Release 55 telethon Part 2

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Humbert_Humbert, Jul 11, 2018.

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  1. Nelzie

    Nelzie Avatar

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    Do we have numbers of how many players of this game are based in the US vs. oversea? If the overwhelming majority of players are in the US... the numbers of the US holiday weekend telethons suggest that, because it seems like on two major US holiday weekends the telethons numbers ended up being less than half of previous months telethons, yet, when they did a second go, the numbers ended up hitting roughly where previous telethons have hit, in total.

    I mean, we don't have ALL the numbers, but there does seem to be some correlation that would be nice to know the details on.

    Is it really an injustice if there seems to be correlation between major US holiday weekends and drop in telethon earnings on those same weekends to suggest there's something there? Are there dips in revenue coming from say the UK on a big holiday weekend there? How about in Canada? Australia? New Zealand? Germany? Spain? France? The Philippines? Nigeria? South Africa? Could some of the previous telethons that barely broke $90k happen because the majority of people in any of those nations were on a holiday? Seeing the breakdown of where all the telethon dollars comes from and how that relates to local to the nation holidays would be very interesting information to have. If we knew that... let's wildly guess that 75% of the telethon dollars come from the US, would it be less surprising to see the telethons falling a bit short on major US Holiday weekends?

    It's more important to know how much money is coming in regularly at the telethons or in subscription numbers.

    I dig the hell out of this game, it's enjoyable and I keep finding some new things to do and I enjoy the new things that they add, plus it really feels like that old school sand box that I've missed since the early era and JTL of Star Wars Galaxies, but... I'm a busy adult with many responsibilities. There can be a whole week where I just don't log into the game. The game is aimed at capturing a 'nostalgic' feel that seems to appeal to people in my age category, the over 30... over 40 lifelong gamer type. Yet, I do my best to hit every single telethon, since the game got to a point where it has the feel I'm enjoying.

    They are fixing gameplay, adding in quests, they put in the start of a PvP system that feels more like something I might take part in, they keep adding and talking about these things every month, I barely pay attention and see these updates and changes.

    Do you have numbers of "too many backers walked away"? It would be good to know solid numbers there too, or is that made up conjecture on your part?

    They really should review the metrics of where the majority of the dollars in Telethons are originating from and... plan accordingly with Telethons so that the sky is falling crowd won't crow about how the sky is falling AND they need to be stupendously clear about the intention of hosting a telethon outside of the "normal" schedule. Just like they did last... fall? When the Telethon would have landed on... a large American Holiday Weekend... ;-)

    I'm a Social Democracy Advocate, I'd rather that "POTUS" go live with Putin, since he shows so much love and adoration for the Putin. We're definitely on the same side there.
     
  2. Nelzie

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    These are good numbers. The telethons do not include new game sales, people just buying stuff, because they can/want to outside of a telethon period as well.
     
  3. Mugly Wumple

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    Correct, and I should have been more precise. These totals are for Telethons/Livestreams only. I've edited original to reflect this.
     
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  4. Mugly Wumple

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    I think there are more important metrics than what region funding comes from. Starr mentioned at one point that SotA's retention rate was well above the average (5% vs 8%, IIRC). If this is so, then success of the game relies on getting people to try SotA.

    What is the average amount spent by new players in their first year vs. those of us who have been here forever? (personally, I've spent gobs.)
    How many game sales are needed to maintain current (or desired) funding?

    Budgeting from a money stream is very different than budgeting from a money pool. This whole brouhaha regarding layoffs seems silly to me. Anyone doing a budget timeline would foresee an enormous expense around physical goods production and shipping. They would plan for layoffs to cover that large, one-time expense. They might do something like push lots of content before laying off artists, then polish and bug fix with a core programming team.
     
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  5. MrBlight

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    Ya it would be.

    Instead you can look at information like steam charts and know that 30% of player base uses steam ( at least) and use simple math.

    You can open the game and get a rough feel that * tens of thousands * of players is unlikely.
    You can attend dance parties and tell that the game bogs down with 30 people in a scene to a point of emotes not working...

    But ya. Numbers would be nice... altho asking for them is considered trolling and locked immedietly. ( hense the perception of doom n gloom he mentions)
     
  6. Anpu

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    Where are you getting that number from?
     
  7. MrBlight

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    Directly from Cerus when he answered this exact question due to it coming up 100 x before and berek locking threads.

    Maybe someone can link, as im on mobile. Was relatively recently on here from cerus

    -edit.
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/where-is-everyone.125460/#post-1036871
    Lol i sure hope it wasnt this one or hes edited his post since answering.

    @Cerus i probably just cant find the original post. But im sure its been waybacked. 30% was the steam numbers you said, as it was supposed to settle the mass amount of bickering over how accurate steam charts were right.
    Mind confirming?
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2018
  8. Nelzie

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    We also know that they changes to how Steam works that information has made it less than useful now too.

    So, looking at Steam Charts is about as useful as looking at steam coming out of a kettle... oh wait.. that's more useful, because you know the water is hot enough for your French Press.
     
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  9. Preachyr

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    As was mentioned many many times when this was brought up before, the changes made to steam do not affect the listing of concurrent players for games in any way. It had to do with individuals libraries and what they were playing, but for games, the data showing how many people are playing it is still accurate.
     
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  10. Mugly Wumple

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    Regarding Steam; while it is an important segment of the player base, I wouldn't go too far in extrapolating to the player base as a whole. People who use Steam are more avid gamers, thus more critical, more likely to make comparisons and often flit from game to game.

    Aside from that, I'd wager that the more one is "plugged in" to gamer sites the more likely one is to adopt the highly critical and hyperbolic tone of those sites. Not every issue deserves a OMFG!

    I don't know how many others there are like me, but I have no use for Steam because I play one or zero games at a time. I'm also pretty tolerant of the frustrations and growing pains of SotA's development style.
     
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  11. Womby

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    The game has problems, but it also has potential. Some notable improvements have already been made, and it looks like there will be more options for player-created content. Many recent games cater very well to player creativity, mostly by allowing the creation of structures of various kinds. Recent co-op survival games provide good examples of this, and it is even starting to appear in big budget single player games. It looks like there will be more about that in Part 2. Hopefully they can use tools from the Unity Asset Store to keep development costs down.
     
  12. Fungus

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    I'm in the lifelong gamer bracket then, UO wasn't my first MMO but it was probably the one with the best memories due to gameplay, taming, runebook travel, boats, treasure hunting, provocation & peacemaking etc.

    New quests are nice, but I'd like old quests fixed first, I still have blue sparklies on my compass for stuff I've erm finished, and others are just plain broken.

    I've been away most the weekend (no it wasn't a public holiday) & could comment more, but I got an inbox message re my post :eek: as apparently I broke the forum rules on posting. *shrug* Therefore consider me self censored going forward, mainly because I'd liked to be able to sell stuff once game hopefully pulls through current crisis.

    Maybe stepping away from game for a period will help me get perspective on how dev's have turned it around when I return; I bought latest expansion of ESO last week and subbed within a few hours of restarting due to it's depth & quality on offer. I hope in 6months time SotA makes me feel the same way.
     
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  13. Kain Darkmoor

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    I agree that new quests should not be added until they revamp the entire system. (And that they probably should have done that a long long time ago.)

    I also agree, that when changes come slowly but surely it's sometimes hard to see how much has changed over time. If we compare this game today to this game last October. There has been a TON of improvements. I would think, six months or a year from now there would be something similar. It's just hard to notice sometimes because we are getting new stuff dripping in each month instead of huge patches every 4 or 6 months like most other games.
     
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  14. Corv

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    It has a lot of potential, that's what makes some things so extremely frustrating.
     
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  15. Nelzie

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    I agree that they need to fix the whole quest journal system and make it possible for us to drop quests, individually, instead of the global Quest reset that they have provided. I believe that using that, which resets EVERY quest on a character and even pulls all quest items/awards meaning they have to all be redone, is a fix they put in for dangling quests. Apparently, some of the early broken quests are fixed and this was a way to "fix" the dangling elements for those of us who want to.

    I don't see so many broken, dangling quests on my second avatar, but... I haven't played that character much, either.
     
  16. Floors

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    Since I won something I change my mind about livestreams hahaha :)
     
  17. Pebbles

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    Love the banner at the top of the forum pages!!! ❤️❤️❤️
     
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