113 replies to this topic

[Coolant]

AI bots comment....that's just...wierd

[Tahribator]

Wake up sheeple! PGI is clearly illuminati.

[FDJustin]

Why Run, on 05 September 2014 - 01:11 PM, said:

What is completely hysterical about that (bottom of the forums) is the 5982 online. You're telling me that the most ever online is 6,000, but you have 600,000 members?! So you have 1% playing at any given time?

Reminds me of a game I use to play quite a bit. It was called Navyfield. It was a great start, but I always had issues. There was a small diehard group that supported the game and hated on detractors. Then came word of Navyfield 2, because the game was doing oh so well. Guess what was cancelled some 5 years after it was announced, because it wasn't really doing so well. Of course the base game still exists. It's possible to sustain a game like this now where all they are doing is creating pay-items recycling current material. You don't have to invest in actual content, just promise it's coming and release it slowly (eg. factions, maps, etc).

They design one mech, charge $30 per special version, and charge for early release. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, keep promising something new coming to keep people buying. But never deliver the actual content. It took them 12 months from the ideas about Factions to implement a second tier of squads. It's basically a second friend's list. 12 months! There is no CW coming anytime soon. It's a farce. But, BUY THE WARHORNS! Oh and more camo, because we unlocked it all. SO BUY CAMO. Just ignore the lack of coherent game play.

There's a lot of problems here... The first being that the number of forum members doesn't reflect the number of game members. It seems you have to sign into the forums for your name to actually exist here.
The second being you aren't signed into the forums by default when you're playing the game, and vice-versa.

Even if those numbers did tell us the player count, they fail to show how many duplicate accounts there are, or how many false accounts there are. (People who sign up but never get around to trying the game out.)

Asheron's Call was doing pretty well. Not top of the list, but certainly wasn't in any financial trouble. Asheron's Call 2 basically bombed. I'm not sure if it stayed around for any length of time or not. How well a game is doing won't predict how well the companies next game does.

[stjobe]

Why Run, on 05 September 2014 - 01:11 PM, said:

What is completely hysterical about that (bottom of the forums) is the 5982 online. You're telling me that the most ever online is 6,000, but you have 600,000 members?! So you have 1% playing at any given time?

And this, my dear friends, is one major reason they removed the player counter: People like Why Run here with no clue thinking the number presented somehow portrays the health of the game or the actual size of the player base.

First, a hint for you, Why Run: Those are the forum numbers. Generally speaking - and PGI isn't shy about rubbing this in our face when it suits them to ignore the forums - only about 10% of any game's population ever visits the forums. So that's 60,000 out of those 600,000. Now people presumably don't spend 24/7 on the forums (perhaps Joe Mallan...), so you'd have to adjust the numbers for that. Perhaps 1 hour a day on the forums? 60,000 / 24 = 2,500. Hey, that's less than the 6,000 number! MWO must be booming!

Secondly, the counter we did have was a counter of players currently online; it fluctuated between 2,000 and 4,000 generally. Did that mean the game only had 2-4,000 players? No, it did not. It only meant that at this exact moment, that's how many players are actively playing. Now adjust that number for average session time, average play time per day, week, and month, and you arrive at a wholly different number.

As an example: let's say the average play session is two hours, and that the average player plays three days a week. That would mean that for the player counter to always be on 3,000 players, you'd need an active player base of at least (3,000 * (24/2) * (7/3)) = 84,000 players.

Did the people crying about "MWO is dying! Look at the counter, there's less than 5,000 people playing the game" ever do those kinds of calculations? Did they my lower rear center torso.

So yeah, apart from PGI being secretive, the numbers were also a real land mine that was the source of no end of doom-saying and death prophesies from our resident Prophets of Disaster. For that reason alone I'm happy they removed them.

[InspectorG]

Lies within lies within lies...

Y u no conspiracy?

PGI is a front for a DARPA lab developing AI for rather large fully autonomous drones for interstellar warfare. Just WHERE do they get their funding????

WE, the players are the 'bots' for the AI to practice against:

http://www.scienceda...41022104658.htm

Human mechwarriors are just too uneconomical anyways...

[Mal]

DV McKenna, on 05 September 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

People like to see it because it's basically an industry standard for F2P games.

Defiance - F2P - No player Counter
Neverwinter - F2P - No Player Counter
Star Trek Online - F2P - No Player Counter.
Hearthstone - F2P - No Player Counter
Rift - F2P - No Player Counter


For an "industry standard" there seems to be a lot of games not following it.


So, question for the 'we need a counter' folks... let's say PGI gives us a counter... who gets to decide what a 'healthy' population is?

Is 2,000 people playing at midnight healthy? 5,000? What about primetime GMT? Primetime PDT? Primtime in Hawaii? What metric would be used? We (the MWO Community) can't seem to agree on anything, what makes anyone thing we could agree that X amount of concurrent players = healthy?

And, what would the 'doom and gloom' folks do, if we got a counter...and it proved them wrong?

[UnsafePilot]

I've never really understood the desire to prove that a game is dying. Either you can log in, find matches and have fun or you can't.

[MarineTech]

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

Mal, on 05 September 2014 - 01:45 PM, said:

And, what would the 'doom and gloom' folks do, if we got a counter...and it proved them wrong?

seems like the need for a counter argument actually underlines the point

i know..i know. you just can't win.

(but neither can we :\)

mystically transported to K-town. think I left my lunch in GD though...

Edited by ArchMage Sparrowhawk, 05 September 2014 - 02:32 PM.

[Why Run]

stjobe, on 05 September 2014 - 01:30 PM, said:

And this, my dear friends, is one major reason they removed the player counter: People like Why Run here with no clue thinking the number presented somehow portrays the health of the game or the actual size of the player base.

First, a hint for you, Why Run: Those are the forum numbers. Generally speaking - and PGI isn't shy about rubbing this in our face when it suits them to ignore the forums - only about 10% of any game's population ever visits the forums. So that's 60,000 out of those 600,000. Now people presumably don't spend 24/7 on the forums (perhaps Joe Mallan...), so you'd have to adjust the numbers for that. Perhaps 1 hour a day on the forums? 60,000 / 24 = 2,500. Hey, that's less than the 6,000 number! MWO must be booming!

Secondly, the counter we did have was a counter of players currently online; it fluctuated between 2,000 and 4,000 generally. Did that mean the game only had 2-4,000 players? No, it did not. It only meant that at this exact moment, that's how many players are actively playing. Now adjust that number for average session time, average play time per day, week, and month, and you arrive at a wholly different number.

As an example: let's say the average play session is two hours, and that the average player plays three days a week. That would mean that for the player counter to always be on 3,000 players, you'd need an active player base of at least (3,000 * (24/2) * (7/3)) = 84,000 players.

Did the people crying about "MWO is dying! Look at the counter, there's less than 5,000 people playing the game" ever do those kinds of calculations? Did they my lower rear center torso.

So yeah, apart from PGI being secretive, the numbers were also a real land mine that was the source of no end of doom-saying and death prophesies from our resident Prophets of Disaster. For that reason alone I'm happy they removed them.

Unfortunately, you can't read. When presented with a situation without the actual numbers, you can extrapolate based on what you have available. Perhaps if you had read my follow up post. By knowing one statistic, actually, active players logged in (usually around 500-1000), you can build outward, if you actually cared to try. Instead, you simply continue to defend, some what blindly, being lied to continually. I have unfortunately spent quite a bit of money on a game which is actually still in beta, if that, without major features. Perhaps try clicking through my profile and checking out the member since date.

And doing so is wholly reasonable and relevant when you spend REAL MONEY on something, especially something that you lose entirely if they turn off the servers.

Edited by Why Run, 05 September 2014 - 02:39 PM.

[IraqiWalker]

PappySmurf, on 05 September 2014 - 08:22 AM, said:

I would like to ask PGI to give us a true players count on the active server. The community deservers to know if the game is thriving or dying. Also I would ask if PGI is using AI bots to fill in for low player count they stop. Having AI bots that make it worse in battles is not a good idea .

I know im asking for all the whitie tightie knights wrath but owe well.If PGI would like the communities help to turn this game around all they have to do is ask and many would give free time and resources to keep the game alive and help in its longevity and content.

But it is hard to tell without a true live player counter to see how well or bad off the game has become.Please add your comments in a civil way pro or con.

The grammar and spelling errors alone are giving me a headache.

While your request for player count information is founded, and reasonable. The AI Bots claim is just idiotic.

Also, for the love of Kerensky, USE THE QUOTE FUNCTION.

[Aym]

PappySmurf, on 05 September 2014 - 08:22 AM, said:

I would like to ask PGI to give us a true players count on the active server. The community deservers to know if the game is thriving or dying. Also I would ask if PGI is using AI bots to fill in for low player count they stop. Having AI bots that make it worse in battles is not a good idea .

I know im asking for all the whitie tightie knights wrath but owe well.If PGI would like the communities help to turn this game around all they have to do is ask and many would give free time and resources to keep the game alive and help in its longevity and content.

But it is hard to tell without a true live player counter to see how well or bad off the game has become.Please add your comments in a civil way pro or con.

What kind of Graphic is this? WoW has between 6 and 7 million subscribers.

[IraqiWalker]

Aym, on 08 September 2014 - 02:37 PM, said:

What kind of Graphic is this? WoW has between 6 and 7 million subscribers.

Pretty sure the LOL, and DotA numbers are off. Could be the graph is from 2 years ago? Or whenever GTA Online first launched?

[Bacl]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 September 2014 - 10:51 AM, said:

Ok.. this is definitely original.

No AI bots.

MWO is not dying and continues to grow, and PGI is dedicated to continuing to develop, add, and build upon what we have created so far. There is no end in sight for us!

Well thats good news ( if its actually true). So can you tell Paul ( Nerfinator) to actually peek on the forums for suggestions and stop nerfing the game TT style; roll dice, critical hit, thats a GENERAL NERF ROLL!

Also get some more content into the game other than hero mech. If the game is indeed growing, how about speeding up the grown process with fresh stuff?

[Kraven Kor]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 September 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

I know people would like to see it for a variety of reasons; good or bad. However our position is simple - for now we consider MWO player counts a private corporate KPI, like our sales figures, ARPU, conversion, MAU, etc.

And all your customers and potential customers see it as an admission that you don't have enough players to want this to be public information.

A truly lose / lose situation.

[Logan Hawke]

Lordy I had forgotten this hilarious thread. Brings a tear to my eye and a laugh to my mouth.

[ApolloKaras]

appropriate music for the thread.

[IraqiWalker]

Well, we kinda have rough estimates of how many people play. about 10K of them were bothered enough to sign up for the last tourney. So we know it's not as bad as most doom-sayers think.

[Darth Futuza]

Tahribator, on 05 September 2014 - 01:17 PM, said:

Wake up sheeple! PGI is clearly illuminati.

I have seen the triangle artifacts!

In all seriousness long may the crazy thread live.

Edited by Darth Futuza, 22 October 2014 - 12:14 PM.

[Mike Forst]

Hello thread.