FYI Cryptic released some interesting statistics about the number of players, who plays what and other facts.
5 Year Anniversary Infographic
Thought I would repost the link in here because there's no thread about it in the Galactic News section of the forums.
73% play Starfleet, only 16% play as a Klingon. Now this should settle at least one argument for good
Comments
The only thing this answers is that the masses of people play the faction that is not neglected. So really its a simple case of social engineering. Oh ... and that Cryptic are basically shafting close to a million customers.
As usual, people are not willing to accept the entertain the notion that perhaps a franchise that was focused around human (starfleet) crews on human ships may generally attract people to that faction - and the "neglection" you see for the KDF or Romulans is simply because there have always been more people around that want to play a Starfleet captain.
Forget the factions for a moment - look at the races - humans are played the most. But nothing in the game particular favors humans.
The cool traits are all given to other species, and the most customization options you get with Aliens, and the "hottest" costumes you get with Orions.
But the franchise - it certainly favours humans. Aliens are always the minorities among the protagonists. And even important secondary or tertiary characters are often enough humans.
Not on DS9 ... .
Dax , Kira , Odo , Worf > Sisko , O'Brien , Bashir .
It's even worse if you take in the secondary characters :
Garak , Quark , Rom , Nog , Dukat , Winn , Morn(!!!) > Jake , Keiko , Molly .
All in all , this is not something to hate over .
Trek (most of it) is a Human centric show .
But hats off to the KDF anyway , not only for beating the Rommies (who had a whole expansion based on them) , but for being popular despite 4 years of Cryptic telling us that they were unpopular .
Now to some burning questions :
Why are there more Pakled players then Ferasan ?
Why are there more Saurians then Ferengi ? (I barely seen 2 Saurians in 5 years)
Why are Betazoid and Bajoran right next to Romulans ? Did they get their own Expansion and we all just missed it ??
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
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and similiar it is for ships - when feds alone have more ships that kdf/roms COMBINED - well doy ou think that many players will play them ? players love to have more stuff to chose from.
and that infographic - it nicely show how much game is plagued with spam bots/ very early run away guys, since with cca 1,3 char per acount - when in acount you get 3 chars for free - it tells a lot of things.
I'm sorry, but it's the other way around. The only way we would have known the real ratio of interest between the availible factions in STO would have been if Cryptic released an equal game for both and later for the third faction as well. I'm sure a big majority would still prefer Starfleet for known reasons, but I'm also fairly certain that the difference would not be 73 - 16 - 11%.
Since STO's Klingon Faction has been gimped and the embodiment of underdevelopment since launch, all that can really be concluded from these infographics is that people don't like playing broken, underdeveloped and gimped stuff, which should not come as a suprise to anyone.
If anything, the infographic shows just how loyal and dedicated KDF playerbase Cryptic has even if they don't apreciate it at all, still maintaining a population of 16% after 5 years of playing second fiddle and without the bow.
That has nothing to do with this franchise, a big number of people will generally prefer playing Humans in any game that enables playing Humans. This is the case in most mainstream games that allow Human species. A huge number of people tend to immerse themselves and identify with their on-line character better if that character is Human, just like them. Many tailor their characters based on themselves in RL.
Because its a fun fact. You do remember fun, don't you?
First time they've mentioned number of (presumably active) accounts?
Basically, it takes into account every account created when the game was released (and the Romulan were not even available), banned account, and pretty much every accounts ever.
Since the Romulan are the last one, they are obviously the less "played".
Also, they probably have the less bots, banned or not, which makes them even less (*cough* Qo'nos, *cough*). Not to mention the numerous existing or banned grind bots for feds (Foundry exploit for example, it was easier to create a fed than anything else at that time).
Those stats are as accurate as saying "my friendlist is empty, this game is doomed".
Is it the fun in " server disconnect " " cant connect account server " rubber-band ON Lag ON yeaaa it is funny very very veryyyyy funny
Well said in did ....
I AM PISSED OFF AFTER 3 YRS. I STILL CAN'T USE OR CHANGE OR DELETE OUTFIT IN 3 OF 5 OUTFIT SLOTS ON MY KLINGON TOON !
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Social engineering"? LOL. Name the Star Trek series or movie that was about Klingons. Oh right, there weren't any. :rolleyes:
Because you know all the people with a Klingon captain play STO solely for that reason, eh?
Wait, are you trying to say O'Brien wasn't human? And as for Bashir, while he was "enhanced" he was still human.
Sometimes I play daily, other times I've been known to take 6 months off. Does that mean my account should not be counted?
How do you know they include banned accounts?
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. What "bots"?
Surprising that Engineers are more in number than Science officers, and the dev babies is a nice touch.
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Edit 1: Made a c to a C.
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Active account means non-banned account, and people who played at least once since a set period of time. For example a year or so.
Another example, I made 5 account, just to create a fleet (4+ my main account). Thus, I'm counted 5 times. 4 of them are fed only (fed fleet).
And I'm far from being the only one. How many people created 2-3+account, and are not playing them ? How many people created an account, didn't played much, lost the ID, and created another one when they wanted to play again ?
This kind of datas are completely destroying any kind of accuracy.
Because there are no reasons why they shouldn't. Banned account are merely inactive forever account. But they still exist. When they takes the numbers of created account, they would have to do an extra work to filter them. It would be unnecessary and a waste of time. Especially for a "fun" thing.
When pretty much every other f2p give this kind of number, they give the amount of created account. It doesn't mean anything, but it's always a huge number (that one is very low, I've seen asian f2p with dozen of millions account). The reason is simple, it's easier than having to find how many of those account are active, and having a huge number make it look like it's highly successful.
Seriously, I've seen numbers several times higher than for world of ********. For some random asian grinder. Goldseller farm character, goldseller spam character. They are bots, IE machines, not human. Sometimes they might be "played" by a human, but most of the time a machine (bot) is more effective.
Bottom line is no one outside of Cryptic can know whether they do or not, so I don't want to spend any more time arguing over minutia. Besides I don't expect the number of banned accounts to be significant out of a total of 2.5 Million.
You're right though, no doubt there are accounts that were created long ago and won't ever be used again, for any number of reasons.