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Pondering: 5-th anniversary infographic
shpoks
Member Posts: 6,967 Arc User
So, let's put the assumption that the anniversary infographic numbers are bloated, sugarconed or just another PR shtick aside for the moment and go by the numbers Cryptic so prouldy gave everyone on this game's main webpage:
Factions: Federation 73% KDF 16% RR 11%
Now, to everyone that plays this game is obvious that that the vast majority of people indeed do play Fed. just by observsing things in game. So that's nothing new, shocking or suprising.
However, there is another part that picked up my interest - those percentages have been now accompanied with some actual numbers. And it says that the KDF has 594.000 accounts, so roughly 600k.
Now let me ask you (everyone, including Cryptic) - what business on this Earth neglects and keeps on neglecting 600k costumers? And I do think that anyone with a functional brain that plays STO will agree that the red faction has been neglected since launch. Not saying we never get anything, but the neglect is obvious to everyone.
Seriosuly, it bamboozles me. They (Cryptic) have put out these nubmers themselves, so they at least want us to believe them to be true. So ok, I'll bite. I believe you Cryptic. Now please explain how on Earth does anyone working with you think that ignoring and neglecting 600k customers, some of the most loyal ones you'd ever get given all the TRIBBLE they've put up during the years, think that this is a good business plan???
But that's not all!! According to the same infographic, the Romulan faction stands at 429.000 accounts, so roughly 430k. Now we all know that since LoR, the RR has been getting the same shaft as the KDF by the developers. Sure, they have or had some OP ships and traits created by Cryptic to boost sales, but in terms of development and new additions since LoR the Republic has been getting more or less the same shaft as the KDF.
Now combine those numbers and you get some 1.000.000 customers that have been neglected in terms of the development in this game. One million! Let that sink in for a moment.
No one denies that there are much more Federation players and I'll even take those 2.8 million at face value just as I've done about the Klingon and Romulan numbers in this thread.
But do tell me, what kind of business neglects and ignores 1 million customers?!? Who in the business world, especially in gaming, has the luxury to tell 1 million customers to "TRIBBLE off"?? How on Earth is this good business??
Factions: Federation 73% KDF 16% RR 11%
Now, to everyone that plays this game is obvious that that the vast majority of people indeed do play Fed. just by observsing things in game. So that's nothing new, shocking or suprising.
However, there is another part that picked up my interest - those percentages have been now accompanied with some actual numbers. And it says that the KDF has 594.000 accounts, so roughly 600k.
Now let me ask you (everyone, including Cryptic) - what business on this Earth neglects and keeps on neglecting 600k costumers? And I do think that anyone with a functional brain that plays STO will agree that the red faction has been neglected since launch. Not saying we never get anything, but the neglect is obvious to everyone.
Seriosuly, it bamboozles me. They (Cryptic) have put out these nubmers themselves, so they at least want us to believe them to be true. So ok, I'll bite. I believe you Cryptic. Now please explain how on Earth does anyone working with you think that ignoring and neglecting 600k customers, some of the most loyal ones you'd ever get given all the TRIBBLE they've put up during the years, think that this is a good business plan???
But that's not all!! According to the same infographic, the Romulan faction stands at 429.000 accounts, so roughly 430k. Now we all know that since LoR, the RR has been getting the same shaft as the KDF by the developers. Sure, they have or had some OP ships and traits created by Cryptic to boost sales, but in terms of development and new additions since LoR the Republic has been getting more or less the same shaft as the KDF.
Now combine those numbers and you get some 1.000.000 customers that have been neglected in terms of the development in this game. One million! Let that sink in for a moment.
No one denies that there are much more Federation players and I'll even take those 2.8 million at face value just as I've done about the Klingon and Romulan numbers in this thread.
But do tell me, what kind of business neglects and ignores 1 million customers?!? Who in the business world, especially in gaming, has the luxury to tell 1 million customers to "TRIBBLE off"??
How on Earth is this good business?? 
Post edited by Unknown User on
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That's a lot of cash cattle.
R.I.P
No business I know can afford to slight 1/3 of their market and continue to grow in a healthy manner and sustain it.
R.I.P
Now; I assume the graphic is counting characters and not players, but the conclusion would seem to be that 3 years of near-neglect have barely harmed the KDF "market share" (when one bears in mind the competition from the Romulans). I can easily see Cryptic concluding that they've got it right with the KDF. Still, at least it suggests the faction is not dying despite the beating it's taken; I wonder how many of those KDF alts are dilithium / contraband farmers as opposed to full characters, though.
Another thing that surprised me KDF are more popular than Romulans. Fascinating, I'd assumed the Roms' OP space traits and access to Fed starbases would have given them at least parity.
Check the numbers - 2.5 million accounts vs 3.8 million captains, which implies those faction/class percentages are characters not players. The "so what" is that many of those KDF / Rom alts are probably the unloved siblings of Fed alts. ]
A more meaningful metric would be the hours spent playing by faction, which would establish player preferences to some degree. I suspect that would be less kind to the KDF and Roms.
its a guess based on the numbers of the first post, and only a guess. Not meant to be set-in-stone but just a possible image of how the players rank up and are possibly being slighted.
A validated source of information is needed to make a real statement.
I do agree an Hours Played by faction would give a better look into player likes and dislikes.
R.I.P
1. Playtime by faction (as stated above)
2. Active captains by faction (logged in within past week/month)
3. Percentage of C Store items owned by faction (How many KDF just have nothing else to buy)
4. Average character level per faction (not the "I tried the game and left, but you still count me")
5. Deleted/new characters by faction per season/expansion (deleting a bunch because it's become non-viable).
Otherwise, I agree with OP. I thought the same thing. A million customers- that's a lot of potential money thrown out the window- especially when there is a "LOL KDF" or "LOL Romulans" thing happening (I'm looking at YOU, Delta Rising).
However considering both races are roughly twice as strong as humans that should cancel your equation;)
Hmm I don't know. I do have Fed characters but I seldom play them . I would say no more than 2 hours each month. My main (KDF Klinoon tac) was created on Day2 when my first Fed char reached level 6. I never stopped playing him since then. I have a few KDF-aligned Romulans but I alwasy come back to my main. And I am quite certain I am not the only one. The figure could very well be more favourable to us than you think,
STO is the only game I always come back to despite the way the KDF is beingin treated. No wonder we get nothing. We always come back anyway.;)
Cryptic was never one of them with STO. It was like this when it launched and it's like this now with the 5th anniversary.
There used to be tons more KDF when STO launched but many left when it became blatantly clear how little development attention the KDF was going to receive as well as the absolutely abysmal PVE content at launch.
You are not interpreting the numbers correctly.
There are not 594k KDF accounts. There are 594k captains, I have 4 of those captains on my single account. On that account are 2 Fed captains and 2 Romulan captains as well. There are a total of 2.5 million accounts with 3.8 million captains.
The combined KDF and Romulan figure represents a little over 1 million captains, but that does not translate into 1 million individual customers. I have 5 of those captains. Recently I just saw a post where someone has almost 60 captains... I am not sure if that is on one account, but that means those 60 captains really only represents one customer.
There is too little information to determine how many accounts (customers) are actually associated with the number of captains in each faction. And since there are more captains than there are accounts, it makes it even more difficult to estimate the number of accounts that are devoted to a single faction.
--- Addendum ----
I actually, have two accounts for STO. The 2nd account was created because I did not have an open slot on my original account and I wanted to test something on a low level captain. That means there is 1 account and 1 KDF captain that should be considered "dead".
600,000 x 1 Cstore ship at $25 = $15,000,000.00. Irrelevant doesn't mean what you think it means.
as a hard core KDF fan i hate to punch holes but 600k captains with 1 cstore ship each wont make it to 15mil i mean i own all the kdf cstore ships. but all of my toons can use them. so even if i only bought 1 ship thats 8 toons off the list and i still have 8 more open toon slots from ones i killed off just because i had way to many to manage.
i have always said i dont care that much that the feds are favored and get more what i hate is that what little we do get they get it also. i just want us to be different . let our stuff stay with us. leech comes to mind from back in the day when it actually mattered. even now the ship traits im ok with them being different than ours. but ours dont work together like theirs do so its unbalanced.
if they just would take the voquv and one of our BoP and send it in for a t6 refit we would be set again.
In fairness, you are presuming that 100% of a portion of the playerbase would want to buy the ship. At most I think you would want to consider 10-25% of players would buy a certain ship for a large variety of reasons.
There's another factor that isn't on that infographic. The Romulan faction-split. Namely which faction Romulan players go with. How many have gone Fed, and how many KDF.
I will say this:
Everything on that infographic is true. But it is true in the sense that 'Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker's father'. All a matter of how you look at it. It's probably true that there are 3.8 million characters made, and 2.5 million accounts. But how many of those really matter? How many are 'dead', from either being banned, just being mere spam accounts, or perhaps simply no longer are used? It shows a number, but much like the actual metrics they use I'm sure, they aren't really being used properly.
Being fair, I'm also assuming there is a (Tier 5) ship people would go out of their way to buy. I'm wondering how well the Mat'Ha did, especially since it now has basically a Vaadwaur lockbox version.
Less ships= less options = less people = less sales.
It's not a chicken and egg argument, as it all started with the mandatory Federation character to have access to KDF. This was never rectified (via balancing), and, it likely never will be. I can't say that balancing it would have had a massive effect on population, but it's obvious that there is more incentive to not play non-Federation- which skews the stats considerably.
And the infographic is almost useless as actual information, IMO. They can put up numbers to suggest that people love shuttles, because so many have them.
It was a pain to get a klingon started at first. You couldn't create a toon on the kdf faction until you leveled your fed to 25. Than after it was created the only way to level in the kdf faction was through pvp. Comparing what we didn't have then to what we do have now we have a long way to go. Although I am greatful for what we have become.
I was Klingon before Klingon was cool.
Not only that but they never delete accounts and every captain ever rolled is being counted, even if they haven't played in 3 years.
same here i bet my account is flagged as federation because i have 3 feds that i never play and a dozen kdf toons 4 of those i play everyday