103 replies to this topic

[Strong Female Role Model]

Sky Hawk, on 17 November 2014 - 07:33 PM, said:

That is sad.. Least we know now, that PGI don't/can't put out the player numbers because, they fear, that some idiots would use it for a negative publicity.. and PGI would lose potential players.. very sad...

See, I don't really get this. I don't think that there is anyone who plays the game that wants to see it fail. I think that most people are concerned with how little the game has progressed since the start of the beta. People do, rightly so I believe, decry the mishandling of the franchise by PGI. We can blame IGP if we like, but PGI is the one left holding the bag at the end of the day. If people are critical of the game and the direction it has taken, that does not mean they want the game to fail. If they care enough to complain, then they must have an interest in seeing things done better.

Some of the issues people have been complaining about are slated to be addressed (in the ~future~) according to the devs. That sounds to me like people have been giving PGI constructive criticism, and not being huge trolls as some often claim. I think that player feedback is a terrific tool for the devs, and that if they responded to it more often, even if just to say that what is asked for is not possible/not on the agenda, that the community would be hugely appreciative.

[Punkass]

Kilo 40, on 17 November 2014 - 07:03 PM, said:

IGP sure did. I'm not sure what that has to do with PGI displaying/not displaying player counts, but whatever.

Strong Female Role Model, on 17 November 2014 - 07:09 PM, said:

I am concerned that the player base is continually trending downwards and that PGI is going to start pulling resources from development of features and just try and soak whatever they can from the community before pulling the plug on the game completely. I've been burned spending money on games that failed before, and I would like to know if MWO is just circling the drain before I open my wallet again.

This, right here, is why seeing player count is important. You don't want to throw money at something that might not be there tomorrow. And yeah, I'm not saying that PGI would do what IGP did. But I wouldn't put it past them either.

[CompproB237]

I really am unsure why Russ/PGI are embarrassed to provide numbers. I mean, Vindictus shows theirs and the company that runs that game (Nexon) is where Paul learned how to make a F2P Economy.

[GrimReality]

I find it interesting to note the total number of registered users, which can be easily found here: http://mwomercs.com/...php?app=members Since the player account and forum account are one in the same, we can know the total number of players who have ever even tried MWO. This of course, doesn't begin to tell us their activity, much less if they have multiple accounts or any other variables really at all, just the absolute total.

At my count, the forum has somewhere around 600,000 registered users.

Spoiler

Showing my math:
(20 accounts listed per page) multiplied by (just a hair over 30,000 pages) = 600,000 accounts

That's more than I would have guessed.

Even if you have a very small percent of that total number still active (and a very small percentage is to be expected no matter what) then you should have a sustainable business, and thus, a playable game.

Having played this game regularly since Closed Beta, I can honestly tell you that I feel it's headed more in the right direction now, than it ever has before. I think a lot has had to do with the IGP/PGI divorce, but that's just conjecture.

Consider also that this game has not advertised beyond the standard social networking, it has made very little trade show splashes (that I have heard of anyway), it doesn't get much chatter on tech/game websites, and it isn't on a platform like Steam.... yet. When this game is truly out of Open Beta 2.0 (that is, after CW is fully operational) I think there will be a massive boom in the population since there will be so much more to offer players new and old alike, and a lot more reason to get noticed.

All that said, I'd still like to see a return of the "Players Online" counter.

[CompproB237]

Heffay said:

The number of active forum users, the industry average forum participation rate per active user (2-5%), and the industry average of dollars per month spent by active users ($2-$4/month) for F2P games. I'm not using that result to prove the industry averages accurate. Those are already proven values. {My edit: This is a Rule of Thumb, not an industry standard. A rule of thumb is not intended to be accurate}

Those 3 numbers provide an estimated active player base of about 500k and an estimated monthly income of $1.5M.

Nothing I'm doing is being used to prove the accuracy of other pieces of evidence. That would be circular reasoning. Feel free to question the 3 sources of my data (all publicly available numbers), but if you're going to attempt to prove those numbers inaccurate, you have to make a very compelling argument *why* the industry standards don't apply to this game.

Man, it’s rather odd that this post isn’t supported by Russ. Very odd.

Edited by CompproB237, 17 November 2014 - 08:59 PM.

[DaZur]

Strong Female Role Model, on 17 November 2014 - 07:52 PM, said:

See, I don't really get this. I don't think that there is anyone who plays the game that wants to see it fail.

au contraire mon frere...

I can name probably a dozen "players" who would love to see MW:O crash and burn for no other reason than to gloat over how enlightened and clairvoyant their prognostications were regarding MW:O's demise.

[DaZur]

Punkass, on 17 November 2014 - 08:16 PM, said:

This, right here, is why seeing player count is important. You don't want to throw money at something that might not be there tomorrow. And yeah, I'm not saying that PGI would do what IGP did. But I wouldn't put it past them either.

Not to point out the obvious... But the size of a player base is not a sound indicator of an IP's longevity. We have a number recent examples of strong player bases having their IP yanked out from under them and servers shut down.

[Punkass]

DaZur, on 17 November 2014 - 10:02 PM, said:

Not to point out the obvious... But the size of a player base is not a sound indicator of an IP's longevity. We have a number recent examples of strong player bases having their IP yanked out from under them and servers shut down.

Well then OBVIOUSLY PGI shouldn't give a **** about making their population numbers public. It's a poor indicator of the IP's longevity after all.

[Glythe]

White Panther, on 17 November 2014 - 05:04 PM, said:

Its an important secret that must never be revealed, according to PGI.

Let's try some simple logic. You can't have a MWO game account without a forum account right? But you can have a forum account without actually playing the game. The main page of the forum shows 603,094 members as of 11/18/2014. It also shows that 5,982 was the most number of players ever on the forum at once on Oct 13 2013. That's not a healthy population. I don't know about you but 90% of my friends list is permanently offline.


If for some reason anyone wants to find this number later...... the codeword is:

snigglewigglejiggle

[CompproB237]

Glythe, on 17 November 2014 - 10:46 PM, said:

Let's try some simple logic. You can't have a MWO game account without a forum account right? But you can have a forum account without actually playing the game. The main page of the forum shows 603,094 members as of 11/18/2014. It also shows that 5,982 was the most number of players ever on the forum at once on Oct 13 2013. That's not a healthy population. I don't know about you but 90% of my friends list is permanently offline.


If for some reason anyone wants to find this number later...... the codeword is:

snigglewigglejiggle

This has been exhaustively broken down... somewhere else. You actually can create a game account without it showing up as a forum account. Logging in to the game or purchasing a Clan/Phoenix/'Mech pack also doesn't show as a Forum account. In theory, you can make it so your account doesn't show up as a forum account. The steps are not very straightforward though and the average user, I assume, would not know this and inadvertently show up as a forum account at some point. Again, there is another place this has been researched in detail.

[DaZur]

Punkass, on 17 November 2014 - 10:25 PM, said:

Well then OBVIOUSLY PGI shouldn't give a **** about making their population numbers public. It's a poor indicator of the IP's longevity after all.

Yeah... Your right...

PGI should feel obligated to display their active player numbers because no one around here would make grossly erroneous assumptions and or extrapolate numbers out of context to justify the forwarded their premise that MW:O is tanking.

Yup... not a one.

[CompproB237]

DaZur, on 17 November 2014 - 11:24 PM, said:

Yeah... Your right...

PGI should feel obligated to display their active player numbers because no one around here would make grossly erroneous assumptions and or extrapolate numbers out of context to justify the forwarded their premise that MW:O is tanking.

Yup... not a one.

It would settle some long-time arguments though.

[Impyrium]

People that are happy with the game couldn't care less whether they could see the player numbers. People who clearly aren't happy with the game and are criticizing PGI do want that number. Coincidence? I think not.

[Punkass]

DaZur, on 17 November 2014 - 11:24 PM, said:

Yeah... Your right...

PGI should feel obligated to display their active player numbers because no one around here would make grossly erroneous assumptions and or extrapolate numbers out of context to justify the forwarded their premise that MW:O is tanking.

Yup... not a one.

CompproB237, on 17 November 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

It would settle some long-time arguments though.

Long time, and really stupid arguments

[Xtrekker]

SuomiWarder, on 17 November 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

Well, I have no doubt that I played in MW4 leagues that had far fewer total players than MWO has now. Some eventually folded, but we had fun within the numbers present. Not exactly the same thing I know, but sometimes the quality/dedication of the players can trump the total number of players.

The difference of course being that we would run our own servers, create our own leagues, pick our own games and know exactly who we were playing. We had controls in place that allowed us to refine that quality.

Agent 0 Fortune, on 17 November 2014 - 07:52 PM, said:

If you really feel like you are being bamboozled, then don't play. Or do, and make up you mind from personal experience. Don't base everything you do around what others tell you, don't feel like you can only go see the movies your friends like.
Honestly, you sound like the type of person who will watch TV for 20 minutes waiting for the weather report rather than look out the window, and the freak out because the weatherman said there was a 60% chance of snow, and it isn't snowing at your house.

Wow...rereading my post...how do you even...? Dude, what the hell are you smoking?

[Impyrium]

CompproB237, on 17 November 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

It would settle some long-time arguments though.

Arguments that only the critics cling to. And it wouldn't settle it, it'd add more flames to the fire. Suddenly there's more ammo to fling about. PGI is doing the right thing.
People just need move on from that stuff. If you don't like things, nothing is keeping you here.

[CompproB237]

AUSwarrior24, on 17 November 2014 - 11:37 PM, said:

Arguments that only the critics cling to. And it wouldn't settle it, it'd add more flames to the fire. Suddenly there's more ammo to fling about. PGI is doing the right thing.
People just need move on from that stuff. If you don't like things, nothing is keeping you here.

Because that's exactly what's going on. Isn't it? I mean... unless, you know, showing the population numbers would say something differently then there would be nothing to be embarrassed about.

Edited by CompproB237, 17 November 2014 - 11:41 PM.

[Kilo 40]

AUSwarrior24, on 17 November 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

People that are happy with the game couldn't care less whether they could see the player numbers. People who clearly aren't happy with the game and are criticizing PGI do want that number. Coincidence? I think not.

exactly. It's because they know that if PGI doesn't release the numbers they can criticize them for not releasing them AND the numbers MUST be bad or else they would release them. then if PGI does release them, they will either say the numbers are a lie, or say the numbers show just how poorly the game is doing.

PGI get criticized for this no matter what they do, so they may as well do what they think is best for them in this situation.

[Escef]

Strong Female Role Model, on 17 November 2014 - 07:52 PM, said:

See, I don't really get this. I don't think that there is anyone who plays the game that wants to see it fail.

But there ARE a bunch of loud-mouthed ***holes that want the game to fail. Whether they be table top purists, Founders that are angry that their purchase didn't make them gods of game design, people that disagreed with balance choices and thinks that makes PGI worse than genocide, or whatever they may be, they are out there. And they want the world to know they hate MWO and won't be happy until everyone does. It's a sad, pathetic mindset clung to by pathetic people (whether they be sad or anger addicts is not my concern).

[CompproB237]

Escef, on 17 November 2014 - 11:51 PM, said:

But there ARE a bunch of loud-mouthed ***holes that want the game to fail. Whether they be table top purists, Founders that are angry that their purchase didn't make them gods of game design, people that disagreed with balance choices and thinks that makes PGI worse than genocide, or whatever they may be, they are out there. And they want the world to know they hate MWO and won't be happy until everyone does. It's a sad, pathetic mindset clung to by pathetic people (whether they be sad or anger addicts is not my concern).

Most of the people you detail have just left at this point and don't even visit the forums nor play the game. I myself don't want the game to fail but I see a lot of decisions that I think aren't the best. I have tried to avoid being one of the "loud mouthed a-holes" as you detail and have attempted to stay civil about my discourse. This said, I have a lot of love for Battletech and Mechwarrior and I currently disagree with how it's being handled. This is why I've chosen to cease playing the game. I do still add to the discussions elsewhere about the game since I don't feel compelled to log in, nor post, very often anymore.