Population metrics in games (worth read)

Big brother argument. There is nothing to be afraid of if you have nothing to hide! So let us read your mails and track down the web pages you have been visiting!

 

For different reasons ^^

 

You all do like there there is some magical Formular and Data we as a customer need from SotA to be able to make our own judgement if the game is prosperous currently or to see how it will do at launch.

I do not need Data from SotA to make a very good judgement for myself about how much new Gamers will be picked up at launch.

Currently the only questions that would influence my prediction is : will they go free to play or not. And what will Travian and Blacksun Strategy be.


So just ignore. Compare and think.
Not big science.

SotA is doing all correct. They are behaving like all companies would with how they present numbers.


Basic Rule for all numbers: A company will throw out numbers if it will let them look good.
If there is any uncertainty they will create numbers under the purpose that every future situation turns out in the most positive way possible. Or they will create those funny comparisons: our Gamers are longer online then the average playtime of the country with the highest gaming population on this planet.
Our Gamers spend on Average daily more then Stylish People in Paris spend on Make Up.

Always use guidance and numbers from third party sources who do not make any profit depending on these numbers.


Best decision is to keep your numbers not public.


The only reason Albion Online is showing numbers as the OP Links shows is they are darn good and create confidence for the customers.
They would not show anything if they would be bad. 100% I promise you.

But even these numbers i take skeptical and with grain of salt.

 

I thought we were not allowed to call this alpha or beta? Oh, and some games do provide numbers during those testing times.

And what happens when there is lowly release turnout? Will Portalarium still be happy to provide the true number of players playing, not counting all the duplicate multiple accounts?

Too bad some of the cool ideas are easily dismissed and talked down to, and people chased away from the forums, by a few select group of users. Or I am sure there will be more dialogue and cool ideas.

Did we really raise $80,000 in the last telethon? Yes, telethon, not postmortem. Where is the proof that number is accurate?

And there it is. Accept our righteous way of thinking or shut up and move on. Aren't all of your efforts of shouting down, quieting, dismissing, helping to moderate and lock threads, better spent imagining something cool to ADD, instead of people to chase away?

 

I love the theoretical arguments and pontification about secrecy vs transparency when Chris has in the past summarized the active user base without hesitation. I believe the last time he said the total was a little more than twice the steam numbers.

I bet you could do an aggregation query on the public stats api they give us and get an exact measurement. There is no hiding.

 

Kinda funny but I'm that kinda person who double checks just for the sake of it.
Mostly because I wondered about how they differentiated if you purchased partly with cash and partly with game credit.
So when the seedinvest thingie got out and we got some hard numbers then I checked and yup the numbers match.

Telethon numbers are cash in.

 

Because we have misleading steam numbers, they should provide the correct numbers from all players.

 

I think this is because they also answered to a postmortem question that they dont give out any numbers again cause people would use it in a bad way against them.

 

There is a difference between privacy protected data and open data. Asking them for their salaries would be fall into the protected data, player count number are just statistics. But if you guys crowdfund me i promise i show you me browser history

 

You are a customer, no shareholder.
You request data they aren't obliged to give you.
Even Blizzard only deals in total account numbers and not in online players by hr/day.

 

quality over quantity numbers dont really matter. I've put PLENTY of hours on uo freeshards with below 200 members and boy did we have fun for months and months for 0 cash.

That said it's always fun when numbers are shared. I played a bit of Albion when these numbers where taken and they dont mention the MASSIVE issues they had with all those players. My first 3 days were mostly down time, though compensated (vip time or some such) and good informative posts on the forums from devs regarding the issue it doesnt make it a time of victory.

almost forgot they were being Ddosed at the time... or so they said, im not convinced though common it's also a great excuse.

 

Just red an article about cheaters in another online game.
And i gained the impression that with the numbers comes cheating.
Just a thought - what if porta is hiding the numbers because they are not ready jet for a big cheater wave?
We are still beta... alpha... whatever... pre-release... so that would be logical. And with players comes cheaters... and more than one game was ruined by cheaters...
And as log as everybody thinks he/she could be observed because the numbers are few and statistic outbreaks are easy to find... even for a small team... cheaters might be cautious.

The point could be that with big numbers comes a feeling of anonymity... and this could encourage cheating...
I for my part can see some logic in such thinking... and in the past we had some cases of bug-using and hiding from the devs...
and if i remember right most of them were found by incident and real manpower and so much by anti cheat logic systems.
And do not forget the mac and linux clients. This platforms are not so strong in anti cheat mechanics as they are not strong in anti-malware...
The longer i think about it the more i think the disadvantage of giving numbers outweigh the a advantage.
In fact there is still no real benefit given other than pure curiosity.

And on the other side - what comes next? I am not sure that the hunger for statistics will stop there...

 

as compared to what? made me giggle

agree with the rest you said tho, have stated something similar here before

 

windows... what else client do we have? For windows there is a shitload of anti-cheat solutions...
As an example the battleye client for linux is not more than a flag-setter.
For windows it is a... well depends who you ask... i am on the linux side of this.

And most anti-virus clients for linux scanning for windows viruses...
if this makes any sense... also depends on who you ask.

 

anti cheat is just a mark of 'we have tons of cheaters' they might help stop the guy who is tired of cheaters and wants to hit back with some cheats but ive never seen cheating even halted by anti cheat software. well a decade of counter strike might have me a bit cynical.

I was more reffering to the fact that there are a bajillion more malware in circulation designed to hit windows machines

 

Thats right but i think this would not change anything, they focus on popular games and when its worth it. We already had/have exploider and people who bot the s**t out of the Game, i would count them as cheaters. If the economy wouldnt be dead and people would see a chance to make money, we would gave way more problems then now. I think we will get more alot of problems from the scam/hacker side on release, in a game that allows RMT and even here it doesnt matter how many people play because they can get alot of money from only one high pledge account.

 

I am not sure if the economy is dead. I think it is pretty alive. Only in a small scale. There are too many profiteers around.
I think i can speek for all of us living in Gladsheim that our vendors are more than just for looks. And we are a small community.
But we have quiet some tourism going on. Noting in the millions... well perhaps no even in the 10.000... but it is trading.

I mean...
Selling recipes for 5000 and middle-class armor for 100.000es... and some NSC-Stolen-Decorations for many 1000s...
Walk inside OH and check the vendors. There are the gravediggers of our economy. It is not the number of players that count...

Two players in this game can have quiet some business going on. I know what i im talking about...
Again i think it is the gap between the high and low players that destroys a lot.

And with cheaters... i am not sure what it has to do with hacked accounts... cheating and cracking are very different shoes.
One is against the terms of use the other is against the law.

 

Not always true. CCP never disabled the option to see concurrent players even when they lost thousands of players with some bad decisions in the past.

Principles and never going back. Any kind of transparency is well received and something really appreciated these days.

 

First of all - CCP did as i read on this Source stop providing in 2012 Subscription Numbers for Tranquility. So not as transparent as you claim they are. Source: http://nosygamer.blogspot.de/2015/03/how-many-subscriptions-does-eve-online.html



Also I do not see anything on this concurrent players chart provided not by ccp but third party estimate charts that would i feel like as a company i need to hide my numbers. If you look below they always had a healthy Game. No matter if there would be a bad decision in between. Nothing, nothing to hide for them. A great successful Story this Game is you can show off.
But they themself do not release it ongoing. It is others who try to guess it. Big difference.

Your Sources are Third Party Numbers, not from CCP

And CCP seems also like a company that would stop showing numbers if they start to tank to much as it is doing.

The Sources i presume you are referring to are Third Party Sources, not CCP itself.

 

I could give a damn about the numbers. Playing the game itself decides if I like it or not. Not how many people play. I quit WoW after 13 levels, just couldn't get into grinding for gear.