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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

Gav ponders three years of infographics

gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
edited January 2015 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
2013:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/1017050-anniversary-infographic

2014:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/3031153-4-year-anniversary-infographic

2015:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9065123-star-trek-online-5-year-anniversary-infographic

Also, for laughs:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1359681

I'm not the best at math, so please do check in case I got something totally wrong. Also, the below is not giving years as in "happened in year x" but "tracked on graphic from year x". I'm going to assume the numbers are true.

Captains:
2013 = 2 mil
2014 = 3.2 mil = added ~3,288 new characters per day
2015 = 3.8 mil = added ~2,192 new characters per day

Note: 2015 = 2.5 million accounts = 1.52 characters / account or 0.658 accounts per character
Assuming this is a stable value
2014 = ~2,163 new accounts per day
2015 = ~1,442 new accounts per day

Doffs:
2014 = 75.8 mil = 23.6/ captain
2015 = 107 mil = 28.1/ captain

Fleets:
2013 = 16.5k = one fleet per 121 captains
2014 = 21.5k = one fleet per 149 captains
2015 = 25.04k = one fleet per 151 captains

Now, my thoughts on the above:
We don't know how many stick around, hopefully internal metrics show a lot of those new people stick around. I can say I'm glad there's so many new players finding sto daily. And while the rate is slowing, they are still coming.

Fed outnumbers ROM and kdf combined 3:1. I actually thought it was more heavily weighted to fed than this. The number of tacs vs science and engineers was also not as extreme as I expected. I do wonder if this is getting more balanced with time or less?

Edit ferasans outnumber caitians by a lot. Muhahaha! At least the kdf wins the kitty contest! Also, 68.4 thousand catgirls and catbois in game. That's a lot more than I thought./edit

Players are definitely moving toward consolidated fleets. The number of new fleets is much less than the number of new players. All those who said small fleets are dying can pat yourselves on the back. Given how fleets were the biggest dil sink, I think I can see why so much emphasis on crafting to replace it. I would love to see something change to strengthen small fleets.

Holy schmoley people ignore the doff system that badly? I think I need to start helping the new people I work with learn about the system. At least it went up a bit this year. I'm guessing that's crafting? Not sure what else might have done it.

At 1.5 captains per account, that's a lot of people with no alts. I'm guessing this is why cryptic isn't getting more negative feedback on alt-unfriendly changes with delta rising. Though it also suggests nearly half of accounts have at least one alt, so here's hoping for a more alt friendly future.

So, anyone have any other thoughts? Am I more clueless than usual with these observations? Doom?

Edit: cheers to all 12 sto babies and their families./edit

Edit2: trendy, please stick around and post the info graphic next year. We've never seen the same person post twice. You can make trek history! Dooooo eeeeeet./edit
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • salazarrazesalazarraze Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    This is just my opinion.

    The vast majority of single toon accounts are players that are trekkies that are living out their personal fantasies of being "in" Star Trek. They may not be interested in fleets, doffing, endgame systems like reputation, or STF's. Once they are done with the story, they are done. Some of them, like myself, may eventually convert and become "serious" STO players but the vast majority of them take little note of changes as they are as ultra casual as any player could possibly be.
    When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
  • kozar2kozar2 Member Posts: 602 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    I know a large number of players with 10-20+ alts.

    All free players generally have all 3 captains active.

    If I had to guess on total accounts I'd take total captains and divide by about 5. Of course that's total not active.
  • gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    salazarraze wrote: »
    This is just my opinion.

    The vast majority of single toon accounts are players that are trekkies that are living out their personal fantasies of being "in" Star Trek. They may not be interested in fleets, doffing, endgame systems like reputation, or STF's. Once they are done with the story, they are done. Some of them, like myself, may eventually convert and become "serious" STO players but the vast majority of them take little note of changes as they are as ultra casual as any player could possibly be.

    Probably true. I'm guessing a lot of the one character accounts are the ones that start then stop playing.

    Like kozar says, I bet most who keep playing try out another captain.
  • rodentmasterrodentmaster Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    gavinruneblade wrote: »
    Probably true. I'm guessing a lot of the one character accounts are the ones that start then stop playing.

    Like kozar says, I bet most who keep playing try out another captain.


    True, but they inflate the numbers because they are counting "captains" that haven't been used in 5 years and never got past level 5.

    Further, they almost never delete ACCOUNTS. You might delete all your chars, and stop logging in, but your ACCOUNT most likely remains forever. Then there's people like the troll in PESTF who has 5 separate accounts.

    It's very flattering to present it this way, but seriously over-inflated, IMO. I want to know not how many accounts exist, but rather how many reached 50 and logged in more than once a month in that year. Or the number of captains that actually logged in (say you have 20, but only play 2 and leave the others for storage?). I want to know how many of those people were online but never played a mission or battlezone or anything the entire time they were on.

    Frankly, the metrics are propoganda at this point. Let's have some useful ones!
  • erei1erei1 Member Posts: 4,081 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    salazarraze wrote: »
    This is just my opinion.

    The vast majority of single toon accounts are players that are trekkies that are living out their personal fantasies of being "in" Star Trek. They may not be interested in fleets, doffing, endgame systems like reputation, or STF's. Once they are done with the story, they are done. Some of them, like myself, may eventually convert and become "serious" STO players but the vast majority of them take little note of changes as they are as ultra casual as any player could possibly be.
    Or more likely, people that gave a try to the game, didn't enjoy it for some reason, and stopped playing. For example, like a friend of mine, who want up to lvl 10ish, and uninstalled the game because it was not his kind of game.
    Also, a lot of those account are bot account (banned or not).

    And that's exactly why "total number of account" is a worthless stats, always in the millions range for f2p.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • stf65stf65 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    the real info is player character breakdown: 73% fed, 16% kdf, 11% rom.
  • erei1erei1 Member Posts: 4,081 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    mustrumridcully0 wrote: »
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • sinn74sinn74 Member Posts: 1,149 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    stf65 wrote: »
    the real info is player character breakdown: 73% fed, 16% kdf, 11% rom.

    Sounds like "Let's look at metrics for the full story!" which is never a good idea, unless you really know what you're doing.

    How many of each are active?

    What level are they?

    How many of each have been deleted at certain specific times (DR or LOR)?

    What % of time and purchases are made on each?


    All more relevant than just total characters in a F2P game.
  • johngazmanjohngazman Member Posts: 2,826 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    Surprised that the KDF playerbase still outnumbers the Rom playerbase, even through the Romulans are pretty much superior to the KDF (on a technical level).
    You're just a machine. And machines can be broken.
    StarTrekFirstContactBorgBattleonetumblr_lln3v6QoT31qzrtqe.gif
  • mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    gavinruneblade wrote: »
    The number of tacs vs science and engineers was also not as extreme as I expected. I do wonder if this is getting more balanced with time or less?
    Isn't that pretty much the ratio of any MMO that has the Holy Trinity? I guess even here, were we don't really have that, players still associate tac with dps, eng with tanking and sci with healing.
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • sinn74sinn74 Member Posts: 1,149 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    johngazman wrote: »
    Surprised that the KDF playerbase still outnumbers the Rom playerbase, even through the Romulans are pretty much superior to the KDF (on a technical level).

    I would guess that KDF aligned Romulans/Remans are either equal to, or greater than all other active KDF characters.
  • ladymyajhaladymyajha Member Posts: 1,428 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    johngazman wrote: »
    Surprised that the KDF playerbase still outnumbers the Rom playerbase, even through the Romulans are pretty much superior to the KDF (on a technical level).

    Not really surprised. A lot of people have Klingon captains that date back five years. They don't do anything with them except on occasion, but they have them. My guess is a lot of them are on inactive accounts as well that haven't been played in years... but they exist so Cryptic is counting them to inflate their numbers. Romulans haven't been around as long, so you don't have as many inactive fluff inflating Romulan Captains out there.

    Also figure that just me alone I've run up over 5 years 3 different Klingons faction... the first was an original pvp only Klink that I don't play any more because it's been broken. I made another to experience the first Klingon story revamp... and made another for the latest
  • ddesjardinsddesjardins Member Posts: 3,056 Media Corps
    edited January 2015
    rodentmaster wrote: »
    True, but they inflate the numbers because they are counting "captains" that haven't been used in 5 years and never got past level 5.

    Further, they almost never delete ACCOUNTS. You might delete all your chars, and stop logging in, but your ACCOUNT most likely remains forever. Then there's people like the troll in PESTF who has 5 separate accounts.

    It's very flattering to present it this way, but seriously over-inflated, IMO. I want to know not how many accounts exist, but rather how many reached 50 and logged in more than once a month in that year. Or the number of captains that actually logged in (say you have 20, but only play 2 and leave the others for storage?). I want to know how many of those people were online but never played a mission or battlezone or anything the entire time they were on.

    Frankly, the metrics are propoganda at this point. Let's have some useful ones!

    As a publicly traded company in the US, they cannot imply or fudge numbers. It opens the possibility of a legal challenge. If they post numbers of any kind, you can be certain it's been vetted and approved.

    These numbers are a feel-good marketing metric. They do not represent reality of actual active players. What does make me very happy is that over 1000 per day sign up which is no doubt higher than the number of players who stop playing. The game is very much alive.

    GG captain gecko, GG
  • erei1erei1 Member Posts: 4,081 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    johngazman wrote: »
    Surprised that the KDF playerbase still outnumbers the Rom playerbase, even through the Romulans are pretty much superior to the KDF (on a technical level).
    They are also a lot "younger". It's character, not active character. Many of those Klingons were created years ago before the rom ever existed. And even if the player is not playing anymore, they are part of the stats you can see.
    Not to mention how active the bots are on Qo'nos. Even if they get banned (doubtful, but it might happen), they are still counted, because their account still exist, they are just banned (IE inactive forever).


    Those numbers are pretty generic in the MMO world. They mean nothing.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • UnknownUnknown
    edited January 2015
    This content has been removed.
  • futurepastnowfuturepastnow Member Posts: 3,660 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    If only 11% of characters are Romulan, I guess we can stop calling LoR a success now.
  • neoakiraiineoakiraii Member Posts: 7,468 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    Not many Klingons in the Klingon Empire
    GwaoHAD.png
  • gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    mattjohnsonva wrote: »
    SRS has 4 fleets with a total of around 500 Captains. At any one time about 10% of those are active. If I had never deleted any members over the years we'd have at least 1200 captains of which 4% would be active. So I would guess that from those 2.5 million accounts only about 110,000 are active if our fleet is representative of the whole. Some top of the head numbers but it puts it into some sort of perspective.

    That probably explains the low amount of doffs, I mean most active players I know have hundreds of the things, but the figures quoted here mean that most players have little more than those given away for free, so if there were really a great many active players this figure should be far far higher, somewhere around 250 million at least.

    I'm guessing everyone who gives up near or before level 10, plus all the spam bots have no doffs.
  • gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    neoakiraii wrote: »
    Not many Klingons in the Klingon Empire

    I am compelled to agree with anything you say due to the epic awesomeness of your lag signature. I love that you even included the animated Spok.

    On topic though, there are lots of orions. I wonder if the % of female is higher than the % of tacticals? I'd guess it is.
  • ladymyajhaladymyajha Member Posts: 1,428 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    ddesjardins wrote: »
    As a publicly traded company in the US, they cannot imply or fudge numbers. It opens the possibility of a legal challenge. If they post numbers of any kind, you can be certain it's been vetted and approved.

    These numbers are a feel-good marketing metric. They do not represent reality of actual active players. What does make me very happy is that over 1000 per day sign up which is no doubt higher than the number of players who stop playing. The game is very much alive.

    GG captain gecko, GG

    Yes and no. The infographic isn't being released for stock market (that's a different portfolio they offer) it's being released by PR, so while you can't LIE... you can most certainly stretch the truth... depends on exactly how it's said. So if you look carefully there is no way that in this case they're going to be sued. Besides even if they did lie on the infographic... no one is going to sue them. Oh they'll come here and rant and rave and threaten... but they'll never carry it out, and Cryptic knows it, but they're not lying as you said. They're certainly stretching the truth and using spin for feel good metrics... as yo usaid.

    As to the 1000 per day that sign up, the real question that needs to be asked is... how many stay? I can't tell you the number of games (f2p and not) I've signed up as a trial, played for about a week or a month, realized that the game wasn't for me... especially the end game... and moved on never to look back.

    The other issue to look at is... how many of those 1000 people actually spend any money at all on the game?

    So if 1000 people are signing up, and not spending a dime on the game, and 999 of them are leaving within a week, then the game is most certainly not alive and is dying. If 1000 of them are signing up, 999 of them are spending even 10 dollars, and 500 of them a staying... then I'd say yes the game is very much alive.

    Those are metrics though you can't get from the infographic, and Cryptic will never, ever tell you outside of a stock market report, and even then it's doubtful they'll tell you without burying it in PWE under various marketing slangs.

    There are just too many variables involved to be able to tell from this whether the game is alive or not just from this infographic.
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