AOC - General Discussion II

[Schatze]

Actually, get anyone with any knowledge of stats in here to look over my analysis.

That's the beauty of stats. I could spin it one way, but anyone who knows one thing about stats could prove me dead wrong. You could prove me dead wrong, if you knew anything about stats. If I was wrong. Hell, Millie is taking a stats course; I helped a couple people out in the general forums with stats questions. We could get one of them to take a look at it perhaps?

Now, what server. Oh shit, you still won't say, will you? Ding ding. Twobit is lying his ass off and trolling, news at 11!

P.S. I said Sunday evening was the dead time. And it is. You really should read what people say, mang. Now man up or shut up.

edit: Sorry for the derail. If his next post is not which server he measured "peak" numbers at 300 on, I will ignore him. If it is, I will log onto that server and use the find people tool (which only counts people who are either looking for group, looking for guild, or both) and start counting at level 1. Then I will come back with something more substantial than "trust me", and use the ignore function.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

LOL okay man. Good luck spinning it.

I'm sorry you were wrong and I was right. Wait, no I'm not. Just man up and admit it. It's not that hard. Hell, I was able to admit Funcom got performance from ass to almost acceptable in the last 3 days of beta. Surely you can do the same.

Actually, he could spin it that way, and that's a property of stats. Anyone that's taken advanced statistics would understand how to portray the paper you linked in one of numerous ways. Many scientific papers in fact go through critical reviews and are rejected simply because authors look for and portray a specific finding--and everyone knows if you look hard enough, you can make almost anything come true in stats.

I'm curious as well, what server is peaking at 300?

Secondly, you may not have lied before, but you weaved several posts that were almost laughable--first as a defense, you claimed you did several tests of server population by saying you used the in-game command several weeks in a row at the same time (7 p.m I believe).

Then, as a second defense to someone saying you quit the game and couldn't have taken those polls, you said a friend was charged an extra month, so he took the polls for you.

Then, as a third defense when I asked why you would bother asking your friend to do a census for you if you hated the game so much, you said "No, he did it himself when he logged in a bit and msg'd me saying, "Hey look only X people online."

So riddle me this: Your friend continued your census work actually means a friend who happened to randomly log in exactly at 7 p.m, one time after you quit?

[Rythonn]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I'm sorry you were wrong and I was right. Wait, no I'm not. Just man up and admit it. It's not that hard. Hell, I was able to admit Funcom got performance from ass to almost acceptable in the last 3 days of beta. Surely you can do the same.

As soon as you tell him what server it was. He's called your bluff, time to own up.

[spronk]

this thread has now turned into a faggot math thread

[Flight]

Originally Posted by melicant

It looks like the people that had gems removed were those with T3 armor (which they shouldn't have had anyway).

This was fixed this morning EU side, for info. Gems were still there but not showing or working.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Here is just one study done for a university with the cooperation of CCP.

You could also look at something as simple as Xfire data for every MMO and see that the peaks almost always fall on a Sunday.

I mean, honestly. What day do people actually think is the most active? Random tuesdays? Every other thursday? Of course it's going to be the weekends and for the average working adult or student Sundays are the most stay-at-home day of the week. I really thought this was common sense... and for some silly reason I thought the people here would have a little of that. And yes, there is data that shows that exact thing to hold true.

I'd be more than happy to hear reasons why some other day of the week would be the most active. I'd love to see evidence that suggests otherwise. So far I have seen zero.

Well Xfire is not a good gauge of busyness. Only because that only tells you when gamers are playing the most. But I see your point.

I never play a lot on the weekends especially during football season. I've got season tickets to two teams so I'm always busy especially on Sundays so I never witness it.

[Phelps McManus]

Originally Posted by Schatze

The peak is on Sunday, but we don't know what TIME on Sunday and in fact could be anywhere because it's a sine graph with amplitude = number of players playing.

I understand that we don't know what time reference of the graph. And really that wouldn't matter without knowing the demographics of the playerbase. Peak time for Europeans (whether measured in GMT, EST, or PST) is different that NA players.

One thing you can tell is that the peaks occur regularly, 2/3 through the day. Unless you believe peak time during the weekdays doesn't fall around the NA equivalent of 8pm EST, it is pretty safe to assume that weekend peak time match up with weekdays.

Sunday's peak seems about as steep as any peak except Saturday. So, I would say that a sample taken at a certain time on Sunday is going to be higher than any sample taken at the same time on any other day except Saturday.

If Twobit took a sample at 8pm on Sunday (I don't know or care to check when he actually took it), I don't see how anyone could discount it as not being representative of overall population.

That said, I agree that he could just be outright lying about the value of his sample, but you are wasting time trying to argue with that report. That part of his argument appears to stand up.

[Composter]

Are people seriously arguing that Sunday is not the most played time in MMOs? I think that some people have seriously scewed perceptions.

[Qhue]

Sunday doesnt seem too far fetched when you consider the sheer number of casual gamers.

It seems common to post items on your game's auction house / bazaar on Friday so that the weekend warriors will buy at high prices so practical experience says that the peak day is going to be part of the weekend.

So why not Sunday?

[spronk]

think the best question to ask is if you would recommend Age of Conan to your friends right now. Until a lot more people say yes to that question, the subs are gonna continue to drop off.

Funcom is going to have a chance to "relaunch" the game when the 360 version comes out, until then its probably gonna muddle along with a decent number of subs (200-400k), and gradual polish/finish of the game, but its gonna be slow and take a long, long time. They screwed up their chance to have the hardcore gamers evangelize the game to everyone, but thats ok since they need a lot more time to finish the game.

[Tolanin]

honestly the worst thing about the game atm is they dont test patches and they dont listen to customers enough. I think its more fun to level in this game than it is in WoW even the second time through. But fuck every patch they break more stuff or make something gayer that didnt need to be made gayer.

I find that doing the villas closes alot of the quest gaps nicely since they are such good xp.. I still have fun just lvling alts and that tells me that lots of people will also do that because that was a major casual passtime in wow.

If they get the pvp system working properly on all fronts in the next month and sort out the raid exploits i cant see myself canceling anytime soon. They also need to have a major crackdown on cheating because its slowly getting out of hand.

[Phelps McManus]

I would recommend it to friends. Until the mid-40's when my wife and I hit a lull in quests that required us to continuously make the arduous journey between ND and FoTD, we were having a great time. The content from Tortage all the way through Sanctum is highly polished and enjoyable. This represents at least 2 days played for people playing their first toon. Not many games yield 50+ hours of enjoyment for $50 (we did that within the first month).

Once we figured out that the Haunted Forest quests didn't really require a group (not like the elite Vanir anyway), we sailed smoothly into level 50, on to E. Mountains, and into the mid-50's. We ran Cistern and Main System last night which was the first time I experienced lag/crashes.

Still, the dungeon emphasized group tactics. As a conq offtank (guardian was MT), I had to tag archers and bring them back to the group. Positioning is key, so I used my knockdowns to get stragglers clumped together so everyones' attacks hit all mobs. Also players have to stick close together to stay inside the healers' cones. I tried to keep the healers directly behind me so they would get my Formation buffs (stam/mana regen).

Luckily, before I went to the dungeon, I recognized the futility of conq dps and respec'd my feats to all defense (lots of soldier tree feats). I also stopped running around in frenzy stance, so I wouldn't start fights below half health when mobs got the jump on me and beat me down while I swap stances. I now run around stanceless or in defensive (if full stamina) and swap to frenzy once aggro is established. I think I only died twice. Once on a bad pull (5+ non-minion mobs) and once when I crashed during a boss (another person locked up and the whole group wiped).

Anyway, I am still looking forward to logging in every night. I don't craft or pvp at all so I guess I am not taking advantage of every feature the game offers. Someone starting today would have polished content through the mid-50's (at least, I haven't hit a wall yet) plus whatever is patched in during their month getting there.

I like to think my experience is indicative of the "casual" gamer who started at release (no beta).

[Phelps McManus]

Originally Posted by Tolanin

I find that doing the villas closes alot of the quest gaps nicely since they are such good xp.. I still have fun just lvling alts and that tells me that lots of people will also do that because that was a major casual passtime in wow.

Yeah three things contributed to my lull around the mid-to-late 40's.

1) Not trying the Haunted Forest quests in FotD because they were labeled as "group". We did the Vanir group quests and they were difficult for a group of 5. My wife and I easily duo'd all of the Haunted Forest quests once we committed to trying it anyway. It was like 3 levels worth of exp.

2) I skipped the villas. I normally duo with my wife so solo content was not appealing to begin with. Plus, in my first attempt (where we zoned in and figured out it was a solo instance) I got my ass handed to me due to a pretty horrible (dps) spec and stance dancing inefficiencies that I got away with by always grouping with a healer. My wife, a bear shaman, solo'd her villa just fine.

3) The arena key quest was broken. Last night after a Cistern run, we talked to Aquilos again and he just gave us the flag to enter the Arena. So, we camped there and plan to run that tonight.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Necrolyte

I'm curious as well, what server is peaking at 300?

Secondly, you may not have lied before, but you weaved several posts that were almost laughable--first as a defense, you claimed you did several tests of server population by saying you used the in-game command several weeks in a row at the same time (7 p.m I believe).

Trying counting the players on Bardvisatta. If you thought my data was so off you could have easily proven me wrong. But I think you were afraid I would be shown right.

And how is tracking the population of a server at nearly the same time on the same day 'laughable'? That's about the most accurate way to find a trend. You seem to know all about statistics so clearly you know what a trend is. Checking at primetime on a weekend and then again at 4am on a wednesday certainly wouldn't be a valid way to check anything other than maybe absolute min-max values. That isn't valuable for any sort of conclusion on its own though. You should know that.

So yes.. when you check one day at X pm and then the following week at the same time, as long as there are no extenuating circumstances such as a holiday, downtime, or act of God then it should be fairly accurate in showing a trend. When my server went from 2500+ during peak periods down to 1500 and below then it shows a trend. That trend is less people playing.

Is this really so shocking?

Are people now going to argue that AoC is growing just like they argued that weekends are not the peak days of the week for MMO playing? I guess some people just have problems accepting the truth.

The truth is AoC may have sold 700k copies since launch but populations are lower now than they were at launch. More people are quitting than staying + joining. This should be no surprise, it happens with most MMOs. The real question is where does it level off. My guess is the 200kish range. I think Funcom should consider themselves lucky with that. Most companies could turn a decent profit with that subbase while still investing back into the product. Can Funcom? Well, that remains to be seen.

[Phelps McManus]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

The truth is AoC may have sold 700k copies since launch but populations are lower now than they were at launch. More people are quitting than staying + joining.

While online populations are indicative of total subscribers, launches (including expansions) are exceptions. People are more likely to play a game they just bought rather than one they have played for several weeks. That doesn't mean they stopped subscribing, they just play less often. A decline in online population this close to launch really tells you nothing about the number of subs.