required level of use will vary dramatically. WOW has many more users than any other MMO, even now... but does that mean everything else is "failing"? What's the "acceptable normal" level for online users in Champions Online that it is currently failing to meet? Or is it simply the case that you feel you'll know it when you see it, but despite being unable to name it, you know it ain't that?
Ah, the credo of every armchair expert on every topic ever! I bet you have some strong opinions on Obama, too, right?
Sorry if I wasn't clear there - my point is that STO and CO are poor comparisons unless you, like xao, think all MMOs are on the same field in which case all MMOs except WOW are "failing". I doubt you believe the latter assertion, so you need to decide what you can compare the current numbers to in order to make a serious observation about the state of THIS game. The most rational thing to do would be to compare it to itself over time, and say "the game is showing a significant downward trend in use" or "the game is relatively stable at 400 users during peak hours in the USA" or whatever. Currently there is no baseline offered, and the numbers being thrown around have no meaning.
What were CO's numbers this time last year? What were STO's numbers this time last year? STO got a major expansion between now and then... are the numbers its showing stable, or are they still benefiting from the numbers boost you see when an expansion comes out and dormant users come back to play new content? Do you know the answers to these questions? I sure don't.... the difference is that I understand that I don't, and that without proper context numbers have no meaning.
You may want to rethink your position there, champ. That you're not comfortable with "I don't know" doesn't actually force people to take one of two positions on the matter. We're saying "we're not saying the conclusion is wrong, we're saying the conclusion is unsupported and is no better than flipping a coin until it has objective support". I don't know the answer to this question but neither do you - with the big difference being that I know I don't know.
That's not handwaving, that's rationality. Try it sometime - I think you'll like it.
CO doesn't compete with WoW. It DOES compete with most of the other MMOs for players' money and time.
Comparing to ITSELF, we have a game that hasn't been worth a big investment for some reason. The big reason is likely to be 'lack of income.'
If you only look at 'number of MC instances' and some thought, you can draw rough conclusions -- that before On Alert numbers were abysmal, that they took some degree of jump after On Alert dropped, and that population has cooled off since.
Now, it's hard to compare MC pre-alert to post-alert numbers, because of a lot of design changes: people are now often in alerts+, people are less likely to be running missions in other zones-, 6-15 is now in Westside rather than Desert/Canada+, and so on.
Yeah, claiming absolute concrete numbers is silly. That doesn't mean these numbers say nothing.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
If you actually want to communicate, drop attitude. It makes you look like a XBOX Live kid.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
You're seriously comparing a single use of "Champ" to being a bad-mannered kid with an attitude problem on Xbox live constantly shouting all manner of explicit insults over voice chat?
Seriously?
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Yes, I realize that I avoided addressing the rest of your points, because all you're doing is repeating arguments that have already been addressed. Eyeballing the number of MC instances at any one time does not determine exactly how the population is fairing, due to a number of factors like different gameplay times and different time zones, and the fact that full instances do not show up on the instance window like how Brou has effectively pointed out.
Oops, there you go again, trying to assert that eyeballing is a valid form of analysis. I'm glad that you find that kind of thing satisfying, but there's nothing objective about it... which means it has no value to anyone but you. There are people who DONT think the game is in bad shape... which opinion should I, as someone who has no firm opinion on the "shape" of the game, take more seriously? Neither side is presenting anything but shouting and handwaving in support of their opinion... you just seem to think that jotting down numbers on the page makes for support... and it quite frankly does not.
See, now we're getting somewhere - you've identified inherent flaws in using MC numbers to estimate population between pre-Alert and current games. That suggests that if we want to compare CO numbers using MC population, we should probably stick to post-Alert numbers.
It does mean they do say nothing, currently, actually. They are numbers without context. We could certainly try to give them context if people were interested in doing it, but so far its just a handful of people yelling "stop questioning our conclusions and think what we think!!!!!".
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them" - Thomas Jefferson
Your position on the numbers makes you look like you dropped out of school in grade 8. If you don't want to communicate that'd fine: so far you've had nothing useful to provide, for all the reasons I've stated. You think something... that's swell... you can't support it in any objective fashion... and that's swell too, so long as you don't expect what you think to have any meaning to anyone else who doesn't already think the same thing.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Hey at least we're not insulting the intelligence of others by calling them stupid.
That's you by the way, and you have the audacity to preach about positive results in the discussion.
inb4 egoistical retort
Maybe you can get the moderators to roll back the thread to a point before people muddied the clear waters of agreement with questions of validity?
Jack and The Architect seem to have the same attitude about growth, though, which is unfortunate for us.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Full instances do not appear in the window. Correct. An instance gets full when it reaches 100 players (and then creates another one). The instance of highest number (lets say, Millenium City 5) usually has the players that couldnt fit on the previous ones when they logged on. This means that there is not a Millenium City 6 since 5 isnt crowded enough to create it. Notice how instance 5 has less players when compared to the previous ones (instance 5, in that screenshot, had just 14 players). Unless it had 100 players (creating MC 6) and mysteriously dropped to 14 players and MC 6 got 100 players enough to disappear from the list - which is extremely unlikely - that is the full list of all instances.
So yes, its true that full instances do not appear, but that isnt evidence that there are invisible instances in the list. Oh, and
This argument will only stand if we get higher number of instances in different times. You're implying that we only get 5 instances now, but in some other mysterious hour we actually get many more. But its false - i have played the game in several other times, from 3 am to afternoon to night to any other time you think, and we never make it over 5. Never.
Unless there is some secret Champions peak time during 5 am (which you would need to prove to us with screenshots), that argument is also false. You are wrong until you prove counter evidence.
Boy, i sure remember Haloween Bloodmoon two years ago with 17 instances... What happened to the game i love...?
When I mentioned different gameplay times and different time zones, I was refering to the player population in general and not instances. In an earlier post I talked about how tracking of actual gameplay periods that can differ from player to player would make for a better outlook of how the overall active population is like.
Even if there are only a total of 5-6 MC instances at any one time and assuming that there is a maximum of 1-2 full instances at any one time, there is still no solid indication of just how many active players are moving from one instance to another non-MC one and also how many players are logging in and out at the time.
Yeah, sure, there are still people in instances and hideouts (hideouts usually go up to 7 or 8 instances) and Caprice etc... Still, i think in total those other players are somewhat of a negligible number. To be honest, i'd say there are 70 to 80 players that arent in the main MC instances. Even if there were 100, or 200...
... its still an unsettlingly low number, isnt it? To think that the entire population of the game right now doesnt even reach 1000 if you sum up all instances. It makes me sad, and worried.
You're ignoring the fact that people log in and out at different times due to different gameplay times across different time zones.
Since there's isn't a way for any of us to do such tracking across all currently active accounts that haven't been inactive for a long period of time, it's not possible to determine just how huge the "entire" population is.
Oh no, i meant "current, logged population". Total population is certainly MUCH MUCH higher - people that quit the game for a week, or people that are traveling, etc etc... Oh god, this has all been a huge misunderstanding. You thought i was talking about total game population, including those who arent logged? NOOO! I was talking about how many players we have literally RIGHT NOW, like, the peak of logged players. Its impossible to determine how many players we have, logged and not.
Still, for peak time its kinda low. But Champs has never been a mainstream game.
Might I suggest DCUO since that is CO's direct competitor? Although, I hear that that game isn't doing so well either apparently. At least that means the numbers will be small enough for Nextname and his fanboys to more easily comprehend.
Yes, but not for the reasons you think.
Oh man, so true. **** caused Champs to shut down three months after launch, didn't it! XFire!
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Reaching meaningful conclusions with limited information isn't unusual. It depends on how the numbers are limited.
Which is one reason I compared STO instances to CO. The factors that hide logged players apply to STO (if anything, even MORESO). The factors that limit logged players in CO now applied a month ago, and earlier.
It's not concrete, but it's a piece of information. And it's consistent with a general picture of a game that's not doing well, and hasn't been for some time.
The only contraindications are 'the game hasn't been closed yet.' Which ... is rather limited.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
... Extrapolating tiny pieces of missing data points does not take away from the conclusion.. Champions Online has a low population at any given time and substantially less than it used to have and the population has not grown but shrunk.
All of this can be concluded with the evidence at hand. The fact that Cryptic Studios does not release actual game meta-data (even to its shareholders?!) does not mean the other measurements that have all supported this conclusion are all "irrelevant" because the full picture isn't clear. ESPECIALLY when measuring VOLUME not composition.
Hopefully CO decides to try to rope them in before that population bleeds away.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?