118 replies to this topic

[Theodore42]

Really great analysis. I wonder though if the 15 minutes per game is rather high. That means the average player would only play 4 games an hour, which seems rather low. I would guess more like 6 games an hour, 10 minutes a game, is a better guess.

Also, the only data we have is the number of games played per hour. And the data we have doesn't include the overhead of finding a game, changing modules or builds, or changing mechs. If you want to call that playing MWO (for the most part I would, weird ui aside).

Anyway, if the average player does 6 matches an hour, that would come to 1560 concurrent players by your formula.

I do very much appreciate your conclusions drawn from Steam and Eve data btw.

[Bobzilla]

The question is, what percent spends, and how much on average?

LoL averaged $1.32 per month per player, WoT is $4.51.

So with 35000 players, MWO would make $45,000 to $135,000 a month.

Anyone who likes this game better pray the Steam launch goes really, really well.

[Tai Fighter]

Torgun, on 09 February 2015 - 04:42 PM, said:

One of the best guesstimations I've seen, I'd expect the real numbers are thereabouts. Not over 9000 players at any time that some want to think. Let's not forget this was the weekend too, with a boost in numbers you wouldn't see on weekdays.

Thats correct, these are numbers for a weekend period. I can again use Eve/Steam data to predict overall but weekend peak is on its own a primary benchmark so I'm not too concerned about weekday numbers.

Cion, on 09 February 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

OP, you forgot to take into consideration CW matches. Granted, they are the lesser of the match types, they do take twice as long.

Anyways, I did my own calc and we're not too far off.

I highballed the average match length to 15 minutes to hopefully account for the longer but less common CW matches.

Fishbulb333, on 09 February 2015 - 05:49 PM, said:

There was close to 70,000 founders, so I think guessing 35,000 total players might be lowballing it just a bit...

There may be 70,000 founders, but how many of those still play?

Green Mamba, on 09 February 2015 - 06:07 PM, said:

No way 35 k still play this game...not even close..I figure the 4k or 5 k numbers regularly with a bump up to maybe 7k or 8k on patch days or events are fairly accurate

35k would be how many people log into the game regularly, not how many are online at any given moment. You're mixing up what I call "concurrent users" and "overall population". Think of a clinic - the clinic may have thousands of patients on file but only have a handful of examination rooms.

Bobzilla, on 09 February 2015 - 07:03 PM, said:

The question is, what percent spends, and how much on average?

LoL averaged $1.32 per month per player, WoT is $4.51.

So with 35000 players, MWO would make $45,000 to $135,000 a month.

Anyone who likes this game better pray the Steam launch goes really, really well.

MWO seems to have a more mature playerbase, which means more to spend, so hopefully it's on the higher end of that scale. 1.6m gross revenue doesn't seem too bad to me, but I know little about business and economy - maybe someone with more knowledge can give us an estimation of MWO's financial status?

Edited by Tai Fighter, 09 February 2015 - 07:44 PM.

[Scyther]

Pretty sure your way of calculating assumes all active/online players are continuously playing, and is not taking into account people being on but idle for a part of their time.

Also, 6.4% of playerbase online avg. is slightly high compared to some other numbers I have seen (which are more in the 4-5% range).

Those two factors alone would significantly change your end result.

Edited by MadBadger, 09 February 2015 - 07:57 PM.

[Navid A1]

MWO client used to have a "Online Users" counter back in closed beta. It was usually in the 1200-1900 range at any given time.

We don't have that feature anymore but i seriously don't think MWO has more than 1000-1500 players playing the game at a given moment currently

[Mister Blastman]

I think you are being generous.

[Dudeman3k]

I would say the numbers seem pretty accurate. It's still very low, but accurate.

Anyone else remember PGI saying it would never have a steam release? I sure do.

what did Age of Empires online do when their numbers were seriously low? Changed their views of steam and did a free release

Did Age of Empires online survive? nope.... no they did not.... steam did invite larger numbers initially, but the real problem isn't the numbers/sales. its the retention/sales. Age of Empires did a conference on why they failed, and MWO seems to be following the foot steps pretty darn close.

[DaZur]

The biggest mistake folks make in regards to MW:O player population is they try to compare it to similar F2P offerings... Which is understandable as these are the only similar metrics to gauge from.

While we are definitely a rabid player base... we are also without question a very niche genre, IP fan base not withstanding.

We are not anywhere in the same league as TF2, WoT, War Thunder, Warcraft etc... That said, the proposed numbers in context are not too terrible all told... most surely more players would not hurt.

[TalonOne]

Quote

"the proposed numbers in context are not too terrible all"

There were allegedly 70.000 backers. People that payed 30-150$ for a Free to Play game that didn't even exist.
And now less than 10.000, probably less than 5.000 of them are left.
And that isn't terrible?

[Thorqemada]

The Player Count in the Beta most often was around 2500 with Peaks well beyond 5000 and Lows around 1000 Players.

[ollo]

Didn't Russ say they'd be in the steam top 50 or something a while ago?

[Zakie Chan]

Thorqemada has it... there was 2k-2.5k before they stopped tracking. I havent played more than a handfull of matches over the past year. I keep following in the hopes that the game comes around, so far CW is a far cry from the gem that was promised originally so many cycles ago...

I would doubt anything over 2K ATM... many clans/members have either completely abandoned MWO during the money grab phase or are simply keeping tabs. There is news of some good changes coming for gameplay, but as of yet, the game has revolved around increasing hero/mech count instead of developing gameplay

[Navid A1]

As of writing this comment... i'm kinda sure that there can't be more than 200 playing right now.... 200 !!!

[mike29tw]

This ends up better than I expected.

Of course, the estimation might not be accurate, but until a better one is presented, i'm going to trust this one.

[627]

Didn't Russ post some numbers for the first clan sells and that half of all packs where the masakari tier?

[Lily from animove]

Tai Fighter, on 09 February 2015 - 03:30 PM, said:

With the most recent tournament results, I have out of boredom and curiosity made a rough estimation of Mechwarrior Online's player population.

Hard Facts:
~400,000 points were earned over a 72-hour period
24 players per match

Some assumptions:
Each game takes 15 minutes (including searching, ready screen, score screen, etc.) and nets 15 points. (The main assumption is that most players are playing in regular drops as opposed to CW)
-edit- this is a bit high but I figured it would be the best way to account for mechbay clicking and the 30-min CW matches

Numbers are rounded for easier reading.

400000 points ÷ 15 points/game = 26666 games
26666 games ÷ 72 hours = 370 games launching every hour, or 6.2 games/minute
15 minute games means that there are, on average, 93 concurrent games
93 concurrent games with 24 players per game = 2200 concurrent players

If the population follows the same pattern as Steam, (which it probably doesn't, but Steam data is the best analogue I can think of) the peaks and troughs are 25% above and below the average, respectively, meaning
Peak concurrent players: 2800
Average concurrent players: 2200
Trough concurrent players: 1650

Using patterns from Eve online we can estimate the overall population and not just average concurrent users. In 2013 Eve hit 500000 subscribers, and the average server population was at around 32000, meaning 6.4% of subscribers were online at a given moment.
Transcribed to MWO, that means that if the average number of players online is 2200, the overall active population of MWO can be estimated to be at about 35000 players. (or more forgiving fermi estimation, in the magnitude of the 10000s)

Well I don't think the estimations are that correctly, I would say on the weekend morning form EU point, population is a lot lower. I see people then I never have seen before and they generally play horrible. So I guess population is so low that elo matchups get thrown out of the window.

Also, I would not compare the MWO community to the Eve Community, Eve is a more "No life game" so the average user that playes eve is less casual. So I guess the gap between your estimation would be bigger between total playernumbers and registered accounts.

How many clan wave 1 packs did PGI said were sold?


I remember we had a update and there were like 2000 or even 2700 people online in the FORUM, and the forum is only a fractiopn of the people playing.

Using the steam stats is also a BAD idea, because there are laods of steam users always online in steam, but not playing. Poeple who leave their PC's online all day being logged in. Further there are a lot of bots in steam who just add and spy others.


individual Games like Warframe or APB Releaded may be better refferences how palyer population alters, because they by playerbehavir and casuals vs hardcore may have a more similar distribution.

[PurpleNinja]

Based on my calculations, there are over 9000 playing at the same time.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

PurpleNinja, on 10 February 2015 - 02:19 AM, said:

Based on my calculations, there are over 9000 playing at the same time.

troll

[Sembrin]

Tai Fighter, on 09 February 2015 - 07:43 PM, said:

1.6m gross revenue doesn't seem too bad to me, but I know little about business and economy - maybe someone with more knowledge can give us an estimation of MWO's financial status?

Wikipedia says PGI has 65 employees (not sure where that number came from, I can't find any reference to amount of employees on the PGI website). They also enjoy some (no idea how much) revenue from other games. That said, $1.6m is quite low to be supporting that many employees, alone. That averages out to $24.6k year/employee. And while I'm not sure how the taxes and additional costs work in Canada, in the US, you can add about 20-25% of an employee's base pay to their cost in the form of taxes, benefits, etc. And this isn't even factoring in cost of computers, rent, utility bills (imagine their electric), internet bill, yadda yadda. Anyways, that would lower actual real wages to $19.7k year/employee. And again, you're still not paying for anything else than 65 people standing in a parking lot. Sounds kinda low don't you think? So either their other games are subsidizing MWO (seems pretty unlikely), or they make a heckuva lot more than $1.6m/year from MWO.

[Kilo 40]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 10 February 2015 - 02:24 AM, said:

troll

did you find a mirror?