70 replies to this topic

[Unreliable Mercenary]

Is there a particular reason why the numbers are hidden? It seems odd to do this, most F2P sim games I play (World of Tanks, War Thunder, ect.) all have player counters easily accessed.

[Anjian]

I use Google Trends for search trends, which is a good indicative of interest on a particular topic. Mechwarrior Online has been on a gradual decline since 2013, though there are peaks and valleys in the trend graph. Then suddenly this month, when it launched in Steam with a bunch of news headlines, interest spiked. The question of whether it is sustainable I don't know. Compared to other large scale F2P games, MWO remains miniscule, Google Trends can also be reflective of player base size as well.

https://www.google.c...tz=Etc%2FGMT-10

Interesting to see there is an interest breakdown in the region. Canada actually ranks first, and the US is only fourth. Germany comes in second, Australia surprisingly third, and Russia a surprising 5th. The UK rounds up the top six nations.

You can test Google Trends with other games, movies, TV shows, politics, political candidates, and this can be a very fun tool to play with as well as a serious research aid.

[TLBFestus]

Mister Blastman, on 19 December 2015 - 10:27 PM, said:

Well I don't know about that. The opening for AoE 2 is quite **** and defines the entire course of the game. Sheep poaching, resource towering etc. can all screw stuff over fast. I haven't played it in at least thirteen years but I did play it a ton back in the day and remember all of that.

Supreme Commander (vanilla) had more depth than AoE 2 and in my opinion is the greatest RTS ever made... but unfortunately a bunch of whiners complained and forced Forged Alliance to butcher the game and vanilla play died off.

Don't get me wrong, AoE 2 was awesome, but from a FFA perspective, SupCom was and still is unmatched.

Just to continue with the derail.....

You are all nuts. The only 2 great RTS games ever were Homeworld and Company of Heroes. No others come close. Notice they were both made by RELIC in Vancouver before the next generation of internet geniuses sprung up in town.

Personally I think that the STEAM thing has probably doubled the population at this point. Hard to say what it will do going forward, but I think that PGI is going to squander a golden opportunity.

They should be pushing for more front page time, even if they have to pay for it. They should have had an advertising campaign of some sort, but as usual they have never seemed particularly adept at that.

Edited by TLBFestus, 20 December 2015 - 01:56 PM.

[Anjian]

Owen Miller, on 19 December 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

Is there a particular reason why the numbers are hidden? It seems odd to do this, most F2P sim games I play (World of Tanks, War Thunder, ect.) all have player counters easily accessed.

Marketing purposes I assume.

Wargaming.net certainly keeps its server stats wide open. There is even a regional breakdown, based on count by regional servers. You can also see peak concurrent player stats being graphed across a period of time.

http://www.vbaddict.net/servers/

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

TLBFestus, on 20 December 2015 - 12:04 AM, said:

Just to continue with the derail.....

I'm sorry... I can't hear you over the sound of my Tesla coils...

[Kilo 40]

Owen Miller, on 19 December 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

Is there a particular reason why the numbers are hidden? It seems odd to do this, most F2P sim games I play (World of Tanks, War Thunder, ect.) all have player counters easily accessed.

I'm pretty sure it's because the usual gang of haters would try to stir up crap about how the game is dying every time the numbers look like they were down a bit.

hell, we still get that even without the numbers.

[redacted]

Edited by Coryphee, 20 December 2015 - 08:38 AM.

[MonkeyCheese]

They should just put the counter back in like the good old closed beta days. No point in hiding it now.

[Satan n stuff]

Iqfish, on 19 December 2015 - 04:21 PM, said:

So, he pretty much said that if we combined the numbers of steam players and players that play throught the old, normal client, the game would sit in the top50 of steam.

Lets check then, shall we?

He said "firmly" so let's say he means top 40-50.



These numbers are from "right now", which is around the highest phase for every game on steam.

tl;dr: MWO probably has about 8000-6500 peak players every day.

Can anyone remember what the counter showed during close beta? Were the numbers higher or lower?

They were much lower, but there weren't all that many players in CB before the counter was removed. At the time it was founders ( a significant portion of which didn't even play until launch ) and 50.000 or so players who got an invite and most of those got founders packs anyway. I'm pretty sure the counter was removed before the PC Gamer invite giveaway.

[Darian DelFord]

Here is a question and just throwing this out there

Russ says, that the population of MWO is roughly in the top 50 of Steam.

OK, well how many of those games, like MWO, can launch without Steam? Steam can not count the number players playing through the default game client.

So while MWO Steam and MWO default may be in the current Top 50, in reality it COULD be much lower than that?

Dunno thought just came into my head after my cup of coffee

[stjobe]

Iqfish, on 19 December 2015 - 04:21 PM, said:

Can anyone remember what the counter showed during close beta? Were the numbers higher or lower?

The concurrent player counter was usually at 2-3k, with lows of 1k or less and highs of 4k. I don't remember it ever being above 5k, but I didn't keep all that closely a track either.

As someone else said, we were roughly 70k founders, and probably about 25k non-founders, so about 100k all in all.

For some more recent numbers, Tukayyid 1 drew 17k players, Tukayyid 2 drew 14k.

Edited by stjobe, 20 December 2015 - 05:16 AM.

[DAYLEET]

Mister Blastman, on 19 December 2015 - 10:27 PM, said:

Supreme Commander (vanilla) had more depth than AoE 2 and in my opinion is the greatest RTS ever made... but unfortunately a bunch of whiners complained and forced Forged Alliance to butcher the game and vanilla play died off.

Say what? Forge Alliance was the most complete and best rts ive ever seen. I wished they would have remade it with a better engine rather than kill the franchise with supcom2. FA Forever Lobby has user created patches that balance the game better or fixes it with user created game mode solo/coop if that's your thing.

[DAYLEET]

Darian DelFord, on 20 December 2015 - 05:10 AM, said:

Here is a question and just throwing this out there

Russ says, that the population of MWO is roughly in the top 50 of Steam.

OK, well how many of those games, like MWO, can launch without Steam? Steam can not count the number players playing through the default game client.

So while MWO Steam and MWO default may be in the current Top 50, in reality it COULD be much lower than that?

Dunno thought just came into my head after my cup of coffee

That's not the point. It;s to give us an estimated number on people logged at the same time at peak hours. So we see 2.5k 3.5k when its closer to 6k-7k at peak hours.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Owen Miller, on 19 December 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

Is there a particular reason why the numbers are hidden? It seems odd to do this, most F2P sim games I play (World of Tanks, War Thunder, ect.) all have player counters easily accessed.

We were told it wasnt in their "best interests to give the number at this time" when the counter dissappeared

Anjian, on 20 December 2015 - 12:03 AM, said:

I use Google Trends for search trends, which is a good indicative of interest on a particular topic. Mechwarrior Online has been on a gradual decline since 2013, though there are peaks and valleys in the trend graph. Then suddenly this month, when it launched in Steam with a bunch of news headlines, interest spiked. The question of whether it is sustainable I don't know. Compared to other large scale F2P games, MWO remains miniscule, Google Trends can also be reflective of player base size as well.

https://www.google.c...tz=Etc%2FGMT-10

Interesting to see there is an interest breakdown in the region. Canada actually ranks first, and the US is only fourth. Germany comes in second, Australia surprisingly third, and Russia a surprising 5th. The UK rounds up the top six nations.

You can test Google Trends with other games, movies, TV shows, politics, political candidates, and this can be a very fun tool to play with as well as a serious research aid.

https://www.google.c...tz=Etc%2FGMT-10

living legends' graph

TLBFestus, on 20 December 2015 - 12:04 AM, said:

I think that PGI is gong to squander a golden opportunity.

The one thing they do extremely well

[Elizander]

CCU/Concurrent Users is usually a bad metric to base success on because this is a shooter. Unlike in MMOs where people stay logged in all day to grind stuff out, there are more people who will log in for a quick game and then log out and you'll never see really high numbers.

Developers can add stuff to make people to want to stay logged in to produce higher numbers but they didn't do anything like that for MWO so people can log off whenever the hell they want to instead of being trained skinner box style like most mobile apps do.

[TexAce]

stjobe, on 20 December 2015 - 05:14 AM, said:

The concurrent player counter was usually at 2-3k, with lows of 1k or less and highs of 4k. I don't remember it ever being above 5k, but I didn't keep all that closely a track either.

As someone else said, we were roughly 70k founders, and probably about 25k non-founders, so about 100k all in all.

For some more recent numbers, Tukayyid 1 drew 17k players, Tukayyid 2 drew 14k.

To turn your argument around Tuk1 was nearly twice as long as Tuk2. Tuk2 was only 3 days.

[Darian DelFord]

DAYLEET, on 20 December 2015 - 06:17 AM, said:

That's not the point. It;s to give us an estimated number on people logged at the same time at peak hours. So we see 2.5k 3.5k when its closer to 6k-7k at peak hours.

Once again, the Steam Numbers LIKE MWO, may have default log ins that Steam does not count. So the point is still the same. If you compare apples to apples, would MWo stand "Firmly" in the top 50 of COMBINED Players. I personally do not think so. As I know a few of those games have default log in's like MWO.

DAYLEET, on 20 December 2015 - 06:10 AM, said:

Say what? Forge Alliance was the most complete and best rts ive ever seen. I wished they would have remade it with a better engine rather than kill the franchise with supcom2. FA Forever Lobby has user created patches that balance the game better or fixes it with user created game mode solo/coop if that's your thing.

Masters of Orion I and II as well as Masters of Magic hands down the best strategy games ever made, and that was back in the 90's

Edited by Darian DelFord, 20 December 2015 - 06:40 AM.

[KuroNyra]

TLBFestus, on 20 December 2015 - 12:04 AM, said:

Just to continue with the derail.....

You are all nuts. The only 2 great RTS games ever were Homeworld and Company of Heroes. No others come close. Notice they were both made by RELIC in Vancouver before the next generation of internet geniuses sprung up in town.

Personally I think that the STEAM thing has probably doubled the population at this point. Hard to say what it will do going forward, but I think that PGI is gong to squander a golden opportunity.

They should be pushing for more front page time, even if they have to pay for it. They should have had an advertising campaign of some sort, but as usual they have never seemed particularly adept at that.

Don't you think you forget Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of War II?

Company of Heroes is close to it.

[Satan n stuff]

KuroNyra, on 20 December 2015 - 06:45 AM, said:

Don't you think you forget Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of War II?

Company of Heroes is close to it.

Dawn Of War 2 is good, but Relic really messed up by having campaigns that don't play anything like a multiplayer match, one of the main reasons to even have a campaign is to prepare players for multiplayer and it completely fails at that.

[stjobe]

TexAce, on 20 December 2015 - 06:38 AM, said:

To turn your argument around Tuk1 was nearly twice as long as Tuk2. Tuk2 was only 3 days.

I wasn't making an argument, just presenting some numbers.

[Chemie]

DAYLEET, on 20 December 2015 - 06:10 AM, said:

Say what? Forge Alliance was the most complete and best rts ive ever seen. I wished they would have remade it with a better engine rather than kill the franchise with supcom2. FA Forever Lobby has user created patches that balance the game better or fixes it with user created game mode solo/coop if that's your thing.

Ashes of the Singularity
(cross between SC and Sins of Solar Empire...Sins resource methodology with SC massive unit and scale)