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If it is any indication... traffic in the forums is similar to traffic in game...
krisst0f
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 0 Arc User
From that thursday "nightmare" patch (yes, I am referring to the nightmare mount mess), the traffic in both the forum AND the number of players in game (from the number of instances, and the players in them) has decreased DRAMATICALLY...
Posts on this forums used to flow like crazy... now after one page of posts, you see posts from "yesteday"
In game, from a consistent 50-60 instances with players at anytime during the day, it is down to 10-20...
Good job... NOT!!
I don't give this game more than another 2 months before a new one comes out and lure away everyone who has reached 60!!!
Maybe it is time for a self-analysis session Cryptic devs/management? Ask yourself, is it coincidental? You bet it is...
Posts on this forums used to flow like crazy... now after one page of posts, you see posts from "yesteday"
In game, from a consistent 50-60 instances with players at anytime during the day, it is down to 10-20...
Good job... NOT!!
I don't give this game more than another 2 months before a new one comes out and lure away everyone who has reached 60!!!
Maybe it is time for a self-analysis session Cryptic devs/management? Ask yourself, is it coincidental? You bet it is...
Post edited by krisst0f on
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The thing is there are issues so you have a point, however I don't think that the game has decreased I think it has increased in players.
I have been keeping track of players since they announced the 2 million free accounts created milestone as some sort of special thing (lol) which was well before feywild and can say that dragon server is down 70% players since the patch. You just have to compare #s in PE, Festival (like no one here ever, at most 80 people and not all of them 60, but I include it because people think it's where all the players have magically disappeared to) and Sharandar.
Then compare activity in zone/lfg chat for dungeons on and off DDs and compare queue times with a lvl 60 GF. There has definitely been a huge drop in active players since Feywild. whether its BoP change, class nerfs, daily grind focus, more bugs created than fixed, take your pick for reason but less people are playing. The massive drop off happened before FFIV which is another common excuse from cryptic apologists but whatever. But of the people that are playing, with the aforementioned changes more of them are buying zen for AD to afford to play so PWE makes more money in the near term, which is all they care about.
and finally, with the negativity, unsubstantiated rumors/theories and whining that goes on here, it's possible that people actually avoid the forums.
point is, you don't know. neither do i. but then again, i'm not trying to sentence this game to death in two months time.
I suggest that all you folks predicting doom and demise in the near future. Should send me all your stuff. If you honestly believe its all going to end. There is little harm in putting your money where your mouth is.
That, and it would make me happy. So....my mail box is open
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
These new customers/return players will stick around for another 2-3 months and things will balance out again after 3-6 months to normal and the cycle continues. If the MMO continues to trend towards failure after 2yrs they will reduce or sometimes stop development of new content and just do patches of bugs, etc... and release Cash Shop items and bleed the customer base as long as possible.
That post was as useless as it could have been... without actually substantiating anything but judging my expertise/experience... Stop shooting the messenger and actually try to understand my point.
I have been playing since the first day of beta, daily. I have 5 chars at different levels, and my main has 4 full T2 sets with fully loaded enchants. Been trying since the patch to grind the game playing dungeons DD of the last set to get other 2 pieces I dont have yet, and make enough AD to try to slot these pieces with enchant rank 7/8.
I have been an active poster in these forums, I joined a guild which back then had 125+ members (now about 150), and played at first probably 4-6 hours PER DAY. I got 2 professions to level20, actually spend "some" $$ to buy epic tools, make dozens or shirt and pants (then I resold them).
I have noticed a HUGE decrease in players in instances, zones, dungeons, etc.... like I said in my post. As well as a HUGE decrease in the number of posters in these forums... from a constant flow of posts to a few ones each hour... Even in my guild where anytime during DD you could get 2 or 3 concurrent dungeons running, you'll get lucky if any of the level60 are actually there....
So Please don't tell me I don't know anything...
And have a good day.
I don't know why it matters that not everyone at the Festival is level 60. Seems pretty obvious that a constant stream of new players contributes to the longevity of a game as much as hanging on to established players. If anything, I find the relative quiet of areas like Black Lake more of a danger sign than any reduction in players loitering in PE. And yet, I do run across just-started-playing people almost every day.
Very few of the people who play the game are active on the forums, and the people who are happy with the game especially, because they're not coming here to moan about their pet issues.
There are people who seem to only play on weekends. There are people who have jumped ship for other games. There are people who, as mentioned, are no longer on summer holidays and can't game 24/7 anymore. There are people who have quit out of protest over one thing or another, and others who've been banned. I think there is a certain amount of declining trend, but it can't be blamed on any single factor, and the shrieking and finger-pointing is unproductive.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I think you may be right. I have played "some" other MMOs and this one to me was the most promising, until they nerf'd everything without concerns for players who spent a lots of time building their chars.
It still is one of the best game probably for newer player leveling up, but after 60, this is game over in terms of fun... unfortunately.
one caveat, no one other than cryptic knows how many people actually play, but as long as the methodology used to gather #s is the same then the number of players observed before and after can be compared directly. ie:
start by calculating the # of people in PE (using your map you see the total # of instances of PE and the populations of each instance). since the patch you must also include sharandar (lvl 60 only) and festival grounds (all levels)
I was mainly concerned with the # of level 60 players so my tracking of dungeon players was focused on them. You do this by checking queues with a lvl 60 GF due to the way the queue system is coded it always builds a team around a GF first if one is available. prior to the patch you would always insta-queue on a GF meaning that all dungeons were active. So using the social window ("O") you do a search for level 60 GFs.
What you are mainly concerned with is finding the # of instances of each dungeon that currently exist, and using GF (the least played class and one that instaqueues) loosely allows you to determine this. Look for the highest instance # on the /who list for GF. ie, Castle Never #50 is the highest you found, that means there are 50 instances of CN with 5 players each for 250 players total for that dungeon*. repeat for each epic dungeon gave a rough estimate of the players I wanted to track.
*Not really, not every instance is actually in existance, and not all of them have 5 players in them, but giving them the benefit of the doubt assume that each instance does exist and has 5 players.
Using this methodology, prior to FotF there were on average 5k players in PE (between 25 - 50 instances of it with up to 150 players each) and 2k players running dungeons during DD (500 not on DD). USTZ had slightly more, euro TZ i had the least amount of data points for as that was typically when i would be at work. So 7k for each primetime i calculated is 21k x 3 shards is 63k players, which given the assumption that only 10% of your active players are ever on at one time, grants you ~600k active players of the "2 million free accounts created ever" milestone they hit, which I thought was pretty good numbers for the quality/style of f2p game this was.
After FotF, you must include Sharandar and festival numbers in the PE numbers, yet there are only 8-11 PEs up and none of them hit 150, 6-15 sharandars with up to 40 players each, and maybe 50-60 people in the festival total at any point in time. and dungeon numbers are worse than that, on and off DD.
For the web traffic? I'm assuming the guy is just looking at the # of viewers of each forum? no idea. It's definitely down but I haven't been tracking forum viewers so I can't say precisely how much it's down. but again forums aren't the game so it doesn't really mean much.
Always sad to see games die like Neverwinter did. It started out very great and promising. I'm not a Horror-Movie enthusiast but I have seen my share of messed up ways for things that used to be alive turned into a dead decaying mass. That being said, I have never seen something butchered as thorough as the D&D franchise through means of a "game". From the looks of the current state they went at with a dull rusty spoon, in a programming way. Very, very ancient old rusty spoon. Very rusty. I could go on like this for quite some time.
Checking back in, in 1-2 weeks to find this thread still on "page 1"
Take care y'all
i personally know 34 players that are no longer playing the game in MF server, from guild and friend that started with me playing, they only log in every now and then to do some dailies to a some point open the boons, however they see no point in continue playing, some were mad of all the nerfs, others are mad due to the Bugs in the dungeons, and other due to BoP and no longer see a point in running the same dungeons over and over again for no good reward.
and there are like 15 of us that are thinking to move back to our previous game at least wait till there is a patch that fix some of the big concerns, for now i will continue playing till i have my fomorian set and boons unlocked
The game itself is fine for a newly released MMO and has a very strong population. The main issue right now is the massive changes that beta and old player base has experienced with BoP and the bugs. As they fix the bugs and remove exploitable bosses, etc... the game will smooth out and become stable.
The game play and MC dungeon is tons of fun even if there is very little incentive. I already have my new BiS Weapon/Shield 4p set and continue to level alts for farming leadership. Sure the game has issues but these are all normal for new releases expect for all of the exploitable bosses. I've never seen an MMO in the past few years with this many exploitable bosses and broken pathing. But I think that's because of their map designer or system.
Every game that has ever existed had forumites screaming about impending doom.
Just nature of the beast.
Look at League forums, game is dying will be over in a month because they nerfed Irelia.
Look at WoW forums, game is dying because of Panda's or something.
Look at D3 forums, game is dying because of RMAH.
You can take it from there with whatever games you are familiar with. All games are dying and maybe that is true since the moment you are born you begin dying. Maybe same way with games lol.
Some people complain about it some enjoy the ride!
I expect they will come with a new game next year, and won't be supporting this game that much anymore.
I fear this scenario you lay out is prophetic. What's frustrating to me about it is that it doesn't have to be that way. Neverwinter could be one of the top MMOs for years if it was properly managed.
You're right, many of the early exploiters and other types of kewl kids moved on, to other games. Mainly due to the reason, that they are no longer able to milk the system, the way they would like it. Others have school, some just got banned, again others just realized that what they did was wrong and are now living in exile on tattooine.
But isn't less, "not so nice gamers" a good thing?
Yea but its so small a sample size you cant really draw any hard conclusions, just light stuff.
I mean in any given game maybe 5% people actually even sniff the forums.
Maybe a smaller percentage like 40% of the 5% even post or reply. (rest looking for a specific answer from a google result or something very targeted.)
And honestly i would say that only about 60% of the 40% of the 5% are even unhappy.
Just my opinion based on other forums/games whatever.
In game of course there is a decline. It should be expected even for the very best of games as opinions vary and so on, but there is always a mass of locusts that game hop. Probably invading FF14 now.
As far as counting up in game numbers ... the methodology described is terribly flawed at best. Nothing taken into account those who spent the first couple months lvling an gearing one character and are moving on to a new alt. This game, because of the leveling experience, encourages play of alts and a lot of people are. The lowbie zones are still very active. You can't be selective of how you collect data in the manner that was described and then purport some kind of actual finding when the very basis for which you sample is heavily effected by unmeasured variables with no correlation to the actual success of the game.
I concur. Very eloquent explanation of my opinion as well.
It sounds callous but i cant wait for the migrating MMOers to get through complaining and find the next game to complain about. I think once this base gets boiled down to a very dedicated group of people i think the game will truly start to take shape.
Perhaps ... as long as there are enough players who buy Zen. If not, it won't matter how "dedicated", laid-back and cool everyone left in the game thinks they are.
http://dublinopinion.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/dan-obrien-irish-economist.jpg
That's right....a big fat 0...nada ....NONE...niente.........did I say "nada" yet....yeah I did.
*pokesitwithastick* .....yeeeeaaaaah seems pretty......(let's not use the word "dead") deserted to me. That's just my observation though. I might be wrong, it might be the time of the day i checked that NOONE was streaming this "game". Miracles happen !!! Keep believing.