Archetype Popularity Analysis (repost)
By
5th_Player,
Posted on: 2009-07-22 15:19 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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To what end? What do you want to balance? Popularity or XP earning? I think Blasters are fairly convincing evidence that the two aren't exactly very well correlated. They'd score pretty low in your metric given how much more likely they are to die and earn debt than pretty much every other AT. Isn't it a metric like this that drove the Defiance changes at a time when Blasters were revealed to also be the most popular AT in the history of the game up to that point?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If I had access to the devs' datamining tools, the statistic I think I would most want to pull (related to this matter) would be total XP earned per archetype per day per level, normalized as a percentage of the total for that level. In other words, how much bars of XP is each archetype earning per day, summarized per combat level. Analysis of that information would probably reveal a lot about cumulative patterns of play.
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I suppose it would be interesting to see what, if any, change in popularity was wrought by that exercise and if indeed the metric used to drive it has improved at all for them.
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Hmm, interesting stat, but that doesn't really tell you how popular an AT is. It simply tells you how fast an AT can level. There are a LOT of factors that can affect that, and I'd say they are significant enough to make the stat mostly worthless. Plus it doesn't measure level 50 chars, though I suppose you could count XP equivalent at level 50.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If I had access to the devs' datamining tools, the statistic I think I would most want to pull (related to this matter) would be total XP earned per archetype per day per level, normalized as a percentage of the total for that level. In other words, how much bars of XP is each archetype earning per day, summarized per combat level. Analysis of that information would probably reveal a lot about cumulative patterns of play.
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Many people are proficient at PLing, which would make it appear like the PL'd char is being played a whole lot by gaining a lot of bars. In fact the PLer may be the only character being actively played.
Good teams earn XP faster than solo chars, so team oriented ATs and powersets would appear overrepresented.
You don't account for time played. If I had to guess, I'd guess that solo oriented ATs are more casual friendly, and get played for less time. ATs designed for teams (Tankers, Defenders, and Controllers) would be played for longer stretches. Add that to the previous point and team oriented ATs may be significantly overrepresented.
I'd say "time played" is really the stat you want. After all, it takes into account what people have logged in. Whether they're afk, soloing, teaming, or getting PLd, they chose to log in a specific char. That's really all that's important. And I still think the /search tool is all you really need. Do it a few times a week at different times to get a random sampling, and that will really represent what people are playing. Granted it won't see hidden chars, but I'd expect that to be a fairly small percentage of the population.
I honestly think /search will paint a rather different picture than all of the stats above, more than the population shifts due to recent buffs and nerfs would account for.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304
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Time plays a big part of all this, but if you look at XP gained, you know popularity. At some point certain AT's get to be "not so fun" as others and people quit. So bars of xp per day would show a few things.|
Originally Posted by TopDoc
Hmm, interesting stat, but that doesn't really tell you how popular an AT is. It simply tells you how fast an AT can level. There are a LOT of factors that can affect that, and I'd say they are significant enough to make the stat mostly worthless. Plus it doesn't measure level 50 chars, though I suppose you could count XP equivalent at level 50.
Many people are proficient at PLing, which would make it appear like the PL'd char is being played a whole lot by gaining a lot of bars. In fact the PLer may be the only character being actively played. Good teams earn XP faster than solo chars, so team oriented ATs and powersets would appear overrepresented. You don't account for time played. If I had to guess, I'd guess that solo oriented ATs are more casual friendly, and get played for less time. ATs designed for teams (Tankers, Defenders, and Controllers) would be played for longer stretches. Add that to the previous point and team oriented ATs may be significantly overrepresented. I'd say "time played" is really the stat you want. After all, it takes into account what people have logged in. Whether they're afk, soloing, teaming, or getting PLd, they chose to log in a specific char. That's really all that's important. And I still think the /search tool is all you really need. Do it a few times a week at different times to get a random sampling, and that will really represent what people are playing. Granted it won't see hidden chars, but I'd expect that to be a fairly small percentage of the population. I honestly think /search will paint a rather different picture than all of the stats above, more than the population shifts due to recent buffs and nerfs would account for. |
Daily Trends in AT's.
At what level are certain AT's being dropped on average.
Are people recreating within the AT or under a new one (the inferred data from trends).
Also you add in the Data-mining of what AT's are being deleted each day, and its faily comprehensive.
Example. I have made and deleted more trollers in the late teens/early 20's than I have made of all other AT's combined. Its because I never had the patience to get to 32 where the AT looks like fun. I play my 1 and only troller about once every few weeks, and I'm finally close to 32 (I tend to do most of my leveling through TF's cause I just find them fun). On the other hand I play my mastermind nightly, having only ever deleted 1 before it. I play my Blaster every weekend for at least a couple of hours.... after deleting 5 or so I found I love Ele/Dev. I never really enjoyed Scrappers until I made a fire/shield. Each AT I generally played to within a level or two of all the others before recreating. Not the same levels though. Trollers get to me around 15-22. Scrappers I start disliking around 24-27. Tanks I don't enjoy at levels 10-15. Etc. Etc. This sort of data-mining would see those trends. It would say not only what is popular (see what is made that hits level 10) vs. what is powerful (which AT's make it furthest on average).
Not that any single dataset will tell you the whole story, but I can see where Arcana was going with the data he/she would pull.
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Theoretically, we know how fast archetypes level: the devs hinted at it with the Defiance changes. Except for blasters (at the time) no other archetype could claim that all of its powerset combinations underperformed the average of all archetypes by more than some (admittedly unknown) margin. From a meta-analysis perspective, I can theoretically combine the analysis of the information mentioned above with the answer to this question, which the devs might be willing to answer separately:|
Originally Posted by TopDoc
Hmm, interesting stat, but that doesn't really tell you how popular an AT is. It simply tells you how fast an AT can level.
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Does X sxignificantly underperform relative to everyone else at level Y?
Of course, more information is better, but I was hypothetically thinking about having the opportunity to run essentially one report out of the dataminer.
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| I'd say "time played" is really the stat you want. After all, it takes into account what people have logged in. Whether they're afk, soloing, teaming, or getting PLd, they chose to log in a specific char. That's really all that's important. And I still think the /search tool is all you really need. Do it a few times a week at different times to get a random sampling, and that will really represent what people are playing. Granted it won't see hidden chars, but I'd expect that to be a fairly small percentage of the population. |
The real problem is you'd need to measure all of the servers, or at least several of the most populous ones, and most or all of the zones, at least several times a day, for probably at least a week, to get a reasonable sample. But there is some automation opportunities for the data aggregation at least, which might make it a less insane project than it first appears.
As to the question of "time played is all that matters" here's a hypothetical question, which I don't claim to have a definitive answer to either. Suppose we have exactly 2 CoH players: one plays a single Tanker 24 hours a day. The other has 24 blasters that they play for about an hour each, 24 hours a day. If we were to collect hourly statistics, we'd discover that at any one moment in time there was exactly one blaster and one tanker playing at all times: Blasters and Tankers would each represent 50% of the total number of characters. However, if we were to collect the actual *names* of the characters, and aggregate on a 24 hour basis, we'd discover that in the average day 24 Blasters and one Tanker were being played.
Now replace the single player playing 24 blasters with 24 players playing one blaster each for an hour. Statistically speaking, the two situations are identical (in terms of the statistics we can collect). My hypothetical question is: are these situations statistically identical in actual fact: do they represent the same fundamental information about the popularity of the two archetypes?
There's some very subtle biases that I think are embedded in /search-style analysis that I'm not sure are insignificant. The biggest one I can think of is whether its very subtly biased against casual players, and as a consequence underrepresents their archetype choices. Ironically, I think the only way to know if such statistical skews exist is to actually collect the data and see if they are present in the first place.
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No. I would say the Blaster is 24 times more popular in that example assuming the one hour of Blaster is all those people played that day. In other words, I think you should look at each player as having one "vote" in the popularity contest. But it's a vote they can subdivide by AT. I, for instance, could say I vote 80% corruptor and 20% stalker in the popularity contest. Or rather, if they looked at how much time I spend on each AT on average per day they might come to a conclusion like that.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Now replace the single player playing 24 blasters with 24 players playing one blaster each for an hour. Statistically speaking, the two situations are identical (in terms of the statistics we can collect). My hypothetical question is: are these situations statistically identical in actual fact: do they represent the same fundamental information about the popularity of the two archetypes?
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This is the metric I'd care most about if I was making money off this game. I get the same amount of money from the person who plays 2 hours a day as from the one that plays 12 so I should care at least as much which ATs he's playing. I might even care more if I had data showing that casual gamers were less likely to burn-out and quit sooner.
I could care less about XP earning rate or any other performance metric because those numbers don't matter unless they matter to the players. And if they matter (enough) to the players, they will show up in the popularity metric.
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Actually, a couple of assumptions make this a lot easier. Granted the assumptions are wrong, they're close enough for government work.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
...it seems to be within the capabilities of a player (a crazy player, perhaps).
The real problem is you'd need to measure all of the servers, or at least several of the most populous ones, and most or all of the zones, at least several times a day, for probably at least a week, to get a reasonable sample. |
Since we're looking at relative preference, the sample size doesn't really matter (except that bigger is better). We don't need to check every server, as we can assume they're all roughly the same. This is wrong as there's likely a preference for solo or small team oriented ATs on lower population servers. But as long as we check a few high and low population servers, we can quantify it.
Similarly, time doesn't matter. Again wrong in that low population times of the day will likely have a preference for solo or small team oriented ATs. This probably applies to weekly cycles as well. But quantify it and then ignore it.
And zone? Who cares what zone characters are in???
As to your hypothetical question, I'd say "time played" as indicated by /search snapshots and total counts is really all that matters. Who really cares if there is a single person playing a Blaster 24/7 or 24 different people playing an hour at a time. If I'm putting together a team, I see 1 Blaster and 1 Tanker. If I happen to see 24 Blasters and 1 Tanker, that tells me Blasters are MUCH more popular.
Actually another stat that might be worth recording is what percentage of each AT is teamed. I expect to see Defenders and Controllers teamed a lot more often than say Scrappers.
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I don't think teaming would very accurate from a snapshot. One second someone could be unteamed (just logged on, or just left a team), and the next they could be teamed.
And how would you want to handle HEAT and VEAT data? Combined, separated, or not at all?
From a snapshot of the Pinnacle Server - CoV @ 5:50PM EST I found:
4 SoA
2 Widow
16 Cor
11 Dom
26 MM
15 Stalk
21 Brute
If that's all the data you're looking for, I think you could easily get volunteers to record a log here a few times a day for a week or two. Then, you just need one person to compile the data.
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I'm not certain they are, for a couple of reasons:|
Originally Posted by TopDoc
Actually, a couple of assumptions make this a lot easier. Granted the assumptions are wrong, they're close enough for government work.
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| Since we're looking at relative preference, the sample size doesn't really matter (except that bigger is better). We don't need to check every server, as we can assume they're all roughly the same. This is wrong as there's likely a preference for solo or small team oriented ATs on lower population servers. But as long as we check a few high and low population servers, we can quantify it. |
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| Similarly, time doesn't matter. Again wrong in that low population times of the day will likely have a preference for solo or small team oriented ATs. This probably applies to weekly cycles as well. But quantify it and then ignore it. |
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| And zone? Who cares what zone characters are in??? |
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| As to your hypothetical question, I'd say "time played" as indicated by /search snapshots and total counts is really all that matters. Who really cares if there is a single person playing a Blaster 24/7 or 24 different people playing an hour at a time. If I'm putting together a team, I see 1 Blaster and 1 Tanker. If I happen to see 24 Blasters and 1 Tanker, that tells me Blasters are MUCH more popular. |
I'm not sure that's the "right" perspective, but it feels "righter" than the time-weighted one to me at the moment.
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| Actually another stat that might be worth recording is what percentage of each AT is teamed. I expect to see Defenders and Controllers teamed a lot more often than say Scrappers. |
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You're not certain they're wrong? Or you're not certain they're good enough? Don't worry, that's a rhetorical question.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm not certain they are...
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
My memory of past measurements done by other people in trying to quantify archetype populations is that sometimes it generated significant differences between servers. Whether that represents an actual skew between servers, or simply the large statistical fluctuations inevitable in these kinds of measurements is an open question.
Ditto for the time, but moreover I think there is another potential for skew here that is larger, and again may skew significantly by player type. Player populations may have significant cyclical beats to them congruent with things like timezone and work hours. The problem here is that since some players play for less time than others, the more casual players might cluster more. |
All that said, there's no reasonable way players can measure that. The best we can do is /search under a lot of different conditions and gather a lot of data.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Ah, I should have elaborated. In my head I was wondering if placing alts in each zone and using /whoall might be a simpler way to collect the statistics than using /search, as /whoall would allow an automated script to capture the statistics from chat logs.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
My lean is towards thinking that 24 people playing 24 blasters for one hour each represents a higher level of popularity than one player playing 24 blasters, for reasons similar to Zem's. You're looking at popularity in terms of representation: given a single player looking at the current character population, which archetypes do they encounter more. I'm inclined to look at popularity from the perspective of "for each player, which archetype do they prefer to play more." In other words, I think I buy Zem's "one player, one vote" position more: regardless of the amount of time that each player plays, if they play at all they get one vote. If someone plays blasters 90% of the time, and tankers 10% of the time, they generate 0.9 votes for blasters and 0.1 votes for tankers, regardless of hours of play.
I'm not sure that's the "right" perspective, but it feels "righter" than the time-weighted one to me at the moment. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Technically, I think the devs (at least theoretically) collect that statistic, although its not a stat that I have any insight into, except insofar as I believe the datamining they do intrinsicly contains that information, given what Castle said about blasters (that they underperformed in or out of teams).
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Anyways, it should be fairly easy to collect, and it might be informative.
If anyone does want to collect data and post it here, I recommend including the following info: Server, Date, Time, Day of week, AT count for heroes and villains. If you want to go the extra mile, include %teamed for each AT.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
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It's sounds great when you use an extreme example like that, but it's not like there are many players at the one-hour-per-month average. You're talking the very end of the bell-curve there. Sure, you can think of their vote as cancelling out some 24/7 psycho-gamer on the other end, but... so what? The vast majority of opinions in the per-player metric would be coming from the fat middle of the bell-curve where people are playing a decent average number of hours per day. I think that will give you a good enough idea what is hot and what's not without telling the one-hour-per-day players that their opinions matter half as much as the two-hour-per-day players but, oh, thanks for the fifteen bucks anyway! |
Originally Posted by TopDoc
I think "one hour one vote" is a more useful statistic. Does it really matter what someone thinks if they only play the game for an hour a month? Kind of, since their $15/month is just as green as someone who plays a couple hours a day. But the person who plays a lot more probably has higher level characters, and more of them. They probably have a better handle on what the different ATs are like, and which ones they prefer. I'd much rather get their opinion.
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I think it is equally important to figure out why certain AT only gets few hours of play while other ATs get way more hours of gameplay.
If Player X picks Stalker to start the game, this means he must like the Assassin theme/style a lot. This also means that if a lot of new players are abandoning Stalkers sooner than other ATs, then:
1. Something is wrong with Stalker's design.
2. They may get bored with the game sooner as their most favorite AT fails to deliver = less potential money. Sure, they can switch to another AT but I usually trust the initial instinct.
Can dev tell what the new players choose when they first bought the game?
Oh and don't get me wrong, I also tend to think OUR opinions (meaning those that have more than 500 posts here!!) aren't a good measurement of what the whole picture is because obviously we LOVE the game so much that we spend a lot of time here. Majority of gamers don't put this much effort. They create a Blaster, blast a few things for a few weeks and then probably quit. They can care less if Controller is a "late-bloomer" or not.
Just like us "veterans" know about Stalker and Dominator buffs but many new-players don't.. or don't care.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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If I were doing datamining for NC Soft, one of the more interesting and long-term balance important reports would seem to be something along the lines of the following: "What percentage of first characters on an account are each AT? Within each first-AT group, what percentage of accounts pay for a second month?" Then breaking down the sub-details, such as by powerset, looking at the first several characters, and then looking at which characters people play once they *have* settled in. |
Originally Posted by Jibikao
Can dev tell what the new players choose when they first bought the game?
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For instance, if an AT shows a higher than proportional percentage of first pick, but a lower than proportional percentage of continual subscription, there's clearly something about it that isn't working from a player perception standpoint. This might be the result of game balance, it might be the result of perceptual problems with how the AT is "sold" vs. how it actually plays, it might be the result of people coming in from other SPGs or MMORPGs with expectations that don't fit well with CoH, etc.
To extend a previous theme, someone looking for a Thief: The Dark Project experience from a stalker probably isn't going to be really happy no matter how the relative combat performance ends up being balanced. The other aspects of the game and sytem may draw them in, but they're starting out looking for something CoH isn't really in the market of providing.
On the other hand, if amongst the people who first create a blaster and go on to subscribe for longer, one of the blaster primaries is noticeably under-represented... there might be a problem. Even if it's numerically balanced, somehow it's not presenting the sort of experience that leads folks to become enthused paying customers. This might have to do with animation, coloration, public perception, comparison to other games, or many other things in addition to the sort of direct combat output questions most people on the boards tend to focus on.
At that point you'd do further detailed datamining to try and look at more complex relationships... of the people who do play that primary, do they tend to be long-term vets or newer players? Are there levels that that primary tends to plateau out at, with people loosing interest (in context / comparison with the overall plateau trends for the AT and the game as a whole)? Do certain secondaries cancel the trend or reinforce it, which would point to needing to look at synergies / anti-synergies? And so on.
Then you start to get into the more esoteric realms of game balance design over time relative to player populations over time. FF-XI ran into a version of this problem; their original design assumed a rough availability of healing-capable jobs to put into parties as one leveled up, yet didn't provide a large range or variety compared to more offensive roles. With a high percentage of very long-term players, eventually everyone who was interested in leveling a primary healer already had, and it became quite difficult to assemble traditional mid-level parties. They ended up adding proportionally more healing-capable jobs and expanding their equivalent of sidekicking considerably to rebalance the overall game as it aged. The balance issue difference facing a Day 0 game like CO vs. a Year 5 game like CoH are larger than they seem at first glance... datamining the enormous amount of info you've collected over those five years is generally the best way to keep ahead in the Red Queen's Race.
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I'm not too interested in AT actual popularity other than due to the possibility of the devs caring. IF the devs actually buffed stalkers and dominators due to their low population, then I'd care to see because it could mean that less popular ATs are next on the buff line.
That being told, the only popularity I truly care about is the demand. I don't care if stalkers, dominators or tanks are popular, I care if they are desirable on teams and if there is a low limit of desirability. Would you consider a 2nd dominator a waste? how about a second stalker? second tank?
That's the kind of popularity i think truly matters in the end, and sometimes I think that's the type of popularity the devs talk about when they say an AT is not popular enough.
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I know of all the characters I've made, my Stalker gets the least "invite". I have to literally ask people to take me and if his team already has a Stalker, that means "no thanks" to me. |
Originally Posted by Starsman_NA
QR
I'm not too interested in AT actual popularity other than due to the possibility of the devs caring. IF the devs actually buffed stalkers and dominators due to their low population, then I'd care to see because it could mean that less popular ATs are next on the buff line. That being told, the only popularity I truly care about is the demand. I don't care if stalkers, dominators or tanks are popular, I care if they are desirable on teams and if there is a low limit of desirability. Would you consider a 2nd dominator a waste? how about a second stalker? second tank? That's the kind of popularity i think truly matters in the end, and sometimes I think that's the type of popularity the devs talk about when they say an AT is not popular enough. |
But I can equally say people don't want to invite more than one MM to the team due to lag issue but that's another story.
I think one Tanker is good for a large team but having two Tankers or one Tanker and then another Brute would be too much IMO. If I have a choice, I rather not invite two Tankers but a lot of times I don't have choice. I would be lucky to have a full ITF or LGSF team!
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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It's not limited to Stalkers. In my head, I divide the ATs in two classes: the ones that can buff the team/debuff the enemies, and the rest.|
Originally Posted by Jibikao
I know of all the characters I've made, my Stalker gets the least "invite". I have to literally ask people to take me and if his team already has a Stalker, that means "no thanks" to me.
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Now, if I have to choose between grabbing a Tank with high survivability, or a Cold Domination character that will raise the survivability of the entire team, I'll always go with the one that'll help the team. Similary, given the choice between a Blaster or Stalker vs. a Kinetics defender/troller that'll raise the damage of everybody else, I'll always go with the Kinetics. Pretty much any buff or debuff will beat a "simple damage" AT in my teaming priorities.
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On some servers I just see that over 50% are controllers, all Fire/Kins, all farming.
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Sure, why bother with a team anymore. |
Originally Posted by New Dawn
On some servers I just see that over 50% are controllers, all Fire/Kins, all farming.
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I know of many people that do nothing but speed TFs for merits and farm. Boring activities, if you ask me, but they're all about the phat lewtz!
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Why does everyone think that a tank doesn't help a team, only itself, just because it doesn't buff them?
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Originally Posted by Leandro
It's not limited to Stalkers. In my head, I divide the ATs in two classes: the ones that can buff the team/debuff the enemies, and the rest.
Now, if I have to choose between grabbing a Tank with high survivability, or a Cold Domination character that will raise the survivability of the entire team, I'll always go with the one that'll help the team. Similary, given the choice between a Blaster or Stalker vs. a Kinetics defender/troller that'll raise the damage of everybody else, I'll always go with the Kinetics. Pretty much any buff or debuff will beat a "simple damage" AT in my teaming priorities. |
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I think in this case he's specifically talking about the 'force multiplier' ATs. A well-played tank is certainly an asset to the team, but it's not a multiplicative boost like that from a well-played character with a buff/debuff set. Granted, tanks are probably the AT which comes the closest among the non buff/debuff ATs (at least with some team compositions), but it's still generally not of the same magnitude.
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Not all Fire/Kinetics are farmers you know...
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Originally Posted by New Dawn
On some servers I just see that over 50% are controllers, all Fire/Kins, all farming.
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I see this said often, which is odd to me because from a Redside perspective some of the strongest 'steamroller' type teams I've been on have been composed of almost nothing but brutes and corruptors.|
Originally Posted by Jibikao
I think one Tanker is good for a large team but having two Tankers or one Tanker and then another Brute would be too much IMO. If I have a choice, I rather not invite two Tankers but a lot of times I don't have choice. I would be lucky to have a full ITF or LGSF team!
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This is not to say that adding VEATs or Doms, etc, don't add to a great team but more of a counter to the idea that multiple Brutes hurt what a team can do.
Brutes only step on each other's toes when there aren't enough mobs to satisfy each Brute's fury needs.
I think one of the problems stalker players face is very restrictive early builds. You only start to get some options when you reach the mid 20s.
Villain HEAT VEAT population vs. HERO population is a sound observation.
The people that are attracted to villains aren't attracted to them because of "evil" but because they avoid the MMO holy trinity concept.
Villains and EATs also tend to be preferred by people who prefer solo.
I've seen the same trend in other games.
Excellent analysis Arcana !
I would be very interested in seeing how these numbers change after Going Rogue, and here is why;
I play only Hero-side. When I played WoW, I played only Alliance. Its just a Role-play preference for me to prefer the "Hero" in the story. The character that is focused on improving his world or situation in a "good" way. The most "evil" I can get into character with would be a "rogue-ish" character, who is actually a good guy but mis-understood.
With that being said, I have long wanted to try the Villain-side ATs, because they are excellent variations of the main Hero-side ATs. And GR is going to solve this whole issue for me. I have already set-up placeholders for at least a dozen names of toons that will be Villain-side ATs who will be going "good".
So instead of ALL my characters consisting of 5 specifc ATs, that will jump to 10 ATs and stay there after Going Rogue. Who knows, one of them could even tempt me away from my favorite AT (Defenders), ehhh, probably not though. 
BIOSPARK :: DARKTHORN :: SKYGUARD :: WILDMAGE
HEATSINK :: FASTHAND :: POWERCELL :: RUNESTAFF
*Character played at least 20,80,120 hours of the last 60 days?
*Characters logged in above level 20 (to avoid simple padders and marteteers) but below level 40, vs level 40+ (you kinda mentioned this)
*Characters logged in on accounts over a year old, vs under a year old.
#A combo of all 3
With all three you would see, what AT's are being played longest at a time (thus tend to be more "fun"). You would also see what AT's are making it to the end game vs, "getting too hard to play," vs "not fun at all." Lastly you would see what the "vets" play over what the "n00bs" play.
I think this would be a better descriptor of current trends. Most people I know get a 50, then make a HEAT and quit before lvl 20. Not all, but most. Most "vets" i know go for broken/farming builds over "just for fun" builds. Also I know alot of people that only log in to change dayjobs and log out, which would inflate numbers on played vs unplayed toons.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
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