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Steam Peak Players Down
leadme2kirk
Member Posts: 1,273 Arc User
By almost 1000 and Cryptic was just boasting about a rise in peak players. Now, how are they gonna spin this?
Sure, we all know the variables but, come on. There was no ARC Promo last week and I seriously doubt 1000 Steam users had a whim to use the regular launcher instead.
Sure, we all know the variables but, come on. There was no ARC Promo last week and I seriously doubt 1000 Steam users had a whim to use the regular launcher instead.
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Incidentally, I do think player numbers are down.
Free Tibet!
I don't see why the activity of steam logins (which is a large sample) cannot be extrapolated to cover all logins. If steam logins are down over a 6 month basis, then it is completely reasonable to conclude that Arc and CD logins are also down.
In all if they want players they need to give into giving away T6 ships without any attachments. Do it once or every 3 months. Just give stuff away for free. Making Elite so tough to play even best ships can't make it. Players need to have a challenge but don't make so they can't even win. I can hold my own but if there was 5 to start and only 2 left playing the PVP Elite will fold in.
Really a problem. STO really needs to think about this. Need more content, bring back First Contact for us who are now at that level 3. Shoot I can't even start that mission it's gone. I know it's been gone but they should have made the changes to add a replacement mission.
Time will only tell!
2000 out of 6million is valid data
so according to STO devs we have more than 6 million players WOW
yeah and as I said bercause of that DONT use steamcharts
That's perfectly legit actually because to Steam the launcher is the game so these 1000 players could have been updating in the down time and/or waiting for the server to come back up.
That has always been my take on it. OK I will conceded that Steam is not the only launcher but it still a sample dataset of the user base and shows a declining trend.
irs been stated before so i will state it again for those who dont pay attention or refuse to acknowledge it; steam charts prove nothing so quoting from them has no justification to it at all.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
If you are going to use Steam stats for your argument (FOR SHAME!!) please provide ARC stats and the stats of those logging in via the original Launcher. This is the umpteenth time someone has posted on the forum about Steam stats, and they are extremely limited in exacting information.
And on a personal note, I'd never recommend Steam or ARC for launching STO and would only recommend the actual Launcher to play, as I do to all my mates.
No. I am saying that based on the provided data Steam's Average number of players on STO per month is around 1,700, and has been for years. There are some bumps when new Expansions come out but then it falls back to the Average a couple of months later.
If you are only quantifying everyone into a 1 or 0 category then I guess I can only say here that some of you guys will do likewise.
Entry-level statistics courses are quite cheap at your local community college. I strongly encourage you to take one so you can understand why parroting that is factually wrong.
Tell me, how is 5,000-some-odd votes in the poll that got us VOY content in the first place valid data for playerbase opinion, and yet a similar number on the Steam charts somehow invalid?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Folks have already explained why the Steam charts can be inaccurate in and of themselves; all I can add is that Steam is only one of three ways to launch the game, and so far as I can tell it's the least popular of the three. (Or have you already forgotten all those clamoring about being "forced" to install Arc on the day, apparently still long distant, when the standalone launcher no longer works?)
This is so lame...so if we dont believe steam data...then are we supposed to believe in the bunch of words you say?
By the same token...where is your data and who has the authority to say...it's been acknowledged...by whom....you? dude this does not represent the playerbase community and certainly does not speak for me...nor have I acknowledged it :P.
Let others make their point and try not to speak for the playerbase. Certainly I'm not either.
Sorry, you need to go take Statistics 101 as well. Survey samples never poll 100% or even 50% of the target demographic; they take a cross-sectional sample. Just because it's not half a million votes doesn't make it irrelevant.
The Steam charts are perfectly valid statistical samples unless you're claiming that STO has significantly more players than WOW. The game's nowhere near that good.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I do not consider that poll to be a true survey sample. Nor do I feel that the 1-2% of the people on the forum are an accurate example of the entire player-base.
And I will point out, again, that the Steam charts show the Average number of players per month as being consistent for several years now.
This is not a strange thing. Steam doesn't distinguish between players logged into the game and players just having the launcher open, simply because they can't.
If I start Skyrim or New Vegas for example a Launcher also appears, but technically I'm not yet in the game. Steam will still count this as having "logged" into the game.
I often kept the launcher open while waiting for maintenance to be over (European here, maintenance is mostly in progress when I get home).
And to the person who said this game has around 6 million players. I doubt it. It may be that there are 6 million accounts, but 6 million active players? No. It would be hard for me to believe that more than 20.000 people are still playing this game.
That shows the number of people who have the STO launcher booted, not the number of people actually logged in. It's entirely possible to log the launcher in to pull the patch off the server while maintenance is going on; you just can't get any further than that.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
We discussed Steam numer sup and down and sideways and upside down already. The "spin", if you need it, was already made here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=21676911#post21676911
Believe it, believe it not, it matters not. If the Steam numbers are representative of the player population of STO - 4 month after Legacy Romulus, the numbers were even lower than the current ones, and few usually suggest that LOR was bad for the game or a failure.
And if they aren't representative - well, we can't take any useful out of it at all...
IT takes more than numbers to make a representative sample. If you ask 20,000 people what they will vote on the next election, that is still not representative of the general population if you only ask white males that have played 3D shooters in the past 3 years.
I wasn't around for that vote, but unless it was made inside the game, you still would have a strong selection bias and thus would not get an actual representative example. But since Cryptic's "metrics" will not tell them in any way whether people were interested in fiuture VOY content or not, it doesn't really matter.
But I figure their all-powerful metrics can accurately measure whether people buy Zen or how long people are logged in and provide information that Steam Charts doesn't tell us.
Hi,
I'm new here, but I need to correct something here and I often see people making these kinds of mistakes when talking about statistics.
Actually the steam charts are not valid statistical samples. In order to be a valid statistical sample, every member of the population would have to have an equal chance to be selected. In this case, steam users have a 100% chance to be selected and non-steam users have a 0% chance of being selected.
Secondly, judging overall population trends by looking at the trends of a non-statistical subset is not possible due to the issue of collinearity.
Well it is funny that Cryptic keeps dismissing Steam numbers, saying they only represent a small portion of the player base. But that portion is still substantial. There is a reason why an election can often be called after about 20% of the votes are in.
So are Steam numbers representative of the entire player base? No. Do they give a clear indication of the game's trend? Yes.
im dismissive because the case doesnt exist. why you think it does is puzzling.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
July, 2012: 1,717 monthly player average.
July, 2013: 1.788 monthly player average.
July, 2014: 1,640 monthly player average.
December, 2014: 1,774 monthly player average.
What it tells me is that the people who want to play STO on Steam have continued to do so consistently for over 2 years. Some people pop in and try it and then leave, but the core base has changed very little over the years.
If you go onto the Star Trek Online forums and ask the question:
"DO you prefer Star Wars or Star Trek", don't you think it's likely that a larger portion of forum users would vote "Star Trek".
Would you now infer that more people like Star Trek than Star Wars across the world?
If you don't - you have probably implicitly understood that there is a selection bias in your sample. If not, then you failed to account for the fact that of course the Star Trek Online forum is likely to attract people that care particular about Star Trek, so a general preference for Star Trek over other things is likely. You do not get a representative sample out of this, even if your sample size may be large enough.
People that use Steam can generally be assumed to be interested in a variety of games, since Steam is a platform designed to sell games of all kinds. Star Trek games are just one aspect of those games. But Star Trek games appeal to a particular subset of gamers -those interested in Star Trek, obviously. And these people do not have a strong incentive to use Steam - since it's not focused on Star Trek games (and I am not sure, but I think STO may actually be the only Star Trek game available there). That means tehse people often will use different channels to get into STO, which brings them to use the Arc launcher these days, and the old Cryptic launcher if they joined before Arc.
In addition, Steam is also a platform where the audience is affected by events that may not hold true for non-Steam players. For example, Steam is running sales, particularly around holiday seasons. This can attract people away from all kinds of F2P games, because, well, you don't need a sale to join a F2P game*, and a F2P game has generally no running subscription that you need to put to good use.
If you want to play only Star Trek games, certain "advantages" other games have don't matter to you - if STO is too grindy, but WoW isn't, it doesn't matter if you want a Star Trek game. WoW is still not Star Trek. For Steam players, that may generally have a broader interest in games, such advantages and disadvantages will weigh more.
*)(I, for example, bought Secret World during the sale, and also played it. Of course, this is just anecdotical, not data)
I did not argue what is occurring with the population one way or the other. I simply stated that the numbers are relevant despite what Cryptic says.
mustrumridcully0 I'm just ignoring your irrelevant strawmanning.
Summer is always the most empty time for any MMOs. That's not new.
July-August are when MMO are dry. Waiting for the september rain.
As for december, while you have less players with Christmas and all, you still have more. They just play less mostly.
Also, you have the christmas event, which is probably more important than the summer event. Just saying.
Also, both the peak AND the average number of player are important. A fact that both side loves to forget.
Average vs peak means people log in, play 5mins, log off (during prime time, people log in, and log off, so you never really increase the peak number because some people log at 7pm, others at 8, and the first wave is already gone). If people stayed for hours, like they did for LoR, the peak player would be much higher.
Peak is very low, average is fine. Which means people didn't enjoy DR as much as LoR, spending hours to play. However, they still log in. But they merely do their daily project or whatever.
You guys need to understand something: Overall Cryptic/PWE COULD CARE LESS about how many are playing pre se. What they care about is how many players are continuing to spend real cash purchasing Zen. <--- That's the main metric PWE cares about, so as long as that's either up; OR the existing players who spend spend MORE then before DR; in PWE's eyes:
"Delta Rising is the best STO expansion ever; and the players love it."
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."