177 replies to this topic

[KraftySOT]

Asyres, on 08 October 2014 - 08:10 AM, said:

You have no idea how many total active players MWO has - don't pretend that you do. Best case, you have napkin math based on figures provided from this past weekend.

I have no exact number, but I promise you its close. Its also a huge window. 15k-30k. And quite assuredly there are more casual players that bump it up around 50k. However they dont play enough to be considered "active".

The way this games MM works is how Fighter Ace's MM worked, and they posted a player count. When you see similar trends, like, playing with the same people, participation in events, votes on the forum, active forum viewers, etc...you can extrapolate that the causes are the same. Thus a similar player count.

Do I know for sure? Well I know two things for sure. If it was only 2,800, or the more likely ~5,000 that opted in to the tourney, as the entire player base, these forums wouldnt be up right now. PGI would turn off the lights.

And I know if it was higher than 100k, we'd have more participation in the forums, theyd advertise the numbers, and we'd have a great publisher and alot more hirings and goings on within PGI.

So its a large window. But there you have it.

[DONTOR]

Mickey Knoxx, on 07 October 2014 - 03:13 PM, said:

If I recall correctly, War Thunder usually had around 30k online whenever I played. Not saying MWO has near their player base, but isn't to bad considering.

Its probably pretty close I would imagine...

[Bilbo]

KraftySOT, on 08 October 2014 - 08:41 AM, said:

I have no exact number, but I promise you its close. Its also a huge window. 15k-30k. And quite assuredly there are more casual players that bump it up around 50k. However they dont play enough to be considered "active".

The way this games MM works is how Fighter Ace's MM worked, and they posted a player count. When you see similar trends, like, playing with the same people, participation in events, votes on the forum, active forum viewers, etc...you can extrapolate that the causes are the same. Thus a similar player count.

Do I know for sure? Well I know two things for sure. If it was only 2,800, or the more likely ~5,000 that opted in to the tourney, as the entire player base, these forums wouldnt be up right now. PGI would turn off the lights.

And I know if it was higher than 100k, we'd have more participation in the forums, theyd advertise the numbers, and we'd have a great publisher and alot more hirings and goings on within PGI.

So its a large window. But there you have it.

10k opted in this time.

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 08:21 PM, said:

We had a little over 10K people opt in to the tournament. As we know a majority of players do not come to the forums.

Edited by Bilbo, 08 October 2014 - 08:44 AM.

[Asyres]

KraftySOT, on 08 October 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

gut feeling

You don't know, you're making an semi-educated guess. Which is fine, but it's still a guess.

[KraftySOT]

Jody Von Jedi, on 08 October 2014 - 08:18 AM, said:

I played hard 3 or 4 hours per day last weekend and ended up making 9 mil, 18 matches that made the 130 point cut. I'm a decent medium pilot and it was difficult to get the 9 mil I ended up with.

Russ stated they sold 23k Wave 1 Clan packages in a recent NGNG pod cast. I think that's outstanding and see growth in the community. The 50k player base number is probably pretty accurate, maybe a little low.

Jody

Yup,

Active players being a tad lower obviously than total players.

And of course you see spikes around patches, and mech releases. Occasionally theres some press, but not alot. Which if we were in dire need of players (10k active) there would be more press. If we were much higher (80k active players) there would buzz press and no need for press releases.

DONTOR, on 08 October 2014 - 08:42 AM, said:

Its probably pretty close I would imagine...

And War thunder took a serious serious hit when it put the tanks and planes together. Its pretty messed up over there right now.

Asyres, on 08 October 2014 - 08:44 AM, said:

You don't know, you're making an semi-educated guess. Which is fine, but it's still a guess.

Lets call it an estimation. But yes. A guess.

Bilbo, on 08 October 2014 - 08:43 AM, said:

10k opted in this time.

Far more reasonable than 2,800. Or 28,000.

[GrnMonster]

Bilbo, on 08 October 2014 - 05:20 AM, said:

I played Monday night and only had 4 qualifying matches. On a non tournament evening I'd have probably easily gotten 20. It wasn't because of stomps though, match quality seemed to me to be much better overall. It was because the effectiveness of my teammates appeared to be much better than usual. I put it down to all the group queue players coming to slum in the solo queue.

I played quite a bit this weekend and didn't have any trouble getting to 20 wins. I think I wound up with 30 qualifying wins altogether. I thought the match quality was pretty damn good all weekend. You could definitely tell there were a lot more group queue players in the solo queue than normal.

Usually in the solo queue you see 2 or 3...maybe 4 unit tags per team. This weekend almost half the players had unit tags. Of course that doesn't always mean they'll be any good, but you can usually assume some level of competency if they've taken the time to apply, and be accepted into a unit.

Maybe I just had a good string of luck with my teams, but for the most part I had a good time this weekend and had some really good teammates.

[Bilbo]

GrnMonster, on 08 October 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

I played quite a bit this weekend and didn't have any trouble getting to 20 wins. I think I wound up with 30 qualifying wins altogether. I thought the match quality was pretty damn good all weekend. You could definitely tell there were a lot more group queue players in the solo queue than normal.

Usually in the solo queue you see 2 or 3...maybe 4 unit tags per team. This weekend almost half the players had unit tags. Of course that doesn't always mean they'll be any good, but you can usually assume some level of competency if they've taken the time to apply, and be accepted into a unit.

Maybe I just had a good string of luck with my teams, but for the most part I had a good time this weekend and had some really good teammates.

I only played Monday night. Had I played Friday night I probably would have gotten them as I would have played much longer. I didn't lose any more than I would have normally. My team mates were more effective on average. They also tended to play much more aggressively so it was harder to make the same impact on each match as I don't usually have to chase the action as much.

[Gallowglas]

KraftySOT, on 08 October 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

The various clues. How many people PGI considered a majority, how many people are on the forums, the founders, how many people left during #savemwo, how many people vote, and how many people participate in the things that let you garner numbers.

That and a gut feeling/observation of alot of games over the years. I can tell when total player count in the solo queue is small because I see the same people game after game. I know what that means globally from other games that have the same issues, or really low valleys in off times that do post their player numbers.

I know the whole "player count" aspect of development well from 11 years in Battleground Europe, that still, hasnt posted their player count since 2001.

How do you correlate any of those items to the number of people actively playing? I just don't see how you could ever draw any conclusions. Anything would be a wild guess. For instance, most of the active players in my unit don't even participate in MWO forum activity at all.

This has come up several times and someone mentioned that there should be a correlation between trailer video views and the player base. They cited that the official MWO trailer only had a few thousand views at the time, which seemed a plausible argument until you looked at a Starcraft official trailer that had almost identical numbers.

Short of having hard evidence about actual player numbers, I just don't know what these sorts of observations accomplish. That said, I don't have a problem with people making wild guesses. I just wish they'd acknowledge that that's what they are.

Edited by Gallowglas, 08 October 2014 - 09:09 AM.

[KraftySOT]

Gallowglas, on 08 October 2014 - 09:08 AM, said:

How do you correlate any of those items to the number of people actively playing? I just don't see how you could ever draw any conclusions. Anything would be a wild guess. For instance, most of the active players in my unit don't even participate in MWO forum activity at all.

This has come up several times and someone mentioned that there should be a correlation between trailer video views and the player base. They cited that the official MWO trailer only had a few thousand views at the time, which seemed a plausible argument until you looked at a Starcraft official trailer that had almost identical numbers.

Short of having hard evidence about actual player numbers, I just don't know what these sorts of observations accomplish. That said, I don't have a problem with people making wild guesses. I just wish they'd acknowledge that that's what they are.

Into an exact number? You simply cant. But into a pretty wide possible estimate? Of course.

I mean were not talking the difference between 30k players and 400k players. We know its less than 100k. Really all you have to figure out, is if its over 50k active player base. Which all signs point to no.

And it has to be more than a few thousand active players, because otherwise, there would be no game. They cant sustain themselves on a few thousand active players.

They sold 23k Clan packs...they have 70,000 founders. Popular topics have 20 readers, and at any given time theres around 250 people watching the forums. When you add all these things together and compare them to numbers that are similar in other games, that DO show their player counts...its more than likely that our player numbers are comparable.

If World of Tanks sells 230k T-59s, has 700,000 'founders', popular topics have 200 readers, and theres 2,500 people watchin the forums. Theres conventional wisdom that says, they probably have around ten times as many players.

Percentages of people in the forums vs in the game are pretty steady for all games within a general genre. Free to play...sim...multiplayer.

Also what percentage of a total player base is on at any given time is pretty easy to figure out and standard across most games, but of course depending on where its available. If you cant play it in China...then when its 6pm in China...you have a valley, not a peak, in player count, because everyone where the game is played, is asleep.

Edited by KraftySOT, 08 October 2014 - 09:23 AM.

[Dark Jackal]

Gentlemen, I have earned in a little while playing the Mechblapionline and was paid to me

...

One Million C-Bills!

[Comstar techs laugh]

[Angel of Annihilation]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 09:02 PM, said:

Wintersdark is right on this.

Match Maker changes are one thing we just can't test on the test servers, not near enough show up to test items like this out. The match maker needs live population levels to get valid data.

Only the clan public test resulted in proper live like numbers.

You have provide incentives to test.

For example, we have Clan Wave 2 mechs coming out in a few short months, plus the King Crab. Make them all accessible on the test server, released or not so people can actually test them and provide feed back about things like hit boxes, heat issues, hard points etc. Same with heroes. Make sure they are all available and that all players have the resources to get access to them.

Also the servers need to be up for at least a week at a time not a day or two.

Then allow for a week of discussion and feedback then make changes based on that feedback and open the test again for another week then push to live.

Point here is that you got to invest people into the tests, give them a reason to spend time earning nothing. Many will be there just to get a peek at new mech or to try-before-they-by. Many others will jump on just to test out new mechs and builds in combat just to see how they work without having to worry about the investment cost they couldn't recoup if the build doesn't work out. Others will test as long as you show your actually taking their feedback seriously and can see changes based on that feedback.

Without doing that, yeah the Public Tests are going to fail.

[Mirkk Defwode]

DONTOR, on 07 October 2014 - 01:39 PM, said:

I disagree, COD has about 130K people on at a time and its one of the most popular games. 30K+ is very good for a niche game like MWO.

That's 130K concurrent users. Not total active user base or the user base over the course of a weekend. So that means maintaining between 100 to 140 thousand players always online. Now, I'm not sure which Call of Duty you're referencing or all the ones currently out there right now at once. For individual titles its fairly normal for AAA titles to have hundreds of thousands of concurrent users for their first 3-6 months then it'll be a pretty rapid drop off to hover around 10-30k concurrent users for the die hard fans.

Halo 4's user chart for their first few months is rather telling of the typical behavior, If not on the bad side for how rapidly the number of players dropped off

Spoiler

Looking at the chart you can see the peak times for people connected as well as the overtime drop off. It also shows a resurgence of players when the first DLC is released but a continued drop off after that.

If we only saw 30k users total login and play through the weekend, there are issues. Even worse if it was only 3k users for that same time period.

Even so trying to find statistics for the peak users for an event, the highest I found was 7,700 from a tournament in February of 2013. I think the playerbase has only further dropped off since then, so around 3k users for the whole weekend wouldn't surprise me and those are fairly troubling numbers to be honest.

You could see a surge in new users with a release through another distribution method than the webpage for higher visibility but I wouldn't do that from a business standpoint until Community Warfare is released. That way you at least have something to advertise and entice people to try versus just the mech combat alone and the myriad of issues many folks have complained about on these forums.

Spoiler

Concurrent users and peak numbers for the day for the top 100 games in Steam Multiplayer

So this is steam tracking the number of associated accounts for these games have launched the title.
Current Players Peak Today Game 516,288 752,899 Dota 2 207,598 218,373 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 54,374 66,370 Team Fortress 2 45,679 46,677 Football Manager 2014 38,330 39,017 Sid Meier's Civilization V 32,561 33,955 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 28,115 29,747 Garry's Mod 27,534 30,050 Counter-Strike 26,462 30,066 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor 19,783 20,187 Arma 3 17,948 18,521 Total War: ROME II - Emperor Edition 17,408 19,471 Counter-Strike: Source 16,209 17,116 Borderlands 2 15,940 16,080 DayZ 15,397 17,536 Warframe 12,624 13,080 Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead 10,619 11,414 PAYDAY 2 9,940 11,314 Robocraft 9,456 9,896 Europa Universalis IV 9,426 10,128 Left 4 Dead 2 9,285 9,779 Terraria 8,699 9,287 Euro Truck Simulator 2 8,581 9,697 Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Multiplayer 8,570 11,868 Unturned 8,474 9,024 War Thunder 8,432 8,672 Path of Exile 8,056 8,540 DARK SOULS™ II 7,827 8,903 Rust 7,597 8,182 Wasteland 2 7,508 8,493 Alien: Isolation 7,319 7,408 Football Manager 2013 6,802 8,146 Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies 6,425 7,434 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms - EU 6,115 6,483 Life is Feudal: Your Own 6,101 7,043 Mount & Blade: Warband 5,988 6,480 Crusader Kings II 5,812 5,812 Kerbal Space Program 5,760 6,543 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Multiplayer 5,382 5,493 Company of Heroes 2 4,889 5,275 Heroes & Generals 4,800 4,940 Empire: Total War 4,559 4,593 7 Days to Die 4,395 4,601 Total War: SHOGUN 2 4,344 4,344 PlanetSide 2 4,186 4,274 XCOM: Enemy Unknown 4,175 4,497 Fallout: New Vegas 3,988 4,220 Neverwinter 3,983 4,632 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer 3,972 4,227 The Binding of Isaac 3,943 4,011 Age of Empires II: HD Edition 3,933 6,154 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms - NA 3,688 3,804 Space Engineers 3,572 3,697 Call of Duty: Ghosts - Multiplayer 3,469 3,608 Football Manager 2012 3,461 3,841 Divinity: Original Sin 3,327 3,477 Prison Architect 3,078 3,307 FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn 2,914 2,929 ArcheAge 2,843 3,456 Spacewar 2,616 2,879 Firefall 2,606 2,729 Wakfu 2,596 2,674 Star Trek Online 2,591 2,672 Marvel Heroes 2015 2,462 2,670 Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition 2,441 2,611 Portal 2 2,407 2,546 APB Reloaded 2,397 2,426 Company of Heroes (New Steam Version) 2,326 2,326 Napoleon: Total War 2,194 2,371 Farming Simulator 2013 2,147 2,249 Stronghold Kingdoms 2,117 2,309 Warface 2,099 2,450 Torchlight II 2,049 2,135 Starbound 2,036 2,069 Train Simulator 2015 2,008 2,243 Endless Legend 1,984 1,984 Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag 1,950 1,955 Assassin's Creed® III 1,907 1,954 Rising Storm/Red Orchestra 2 Multiplayer 1,890 2,139 Far Cry® 3 1,850 2,076 Quake Live 1,838 1,951 Defiance 1,824 1,980 The Forest 1,817 1,948 Medieval II: Total War 1,768 1,808 RIFT™ 1,755 1,760 Chivalry: Medieval Warfare 1,746 1,785 Killing Floor 1,735 1,789 Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition 1,661 1,777 Call of Duty: Black Ops - Multiplayer 1,536 1,694 Stronghold Crusader 2 1,524 1,614 Wargame: Red Dragon 1,520 1,621 Banished 1,506 2,222 NBA 2K15 1,492 1,958 The Sims™ 3 1,482 1,622 FTL: Faster Than Light 1,471 1,776 Grand Theft Auto IV 1,470 1,695 Infestation: Survivor Stories 1,441 1,500 Day of Defeat: Source 1,424 1,448 Tomb Raider 1,398 1,443 EVE Online 1,379 1,514 Serious Sam 3: BFE

I'd be fairly interested to see what the servers are seeing constantly for the number of concurrent users through the data center measuring the accounts logged in. That'd be a telling statistic as to how many people are actually playing and the number of sessions that are active at any given point.

Edited by Mirkk Defwode, 08 October 2014 - 11:45 AM.

[TexAce]

1 word: STEAM

we need steam

[Bilbo]

TexAss, on 08 October 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

1 word: STEAM

we need steam

I would guess that they would need to recoup whatever they paid IGP and more before such an option would be considered.

[Torgun]

TexAss, on 08 October 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

1 word: STEAM

we need steam

I think Steam has an active player counter? Well guess that's impossible then.....

[wanderer]

2800ish or so at most did well enough to earn extra C-bills out of a potential 10K?

Wow, that's a testament to the player skill of the community.

[Mcgral18]

wanderer, on 08 October 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

2800ish or so at most did well enough to earn extra C-bills out of a potential 10K?

Wow, that's a testament to the player skill of the community.

Apparently closer to 900 got the full 10 mil.

[wanderer]

Quote

so most probably had about 3 matches that made the cut.

Heck, for once I had no time to play during a challenge- and ended up with all of 2 matches that got a bonus.


And as far as what numbers someone like Buddah wants?

Pretty simple. How many people are playing MWO.

Numbers like that give us an idea on what MWO's matchmaker has to work with, for example. Or how successful something like challenges are in driving gameplay.

I'm speculating here, but it's hard for players to give input on some parts of the game without that most basic of data. You have a special event. How much did it boost player counts? We dunno, we don't know how many players actually play the game. Exactly what is the MM generating on teams? Why does it frequently seem to have players that don't contribute?

We can't tell. There's an ELO system, but ELO isn't displayed. We can't even tell if it's working as intended, or what's happening when the MM is forced into an alternate drop layout.



This results, to the point of painful frustration. I've appreciated the faster responses, I was one of those people who actually said "You're gonna force me to drop in a match type I don't want in non-CW play? NOPE" and will be back on to shoot robots now that my choices are once again meaningful.

Edited by wanderer, 09 October 2014 - 08:10 AM.