The game has dipped below 4k concurrent players two months this year. Last year, it hung below 4k for 5 months. More players are staying for longer, the game is launching on another platform in two days, the reviews have been steadily ticking up for months and are about to break into Mostly Positive for the first time ever, and all of these things actually do point to a pretty obvious positive trend.
And why wouldn’t there be one? Classes and the Auric board added a ton of replayability. Events are coming more frequently and are getting more interesting. Penances added a ton of things to work towards in game. Missions and weapons keep getting added. Performance has been improved, QoL features have been added. And finally the crafting has been vastly improved.
I never said the game isn’t doing better than before, I was saying it’s the class tree update that caused a long lasting effect. Nothing else has actually increased player numbers with any staying power, only that did. The player “baseline” if you will, the amount of players that remain despite no updates happening, hasn’t gone up since the class tree rework.
I’m not even trying to interpret that info, but it’s facts. You could interpret this in various ways, the obvious one being that the class tree rework added a lot of depth to the game and stopped many people from losing interest as quickly. Other updates did not have this same effect, they only caused player peaks around the update time.
The TL;DR being that we aren’t on an upwards trend, we’re just still riding the increased baseline that the class tree rework gave.
One of those sub-4k months this year was in March, after the Class rework so I don’t agree that it’s the only update that’s had staying power. Path of Redemption brought in a large number of players and numbers have held pretty strong since. It’s all cumulative, because the game is just getting better and better (and better value).
Again, individual valleys and peaks happen due to updates and other game releases/updates. It’s pointless to try and cherrypick, you can see the “baseline” hasn’t changed. That’s funnily enough the point of graphics, they allow you to see the full context and determine trends in a simple way that allows you to not engage in cherrypicking.
Correct, the fact that the class tree update caused that is a fact. What isn’t a fact is trying to interpret and analyze what about it caused player interest to stick, so I didn’t want to portray my interpretation as a fact. Read properly before trying gotchas!
Here’s a pretty good post-Class Rework picture of how the game has been doing this year.
EDIT: and this is, once again, just on Steam. WinPC probably has fewer numbers, but I see a lot of Xbox/WinPC players in my lobbies, and Xbox only came in in October of last year. And now, we’ve got PS5 players too. Those numbers aren’t shown on these charts, but they’ll be felt in the health of the player pool globally.
Yeah. I’m not sure what you see but I don’t seen an upwards trend, I see a consistent baseline of just-around-9k and then an assortment of updates causing peaks on that same baseline (and one dip). Havoc obviously means it’s going up again. It’s dishonest to interpret inflated playercounts due to an update releasing in the timeframe as a long lasting trend upwards. Just how when the game had 33k players during the class tree rework, it wasn’t an “upwards trend”, it was just updates inflating player counts. The difference is meaningful; the upwards trend became visible months after.
You’ll be able to tell the effect these updates had in 2-3 months time, when player counts stabilize and once again the core playerbase is left. That stable number would be the trend.
I’m not saying it won’t trend upwards, there just isn’t an upward trend right now. I don’t have a crystal ball though, I can’t tell what the baseline is going to be after a peak, I can only make guesses and I don’t care for that.
I noticed you dodged the question asking why the y axis would increase on a longer timeframe, and I’ll take it to mean you realized you had a brainfart
The average player count just continues to rise over the months and doesn’t look like it’s in danger of dipping back down to the lows we saw last year. That’s a positive trend imo.
And my point about zooming out the tiny graph is that it makes it hard to see (but doesn’t change) the actual improvement in these numbers:
It’s not hard to see, when looking at the numbers, how relatively bad the game was doing last year compared to this year (unless you think there’s no difference between 2k and 4k players and ignore the entire player base not represented in these numbers, and how it’s changed).
I don’t view that as the baseline because each of these higher-average-months had a big update in them (or right before them). Unless you’re to assume that they’ll keep updating monthly (I doubt this strongly and the holiday season will prove me right) then we’ll see what the actual baseline will be like in a couple months.
This is once again where the graph is nice, of course when you look at the averages that include the peaks they’re higher. You’re smoothing out those peaks by looking at just the averages. If you can rotate an apple in your head, that should be obvious.
I think average player counts (like people pouring hours and hours into a game) is significantly more important and impactful than peak players, because the tourists all leave after an update but the average players are the ones filling games and most likely buying cosmetics.
Yet you’re including those peaks in the averages. I’m lost with your logic. That’s my entire point, you’re literally including all those tourists in your comparison when I’m saying to wait a couple months to see a trend and the actual baseline.
To borrow a phrase…if you can rotate an apple in your head, you can ignore the right column on that graphic (which is just what my browser grabbed in its screenshot tool).
I wasn’t referring to that, it seems to me you’re lost. The tourists causing those peaks (on the graph lines, not the peak player numbers) are included in the averages.
Correct, and in those months, updates dropped and those hourly numbers are inflated by tourists (as opposed to the core playerbase).
You’re acknowleding that looking at those inflated numbers from update tourists aren’t a good metric to pay attention to, but at the same time you insist on looking at the average that month, which includes those.
Again, unless you’re saying monthly updates is the new standard, using averages from 2 consecutive months which had updates drop is not representative of a core player trend.
Significant updates are quarterly. That’s the pace they said they’re going to work at and have been working at since launch (this year we got PoR April 15th, SoTMG June 25th, U&L Sept 25). More and more players are hanging on between updates, which I think is very clear from the average player counts…the counts of players logging in and putting in time every hour of every day.
We got an update in late september and another update in november though, that’s what’s inflating the player counts in october + november. Their cadence aside that’s clearly why those months have higher averages, and not because more people stick around without updates. I don’t really see this as a complicated concept.
I agree more players stick around between updates ever since the class tree rework though.
I’m not sure which updates you’re talking about from October and November. I could just be blanking, but I scanned the announcements and the most recent major update was Unlocked & Loaded on 9/25.
Maybe you mean the Grandfather’s Gifts event in November? They’re doing more and more events since they introduced the system for them in April, and I do hope they get to doing them at least once a month. I think they will also have a positive effect on player numbers, as will Havoc.
