I think it is a waste of time to study the numbers or the company's division and manpower.
You can have 10 million players tomorrow. If nothing sells, they will announce a player limit or a closing server. It is unwise to pay ten thousands and nothing sells. Similarly, if things sell, the company will change and the headquarters will exist for Neverwinter.
What is the selling point of this product?
It's the upgrade packs, wards, Vips. Is it still sellable for the next 6 months? Probably yes, for the old supporters. Will 1 million players suddenly want to buy them in the next 3 months? It's be really challenging.
Look at our feedback, we complain about people who pay to win, we complain on the lack of players. What do we suggest them to sell to sustain the product, to bring in more people?
Will a new big patch or new content bring in 1 million people? My answer is no - steam announced XYZ games having a patch. When I'm not playing it, I wonder what that patch is all about. I have no interest. It just creates confusion and gave an alien feel.
Other RPG competitors such as Genshin impact is able to start with just 60k and ended up with 300 million profit. I've play it and it's not as in-depth as NW. It's just a few monster 3D which you have to hit over and over. Why is it that a new game can surpass Neverwinter that much? They create a feel that it is a simple game. You just pick a character you want and hit things. People would then spend money to unbox new character or beautiful dresses. Nobody cares about the story.
What I think can bring in more people, and is able to increase sale =
1. Make things simple. Remake store description and create a big patch to attract new players Neverwinter - Come and Help tank for 4 other people, or heal others up in this fantasy land. Don't miss the beautiful black hole sun look in Avernus or the fantasy warp in vos entrance. Advertise on the selling points - Able to Paint your armors.
2. Improve on character customization The bodies look great but currently it's just a few faces and hair to chose from.
3. Sell beautiful looking characters Xuna looks great. Imagine the player could purchase the skin of xuna and play as xuna. It doesn't have to be xuna but it can be new customization unlocks.
4. Rare cosmetic on steam market. Rare skins in valve games such CSGO could sell up to thousands on the market. Selling items for AD is probably an old fashion market. Imagine a new upgrade where you can sell lucky drops on steam market to buy other games. People will want to play Neverwinter more than other RPG games because of this.
That's all from me currently. I'll write proposals if I have more ideas. I'm sure there are other ideas in your mind, and I hope the community won't just be an critic who find the wrongs, but an idea sharing shooter. When everyone shared their ideas, not only it can increase the chances, it has a little chance for the ideas to evolve around one another to create a next-level idea.
My play time is also very low at the moment. There is just not a lot of content for people who have been long time players. For me it started with the sharandar mod. Once I had completed the campaign there was only vos and hunting for bounties. I stopped doing bounties once I had 3 pieces of useable companion gear and haven't been to the sharandar map since then because there is no reason.
Then mod 21 was released and it had no new content for long time players. I got a couple new characters to 20 to see the new leveling experience but that got boring pretty fast.
The reworked demogorgon trial got me playing a bit more. But now I have the set and I'm not that interested in farming it.
I thought the new Event would be something where I could spend more time similar to the redeemed citadel event. But after completing the weeklies and story quests on my main I was already over 25% done with the milestone. And with the help of y couple alts doing the story quests I was able to complete the first milestone in only 2 days.
Not counting legacy campaing quests and maybe keys there is no reason to revisit any of the old campaigns. The only campaign that is an exception is descent into avernus in vallenhas, because it has the juma bags.
Currently I mostly log in to claim my daily key from vip. I also do the legacy campaign quests but that's mostly it. Sometimes I also run random queues but not even every day. I did them more often when you could complete them with a random group but with the advanced dungeon queue and the reworked demogorgon I only do them with a premade group.
I really hope that the new queue that they want to introduce will keep my interest a bit more.
Just curious do you do daily influence runs for your guild (if you are in one)?
They need to have a place where once you're in that position you can convert influence to any other currency, even guild marks.
Or maybe those level 20 alliance guilds need to split off and join alliances with lower level guilds. Give then a place to spend more currencies to get guild marks.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,405Arc User
For years, alliances have been accepting dummy guild (such as personal guild) for that purpose.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,152Arc User
For years, alliances have been accepting dummy guild (such as personal guild) for that purpose.
No alliance should have a level 20 guild at Helm.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
Now I am disappointed, I posted a cool troll post here complete with a picture. The Vanilla forum must have ate it, since it didn't even get tossed down into the lower depths by a moderator. You see I check these things... now stop trolling and get back to work people!
Guilds don't get people in the door, everyone has those. Basically some people are saying others are leaving? Others are always leaving and new players are always joining. Where is the proof everyone is leaving? The OP benyr, uses Steam statistics to show the decline of this game based upon release. While Steam stats are probably a good tool, the way he is abusing that tool is wrong.
Benyr states, "The September 2021 Average players number was 1355.6 and peak players number was 2402. These are the lowest numbers in their respective categories since the Steam records began in December 2013. "
No game can live up to their release numbers. All the games immediately go downhill the first six months after release.
How about you look at the whole last year? 2020 Oct 26th 3,125 Nov 30th 2,809 Dec 28th 3,167 2021 Jan 25th 3,213 Feb 22nd 3,025 Mar 29th 2,696 Apr 26th 2,674 May 31st 2,719 Jun 28th 3,600 - highest peak all year, mid summer how about that? Jul 26th 3,539 - second highest Aug 23rd 2,402 - recorded in August and not September?? Sep 27th 2,216
The numbers above appear with dates on that green graph display. You will notice they don't account for the "data dip" on July 19th in the table either, why is that? Now let's do a 1 year side by side of their other "popular game".
Oh, look Star Trek didn't do too good this summer on Steam, maybe someone should tell them the game is dead? Star Trek dipped on that same day to 1,443 people playing as the recorded peak. But then it bounces back 3,264 in September, why does one game fall when the other rises? Probably because people who play Neverwinter also play Star Trek, and Trek has new shiny things.
While we don't have the colossal numbers on Champions, had you looked at the graph and not the numbers.
Does that sine wave look awesome or what?! According to Steam we have 250 players online playing. If that number is 25% of the total population, it means we have 1,000. I never have any issue finding people to talk with, do alerts, or just run some content. You are welcome to drop by anytime, we have puppies! Ok, they are furries... but what's the difference, if you can pet them?
Just killing time...
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited October 2021
Peak numbers show how well a new mod or some new release was advertised -> How many people returned to check it out.
Lowest numbers show how many players that content managed to actually retain and for how long (distance from peak to drop stabilization).
To compare advertisement campaign we compare peak to peak. To compare content we compare bottom to bottom.
To understand some general trend we take average over a sliding window, or in simple terms, zoom out, and look where it goes (at the derivative).
Which doesn't look too bad, but Winter is Coming, these numbers should be going up very soon. Also it is true, Star Trek added "Reflections" on Sept 15th.
That could easily pull people "with nothing else to do" from Neverwinter to go do something. Module 21 offer a new system and a bard class, but no additional content. Once content is added the pendulum will swing the other direction. It is odd, but the games to compete for attention even on the same network.
If I were to look at the last 3 years of the same data listed above. Your new peak number is 4,435 and the data looks like this;
The further back you go into the timeline the peak numbers will always rise. This means they held 80% of their audience they had 3 years ago and recently it is down to only 50% of 3 years ago. One has to ask if the data reflects any change specific to the game or is it outside factors, the data collection, or even the popularity of the launcher?
I had a difficult time looking for a game to match the same volume as both Star Trek and Neverwinter, but here is the comparison to Neverwinter and two other unrelated games showing the same decline after the summer ended. Neverwinter, PlanetSide 2, and Maplestory
Which doesn't look too bad, but Winter is Coming, these numbers should be going up very soon.
Those are steam peak numbers instead of the averages, which tell us less, but from the former highest peak of "89%" in 5 months it dropped to 76%, which is 15% drop. While from the last peak of 100% in 4 months it dropped to 63%, which is 37% drop.
That's 1 month short, and over double the drop.
If we check "end of summer" we see that last year there was 0 drop from August to September, actually there was a gain of 1 peak player ( which is still less informative, since there was a change in average, but if we compare peaks, then peaks we compare) Compared to this years end of summer drop from 3,539 to 2,402, which is 32% decrease.
Faster drops, in larger numbers in shorter span of time. Doesn't seem that good to me. But maybe it's just players don't like Steam anymore.
Also it is true, Star Trek added "Reflections" on Sept 15th.
It is not just internal game quality issues driving this.
New World had a fairly successful launch(they had to triple the initial number of servers) on Sept 28th, that very likely has drained players from Neverwinter.
This probably does not show fully in the numbers yet, but 3 days of New World and open beta early September and general expectations should affect the September numbers.
Will be interesting to see how this works out longer term.
Also it is true, Star Trek added "Reflections" on Sept 15th.
It is not just internal game quality issues driving this.
New World had a fairly successful launch(they had to triple the initial number of servers) on Sept 28th, that very likely has drained players from Neverwinter.
This probably does not show fully in the numbers yet, but 3 days of New World and open beta early September and general expectations should affect the September numbers.
Will be interesting to see how this works out longer term.
Oh Gawd! Don't fan his flames any higher. You know the man works for Amazon, he is being called Mr. New World Order by all the residents here.
*sigh*. It's seems none of you have notice few important stuffs.
Amazon New World went live, and due massive hype lot of players moved there to try it. So naturally our playerbase activity declined. Same happening in other mmo games to.
After two, three months hype will end, then some players will return, some don't. It's usual thing in mmo games.
Other thing, once you done with campaings and storyline quests. What to do now? Sure Neverwinter have dungeons, but they are interesting for first 20 times. After that it's just boring repeatable content. Till new content gets added to game, obviously some players don't even bother to log in to game at all.
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
*sigh*. It's seems none of you have notice few important stuffs.
Amazon New World went live, and due massive hype lot of players moved there to try it. So naturally our playerbase activity declined. Same happening in other mmo games to.
After two, three months hype will end, then some players will return, some don't. It's usual thing in mmo games.
Other thing, once you done with campaings and storyline quests. What to do now? Sure Neverwinter have dungeons, but they are interesting for first 20 times. After that it's just boring repeatable content. Till new content gets added to game, obviously some players don't even bother to log in to game at all.
New World at the moment seems to be a skeleton waiting to be fleshed out by expansions.
And I must add: A very nice skeleton. They just do not seem to have very much content at max level for PvE people.
I am sure the first expansion will fix that when they can focus on content rather than getting the base system running.
If people get to max level 60 and do all content there is before the expansion hits, certainly they could go back to old games while waiting. Will be interesting to see how this works out.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
First, it's a very very very nice skeleton. And more importantly, it's a fun skeleton, something that I think got lost in the way in some other places. If one doesn't rush it then there is plenty to do, even just strolling around killing trees and petting iron is sort of fun. And there are always the invasions.
AFAIK the rumors are that there are about 6 expeditions in the works, and the planned map is significantly larger than what we see now.
AFAIK the rumors are that there are about 6 expeditions in the works, and the planned map is significantly larger than what we see now.
And they can add ships(probably not in the near future?), swimming(by popular demand), underwater dungeons(goes with swimming?), mounts(popular demand, but some disagreement), pets(clues in game that we'll get tamed pets soon), 100(!) person raids, or smaller raids, etc etc.
Their engine can handle some 100 people in a small area. That's quite nice.
These doom & gloom, the sky is falling posts, permeate down into every MMO forum at least every quarter and it always results in the same thing... lots of assumptions, lots of directing to other sites in search of assumed facts before we all go quietly back to playing the game until something else takes our fancy.. and it will, for a time at least, then when Cryptic announces something we all come back, play it out then look around for the next big WoW killer to feast on for a while. That is the nature of the beast in MMO space these days... competition for the same playerbases is rife nowadays becasue the market is flooded with options, so it's up to us whether we wanna jump on the merry go round or not. The key question you all need to just ask yourself is .. are you still having fun or not... if the answer is no then take a break or go find the next big use of your time. At the end of the day it is out of our hands as to whether the game is still a viable financial concern so try to enjoy it while it still is I say.. or not.
Yes. This and several other online games I monitor have "died" many times according to their users in their respective forums. Some random user pops up and states the population is low and ergo people are leaving. They never bother to check other possibilities or bother to mention this is only one of many hypotheses.
Then because of the psychology behind it people are most apt to respond to the "bad news" as we can see here with 2 pages so far. It is partly our vigilance for threats that explains our predilection for bad news. Humans are on alert and it is a survival instinct that draws us to these ominous warnings. It is almost implausible to shut it off.
It won't take four to six months on New World before the forums flood with "this game is dead/dying" subjects. At present the servers are busting at the seams. It will only be a matter of time, once everyone has submitted to hidden subliminal I implanted, then I will rule the planet, and they will be my mindless army.... no everyone will just get bored. I have told you all before, the human mind and imagination cannot be bested by a machine.
kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
Putting my 2 cents. I can't really speak much for Steam numbers, and don't really think that shows a clear picture at all. Numbers on the subreddit seem like they would be much more accurate, IMHO, due to the fact that Steam can only possibly cover PC users, whereas Reddit covers all 3 platforms. The numbers on the subreddit have been stable for years, following the predictable pattern of higher numbers around mod launches, with a slow steady decline as people finish the content. Are people quitting? Sure. But new players are coming at the same rate, evening things out.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited October 2021
Reddit has few issues:
1. Posting on Reddit is not an indicator if someone is playing the game or not. 2. People are not fast to unsubscribe, they can no longer use Reddit at all but still appear subscribed. 3. People post more when they are unhappy, or feel strongly about something, or just want to respond to someone of the previous groups. So naturally posting correlate less with game time but more with game changes. Publish some game changes and you see more Reddit activity, but the same player count since the changes are not even on the server.
Steam is by far not perfect indicator, but it measures actual game usage. And while it doesn't measure any platform at all, not even PC, it doesn't need to. Every Poll, TV rating and so on are based on a population sample. We just need to ask how close the sample to the whole population and Steam is much closer than Reddit and as such has better statistical indication of the trends.
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kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
1. Posting on Reddit is not an indicator if someone is playing the game or not. 2. People are not fast to unsubscribe, they can no longer use Reddit at all but still appear subscribed. 3. People post more when they are unhappy, or feel strongly about something, or just want to respond to someone of the previous groups. So naturally posting correlate less with game time but more with game changes. Publish some game changes and you see more Reddit activity, but the same player count since the changes are not even on the server.
Steam is by far not perfect indicator, but it measures actual game usage. And while it doesn't measure any platform at all, not even PC, it doesn't need to. Every Poll, TV rating and so on are based on a population sample. We just need to ask how close the sample to the whole population and Steam is much closer than Reddit and as such has better statistical indication of the trends.
I apologize for being unclear. The numbers I was mentioning were unique visitors, not the amount of posts or subscribers. But yes, I do agree that they don't have to be playing the game to be posting on the subreddit. Still, I would think that if the game really were dying, the subreddit numbers would reflect that.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
Are you guys still beating the dead horse? Sincerely, as my husband said, new stuff this month has pulled people away from all the other games. The most accurate picture of player population is an internal census. People who desire higher numbers will always cite, you cannot count everyone. This is true with any census, even internal ones, but they supply the most accurate data. I don't recall who brought it up this time around, I am too lazy to scroll up, but you all know the subject returns every time there is a lull in the game.
Go play the game, that has died many times, and have fun!
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
1. Posting on Reddit is not an indicator if someone is playing the game or not. 2. People are not fast to unsubscribe, they can no longer use Reddit at all but still appear subscribed. 3. People post more when they are unhappy, or feel strongly about something, or just want to respond to someone of the previous groups. So naturally posting correlate less with game time but more with game changes. Publish some game changes and you see more Reddit activity, but the same player count since the changes are not even on the server.
Steam is by far not perfect indicator, but it measures actual game usage. And while it doesn't measure any platform at all, not even PC, it doesn't need to. Every Poll, TV rating and so on are based on a population sample. We just need to ask how close the sample to the whole population and Steam is much closer than Reddit and as such has better statistical indication of the trends.
I apologize for being unclear. The numbers I was mentioning were unique visitors, not the amount of posts or subscribers. But yes, I do agree that they don't have to be playing the game to be posting on the subreddit. Still, I would think that if the game really were dying, the subreddit numbers would reflect that.
I think there isn't that much of a difference between posters and visitors, the more posts there are the mores visitors there are, and the other way, the more visitors, the more chance some of those will comments or post. It's sort of snowball of activity as long as there is some trigger, and IMO usually that trigger is some controversial change.
Due to the above, IMO, the subreddit decline will happen much later than the games (in significant numbers), since people will be still expressing their disappointment or what they think should be done, or whatever while no longer playing as much.
Having said that, I'm not saying that steam decline or even if we knew the numbers for sure, an actual playerbase decline means the game is dying. Even if it does decline the game has its history and it will probably stabilize on some core playerbase, and as long as that core is profitable for Cryptic the game will go on.
Just curious do you do daily influence runs for your guild (if you are in one)?
I'm in an alliance with full level 20 guilds with max rank buildings so there is no need to farm influence
tell me you dont make profit of selling new mw resources from charts without telling me you dont make profit of selling new mw resources from charts xD
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
*sigh*. It's seems none of you have notice few important stuffs.
Amazon New World went live, and due massive hype lot of players moved there to try it. So naturally our playerbase activity declined. Same happening in other mmo games to.
After two, three months hype will end, then some players will return, some don't. It's usual thing in mmo games.
Other thing, once you done with campaings and storyline quests. What to do now? Sure Neverwinter have dungeons, but they are interesting for first 20 times. After that it's just boring repeatable content. Till new content gets added to game, obviously some players don't even bother to log in to game at all.
new world latest trend of cheating bugs that break the game made it the joke, gold exploits, town boards exploits: storaged items being sold on market and when using them on townboard to complete task doesn't reduce the amount being sold on market xD, josh strife videos show lots of these broken features
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,405Arc User
Just curious do you do daily influence runs for your guild (if you are in one)?
I'm in an alliance with full level 20 guilds with max rank buildings so there is no need to farm influence
tell me you dont make profit of selling new mw resources from charts without telling me you dont make profit of selling new mw resources from charts xD
You don't have to farm influence to buy charts. I have not done influence for a long time but I buy charts every now and then when my characters have guild mark max out.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
Doing a random completes both quests from the cleric each day, 30 dungeon shards, or 300 guild marks per toon per day. More if you wait until x2 guild marks. Many guilds are capped, but can free up resources by tearing out one of the support structures(animal pen, or 1 of the others), and then rebuild smelter yard to lvl 1, it takes gems, surplus equip, and dungeon shards, and can be rebuilt each day.
Comments
You can have 10 million players tomorrow. If nothing sells, they will announce a player limit or a closing server. It is unwise to pay ten thousands and nothing sells. Similarly, if things sell, the company will change and the headquarters will exist for Neverwinter.
What is the selling point of this product?
It's the upgrade packs, wards, Vips. Is it still sellable for the next 6 months? Probably yes, for the old supporters. Will 1 million players suddenly want to buy them in the next 3 months? It's be really challenging.
Look at our feedback, we complain about people who pay to win, we complain on the lack of players. What do we suggest them to sell to sustain the product, to bring in more people?
Will a new big patch or new content bring in 1 million people? My answer is no - steam announced XYZ games having a patch. When I'm not playing it, I wonder what that patch is all about. I have no interest. It just creates confusion and gave an alien feel.
Other RPG competitors such as Genshin impact is able to start with just 60k and ended up with 300 million profit. I've play it and it's not as in-depth as NW. It's just a few monster 3D which you have to hit over and over. Why is it that a new game can surpass Neverwinter that much? They create a feel that it is a simple game. You just pick a character you want and hit things. People would then spend money to unbox new character or beautiful dresses. Nobody cares about the story.
What I think can bring in more people, and is able to increase sale =
1. Make things simple.
Remake store description and create a big patch to attract new players
Neverwinter - Come and Help tank for 4 other people, or heal others up in this fantasy land. Don't miss the beautiful black hole sun look in Avernus or the fantasy warp in vos entrance. Advertise on the selling points - Able to Paint your armors.
2. Improve on character customization
The bodies look great but currently it's just a few faces and hair to chose from.
3. Sell beautiful looking characters
Xuna looks great. Imagine the player could purchase the skin of xuna and play as xuna. It doesn't have to be xuna but it can be new customization unlocks.
4. Rare cosmetic on steam market.
Rare skins in valve games such CSGO could sell up to thousands on the market. Selling items for AD is probably an old fashion market. Imagine a new upgrade where you can sell lucky drops on steam market to buy other games. People will want to play Neverwinter more than other RPG games because of this.
That's all from me currently. I'll write proposals if I have more ideas. I'm sure there are other ideas in your mind, and I hope the community won't just be an critic who find the wrongs, but an idea sharing shooter. When everyone shared their ideas, not only it can increase the chances, it has a little chance for the ideas to evolve around one another to create a next-level idea.
Guilds don't get people in the door, everyone has those. Basically some people are saying others are leaving? Others are always leaving and new players are always joining. Where is the proof everyone is leaving? The OP benyr, uses Steam statistics to show the decline of this game based upon release. While Steam stats are probably a good tool, the way he is abusing that tool is wrong.
Benyr states, "The September 2021 Average players number was 1355.6 and peak players number was 2402. These are the lowest numbers in their respective categories since the Steam records began in December 2013. "
No game can live up to their release numbers. All the games immediately go downhill the first six months after release.
How about you look at the whole last year?
2020
Oct 26th 3,125
Nov 30th 2,809
Dec 28th 3,167
2021
Jan 25th 3,213
Feb 22nd 3,025
Mar 29th 2,696
Apr 26th 2,674
May 31st 2,719
Jun 28th 3,600 - highest peak all year, mid summer how about that?
Jul 26th 3,539 - second highest
Aug 23rd 2,402 - recorded in August and not September??
Sep 27th 2,216
The numbers above appear with dates on that green graph display. You will notice they don't account for the "data dip" on July 19th in the table either, why is that? Now let's do a 1 year side by side of their other "popular game".
Star Trek vs. Neverwinter
Oh, look Star Trek didn't do too good this summer on Steam, maybe someone should tell them the game is dead? Star Trek dipped on that same day to 1,443 people playing as the recorded peak. But then it bounces back 3,264 in September, why does one game fall when the other rises? Probably because people who play Neverwinter also play Star Trek, and Trek has new shiny things.
While we don't have the colossal numbers on Champions, had you looked at the graph and not the numbers.
You would see this display.
Does that sine wave look awesome or what?! According to Steam we have 250 players online playing. If that number is 25% of the total population, it means we have 1,000. I never have any issue finding people to talk with, do alerts, or just run some content. You are welcome to drop by anytime, we have puppies! Ok, they are furries... but what's the difference, if you can pet them?
Just killing time...
Lowest numbers show how many players that content managed to actually retain and for how long (distance from peak to drop stabilization).
To compare advertisement campaign we compare peak to peak. To compare content we compare bottom to bottom.
To understand some general trend we take average over a sliding window, or in simple terms, zoom out, and look where it goes (at the derivative).
3,125 - 87%
2,809 - 78%
3,167 - 88%
3,213 - 89%
3,025 - 84%
2,696 - 75%
2,674 - 74%
2,719 - 76%
3,600 - 100%
3,539 - 98%
2,402 - 67%
2,266 - 63%
Which doesn't look too bad, but Winter is Coming, these numbers should be going up very soon. Also it is true, Star Trek added "Reflections" on Sept 15th.
That could easily pull people "with nothing else to do" from Neverwinter to go do something. Module 21 offer a new system and a bard class, but no additional content. Once content is added the pendulum will swing the other direction. It is odd, but the games to compete for attention even on the same network.
If I were to look at the last 3 years of the same data listed above. Your new peak number is 4,435 and the data looks like this;
3,125 - 70%
2,809 - 63%
3,167 - 71%
3,213 - 72%
3,025 - 68%
2,696 - 61%
2,674 - 60%
2,719 - 61%
3,600 - 81%
3,539 - 80%
2,402 - 54%
2,266 - 51%
The further back you go into the timeline the peak numbers will always rise. This means they held 80% of their audience they had 3 years ago and recently it is down to only 50% of 3 years ago. One has to ask if the data reflects any change specific to the game or is it outside factors, the data collection, or even the popularity of the launcher?
I had a difficult time looking for a game to match the same volume as both Star Trek and Neverwinter, but here is the comparison to Neverwinter and two other unrelated games showing the same decline after the summer ended.
Neverwinter, PlanetSide 2, and Maplestory
PSN Zen AD Exchange - Forecasting Spreadsheet
While from the last peak of 100% in 4 months it dropped to 63%, which is 37% drop.
That's 1 month short, and over double the drop.
If we check "end of summer" we see that last year there was 0 drop from August to September, actually there was a gain of 1 peak player ( which is still less informative, since there was a change in average, but if we compare peaks, then peaks we compare)
Compared to this years end of summer drop from 3,539 to 2,402, which is 32% decrease.
Faster drops, in larger numbers in shorter span of time. Doesn't seem that good to me.
But maybe it's just players don't like Steam anymore.
New World had a fairly successful launch(they had to triple the initial number of servers) on Sept 28th, that very likely has drained players from Neverwinter.
This probably does not show fully in the numbers yet, but 3 days of New World and open beta early September and general expectations should affect the September numbers.
Will be interesting to see how this works out longer term.
Just killing time...
Amazon New World went live, and due massive hype lot of players moved there to try it. So naturally our playerbase activity declined. Same happening in other mmo games to.
After two, three months hype will end, then some players will return, some don't. It's usual thing in mmo games.
Other thing, once you done with campaings and storyline quests. What to do now? Sure Neverwinter have dungeons, but they are interesting for first 20 times. After that it's just boring repeatable content. Till new content gets added to game, obviously some players don't even bother to log in to game at all.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
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And I must add: A very nice skeleton. They just do not seem to have very much content at max level for PvE people.
I am sure the first expansion will fix that when they can focus on content rather than getting the base system running.
If people get to max level 60 and do all content there is before the expansion hits, certainly they could go back to old games while waiting. Will be interesting to see how this works out.
If one doesn't rush it then there is plenty to do, even just strolling around killing trees and petting iron is sort of fun.
And there are always the invasions.
AFAIK the rumors are that there are about 6 expeditions in the works, and the planned map is significantly larger than what we see now.
Their engine can handle some 100 people in a small area. That's quite nice.
That is the nature of the beast in MMO space these days... competition for the same playerbases is rife nowadays becasue the market is flooded with options, so it's up to us whether we wanna jump on the merry go round or not.
The key question you all need to just ask yourself is .. are you still having fun or not... if the answer is no then take a break or go find the next big use of your time.
At the end of the day it is out of our hands as to whether the game is still a viable financial concern so try to enjoy it while it still is I say.. or not.
Yes. This and several other online games I monitor have "died" many times according to their users in their respective forums. Some random user pops up and states the population is low and ergo people are leaving. They never bother to check other possibilities or bother to mention this is only one of many hypotheses.
Then because of the psychology behind it people are most apt to respond to the "bad news" as we can see here with 2 pages so far. It is partly our vigilance for threats that explains our predilection for bad news. Humans are on alert and it is a survival instinct that draws us to these ominous warnings. It is almost implausible to shut it off.
It won't take four to six months on New World before the forums flood with "this game is dead/dying" subjects. At present the servers are busting at the seams. It will only be a matter of time, once everyone has submitted to hidden subliminal I implanted, then I will rule the planet, and they will be my mindless army.... no everyone will just get bored. I have told you all before, the human mind and imagination cannot be bested by a machine.
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1. Posting on Reddit is not an indicator if someone is playing the game or not.
2. People are not fast to unsubscribe, they can no longer use Reddit at all but still appear subscribed.
3. People post more when they are unhappy, or feel strongly about something, or just want to respond to someone of the previous groups. So naturally posting correlate less with game time but more with game changes. Publish some game changes and you see more Reddit activity, but the same player count since the changes are not even on the server.
Steam is by far not perfect indicator, but it measures actual game usage. And while it doesn't measure any platform at all, not even PC, it doesn't need to.
Every Poll, TV rating and so on are based on a population sample. We just need to ask how close the sample to the whole population and Steam is much closer than Reddit and as such has better statistical indication of the trends.
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Go play the game, that has died many times, and have fun!
Due to the above, IMO, the subreddit decline will happen much later than the games (in significant numbers), since people will be still expressing their disappointment or what they think should be done, or whatever while no longer playing as much.
Having said that, I'm not saying that steam decline or even if we knew the numbers for sure, an actual playerbase decline means the game is dying. Even if it does decline the game has its history and it will probably stabilize on some core playerbase, and as long as that core is profitable for Cryptic the game will go on.