107 replies to this topic

[Russ Bullock]

Nightbird, on 09 May 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Yep, since you said steam accounts for minority of the players, but it fluctuates, if I assume 50% and use steam chart's 1200 average players to get to 2400 "true" average concurrent players.

Working backwards, that's 17 hours played per month on average.

This has been a great effort to get information out of me

At any rate I think the main point is yes we could make cases for different modes or decisions that would have made the game more populous and successful. It's a worthy argument that will never lose any steam.

My point is simply that people have been saying the game is shutting down since closed beta when in actuality its been pretty much consistent on it's player base the entire time. We are approaching 6 years in and I think it still has at least a couple years left in it.

Don't take that for being satisfied we will continue to make adjustments in order to try and grow the product.

Currently were watching with interest to see if things can continue growing.

[Bud Crue]

Russ Bullock, on 09 May 2018 - 06:43 PM, said:

Currently were watching with interest to see if things can continue growing.

Well, given the stated interest...
Perhaps addressing some of the long standing complaints regarding CW/FP would be a reasonable way to get some old players returning and even some new players interested in this game. I believe a couple of months ago you tweeted something along the lines that there would be/might be some refocus toward CW after Solaris had been in game for a bit. Anything there worth pursuing in terms of possible growth? Maybe something you would like to share?

[Russ Bullock]

Definitely will be getting a lot of discussion internally. Solaris out and we have a few important features coming in June for working in mechlab and skill tree. Once those are out we will be setting new development priorities.

[justcallme A S H]

Bud Crue, on 09 May 2018 - 06:57 PM, said:

Well, given the stated interest...
Perhaps addressing some of the long standing complaints regarding CW/FP would be a reasonable way to get some old players returning and even some new players interested in this game. I believe a couple of months ago you tweeted something along the lines that there would be/might be some refocus toward CW after Solaris had been in game for a bit. Anything there worth pursuing in terms of possible growth? Maybe something you would like to share?

Totally agree.

The latest round of FP changes were still disconnected from what the community, overall, is kinda hoping will happen. Plus a big potion of the that FP die-hards is still being overlooked after 2 years and those are the guys that are spending money it would seem (Loyalists etc).

Lets hope for the best!

[PocketYoda]

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Steam is up to date and accurate who knows where those jarls stats come from and how faked they are.

[Asym]

Russ Bullock, on 09 May 2018 - 07:38 PM, said:

Definitely will be getting a lot of discussion internally. Solaris out and we have a few important features coming in June for working in mechlab and skill tree. Once those are out we will be setting new development priorities.

We'd like to be part of that "discussion"... Customers are intregal to what is CTQ....their voice is where innovation is creating new values and new deliverables.... We'd like to help you help us......

[Horseman]

Samial, on 09 May 2018 - 07:59 PM, said:

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Negative, Ghost Rider. Steamstats includes only players who log into the game on Steam. As you can read above, those players account for at most 50% of the player base (and possibly less).

Quote

Steam is up to date and accurate

Up to date, perhaps. Accurate? Only for players who use the Steam version of the game.

Quote

who knows where those jarls stats come from

They come from Quick Play leaderboards. If you didn't know about those: https://mwomercs.com...le/leaderboards

Quote

and how faked they are.

The leaderboard page here shows wrong season number lately (seasons started with #1, not with #0). Once you account for that, Jarl's List matches up with your stats exactly.

Edited by Horseman, 09 May 2018 - 08:55 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Russ Bullock, on 09 May 2018 - 05:14 PM, said:

Bit of an old thread but since I saw it I thought I'd make a comment.

Over a month since the comment prior to yours, have you taken up the art of the necroposter?

Quote

Currently we are a 100,000 MAU game and at the moment growing. This does not put us into the categories of the big games not even close but it's still a healthy player base that again is higher than the majority of the almost 6 years.

We have a couple really nice Quality of live improvements coming in next few patches. Were hoping this positive trend on MAU continues. As always we appreciate your support.

MAU is a good start, but it's whether those accounts are 1) playing a decent amount over the course of that month and 2) how they're focused in terms of gamepay that really give you an idea of the lifeblood of MWO.

After all, if we're getting 100k accounts hitting the field:



More than 60% of those accounts are playing less than 10 games a month.



70% of the playerbase doesn't get 20 games in per month on the bread-and-butter QP queues.

What really concerns me is "do I get to see people in the modes I enjoy playing?" "does the matchmaker get strained so badly due to small player pools at any given time that I end up with cadet-bonus newbies in QP with me, a T1 player?". I mean, we know players have multiple alts they use. Go watch the_B33f, and it's generally not his namesake account he's streaming with. It's 2-3 alts he rotates through. Alts are common, and since you aren't going to see players with alts using both accounts at once, it cuts into the meaningful stats of "how many people are playing at once" and "what's the flow in queues like?" (stagnation is bad, natch!)

[Prototelis]

Samial, on 09 May 2018 - 07:59 PM, said:

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Those stats come from player stats released publically by PGI.

What makes you think they are fake?


Also, I'll point out that you don't need steam running to play the game, so I doubt steam is counting me as a user.

[Variant1]

Khobai, on 26 March 2018 - 10:26 AM, said:

solaris is 5 times the garbage fire of FP and meets the needs of no one

anyone who wants to play a good arena FPS is certainly not going to play MWO

solaris was a huge mistake. PGI wouldve been better off improving what their game does well. Instead of changing directions and trying to turn their game into something it isnt.

they didnt really have a choice because microsoft

they wanted to make mechwarrior 5 originally but microsoft said no. microsoft wanted an online multiplayer game.

and copying WoT's sales model was not necessarily a bad thing given its success

the problem is they didnt copy anything else that made WoT successful... MWO doesnt even have real gamemode; it still has beta test gamemodes like assault, its ridiculous. The lack of a decent, fun gamemode is the games biggest failing IMO. Battletech is supposed to be more than just skirmish or variations of skirmish. Conquest is the closest thing to a real gamemode but even that falls short.

From what heard solaris was intended to bring back alot of players that wanted it strangely. And also it wasnt microsoft it was Harmful Goons lawsuit that smacked down any chance we had of an early mw5 for better or worse.
Also what is a real game mode? Counter strike has skirmish with resuing hostages, skirmish with a bomb. Every fps is skirmish with x by that logic.

Samial, on 09 May 2018 - 07:59 PM, said:

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Steam is up to date and accurate who knows where those jarls stats come from and how faked they are.

I agree i hate that jarls list site its awful, aparently taking breaks from mwo and working extra shifts at my job means im alting

[justcallme A S H]

Samial, on 09 May 2018 - 07:59 PM, said:

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Steam is up to date and accurate who knows where those jarls stats come from and how faked they are.

Did you read anything Russ, the chief at PGI, posted?

Russ Bullock, on 09 May 2018 - 06:33 PM, said:

Interesting calculation - If were to assume its a good way of calculating average concurrent users than players must play about 3 times that much in a month as your average number is only about 1/3 of what it actually is.

I mean even the steam charts PCU shows daily low points of around your 694 number. Almost 2K at this very moment not counting the MWO portal launcher which is a significant portion.

The Portal Launcher, being something that is not counted, by STEAM.

JARLs is a combination of STEAM and PORTAL because it counts the ingame stats. Not the game launch method

[Horseman]

Variant1, on 09 May 2018 - 09:34 PM, said:

From what heard solaris was intended to bring back alot of players that wanted it strangely.

I've seen a lot of demands for Solaris mode in here, on Steam and on Reddit.

Variant1, on 09 May 2018 - 09:34 PM, said:

And also it wasnt microsoft it was Harmful Goons lawsuit that smacked down any chance we had of an early mw5 for better or worse.

As far as I know, HG went after websites hosting the trailer, but did not engage in a lawsuit against PGI then.

Microsoft had little to nothing to do with MW5(2009), MWO or MW5:M - their role is limited to granting PGI the license.

The thing is, back in 2009 PGI did not have a publisher. The first we heard of one was when Infinite Games Publishing appeared on the scene. It's entirely possible that the decision to change from single player to online F2P title came from IGP (seeing as they planned to milk the franchise in this way with Mechwarrior Tactics, doubly so).

Edited by Horseman, 10 May 2018 - 02:01 AM.

[Pain G0D]

If steam users are a minority , what is the majority portal / whatever program that gets you into MWO ?

[justcallme A S H]

Just the stand-alone launcher. Download from the frontpage of this site.

[sycocys]

Russ Bullock, on 09 May 2018 - 05:14 PM, said:

free to play games are tricky and your always searching for the formula that brings in new players and keeps more of them.

Welcome back. Devs actively interacting with the player base is a great way do advance both of those things.

I still think you should reach out to David Brevik for some advice/feedback on how to approach that in a more equitable fashion.

[Khobai]

Variant1, on 09 May 2018 - 09:34 PM, said:

From what heard solaris was intended to bring back alot of players that wanted it strangely. And also it wasnt microsoft it was Harmful Goons lawsuit that smacked down any chance we had of an early mw5 for better or worse.
Also what is a real game mode? Counter strike has skirmish with resuing hostages, skirmish with a bomb. Every fps is skirmish with x by that logic.

1) microsoft told PGI's publisher they wanted a battletech MMO game. thats why we got MWO and not MW5. The lawsuit had very little to do with it, since the warhammer in the trailer, which was the basis of the lawsuit, couldve just been removed from the game.

2) a real gamemode is a gamemode that isnt skirmish or skirmish with x. and counterstrikes gamemodes are perfect examples of crappy skirmish gamemodes.

and no not every fps gamemode is skirmish. many fps games actually have objective based play. thats the whole point of why they have respawns. so the objective takes precedence over just killing the opposing team over and over.

Edited by Khobai, 10 May 2018 - 02:54 AM.

[Horseman]

Khobai, on 10 May 2018 - 02:46 AM, said:

1) microsoft told PGI's publisher they wanted a battletech MMO game. thats why we got MWO and not MW5. The lawsuit had very little to do with it, since the warhammer in the trailer, which was the basis of the lawsuit, couldve just been removed from the game.

Do you have any sources on this?

[PAYWALL]

I'm playing Company of Heroes occasionally and the playerbase there is even lower (around 1000 players at once 20:00 MEZ). But it is enough to get a decent amount of games an evening. PGI just needs to stop adding bucket after bucket to the game. FW is in my opinion the only mode that should exist and it should be merged with quickplay like many before me demanded. The change of lootbox system plus the 2x XP games is a good step for more daily players, but they should add more daily incentives like the actual event going on with 100MC per day or such a thing. The hardcore players will always buy some mechpacks if there are enough players, so they really can be more generous with stuff for newer players facing the 300+ mechs they can potentially buy, but maybe never will if the grind is too slow or amount of real life money too high. That combined with solaris mode with all its smaller buckets + FW only (merged with QP) could do the trick i guess.

[Scurro]

Samial, on 09 May 2018 - 07:59 PM, said:

Steamstats is far more accurate than that jarls crap..

Steam is up to date and accurate who knows where those jarls stats come from and how faked they are.

I am the creator of the jarl's list. I pull my stats from PGI's web leaderboard.

This is the source code used for playercounts:

//SQL QUERIES
//****season playercount****
$query="
	SELECT A.season,A.players,B.NewPlayers
	FROM(
		SELECT
			season,
			max(rank) AS players
		FROM $SeasonsTable
		GROUP BY season
	)AS A
	LEFT JOIN(
		SELECT
			FirstSeason,
			Count(*) AS NewPlayers
		FROM $TotalsTable
		WHERE FirstSeason IS NOT NULL
		AND FirstSeason >1
		GROUP BY FirstSeason
	)AS B
	ON A.season = B.FirstSeason
";

[Variant1]

Khobai, on 10 May 2018 - 02:46 AM, said:

2) a real gamemode is a gamemode that isnt skirmish or skirmish with x. and counterstrikes gamemodes are perfect examples of crappy skirmish gamemodes.

and no not every fps gamemode is skirmish. many fps games actually have objective based play. thats the whole point of why they have respawns. so the objective takes precedence over just killing the opposing team over and over.

But counter strike is also very popular and everyone plays it. WoT same thing it has skirmish with x yet lots of people play it.
And isint every fps involve shooting each other, so isint that still techincally skirmish despite objectives? The thing that makes mwo unique is there are no respawns(except fp) so its not generic like most fps that focus on objectives since their combat would be boring. Mwo combat has more punch and has no respawns would make sense for those modes to have some skirmish.