I won't argue that its possible STOs population is shinking. I would bet it is.
I am simply wondering how the heck you are reading the steam chart. lol
Nov 2014 - 2156 Avg 4216 Peek.... Nov 2013 1573 Avg 3218 peek (around 25% increase in players)
Last 30 days Vs 150 days ago (pre delta)
1907 Avg players 3756 Peek Vs 1401 Avg Players 2540 Peek (around 33% increase in players)
Bottom link my friend... not sure what your smoking but your math is really really really off.
Steam numbers support a pretty sizable increase in STO players using steam. Which is sad but true.
If your right and steam was a big enough sample of STO players to make a guess about total login (Which it is NOT... I posted the eve example where Steam accounts for like 5% of the online players, STO won't be any different) then STO is in fact growing 25% on the year... and 33% over pre delta only counting the last 30 days.
You are comparing last years normal numbers to the peak log in of an expanion that has then crashed and burned this year?
See the real story, switch the log in view to ALL, and see when the peaks were last as low as a couple days ago, and getting lower every day.
well if sto is growing by 25% where are all the noobs hiding at?
and if steam is only 5% that's 25,0000 new noobs on during peak...............I don't see a fraction of that on any day
I never believe numbers given by a company after living thru sony and SWG
I don't believe it is growing... I don't believe you can get any real data from the Steam numbers there simply to small a sample if I'm right. I know in Eves case Steam accounts for 5%... even if STO is 3 times that you can't really draw any conclusions from 15%... I do agree no way there is 25k logged into STO pretty much ever. lol
If you wanna play something with a dev you can mostly trust switch to eve. A launcher that tells you exactly how many people are logged in all the time... and a API system that gives that data to any web developer to pull. Heck of a game.
I'm not arguing your numbers but if you look overall although there might be a percentage difference. The playerbase on average decrease in the playerbase playing.
How a company managed to loss enough players of two expansions? Amazes me.
The numbers may well be down but they are still up on steam. You also have to factor in things like seasons and holidays. I mean you can track a -800 for July from the month before... that is just a seasonal shift though as people do other things then game. (every game on steam drops the same month)... if you where to take 5-10 other games on steam of aprox size and representation % on steam. You could get an average up and down for months and figure out what drops are expected on a seasonal basis. If you compared that to STO... I would bet good money it would correlate almost completely. I think I am saying that the steam chart really doesn't seem to show much change in ACTUAL player behaviour at all. I mean if you look at a typical low cycle month for games like July the last 3 years are all in the single digit % difference range. The expansion bump from Oct when you take that into account is only a couple hundred players. (also keep in mind like Cryptic says if you log in for LONGER you show up for longer on the average charge and sku the numbers.) steams numbers are showing Avg... not number of. If I stay on for 1 hour more then normal I will sku there data. I really didn't mean to go on for so long but if you look at there peek and averages... Avg players is almost always right around 50% of peek... Which honest tells me that for the steam users at least they are NOT staying logged in on average any more then they did a year ago. (which means Gekos metrics are wrong hes lying or steam is just way to small a sample)
You are comparing last years normal numbers to the peak log in of an expanion that has then crashed and burned this year?
See the real story, switch the log in view to ALL, and see when the peaks were last as low as a couple days ago, and getting lower every day.
There graph is just a graph that uses the numbers that are there and quite readable.
My point is valid.
According to steam STO is growing at least on steam. Its a bad example if you want to prove STO is dying.
Also read the post I wrote above even if I drug that paragraph out. Its Dec... numbers are going to be low. People have better things to do then play video games. Every game for the next 4-5 weeks will report 20% or so lower numbers then normal. Cause its you know normal usage.
Just stopped by to see if anythings changed yet. Nope? Too bad for them. There's a rumor going around that PWE might have picked up the China release of Black Desert, if that's the case and PWE controls Black Desert here in the USA as well, you can kiss my money goodbye on that title too and it's directly due to what PWE has done to this title. Completely unforgiveable.
Just stopped by to see if anythings changed yet. Nope? Too bad for them. There's a rumor going around that PWE might have picked up the China release of Black Desert, if that's the case and PWE controls Black Desert here in the USA as well, you can kiss my money goodbye on that title too and it's directly due to what PWE has done to this title. Completely unforgiveable.
That would be a good thing for PWE stock perhaps... as they could use more hits in China.
I wouldn't worry about US ports of black desert though unless PWE buys Pearl Abyss out of Korea the developer of the game.
If the rumor is true they will publish it in China. So unless your moving there you won't be dealing with PWE... and PWE will mostly be pushing what the korean developer does after translations and perhaps minor tweaks. Its the same idea as Trion Worlds publishing Archage. Likely the US publisher will be some other company and it won't really matter the P2W cash store and grind stuffs will be added by the Korean developer.
There graph is just a graph that uses the numbers that are there and quite readable.
My point is valid.
According to steam STO is growing at least on steam. Its a bad example if you want to prove STO is dying.
Also read the post I wrote above even if I drug that paragraph out. Its Dec... numbers are going to be low. People have better things to do then play video games. Every game for the next 4-5 weeks will report 20% or so lower numbers then normal. Cause its you know normal usage.
They can compare how many steam users are playing STO but they can't compare how many people in general are playing it. I myself dont use steam (i hate steam actually and wont play games that are only available via steam interface).
Since they have made it harder with zen on steam as well I would not be surprised to see the number of steam users playing STO drop but it doesn't actually mean that players have stopped playing.
They would need to know how many moved from steam to using the arc clients and track them that way. We also need to know how many people are playing STO who dont use steam to know if there is an increase or whatever. Since arc is pushing its own client we have no clue if there is an increase or decrease in anything.
i'm not against Dental fun; but with these f...... queues empty, when finally you can do viscous cycle advanced; i'm a little bit pissed off, when a Dental makes the little gekli follow him, and after moves at the opposite side, away from the mother
everything above that is paywalled. sure you can do the quests, but if you want to participate in the rep-loot-system and get set gear you need to do advanced ques, and to do that you need mk 14 gear or to be leeching off at team that has mk 14 gear.
that gear does not drop
so you get a dilithium upgrade PAYWALL!
and most people, when they reach that, just say "no thanks" and go play star wars.
Wanting info on dead ques mmmm maybe they are going to remove some of them,,,,,,anyway why cant they look.
Whatever they do it wont make any difference if people are not on line, cant even make a team up of friends or fleet mates anymore no one's on line, been like that for 2 weeks now.
Klingon Scout Force, Breaking The Planet, and The Big Dig won't start. Also, Undine Infiltration Advanced takes many times longer than it used to to start. I must be exaggerating.
The queues are still empty. Regardless of any alleged numerical oddities in the U.I., they really be empty.
I can currently play only The Cure Advanced, or the other 2 Advanced STF's, and Federation Fleet Alert. The rest is pretty much a not-happening thing. I used to play Starbase Fleet Defense, and many others.
I wonder what you're planning on doing about this situation. Or whether we can even get full disclosure on what is going on, really, as I find the lack of participants rather alarming, tbh. I'm pretty sure your metrics will tell you the same.
Maybe it's time you did something I know you don't want to do; namely, un-nerf the rewards for these queues. Let NPC's pay out a similar amount of XP as in Argala, for instance. Because, whatever huge loss you're fearing from making that happen, it can't possibly be as bad as no one playing (or hardly anyone, for those accustomed to taking things literal). Or maybe have regular STF's drop Ancient Power Cells too. Yes, I know, that goes linea recta against your wish for everyone to just do DR content. But, as an old saying goes, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
At any rate, you *do* realize that empty queues are 'dangerous', right? People can forego on the insane upgrade cost; they can still grind Argala; but they cannot ignore empty queues, as you can't play what's not available.
Klingon Scout Force, Breaking The Planet, and The Big Dig won't start. Also, Undine Infiltration Advanced takes many times longer than it used to to start. I must be exaggerating.
I couldn't get Klingon Scout Force, Breaking the Planet, and the Big Dig to start before Delta Rising.
I have no problems with the other queue missions, though.
As for Undine Infiltration, most of us are doing Elite.
everything above that is paywalled. sure you can do the quests, but if you want to participate in the rep-loot-system and get set gear you need to do advanced ques, and to do that you need mk 14 gear or to be leeching off at team that has mk 14 gear.
that gear does not drop
so you get a dilithium upgrade PAYWALL!
and most people, when they reach that, just say "no thanks" and go play star wars.
the ques will never be the same again
Really? You think that mk XIV is key to completing advance queues? If someone can't do them with mk XII, he/she still wan't do them with mk XIV. Having better grade equipment wan't magically make people knowing what to do at the mission.
Klingon Scout Force, Breaking The Planet, and The Big Dig won't start. Also, Undine Infiltration Advanced takes many times longer than it used to to start. I must be exaggerating.
Who needs a team for those? Play them solo or in a 5-man team.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I'm looking forward to things being changed. Not for the changes themselves, you understand, but for the back-pedaling forum posts that the Devs will be making. Also the podcasts that will contain interviews with developers that will start off semi-apologetic but within 2 minutes will blame the players for the problems.
If we ever see any form of apology from Cryptic for the mistakes that have been made over the past month I will personally give £50 to a charity chosen by the Dev who posts the apology.
Feel free to bookmark my comment and call me on it.
Comments
You are comparing last years normal numbers to the peak log in of an expanion that has then crashed and burned this year?
See the real story, switch the log in view to ALL, and see when the peaks were last as low as a couple days ago, and getting lower every day.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
I don't believe it is growing... I don't believe you can get any real data from the Steam numbers there simply to small a sample if I'm right. I know in Eves case Steam accounts for 5%... even if STO is 3 times that you can't really draw any conclusions from 15%... I do agree no way there is 25k logged into STO pretty much ever. lol
If you wanna play something with a dev you can mostly trust switch to eve. A launcher that tells you exactly how many people are logged in all the time... and a API system that gives that data to any web developer to pull. Heck of a game.
The numbers may well be down but they are still up on steam. You also have to factor in things like seasons and holidays. I mean you can track a -800 for July from the month before... that is just a seasonal shift though as people do other things then game. (every game on steam drops the same month)... if you where to take 5-10 other games on steam of aprox size and representation % on steam. You could get an average up and down for months and figure out what drops are expected on a seasonal basis. If you compared that to STO... I would bet good money it would correlate almost completely. I think I am saying that the steam chart really doesn't seem to show much change in ACTUAL player behaviour at all. I mean if you look at a typical low cycle month for games like July the last 3 years are all in the single digit % difference range. The expansion bump from Oct when you take that into account is only a couple hundred players. (also keep in mind like Cryptic says if you log in for LONGER you show up for longer on the average charge and sku the numbers.) steams numbers are showing Avg... not number of. If I stay on for 1 hour more then normal I will sku there data. I really didn't mean to go on for so long but if you look at there peek and averages... Avg players is almost always right around 50% of peek... Which honest tells me that for the steam users at least they are NOT staying logged in on average any more then they did a year ago. (which means Gekos metrics are wrong hes lying or steam is just way to small a sample)
There graph is just a graph that uses the numbers that are there and quite readable.
My point is valid.
According to steam STO is growing at least on steam. Its a bad example if you want to prove STO is dying.
Also read the post I wrote above even if I drug that paragraph out. Its Dec... numbers are going to be low. People have better things to do then play video games. Every game for the next 4-5 weeks will report 20% or so lower numbers then normal. Cause its you know normal usage.
That would be a good thing for PWE stock perhaps... as they could use more hits in China.
I wouldn't worry about US ports of black desert though unless PWE buys Pearl Abyss out of Korea the developer of the game.
If the rumor is true they will publish it in China. So unless your moving there you won't be dealing with PWE... and PWE will mostly be pushing what the korean developer does after translations and perhaps minor tweaks. Its the same idea as Trion Worlds publishing Archage. Likely the US publisher will be some other company and it won't really matter the P2W cash store and grind stuffs will be added by the Korean developer.
EDIT...
One quick search
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/24/black-deserts-na-and-eu-publisher-is-daum/
If you care about it there is the info for the NA publisher of the game your talking about.
They can compare how many steam users are playing STO but they can't compare how many people in general are playing it. I myself dont use steam (i hate steam actually and wont play games that are only available via steam interface).
Since they have made it harder with zen on steam as well I would not be surprised to see the number of steam users playing STO drop but it doesn't actually mean that players have stopped playing.
They would need to know how many moved from steam to using the arc clients and track them that way. We also need to know how many people are playing STO who dont use steam to know if there is an increase or whatever. Since arc is pushing its own client we have no clue if there is an increase or decrease in anything.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1330751
Mine Trap Supporter
Thanks for sharing!
NO this is not funny
oh ty i would have missed that link if i had not seen it in this thread I kinda suck and reading all bits of the forum
*goes to post my info*
it's easy street until level 50 and mk 12
everything above that is paywalled. sure you can do the quests, but if you want to participate in the rep-loot-system and get set gear you need to do advanced ques, and to do that you need mk 14 gear or to be leeching off at team that has mk 14 gear.
that gear does not drop
so you get a dilithium upgrade PAYWALL!
and most people, when they reach that, just say "no thanks" and go play star wars.
the ques will never be the same again
Mine Trap won't start, must be a reporting bug.
Whatever they do it wont make any difference if people are not on line, cant even make a team up of friends or fleet mates anymore no one's on line, been like that for 2 weeks now.
Klingon Scout Force, Breaking The Planet, and The Big Dig won't start. Also, Undine Infiltration Advanced takes many times longer than it used to to start. I must be exaggerating.
Do not worry.
Cryptic read your post.
They listened.
A new lockbox is forthcoming. Just hang tight!
Wouldn't mind a new lockbox (Vaudwaar?), as key prices are way too low for my taste.
I couldn't get Klingon Scout Force, Breaking the Planet, and the Big Dig to start before Delta Rising.
I have no problems with the other queue missions, though.
As for Undine Infiltration, most of us are doing Elite.
If we are exaggerating then why is there currently a thread started by PWE that is asking us about these empty STF queues?
Free Tibet!
1. Get rid of existing missions
2. Increase difficulty to maddening proportions
3. Decrease all payouts on everything
Three strikes STO is out.
I just hope they take another chance at bat.
They better listen to the coach this time and not swing at every bad idea.
Cryptic if its not broke don't fix it.
News flash! Before DR it was not broke at all!!
Cryptic and Perfect World WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE people are not buing what you are cooking so fix something else!!
Which does no good for people who have toons not yet 60, alters in particular.
Really? You think that mk XIV is key to completing advance queues? If someone can't do them with mk XII, he/she still wan't do them with mk XIV. Having better grade equipment wan't magically make people knowing what to do at the mission.
^^ These words deserve to be carved in stone... or at least be QFT.
Who needs a team for those? Play them solo or in a 5-man team.
If we ever see any form of apology from Cryptic for the mistakes that have been made over the past month I will personally give £50 to a charity chosen by the Dev who posts the apology.
Feel free to bookmark my comment and call me on it.
Free Tibet!
No, what is gateway?