70 replies to this topic

[C E Dwyer]

Almond Brown, on 21 December 2015 - 06:49 AM, said:

If one plays and enjoys the game, wtf does knowing some number make any real difference to said enjoyment? This place is funny.

People use numbers to try justify their opinion on how bad the game is, as in look this game sucks only 4000 people play it etc etc..

A few use the numbers so they can plan and hope that numbers equals inflow of cash so the game doesn't fold. but as Russ is using the word healthy I would suggest as others have said more around the 25-30 mark, 4o can easily suddenly become 60 in charts

[Screech]

I do enjoy watching the doomsmiths scramble for an angle at all times. Their tenacity would be admirable if it wasn't so unhinged.

[C E Dwyer]

saKhan Ds00 Kerensky, on 20 December 2015 - 12:44 PM, said:

So I don't seem to understand... why doesn't Russ put his money where is mouth is and reinstate a player counter back into MW:O, one would think he'd like to back up his claim?

I'd rather he did this hell numbers are not going to make me stay or go boredom is, and I didn't play World of war craft for more than 3 months...numbers mean squat..

[CHH Badkarma]

MonkeyCheese, on 20 December 2015 - 01:39 AM, said:

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

It really is that simple. Then again, PGI....

The only reason Russ would not want it back would be that he does not want that data seen. Again, that simple.

Personally I like the idea of it being there. "Oh look,10k plus people are on, I should have no problem getting a match" Come on PGI, have some faith in whats left of your diehards and new folk alike. We won't point and laugh. If the numbers are low we will just go bring some bondsmen to the game. Err I mean recruits.

Edited by CHH Badkarma, 21 December 2015 - 08:26 AM.

[DAYLEET]

Mister Blastman, on 20 December 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

Forged Alliance wrecked the economic complexity, created a semi-forced opening and flattened the late game. Compared with vanilla SupCom it was more on rails.

FA wasn't bad, but it wasn't what SupCom was, either.

I don't remember if there was a controversy about that. RTS are games i play for years in month chunks so i might have skipped over it and i don't remember ever going to a forum so i definitely skipped over it.. In the end, FA still has a pretty awesome economy juggling. I never once played multiplayer in open, only against a friend with "unwritten" rules and we only cared about the startup sequence.

[Mawai]

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

Not really. MWO steam reports 2k to 4k concurrent players with usually 3 to 4k at peak times. This puts MWO somewhere in the top 100 on a regular basis. Double those numbers would put it into the top 50. Since MWO can launch outside of Steam and every existing player prior to steam launch used the external client then only those existing players that installed the steam client will be recorded. Although this number is difficult to estimate, I would still guess it is less than 50% due to the fact that steam is not universally adopted or loved and that steam installation requires another 10Gb download which might deter folks from installing the steam client unless they are already significantly invested in steam. That doesn't include folks from steam

http://steamspy.com/app/342200

Anyway, until PGI decides to actually post the numbers then all we can do is guess. However, the number don't look unreasonable and 5k to 10k concurrent users seems to be a reasonable estimate.

[Tordin]

Nice to see XCOM on the list of top games played. Cant wait for nr 2. MWO sure have quite alot of players too, though if all have played on steam? ALOT.

[DAYLEET]

Darian DelFord, on 20 December 2015 - 06:39 AM, said:

Once again, the Steam Numbers LIKE MWO, may have default log ins that Steam does not count. So the point is still the same.

No no no no no. Forget about the other games method of loggins. Russ is only telling you the number of concurrent people logged in MWO based on the numbers you see on steam. He used those number in a vague but still explicit way. He is not trying to compete with those games, he's just telling you about how many people are logged in MWO.

[Mister Blastman]

DAYLEET, on 21 December 2015 - 08:14 AM, said:

I don't remember if there was a controversy about that. RTS are games i play for years in month chunks so i might have skipped over it and i don't remember ever going to a forum so i definitely skipped over it.. In the end, FA still has a pretty awesome economy juggling. I never once played multiplayer in open, only against a friend with "unwritten" rules and we only cared about the startup sequence.

Ah. I only play RTS games online. I usually don't bother with the single player ever with the exception being StarCraft 1 back in the day, some of Warcraft III and Red Alert.

I look at them as chess--best served with humans.

But SupCom was special... it was the ultimate Free For All game. I loved picking maps that supported an odd number of players, 5 or 7 and setting it to no teams, every man for himself. The games would take two to four hours sometimes (many lasted a little over an hour) but man... it was like playing chess meets Risk. It was glorious. It only lasted a few months before FA came out but those were the best months of RTS gaming I have ever had.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 21 December 2015 - 08:22 AM.

[DAYLEET]

Mister Blastman, on 21 December 2015 - 08:21 AM, said:

Ah. I only play RTS games online. I usually don't bother with the single player ever with the exception being StarCraft 1 back in the day, some of Warcraft III and Red Alert.

I look at them as chess--best served with humans.

But SupCom was special... it was the ultimate Free For All game. I loved picking maps that supported an odd number of players, 5 or 7 and setting it to no teams, every man for himself. The games would take two to four hours sometimes (many lasted a little over an hour) but man... it was like playing chess meets Risk. It was glorious. It only lasted a few months before FA came out but those were the best months of RTS gaming I have ever had.

I play with human, there is just no S at the end of human

Ive watch enough replays to know how pros play, and it's only fine for the startup sequence, then im not interested since it makes the mid game the exact same and only the end games can differ.

Edited by DAYLEET, 21 December 2015 - 08:24 AM.

[Mawai]

adamts01, on 21 December 2015 - 04:09 AM, said:

If the number of players really is so great they need to bring mode selection back and/or stop mixing tiers. I can't handle pugs on assault/conquest, just can't handle it. I'm having so much more fun with no armor LRM boats and 12 flamer novas than actually trying to work with these clowns.

No they don't need to bring back mode selection. They don't have enough players over all regions and queues to properly support it.

Assume 5k concurrent players which is pretty decent. However, lets divide that by region. (numbers are made up for the example)

Oceania: 500
Europe: 1500
NA : 3000

Divide by solo, group and CW queue: say 60%, 30%, 10%

Oceania: 300, 150, 50
Europe: 900, 450, 150
NA: 1800, 900, 300

CW players are only on one server ... so 500.

Now, lets put back in game mode selection. Skirmish, Assault, Conquest ... say 50%, 30%, 20%

Oceania:
Solo: 150, 90, 60
Group: 75, 45, 30

Europe:
Solo: 450, 270, 180
Group: 225, 135, 90

NA:
Solo: 900, 540,360
Group: 450, 270,180

Each match needs 24 players. How good do you think the matchmaking can be if there are only 30 players in the conquest group queue in Oceania? The Conquest solo queue is at 180 in Europe but that is only enough for making 7 matches. There will be lots of bad match ups. On the other hand, 900 players to choose from in the solo queue with game mode voting should give much better matchmaking.

Do you see the problem? You can probably get pretty decent matchmaking in NA at peak play times even allowing game mode selection but that is not true for all servers across all regions. The player base is already split by 3 regions and 3 different queues they can play in. They would need FAR MORE concurrent players that 5k to 10k to support game mode selection. In addition, allowing game mode selection makes it almost impossible to add new game modes since it further splits the player base.

The game mode selection was removed to enable PGI to add new game modes, to make sure that new users via steam were never exposed to the option (they can't miss what they haven't had) and to make matchmaking in the smaller population parts of the game better (eg oceania) where it has made a significant difference (based on some forum comments from folks who play there).

Edited by Mawai, 21 December 2015 - 08:34 AM.