[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand why server merges are automatically seen as an indicator of dying game
[/ QUOTE ]
My guess would be because some games waited too much for the move and used the server merge as a last desperate resource, but such games were dead before the server merge anyway, however, the perception for people who were not familiar with them and only have access to second hand comments is merge = doom.
[ QUOTE ]
Well these figures were always going to open up the whole "server population" debate, so I might as well get in now before this thread is locked as a subject not to be discussed.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm perfectly happy for these figures to be discussed. So long as I do not end up having to prune threads and issue warnings for breaches of the forum rules at least once a week as happened with the previous EU population thread(s).
[ QUOTE ]
For clarity:
Monthly Access refers to the number of unique accounts that logged in during a monthly period. It does not include subscribers who did not login during that month, and does include any trial accounts that logged in.
Concurrency refers to the number of unique accounts logged in simultaneously, at a global scale. Highest (or peak) concurrency is the maximum such figure achieved during a given period.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just copying across GR's post in the positron interview thread for clarity.
Well, having read all the clarifications and confirmations of details... I'm not unhappy with those figures. Which is not to say that I'm happy with them, either.
While the discrete account logons is at it's lowest figure since EU server launch, the best part of 125,000 people choosing to log into the game isn't actually anything to sneeze at.
I think that the drop-off can be attributed to a number of factors, the most significant one being simply the huge gap between Issues. I expect that November/December will see a jump when Issue 13 is released, and if there's a DXP weekend somewhere on the horizon, that will also add players back in.
Okay, so "it could be worse" is not a winning formula to take forward, and the peak concurrency figure leaves a lot to be desired, again, that can be at least partially attributed to the lack of issue releases. Another factor to bear in mind is the Global Financial Crisis, which can only cause some people to tighten their purse-strings.
So... it's not great news. I don't think it's "Dooooooom" either. I think that some work needs to be done to advertise/promote/sell the game, and that NCWest needs to look closely at Europe as a target market, because our servers could do with more players on them, but I don't think that they are (currently) anywhere near the sort of level that would make NC question the viability of the game or the servers.
[Edited for clarity and to remove misrepresentation of fact]
The wisdom of Shadowe: Ghostraptor: The Shadowe is wise ...; FFM: Shadowe is no longer wise.
; Techbot_Alpha: Also, what Shadowe said. It seems he is still somewhat wise 
; Bull Throttle: Shadowe was unwise in this instance...; Rock_Powerfist: in this instance Shadowe is wise.; Techbot_Alpha: Shadowe is very wise *nods*; Zortel: *Quotable line about Shadowe being wise goes here.*
It could really just be a case of lies, damn lies and statistics - the 2 figures (peak concurrency and Monthly Access) are just numbers without knowing more...
[ QUOTE ]
How is it possible that these figures are correct and there not be a "population problem"?
[/ QUOTE ]
Not saying that any of these are the case, or not, but there are ways in which it'd be possible to see those two numbers falling, and yet for servers to appear much more populated than before.
Figure 1. Peak concurrency
I wouldn't neccesarily look at this too much - just because there were 200,000 people logged on for 1 minute at some point doesn't mean jack if for 99% of the time only 10,000 were logged in.
So all that means is that peak concurrency may not bear a great correlation to average concurrency (and I think it's the average concurrency that'll be most useful in determining how busy most people perceive the servers to be).
If we also remember that not all accounts online at once may be:
* individual, distinct user (i.e. 1 person may have multiple accounts online at once)
* visible to other players (hiding from search/tells/etc)
It's easy to see that even if peak concurrency is directly proportional to average concurrency then it still may have absolutely no reliable relation to visible players online at any time.
btw - I hate people saying 'average' but for concurrency I can't really decide if mean or mode would be most useful.. pretty sure that median would be a waste of time though.
Figure 2. Monthly Access
I'd guess that the figures are for accounts accessing the service (logging in) at least once (yeah - I bet the report would tell me for sure, but firstly it's probably dry as hell and secondly why should facts be allowed to get in the way of teh intehwebz argumentz ).
I'd also imagine that it's full accounts only, and not counting trials (if trials are included then it may be a dire situation).
So (presumably) we know how many accounts (not users) have accessed the game.
We don't know about churn in these figures though. If we have a figure of 120,000 accounts one period and 100,000 the next have we only lost 20,000 accounts? If so the game is dying...
On the other hand if we lost 50,000 but gained 30,000 the picture becomes more complex... were the 50,000 we lost very active, or did they only log in once every couple of weeks for 5 min then go? Are the new 30,000 recent addicts - having just discovered the game and playing it to death (and maybe even telling all their friends)?
How long were all these accounts playing for? How old are the accounts? Do we know if they're new players or secondary/tertiary accounts for existing players?
As Londoner said active accounts are no longer a measure of playing players - but that could work both ways. Is it worse for server populations if an account that's been effectively unplayed for months is finally cancelled? NC lose the sub, but it doesn't actually impact server player populations.
I'd guess that the old 80/20 rule probably plays here - that about 80% of actual play time logged is probably done by about 20% of the players (who possibly account for 30% of the accounts). I'd guess that that stays pretty static.
So I'd say:
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How is it possible that these figures are correct and there not be a "population problem"?
[/ QUOTE ]
It is possible, maybe unlikely to many. But it is possible.
I'm not saying that the figures are a reason to panic, nor blindly stating that everything is rosy in the garden of CoX... but without more info we can't start to understand what the figures may mean - so jumping to hasty conclusions is about all we can do with them if we decide not to ignore them!
I'd guess that NC will have a lot more data on this than has been picked up on by the boards. They'll know whether they need to be worried/taking extra action.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Dave, read GR's quote in my post 2 above from another thread (complex I know, but it was in reference to the monthly access figure) It explains it is the number of accouts that logged in during the month, including trials, but not including accounts that didn't log in.
I expect to see the game grow over the next year IF NorCal get on the ball and start releasing these things like their graphics upgrade and other stuff they said they couldn't do in the past.
Hopefully we'll get plenty more content for 50s too.
If none of this happens and we're still dropping by next year, then I'll think there's a problem.
[url=http://vox-doom.deviantart.com]Take A Gander At This.[/url]
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Dave, read GR's quote in my post 2 above from another thread (complex I know, but it was in reference to the monthly access figure) It explains it is the number of accouts that logged in during the month, including trials, but not including accounts that didn't log in.
[/ QUOTE ]
Must admit that I hadn't made it to page 2 (max posts per page FTW) when I wrote the post.
A little surprised that trial accounts are included - although it still doesn't alter most of what I wrote - it's still a number, just a number. Just that the nearly-meaningless-without-full-context-number is a slightly different nearly-meaningless number to the one I that thought it was.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
I wonder how much the City of Heroes dev team and running costs are? Because last September, the most 'dire' one of course, and provided there's a general parity in supscription costs across regions (currency fluctuations are evil), the game made about a million quid based on the accounts that actually went online. So at the worst numbers possible, the game will make twelve million in subscription fees a year.
In the real world, the world where we're not using World of Warcrafts rampant abuse of human herding mentality to milk the planet like a money cow, that's a stupid amount of money. <edit by mod: removed inappropriate comment>
EDIT: This also, of course, demonstrates the strangeness of Blizzard as a company. They probably make the entire fortune of major Hollywood celebrities every single damn month and yet the company is doing.....very little. Relatively speaking. With that amount of capital behind them, they should either be funding a major military program or every employee should be wondering if he should slum it in his gold underpants today, or slip into the platinum ones.
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
[ QUOTE ]
that's a stupid amount of money. I would kill any one of you for that money.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hopefully that comment will be picked up by the creators of CSI* and you'll become hideously rich from guest appearances as the prime suspect in any financially-motivated murder...
Hopefully because then you may not kill me when I finally earn those millions...
* and those of CSI:Miami, CSI:NY and CSI:Salford, Law & Order, Law & Order:Criminal Intent, Law & Order:SVU, The Bill, Silent Witness, Cracker, Prime Suspect, and whatever happened to Juliet Bravo and Z-cars?
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Thanks Dave - you've raised a lot of the same points I did in a thread ealier this year (which has since been wiped).
Without wising to go all X-Files on the topic - I don't think these figures are telling the true story (one way or the other) reguarding what we gamers refer to as / see as "server population".
[ QUOTE ]
I'm one of them. I'm just suprised that Tuarus hasn't posted in here yet
[/ QUOTE ]
Ok here goes........
[ QUOTE ]
Highest
concurrent Monthly
users access Servers
Jun-2004 31,085 169,925 11
Sep-2004 26,870 163,053 11
Dec-2004 15,741 124,435 11
Mar-2005 21,283 140,481 15
Jun-2005 20,911 162,922 15
Sep-2005 22,340 150,068 15
Dec-2005 23,730 194,000 15
Mar-2006 23,699 171,951 15
Jun-2006 22,274 171,000 15
Sep-2006 21,500 172,420 15
Dec-2006 17,728 154,953 15
Mar-2007 14,767 143,127 15
Jun-2007 26,669 153,331 15
Sep-2007 15,910 139,313 15
Dec-2007 17,058 136,250 15
Mar-2008 16,311 134,195 15
Jun-2008 17,206 137,026 15
Sep-2008 13,443 124,939 15
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
For clarity:
Monthly Access refers to the number of unique accounts that logged in during a monthly period. It does not include subscribers who did not login during that month, and does include any trial accounts that logged in.
Concurrency refers to the number of unique accounts logged in simultaneously, at a global scale. Highest (or peak) concurrency is the maximum such figure achieved during a given period.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ok bear with me and I am gonna try and work with averages based on September's figures but first I will have to make an assumption as I dont have a US account. It is widely agreed there are 2 freak servers in the US that have populations of over 900. This is the assumption and someone may like to give me a proper figure but I doubt it. The rest of this will be based upon the average of a Monday's figures from September.
There were 124939 instances of unique accounts logged in during September now if we say that these are regular players (they are not but for this we will assume that these players log in every night). This shows that in September (30 days) the average number of players logged in at Server Peak Times to be 4165 (124939/30 Rounded up).
So every day at server peak times 4165 people can be playing which doesnt seem too bad until we take into account servers. Now using my assumption from above that each of the 2 US big servers have 900 players on at peak times we have to remove 1800 from that count. 4165-1800 = 2365. From my figures the average player count on Union for Mondays (Not a busy day in game terms and the time taken was between 7:30pm - 8pm) is 500 (rounded down). So if we remove Union (The highest populated server in the EU) that leaves 1865 (2365-500).
So what we have left is 1865 people playing across the remaining 12 servers. This leaves an average server population 156 people (rounded up to the nearest whole person).
Now I know this is wrong as from my figures I know the Monday average for Defiant for September to be 250 (rounded up). This shows that in my opinion that the game is trying to populate too many servers. It may be making a profit with the current level of subscribers, but we are spread thinly through those servers. If servers were consolidated then players would be in a better position to get the best from the game (with this I mean teaming, as this is a major part of the game for myself and a lot of other people) and the remaining servers would make a greater profit as the running costs for the reduced number should be less.
I am not going to be drawn into any arguments about this, I am merely presenting the figures to back up my previous claims now that they are available. I have a made assumptions regarding some numbers and taken averages and where possible have tried to round up/down in the way that would help the population average of the remaining servers.
oh well - I did invite him didn't I?
The 13,000 is the number of players logged in at the same time, ie a night, not in a month, that number is the 124,000.
Okay I dont pretend to go into it in too much depth, but if the temp/trial accounts are included in those figures, surely that means things are actually worse?
Zhaan, Chakyra, Fiorina 161, Aeryn, Polly Nation, Dee Pression, Shazanne, Night Jester and too many more to mention.
Network Hell 47640
Valley of the Harpies 74519
Green and Pleasant Land 75966
That is why I didnt use that number as that was the number of the highest single incident of unique accounts logged in at once. This number is the best of the month.
The figure I used was the total count of unique accounts logged in over the course of the month. If you saw how I arrived at my average number of players logged in on a day I took the 124000 figure and divided that by the number of days in september to give an average number logged in, NOT the freak highest number that occcurs just once.
That number is probably achieved on a weekend over the course of the month, when the servers are busiest. I merely worked out the average.
If you had read my first post propperly you would have seen that.
[ QUOTE ]
Okay I dont pretend to go into it in too much depth, but if the temp/trial accounts are included in those figures, surely that means things are actually worse?
[/ QUOTE ]
Yea i would say that makes it worse still.
It said the temp accounts are not included in these figures.
[ QUOTE ]
It said the temp accounts are not included in these figures.
[/ QUOTE ]
I thought GR said they were, i could be wrong.
[ QUOTE ]
For clarity:
Monthly Access refers to the number of unique accounts that logged in during a monthly period. It does not include subscribers who did not login during that month, and does include any trial accounts that logged in.
Concurrency refers to the number of unique accounts logged in simultaneously, at a global scale. Highest (or peak) concurrency is the maximum such figure achieved during a given period.
[/ QUOTE ]
Post by GR.
Which makes it worse in my opinion. Also the fact that those numbers dont include accounts that did'nt log in dont make them any better (apart from a money coming in point of view)when you are talking about low server populations.
It just means there are accounts still being paid for and not played.
Sorry my bad.
I was trying to be optimistic 
Yes honest I was and in that optimism I miss read the statement 
[ QUOTE ]
That is why I didnt use that number as that was the number of the highest single incident of unique accounts logged in at once. This number is the best of the month.
The figure I used was the total count of unique accounts logged in over the course of the month. If you saw how I arrived at my average number of players logged in on a day I took the 124000 figure and divided that by the number of days in september to give an average number logged in, NOT the freak highest number that occcurs just once.
That number is probably achieved on a weekend over the course of the month, when the servers are busiest. I merely worked out the average.
If you had read my first post propperly you would have seen that.
[/ QUOTE ]
But that doesn't work as the second number is only the unique id's that conneced in total that minth, that's why you can't use it, it does not say how often each of those people connected each day of that month, if you did it would suggest that 13k people from that list were online together. each nite, at the total peack for all servers.
so it's 13k /15 for the average people per server, per night. not the 4k you site.
but that was my lack of clarity and i am sorry.
The game has far too many servers.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
What WOULD be good for the game is a little bit of marketing. I haven't seen any ads for the game in a long time, and i'm starting to see more and more people who've never even heard of it. Yet they all seem pretty interested when i mention some of COH's features to them (char creation, exem/sk system always draw attention from the wow crowd :>
Make people aware that the game still exists!
[ QUOTE ]
The game has far too many servers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, Union has always seemed totally pointless
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think it's time that the devs held a consulation with the players to see what we think - not just those few that post here.
[/ QUOTE ]
And what results do you think they're going to get?
Players, and I mean all players, have about as much clue as a fried bean what's good for a game. Oh they think they do, but their idea are almost invariably subject to their own point of view and therefore have to be parsed by the very people you are saying need to consult their customers to find out what to do.
In practice, NC did put around a survey to various SG's in game about a month ago. One of the things in it which seemed very popular was the Mission Architect. That's the same Mission Architect which is spawning threads all over the place saying "oh, yeah, I'm sure it'll please a few players, but the vast majority will think it's boring <self-censored> and won't use it."
If I were NCNC, the last group of people I'd ask about the game was the players. I might listen to them and see if I could spot anything useful. I might put some rumours out and see what came back again. But ask them? Nah.
[/ QUOTE ]
You might have as much clue as a fried bean, try not to think everyone's like you though.