Infact it's around 300+ as the peak each day now when the peak seemed to be like under 200 on steam beforehand. But just going by steams numbers doesn't tell us the entire story. The main thing that PWE and probably cryptic care about is the revenue in comparison to what they are putting into the game and revenue per person. They'll also be able to see how many people are on at any given time probably so they'll know where peaks are and will understand that the playerbase rises and falls each day and will have spikes when certain things happen.
Would help to compare games in the same genre that advertised competitively with Champions Online.
September 18th through 20th are the dates the sale/ad hit. WB had a much bigger more persistant and attractive add placement with a bigger sale than Champions Online "this is the usual sale of the day" ad that is shown once when a user logs into Steam.
DCUO is a much more relevant comparison. Even Marvel Heroes would be a better comparison than the Batman games. Unless I'm missing something and Arkham is an MMO.
Steamcharts numbers don't account for non-steam players and there is no reliable way to track overall important variables like different timezones, different playtimes vs downtimes or playtime frequencies nor the amount of revenue coming from players regardless of activity levels every month or so. People are so obsessed with using player numbers as a basis for argument when they don't realize that player number projection means diddly squat when the cash flow isn't factored in at all.
Steamcharts is time-series data, so timezones, etc. are already factored into the dataset. Cash flow is cash flow. Player activity is player activity. They're completely different performance indicators and you don't need to factor in one to talk about the other. It all depends upon the specific question you're trying to answer. For talking about how CO's player numbers are generally trending over time, SteamCharts is a useful resource.
Here's CO vs MSH vs DCUO, past 3 months. You can see that see that CO definitely got a spike with the Onslaught promotion, and has retained some new players since then. It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward.
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Steamcharts is good for determining how player numbers are trending within a portion of the playerbase that runs the game using the steam platform. That much I will agree with. However, since we're obviously talking about population trends on an overall basis, then no, strictly relying on steam graphs isn't reliable. It omits other factors that are important to objectively determine things. It is faulty data.
Also PWE and Cryptic are still businesses at their core, therefore the cash flow ultimately matters. Even with the population ups and lows it really boils down to whether or not the profits are coming in according to whatever margins PWE has decided to be, and seeing how actual population numbers correlate with it. That's the performance indicator that determines the success and longevity of the game. I don't see the logic in excluding that factor when talking about the game's performance.
NO one, I repeat, NO one is claiming the steam charts show the entire playerbase. Steam charts only show the people playing through steam. Blatantly obvious statement is blatantly obvious. That said, there is no valid reason to assume that the majority of people playing through steam behave in a significantly different way from those who use arc, or the standard launcher. So while steam charts do not show the entire playerbase, they do show patterns of growth and loss that can be representative of the playerbase as a whole.
DCUO is a much more relevant comparison. Even Marvel Heroes would be a better comparison than the Batman games. Unless I'm missing something and Arkham is an MMO.
Either way it's interesting info.
Arkham is one of the WB franchises that had the full page header ad hanging directly over Champions little thumbnail. Doesn't matter if it's an MMO, its a super hero game advertised in direct competition to this super hero game. It pulled customers to it much more effectively than CO's little cartoon ad, for cash money, not free to play, that's the real distinction, every tick on the line represents real money.
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO, its a super hero game advertised in direct competition to this super hero game.
Um, no. While it is true that they are both super hero games, the TYPE of game actually matters a lot. Using myself as an example, I don't really play single player games anymore. The only games I play are MMOs. Yes, I like super heroes, but if I am going to play a super hero game, it is going to be an MMO. Conversely, some other people may be the exact opposite. Some other people probably only play single player games, and don't play MMOs at all. And obviously, there are people who play both, or prefer one over the other, to varying degrees. All of that being the case, you can't make a direct comparison between an MMO and a single player game. At least, you can't make a comparison that actually makes sense.
The Time Warner media empire buys a Steam banner promoting the first two games of a AAA trilogy starring the g*ddamn Batman, available for PCs and consoles, as part of a multi-million dollar ad (and PR disaster recovery) campaign for PC version of the third game, highlighted by prime-time TV ads featuring licensed music by Nine Inch Nails.
I can't wait to hear your dissertation on how the Caterham Seven is too pathetic to live because of the size of Ford's F-150 ad budget.
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
Arkham is one of the WB franchises that had the full page header ad hanging directly over Champions little thumbnail.
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO, its a super hero game advertised in direct competition to this super hero game.
It pulled customers to it much more effectively than CO's little cartoon ad, for cash money, not free to play, that's the real distinction, every tick on the line represents real money.
Whuteva! I think the one Quasimojo posted is much better. I thought DCUO would be closer to Marvel. I'm quite surprised it's blowing DCUO out of the water, but at the same time not that surprised because DCUO has a terrible free-to-play model and Marvel has one of the best I've ever seen.
Game population is important. Cash flow from people who don't play CO is $0.
Also, the people who may not spend money themselves are helping to keep around the people who ARE spending money. How? Because if there aren't enough people on at any given time, the queues don't pop or you can't find people to group with for high level content. So again, even if someone is not spending money themselves, their very presence may keep a paying customer around.
PS: the last 2 posts were accidentally made from a secondary account I created to test the F2P model of STO. Somehow it got logged in instead of my normal account, so I apologize for any confusion(though I think it was still obvious who it was )
Actually since CoH/CoV demise CO & DCUO are the only ones which can compare with each other; being more into the traditional MMO terrain (free character creation; open world stuff (at least till both companies had run out of funds to expand the open world concept ). IIRC that Marvel game is more of a MOBA thing or at least does not allow your own unique character creation.
Its quite surprising how much both have in common besides the gameplay similarities. Both got rushed out in a lousy state, did not managed to benefit from the new release momentum because of it and since then slugged around; held up by a dedicated, professional but far to small; understaffed Dev team.
... pondering at that I guess I described 90% of the MMO releases
I am going to have to side with the people saying, yea the steam chart isn't telling the whole picture, but it paints an accurate portrait of the state of Champions player base. And ignoring it is just being silly, because even if Steam only represents say, a third of the people that log in, that's a significant chunk because if it's only a third of the log ins, guess what, all you need to do is multiply that number by 3 and you have your accurate picture of how many log ins Champions has.
Just assuming it's a third or a fifth or half is silly. The trend info is nice, though.
Well let's think about that. You have three ways to log in. One is through steam. Another is through Arc, the final is if people abuses the launcher in a way that shouldn't work. Then let's compare the average number of people on at a given time now. 95, 53, and 44 according to the three instances of MC as of this post I am making. That's 192 people. According to steam chart, 15 minutes ago, there were 286 people on. Now I could comb through all the instances, and probably get a more accurate number going, but from just the looks of that, Steam looks to account for as much as a third, if not more, of this player base from logins at a given time. And trying to discredit steam, which is the largest digital distribution on the PC, is sort of like trying to discredit Wal-Mart as the biggest retailer in America. May not like them, but they are still the top dog.
Three instances of MC. No data on the Desert, Canada, VB, the various Crisis Zones, Lairs (please, no laughing), or Alerts. Your data are incomplete, and thus cannot help but be inaccurate.
Has nextname taken over your account? This sounds like his level of understanding of statistics.
"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!"
Three instances of MC. No data on the Desert, Canada, VB, the various Crisis Zones, Lairs (please, no laughing), or Alerts. Your data are incomplete, and thus cannot help but be inaccurate.
Has nextname taken over your account? This sounds like his level of understanding of statistics.
Actually it's not. I can do a full census. It would take me about ten minutes to get it. That's what the search function is for. It's not as incomplete as you think because MC is always the most populous zone, and the only one that spawns multiple instances without being personal. It's not incomplete in the slightest. It's wishful thinking to believe it's not accurate.
Just assuming it's a third or a fifth or half is silly. The trend info is nice, though.
Well let's think about that. You have three ways to log in. One is through steam. Another is through Arc, the final is if people abuses the launcher in a way that shouldn't work. Then let's compare the average number of people on at a given time now. 95, 53, and 44 according to the three instances of MC as of this post I am making. That's 192 people. According to steam chart, 15 minutes ago, there were 286 people on. Now I could comb through all the instances, and probably get a more accurate number going, but from just the looks of that, Steam looks to account for as much as a third, if not more, of this player base from logins at a given time. And trying to discredit steam, which is the largest digital distribution on the PC, is sort of like trying to discredit Wal-Mart as the biggest retailer in America. May not like them, but they are still the top dog.
At the end of the day, you're still just guessing. Dream up justifications all day for whatever reasons you want, but at the end of the day you don't know if your estimations are anywhere near correct.
I find the trend info useful, but I'm not going to pretend I know how many people are playing, not even in the "ballpark" figures.
Also why did you mention discrediting Steam? I didn't even mention them. Don't make up silly nonsense.
Three instances of MC. No data on the Desert, Canada, VB, the various Crisis Zones, Lairs (please, no laughing), or Alerts. Your data are incomplete, and thus cannot help but be inaccurate.
Has nextname taken over your account? This sounds like his level of understanding of statistics.
No no...steam numbers are 100% accurate representation of player population trends, even if they count for an undetermined percentage of the overall population. Silly Jon, whatever were you thinking?
This arguement over if the steam charts are a reliable representation of the population trends is ridiculous... Would you say a survey of 1,000 people was an unreliable guage of the populaity of a certain product simply because 1,000 is a tiny fraction of the population with access to that product let alone globally? Of course not... The data from surveying 1,000 is perfectly reliable, it miht not be 100% accurate but it is reliable... There is a difference between "reliable" and "accurate"... accuracy is not overly important when measuring trends, only reliability...
So then the tons of people saying this would happen are right and all the people constantly going on and on about how nothing can help the population recover were wrong
Lol, did you see the amazing numbers from your link now ? (After only 3 weeks) You can see by yourself: http://steamcharts.com/app/9880
And I didn't trust Steam numbers showing the increase any more than I trust Steam numbers showing a decrease. Not everyone uses Steam to launch CO. A fair proportion of our longer-term players use the old stand-alone launcher; a pretty large number of the newer ones probably use the Arc launcher, as that automatically downloads when you download the game (I installed CO on this weak laptop we got for my son to surf the Net on; it's barely powerful enough to play the game, but it launches with Arc).
There's just no way to control for non-Steam players. I go by instances, and lately I've been seeing as many as four instances of Mill City, which isn't a lot of players by most standards but does indicate an increase of somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% in the active player population. (Some of those are doubtless long-term players who'd stopped playing because they were bored, but given some of the questions I've seen in Chat many of them are newbies.)
Newbies who aren't on the game anymore. They've seen, they've quit. And so many old LTS who've came to see the new "update" and which did the same. (Nothing to see, okthxbye). Steam or not, there is only 3 instances of Millenium city now. The exact same number than before the "update".
Three instances of MC. No data on the Desert, Canada, VB, the various Crisis Zones, Lairs (please, no laughing), or Alerts. Your data are incomplete, and thus cannot help but be inaccurate.
Has nextname taken over your account? This sounds like his level of understanding of statistics.
Tsss. MC is the most populated map and far away from others, this is why it's the best example. But we can speak of 1 almost empty instance for lemuria or 1 almost empty instance for MI, etc... If you want. Are you able to to change your instance and see by yourself how many instances and players there is in every map (Desert, Canada, VB, Monster island, Lemuria) ? Or do you want 5 screenshots ? Almost all the maps are empty. There is only a few players at MC and the powerhouse/theater because create costumes "is" the only end game. You can wait an eternity for one of the 4 level max dungeons when you're in queue (therakiel, nemcon, etc..). Pvp is dead. And alerts are for 5 or 10 players but there is a wait too. (Pugs who came back and wasn't in a super group probably be bored to death in front of their screen. I'm sorry for them). But what do you expect? 300 on steam and 20k without steam? Lol, before speaking of his level of understanding of statistics, begin to open your eyes and stop dreaming.
Nothing changes. But it was funny to read this thread, especially the irony from Spinnytop or yours. Sorry guys, it seems the tons of people was right... See you next year to speak about the next update. (If there is one...)
This arguement over if the steam charts are a reliable representation of the population trends is ridiculous... Would you say a survey of 1,000 people was an unreliable guage of the populaity of a certain product simply because 1,000 is a tiny fraction of the population with access to that product let alone globally? Of course not... The data from surveying 1,000 is perfectly reliable, it miht not be 100% accurate but it is reliable... There is a difference between "reliable" and "accurate"... accuracy is not overly important when measuring trends, only reliability...
1000 people selected without regard to other criteria does indeed relate poorly to popularity in the population at large. I could walk out my door right now, take a quick survey, and come to the conclusion that the most popular beverage in the world today is microbrewed beer.
For that matter, Google "Dewey Defeats Truman".
"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!"
...I really wish people would learn what a MOBA is.
MARVEL is a Diablo-esque dungeon crawler that has a lot more in common with Ultimate Alliance than with Diablo.
MOBAs are multiplayer online battle arenas that generally focus on skill rather than loot/levels, like Quake and TF2 and DOTA2 and League.
I know that. But that Marvel game already lost me at online action game without character generation. I just did not bothered find out to which of the subgeneres I'm nearly never interested in it belongs to.
I'll just put out that a few days ago I went on and there were 69 (no joke) people in MC #1 and #2 was open but had 0 people in it. That's the least I've ever seen in MC. ;'(
1000 people selected without regard to other criteria does indeed relate poorly to popularity in the population at large. I could walk out my door right now, take a quick survey, and come to the conclusion that the most popular beverage in the world today is microbrewed beer.
I know that actual domain knowledge doesn't really count for much in the eyes of some forumites, but I'm just going to throw out there that as someone who makes a good living doing business intelligence analytics consulting to Fortune 500 companies, the lack of basic understanding of how statistical inference and sampling works being shown here is profound.
No, the Steam Charts data doesn't tell you the absolute number of CO players, but for generalizing active player trends, I've seen no good reason to discount it as a useful indicator. Its accuracy may not be 100%, but no such indicators in the real world are 100% accurate, and it is the best resource publicly available.
The argument against it would be a thesis that CO players accessing via Steam behaved significantly differently as a group, over the study time period, than non-Steam players, and there's no evidence or even intuitive case for that. Even if Steam players did behave differently, the sample of Steam players is so large in relation to the total population of players (IMO), that the SteamCharts data would still be significant.
Post edited by quasimojo1 on
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
I know that actual domain knowledge doesn't really count for much in the eyes of some forumites, but I'm just going to throw out there that as someone who makes a good living doing business intelligence analytics consulting to Fortune 500 companies, the lack of basic understanding of how statistical inference and sampling works being shown here is profound.
The models you use in your job are proven, not just in practice but mathematically. They've analyzed the biases in their samples, determined the error those biases create, and accounted for them. Neither you nor Spar nor Nextname have done that. The prevailing method here is "Assumptions + Data + Volume = Model". You know how any statistics professor would grade that?
"Show your work. D-."
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
The prevailing method here is the actual numbers of Steam players tracked by SteamCharts in relationship to the advertising. We very clearly see the game on a death spiral for four years with no advertising, it has absolutely no population spikes from any Arc initiative, the population peaked at 96 just before the advertisement, it gets a bump of life for two weeks from a four day Steam advertisement with a peak of over 900, but its population instantly continues bleeding out as it had before the advertisement.
What do you have that contradicts the data? Nothing, you've always had nothing.
The models you use in your job are proven, not just in practice but mathematically. They've analyzed the biases in their samples, determined the error those biases create, and accounted for them. Neither you nor Spar nor Nextname have done that. The prevailing method here is "Assumptions + Data + Volume = Model". You know how any statistics professor would grade that?
"Show your work. D-."
Uhh the Steam numbers are proven. In practice to. When they went up the zone populations went up. When they went down the zone populations went down. The work has been shown, what we have is a case of ostrich syndrome where people just don't want to believe Champions might be in this bad of shape. I think it's fairly obvious when they are scraping the barrel now for new content for the game (aka they are slapping together things that already exist with a different skin) because they don't have the resources to dedicate for fresh new content for Champions. Hell, let's look at the fact the new costume flow has severely dropped. And let's not even bulk at the fact that if it wasn't for the fact Champs was a solely owned IP it would have probably set sail by now.
Never mind the one thing that people want it new power sets not simply just one power here, one power there, but whole sets, and they haven't done that in an incredibly long time. Nor have they delivered new zones of content but instead tried to appease us by saying the comic and adventure series were done because making whole zones "wasn't as interesting for new players" even though new zones would have made new players aspire to reach them if they cared.
I know that actual domain knowledge doesn't really count for much in the eyes of some forumites, but I'm just going to throw out there that as someone who makes a good living doing business intelligence analytics consulting to Fortune 500 companies, the lack of basic understanding of how statistical inference and sampling works being shown here is profound.
The models you use in your job are proven, not just in practice but mathematically. They've analyzed the biases in their samples, determined the error those biases create, and accounted for them. Neither you nor Spar nor Nextname have done that. The prevailing method here is "Assumptions + Data + Volume = Model". You know how any statistics professor would grade that?
"Show your work. D-."
Eh? Did we have an agreement for a professional quality analytics engagement with cross-validated predictive modeling and I missed it? What's the SOW and what rate did we agree on?
See, I thought we were just having a discussion on a video games forum, and your cohorts made some assertions that make zero sense, like that you can't infer population trends from a sample, or talk about player metrics without knowing cash flow. Did they learn that from your imaginary statistics professor?
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Why? Why do I find the self-destructive fandoms? You want to keep broadcasting and over-exaggerating every negative impact on our population until nobody wants to play the game? Fine. This game's gonna get buried next to City of Heroes. Take care which grave you p*** on. I'm going to take a long break from the forums, so save your breath.
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
Uhh the Steam numbers are proven. In practice to. When they went up the zone populations went up. When they went down the zone populations went down.
I think the problem is that you're talking trends here, not numbers. Arbitrary amounts of players going up is trends. 1000 players online at a time is numbers.
The work has been shown, what we have is a case of ostrich syndrome where people just don't want to believe Champions might be in this bad of shape.
Champions has been in this shape for years. No one's pretending that we have a huge number of players.
I think it's fairly obvious when they are scraping the barrel now for new content for the game (aka they are slapping together things that already exist with a different skin) because they don't have the resources to dedicate for fresh new content for Champions.
I think they've been pretty transparent with all they've been doing. They've basically said all you said above.
If PWE is raking in the profits required to offset whatever investments are being made into the game to validate keeping the service running, then I don't see a point in being anal retentive about population numbers.
Oh and unless anyone's been directly involved with the MMO gaming industry and has some semblance of domain knowledge relevant to the industry with how gamer population statistics are being done, it's probably not a good idea to bring up your personal job experience, especially when using it to disparage others.
If PWE is raking in the profits required to offset whatever investments are being made into the game to validate keeping the service running, then I don't see a point in being anal retentive about population numbers.
Because we don't just want barely enough to keep the service running. We want profits that means we can get substantial and hopefully new content updates. Enough to keep it running is a faux number to shoot for because eventually the retention of players will drop far too low below that line.
Oh and unless anyone's been directly involved with the MMO gaming industry and has some semblance of domain knowledge relevant to the industry with how gamer population statistics are being done, it's probably not a good idea to bring up your personal job experience, especially when using it to disparage others.
It's still quite relevant. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter.
Champions has been in this shape for years. No one's pretending that we have a huge number of players.
I will just disagree with this statement then, because if people were not pretending about the state of Champions Player Base they would not be so quick to dismiss the Steam numbers as "not accurate enough" when they seem to be pretty damn accurate.
The numbers are not accurate at all, because you're guessing "It's just a third of the overall population." It could be more than 1/3 or less. Steam's numbers are 100% accurate for Steam users. Anything beyond that is conjecture.
However, it does seem to be the only (maybe?) place to see player trends. "Population goes up" and "population goes down" is not an accurate population census.
The numbers are not accurate at all, because you're guessing "It's just a third of the overall population." It could be more than 1/3 or less. Steam's numbers are 100% accurate for Steam users. Anything beyond that is conjecture.
However, it does seem to be the only (maybe?) place to see player trends. "Population goes up" and "population goes down" is not an accurate population census.
I never said they were, I said they could be, or even higher. It's not guess work really. All I would need to really do to get an accurate number is take a census of all the instances in game. And guess what? We can do that. And once we get that census number, guess what, that steam chart becomes MORE accurate, not less.
Smack, you're really, really, really, desperately trying hard to make these numbers sound flawed, but they are not. And to discredit them because you don't like them, which is essentially what you are doing, even though Steam is the biggest digital distributor on PC is just a broken argument.
You're being silly. I'm not trying really really hard to do anything. I know and acknowledge that the population is low. What's hard to understand about that.
If the numbers are accurate, tell me exactly how many people are playing right now. If you can't tell me that, then it's guesswork.
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A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
ta-da, what?
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http://steamcharts.com/app/350660#48h
... it's pretty much the end of the line :P
September 18th through 20th are the dates the sale/ad hit. WB had a much bigger more persistant and attractive add placement with a bigger sale than Champions Online "this is the usual sale of the day" ad that is shown once when a user logs into Steam.
Either way it's interesting info.
Faulty data is faulty. Stop using faulty data.
Steamcharts is time-series data, so timezones, etc. are already factored into the dataset. Cash flow is cash flow. Player activity is player activity. They're completely different performance indicators and you don't need to factor in one to talk about the other. It all depends upon the specific question you're trying to answer. For talking about how CO's player numbers are generally trending over time, SteamCharts is a useful resource.
Here's CO vs MSH vs DCUO, past 3 months. You can see that see that CO definitely got a spike with the Onslaught promotion, and has retained some new players since then. It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Also PWE and Cryptic are still businesses at their core, therefore the cash flow ultimately matters. Even with the population ups and lows it really boils down to whether or not the profits are coming in according to whatever margins PWE has decided to be, and seeing how actual population numbers correlate with it. That's the performance indicator that determines the success and longevity of the game. I don't see the logic in excluding that factor when talking about the game's performance.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO, its a super hero game advertised in direct competition to this super hero game.
It pulled customers to it much more effectively than CO's little cartoon ad, for cash money, not free to play, that's the real distinction, every tick on the line represents real money.
I can't wait to hear your dissertation on how the Caterham Seven is too pathetic to live because of the size of Ford's F-150 ad budget.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Whuteva! I think the one Quasimojo posted is much better. I thought DCUO would be closer to Marvel. I'm quite surprised it's blowing DCUO out of the water, but at the same time not that surprised because DCUO has a terrible free-to-play model and Marvel has one of the best I've ever seen.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Its quite surprising how much both have in common besides the gameplay similarities. Both got rushed out in a lousy state, did not managed to benefit from the new release momentum because of it and since then slugged around; held up by a dedicated, professional but far to small; understaffed Dev team.
... pondering at that I guess I described 90% of the MMO releases
He who posts 2 years before he joins
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/10732872
MARVEL is a Diablo-esque dungeon crawler that has a lot more in common with Ultimate Alliance than with Diablo.
MOBAs are multiplayer online battle arenas that generally focus on skill rather than loot/levels, like Quake and TF2 and DOTA2 and League.
Nah, MOBA is more of a DOTA thing; With lanes, mobs, leveling, and towers. Examples: SMITE, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm.
That's not a pleasant picture to think about.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Well let's think about that. You have three ways to log in. One is through steam. Another is through Arc, the final is if people abuses the launcher in a way that shouldn't work. Then let's compare the average number of people on at a given time now. 95, 53, and 44 according to the three instances of MC as of this post I am making. That's 192 people. According to steam chart, 15 minutes ago, there were 286 people on. Now I could comb through all the instances, and probably get a more accurate number going, but from just the looks of that, Steam looks to account for as much as a third, if not more, of this player base from logins at a given time. And trying to discredit steam, which is the largest digital distribution on the PC, is sort of like trying to discredit Wal-Mart as the biggest retailer in America. May not like them, but they are still the top dog.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Has nextname taken over your account? This sounds like his level of understanding of statistics.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Actually it's not. I can do a full census. It would take me about ten minutes to get it. That's what the search function is for. It's not as incomplete as you think because MC is always the most populous zone, and the only one that spawns multiple instances without being personal. It's not incomplete in the slightest. It's wishful thinking to believe it's not accurate.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I see no reason to use it, when I have always used the launcher.
and those people who run in ANON?
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People that run anon are not all that common.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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At the end of the day, you're still just guessing. Dream up justifications all day for whatever reasons you want, but at the end of the day you don't know if your estimations are anywhere near correct.
I find the trend info useful, but I'm not going to pretend I know how many people are playing, not even in the "ballpark" figures.
Also why did you mention discrediting Steam? I didn't even mention them. Don't make up silly nonsense.
You can see by yourself: http://steamcharts.com/app/9880
Yeah. You're right. Newbies who aren't on the game anymore. They've seen, they've quit.
And so many old LTS who've came to see the new "update" and which did the same. (Nothing to see, okthxbye).
Steam or not, there is only 3 instances of Millenium city now. The exact same number than before the "update". Tsss. MC is the most populated map and far away from others, this is why it's the best example.
But we can speak of 1 almost empty instance for lemuria or 1 almost empty instance for MI, etc... If you want.
Are you able to to change your instance and see by yourself how many instances and players there is in every map (Desert, Canada, VB, Monster island, Lemuria) ? Or do you want 5 screenshots ?
Almost all the maps are empty. There is only a few players at MC and the powerhouse/theater because create costumes "is" the only end game.
You can wait an eternity for one of the 4 level max dungeons when you're in queue (therakiel, nemcon, etc..). Pvp is dead. And alerts are for 5 or 10 players but there is a wait too. (Pugs who came back and wasn't in a super group probably be bored to death in front of their screen. I'm sorry for them).
But what do you expect? 300 on steam and 20k without steam? Lol, before speaking of his level of understanding of statistics, begin to open your eyes and stop dreaming.
Nothing changes. But it was funny to read this thread, especially the irony from Spinnytop or yours. Sorry guys, it seems the tons of people was right...
See you next year to speak about the next update. (If there is one...)
For that matter, Google "Dewey Defeats Truman".
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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He who posts 2 years before he joins
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/10732872
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
No, the Steam Charts data doesn't tell you the absolute number of CO players, but for generalizing active player trends, I've seen no good reason to discount it as a useful indicator. Its accuracy may not be 100%, but no such indicators in the real world are 100% accurate, and it is the best resource publicly available.
The argument against it would be a thesis that CO players accessing via Steam behaved significantly differently as a group, over the study time period, than non-Steam players, and there's no evidence or even intuitive case for that. Even if Steam players did behave differently, the sample of Steam players is so large in relation to the total population of players (IMO), that the SteamCharts data would still be significant.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
"Show your work. D-."
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
What do you have that contradicts the data? Nothing, you've always had nothing.
Uhh the Steam numbers are proven. In practice to. When they went up the zone populations went up. When they went down the zone populations went down. The work has been shown, what we have is a case of ostrich syndrome where people just don't want to believe Champions might be in this bad of shape. I think it's fairly obvious when they are scraping the barrel now for new content for the game (aka they are slapping together things that already exist with a different skin) because they don't have the resources to dedicate for fresh new content for Champions. Hell, let's look at the fact the new costume flow has severely dropped. And let's not even bulk at the fact that if it wasn't for the fact Champs was a solely owned IP it would have probably set sail by now.
Never mind the one thing that people want it new power sets not simply just one power here, one power there, but whole sets, and they haven't done that in an incredibly long time. Nor have they delivered new zones of content but instead tried to appease us by saying the comic and adventure series were done because making whole zones "wasn't as interesting for new players" even though new zones would have made new players aspire to reach them if they cared.
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See, I thought we were just having a discussion on a video games forum, and your cohorts made some assertions that make zero sense, like that you can't infer population trends from a sample, or talk about player metrics without knowing cash flow. Did they learn that from your imaginary statistics professor?
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I think the problem is that you're talking trends here, not numbers. Arbitrary amounts of players going up is trends. 1000 players online at a time is numbers.
Champions has been in this shape for years. No one's pretending that we have a huge number of players.
I think they've been pretty transparent with all they've been doing. They've basically said all you said above.
Oh and unless anyone's been directly involved with the MMO gaming industry and has some semblance of domain knowledge relevant to the industry with how gamer population statistics are being done, it's probably not a good idea to bring up your personal job experience, especially when using it to disparage others.
Because we don't just want barely enough to keep the service running. We want profits that means we can get substantial and hopefully new content updates. Enough to keep it running is a faux number to shoot for because eventually the retention of players will drop far too low below that line.
It's still quite relevant. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter.
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I will just disagree with this statement then, because if people were not pretending about the state of Champions Player Base they would not be so quick to dismiss the Steam numbers as "not accurate enough" when they seem to be pretty damn accurate.
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However, it does seem to be the only (maybe?) place to see player trends. "Population goes up" and "population goes down" is not an accurate population census.
I never said they were, I said they could be, or even higher. It's not guess work really. All I would need to really do to get an accurate number is take a census of all the instances in game. And guess what? We can do that. And once we get that census number, guess what, that steam chart becomes MORE accurate, not less.
Smack, you're really, really, really, desperately trying hard to make these numbers sound flawed, but they are not. And to discredit them because you don't like them, which is essentially what you are doing, even though Steam is the biggest digital distributor on PC is just a broken argument.
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If the numbers are accurate, tell me exactly how many people are playing right now. If you can't tell me that, then it's guesswork.
According to steam charts 224 were playing as of 7 minutes ago from Steam. That is above the 1/3rd margin I predicted, but by a smidge.
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