Number of Players Lost Since Glacier?

[Buffalkill]

I'll write down some info here to be able to refer to it in 6 to 12 months:

Date	Registered Players	Weekly Activity	Daily Activity
2014 Jan. 26th (peak count)	880	577	304
2014 March 1st (Beginning of freezing)	825	539	288
April 10th	797	541	293

While some inactive accounts have been lost, the level of activity has stayed level over the past 6 weeks.

This is very useful. Would it be possible to drill down and see more details about the players, e.g. how long they've been playing, how often they play, what positions their chars' hold?

I simply got that info from the in-game statistics page. I don't know how I could access any of that additional information.

Anaris?

[Anaris]

That kind of statistical information would require extra tracking which we don't currently do.

More tracking is definitely on my list, but, like everything else, it takes time.

[Buffalkill]

Does the "Registered players" column include paused accounts?


Do the "Activity" columns count the number of logins?

[Anaris]

Does the "Registered players" column include paused accounts?

Yes.

Do the "Activity" columns count the number of logins?

The "Activity" columns simply record the number of players who logged in within the relevant period.

[Eirikr]

Yes.

The "Activity" columns simply record the number of players who logged in within the relevant period.

Sounds like we've got the perfect statistic.

[Buffalkill]

What I can immediately get from these numbers is that, player count is dropping fast, the remaining characters have maintained approx the same level of weekly activity, and somewhat less daily activity. Of course this is a small window of time, so I wouldn't read too too much into it.

[Indirik]

Also note that BattleMaster activity is seasonally dependent. It changes based on the time of year. I am fairly certain that summer is a historically low point in player count. People seem to join back up when fall/winter roll around. Finding a new hobby for the school year? Less free time in the summer?

[Tom]

But all these critical decisions are made within a small circle,

Correct. As a famous man once said: Important decisions are best made in a comittee, made up of three people, two of them absent.

We've tried making decisions in public forums and there were endless discussions going nowhere. Almost everything good in this world is driven by a small group or even one individual with a strong vision.

[Zakilevo]

Correct. As a famous man once said: Important decisions are best made in a comittee, made up of three people, two of them absent.

We've tried making decisions in public forums and there were endless discussions going nowhere. Almost everything good in this world is driven by a small group or even one individual with a strong vision.

Can't agree more. That is why democracy leads to nowhere 

[Tom]

And I'm dead serious, and I know that Tom will agree with me completely: If you do not trust the dev team to be impartial, regardless of what we say, then you cannot hope to play this game without constantly looking over your shoulder. So you may as well leave.

I agree with Tim. My wording is different, but basically, we're the hosts here, and if you come to a dinner party and then start discussing whether or not the food has been poisoned, then you really shouldn't be surprised that everyone is looking at you with a "why the !@#$ are you even here?" expression.

Tim has access to the database. If he wants to boost his characters, he can simply give them 20,000 gold each, it would take him 5 minutes max. Anyone who assumes that a dev with database and code access would do something so complex and time-consuming as this event just to gain some in-game advantage has lost his mind.

[Tom]

Many players don't leave, because the game is unique.

Not anymore :-)

But one way or the other, like in a good relationship, you can disagree with the devs and think they made a mistake, but you need to have some elementary trust or you're in the wrong place.

[Tom]

Anaris, you're telling a new player that they're wrong. You know, the people we're trying to attract. They're telling you this is driving people away, including them. You're getting feedback and ignoring it.

We knew it would drive people away. That's why it was such a hard decision (and the dev team discussed for months about this and alternatives, etc. etc.).

We all hated it, but we all agreed that doing nothing would kill the game, just slowly. So doing something was necessary, even if it hurt. And this is the solution we came up with.

[Stue (DC)]

Anaris. Let's say this very straight.
The polls were not IC, they were on the forum.
On the forum are only active players.
So only active players voted.

I would be more precise and say "on forums are only those who like forums". There has been long time since players who dislike forums are announced to be "second-grade" players, and they even cannot act against such devaluing - as all discussions go through forums.

[Anaris]

I would be more precise and say "on forums are only those who like forums". There has been long time since players who dislike forums are announced to be "second-grade" players, and they even cannot act against such devaluing - as all discussions go through forums.

Ignoring the blatantly false statements about what we've announced, what would you propose as an alternative?

Before most discussion occurred on the forum, it occurred on the mailing list—which had a lot fewer people on it.

And if you think I'm going to write some kind of custom code just for discussing stuff without a "forum" in some bizarre quasi-in-game way, then you're nuts. Discussion is exactly what a forum is designed for.

[Deytheur]

I would be more precise and say "on forums are only those who like forums". There has been long time since players who dislike forums are announced to be "second-grade" players, and they even cannot act against such devaluing - as all discussions go through forums.

As someone who dislikes the forum, I don't feel like the devs have ever acted as such. In fact I would go so far as to say that it's just many 'forum players' thinking they are first grade players and so have the right to complain more than the average person who is happy to just trust and play.

While I was at first annoyed that Eponllyn was chosen to be glaciated only by people on the forums, I have since realised that as they didn't actually know what they were voting for it probably would have made little difference how many people voted, it was essentially just a transparent random number generator.