Jester’s Trek: Counting Crows

By Ripard Teg | Sep 15th 2012 7:38AM
33 Comments

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Jester’s Trek: Counting Crows

Snapcount is still off doing its thing and this strikes me as a good time to provide an update of what’s been happening since May and March.

Short answer?  Not a lot.  After peaking at an average logged-in user count around 31000 just before summer began, there’s been a long very slow decay.  What I believe is the explanation for the pronounced dip in late May and early June is below.  But we’re now at 90-day rolling average of about 29000 logged-in players and that’s where things seem to be trapped.  Things are so flat on this metric that it got me curious how long that’s been the case now.  The answer turns out to be 40 months, since right around 1 May 2009:

The mountain in early 2011 is the release of the Incursion expansion.  That still currently holds the holds the record for the highest sustained logged-in user counts particularly during the incursion live events that were frequent at that time.  The deep valley later in the same year is the summer of rage, ending with the announcement of “all spaceships, all the time” that happened that autumn.  But overall, the curve remains remarkably flat.  CCP is not having any luck breaking out of this deadlock at present.

I didn’t show the 7-day rolling averages on these charts because if one thing has changed, it’s that the data is much more volatile this year.  There’s been a lot of competition in the MMO space in the last 12 months, and I attribute the volatility to that.  Every time a new competitor is released you can see massive dips in EVE’s logged-in players, particularly on the weekends.  Very prominent on the upper chart starting in late May is what I’ve started thinking of as the “MechWarrior depression.”  There was a less-pronounced “Star Wars depression” and the September Snapcount data so far shows there’s going to be a fairly pronounced “Guild Wars 2″ depression as well.

Still, EVE seems to survive each depression and bounce back to its previous average.  So the game doesn’t seem to be losing we hard-core players to other MMOs.  As I said, we’re just not having much luck adding many new players to that core.

So as I said, not a lot to talk about.

The question does come up, though: how much longer is Snapcount data going to valid and measurable?  This has come up in my thinking because the data is about to get goosed pretty hard.  Look at the Tranquility logged-in user data and you’ll see that the average logged-in users over there has been running between 100 and 200 for a couple of years now.  This was the case right up until mid-August this year, when DUST 514 testing was moved to Singularity. 

Now that that’s taken place, daily logged in averages on Sisi are running at about 1200 with peaks to anywhere from 1700 to 2500 logged-in users.  Last weekend, the peak logged-in users on Sisi pushed more than 3000.

So… yeah.  We can expect this means that the same thing will happen with the Tranquility API once DUST 514 goes live presumably later this year.  So, unless the API is tweaked to differentiate between EVE players and DUST 514 players — and I don’t see any reason why CCP would want to — there will probably be one more Snapcount update based purely on EVE players this year.  After that, there will be a new normal and any changes will probably be influenced much more by DUST 514 player count changes than EVE player count changes.

I’ll have to decide what to do with this little project when we get to that point, but I’ll probably keep it running.  Why not?  It’ll be a very nice measure of how successful DUST is in the marketplace.

Ripard Teg

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  • DarthNefarius

    What I see in the charts there is that if CCP wants to boost numbers they need to add another Incursion like expansion with live events ( I also see a significant drop after the nerf bat at the knees of Incursions but maybe I'm a lil biased =/ )

    • Nerds Unite

      Any correlation to the lack of any sort of decent trailer being released in the last 6 months? Yes there were some trailers for patch releases but where are the in-between patch marketting videos, like The Butterfly Effect or No Other Destiny??

      Also there hasn't been any storyline content since Incursion was released, not even with the FW revamp.

      You;d have thought there'd be a bit more multimedia hype coming out getting people revved for DUST9000

  • GO CCP!

    When do we start saying that if we want this player base to really grow it is also up to us to help make CCP's effort's knowledgeable to others.

    Maybe that is what they are hoping Dust 514 will do for EvE? If our players start explaining to people in Dust that the ship that just came down and helped them was a corp mate in game, it might further intrigue them to explore that world.

    I know CCP makes programs that encourage people to open more accounts or get friends recruited. I also know CCP has a very strong internet marketing campaign, social media campaign, and such. What could we as a player base help to move that along?

    If we want the numbers to go up, and we already see CCP is putting credible effort forward to do that but reaching only mediocre results (as of late) lets pick up our own recruiting game…

  • -A-

    If you want EvE to grow 0.0 should stop being such a hater filled pool of little bitches, spamming local and forums with obscenities. This includes making more content (read interesting content) for Highsec and and PvE players. And smaller, easier to enter PvP for new players (Like RvB are doing).

    • Nerds Unite

      Like RvB are doing, like EvE Uni do, like pretty much every half decent corp does……..

      So er emergent game play in a sandbox. The current issue for null is the ISK for your average grunt problem.

      • Gort

        The current ISK for your average grunt problem in null is caused by the leading players in null alliances who fund their supercaps with the moons and effort of the grunts. It takes on average 100 grunts to have below average income to fund each of those senior shiny pilots with the uber expensive it Titan or Supercarrier.

        • CFC Grunt

          Yes. That is why tech is bad. ISK should come from the grunts to the alliance and not the other way around.The current system benefit very few, although powerful, players, and certainly does not make it easier for newer, smaller alliances to make it.

          • donttalkbackto-a-

            none of you people live in 0.0 ore are totally clueless about making isk. either way you're fucking morons.

      • Goon since 07

        Lol Really you think that?

        With easy PvP i dont mean; telling them what ship to fly, and having them orbit and spamming F1, while they have no idea whats going on. What Test and GF do is NOT teaching people to PvP. They tell people to orbit and F1. Thats all!

        Furthermore, the logistics and effort required to enter 0.0 (moving stuff, buying stuff, learning the lay of the land, etz) is HUGE. CCP should make 2-4 NPC corps that you can join if you have less then; say 10Mil SP and that are in constant war with each other in 1 or 2 regions. Including flee insurance, making losing your ships not a big problem.

      • DarthNefarius

        I hope some grunts made a killing with thier alts in the great FW LP/ISK ISK REDUCTION of 2012 then in lo sec to counter the anom/incursion nerfs which were not properly opposed by the SPACERICH CSM I guess because they want thier big Alliance directors to be happy while their thumb is crushing the small grunts&corps.

    • M1k3y

      Make the number of alliances able to live in 0.0 higher.

      Currently theres 2 Superpowers (CFC & -A-) and 2 weaker alliances (NC. & SOLAR) that could be steamrolled, and well as their pets/renters/etc.

  • Nap fest

    If you want more players in eve, give it a future, so far the future we see is cfc making a huge napfest in eve. Congratulations game over!

    • Truth

      Affectively if majority of 0.0 is owned by cfc, it would mean that the smaller alliances that are awesome at Pvp will degrade over time, losing many of Eve's oldest most active and loyal player base. The napfest is no place for real pvp'rs. As has been the case for some years now the equilibrium of focusing Eve's needs for vets & noobs has been significantly overlooked, it's. Even majorly focused on getting noo s into the game with has benefited shite entities such as cfc, there has been no be idiots for vets & only nerfs. There is one of Eve's biggest problems. War creates a activeness in all areas, before long there will be long periods of nap fest. This is why cfc is one of the cancers of eve!

      • Truth

        No Benifits* bleeding predict txt.

  • noob

    Love reading these metrics, keep up the good work!

  • eve is boring

    where are players?playing world of tanks,world of planes coming soon..instant pvp.no grifers,15 min action.you can stand up from comp.2 make a telephon call with no danger to lose 1day/1 month of work.and it is free,really free to play.fuck isk/h, get a life.

    • Dragon Outlaw

      I to think World of Warplanes will hurt Eve a lot. WoT currently IS the game keeping me away from Eve atm.

      • Anonymouse

        For me it's a combination of Aion, Minecraft, and playing around with the Unity3D editor seeing if I can find that 'spark' I did try Tanks for a little while, started getting too shallow after awhile…

  • Surol

    you want more people to join in expand the content. the pond is full the gold fish are not going to grow any bigger now.

    look at 0.0 so many stations out there looks like high sec.

    add low sec to high make 0.0 low and then make a null that is double the size it is now.

    Make it where as an alliance you can rent stations in low with standing to set prices there as you like and incentivize low.

    Change the moon goo mechanics to a depletion and random spawn to another moon that is depleted this will keep power fluid in the expanded low and new 0.0.

    • Jon

      The moon changes sound like that something that could work really well if implemented right. CCP could even make depletion levels different to give a boost to smaller alliances. Smaller alliances could fight over a moon that depletes in say two weeks and larger alliances would fight over moons that have maybe a three or six month timer.

      • Jon

        It could also give a boost to lowsec.

    • Treston Cal

      Stations – no. Outposts – yes. Thing about non-npc outposts is that players build them. If 0.0 is looking like NPC space, it's because it is a lot easier to defend a station system than a non-station system and accounts for a strategic advantage to holding space as well as getting assets out.

      That being said, they COULD make it a lot harder to build a station, but what would you do about the current outpost count? Perhaps expand non-NPC 0.0 by a few regions? – but we still have the issue of the old stations.

      I say make the OUTPOSTS destroyable. When you try to take over a system with an outpost, that outpost will die – much like a POS. Not only would this make people fight for systems, but also give them a reason to save the system in general.

      • Surol

        Well i ment outpost. turning the existing ones into rentals basicly and expanding 0.0 beyond the known map. giving the existing alliances and corps time to rename them permanantly with a bit of ccp guidance

        destruction of the outpost is only increasing the grind of structures. do you feel its a better game mechanic to destroy and build outposts month after month?
        SBU sov is really just as bad as POS sov was. people will just safe up and wait you out. Ive been on both sides of it when in IT and Razor. 0.0 needs to be more fluid. this is why alliances are turning into huge blobs. how long will it take a 100 man fleet to take down structures vs. the 1k+ we are seeing now. this is why 0.0 sov sucks.

        0.0 is constipated and we run around in huge fleets trying to push thru it. biter vet syndrome is the result.

        Making eve sov war harder is not the direction i think we should go. making building harder is the same as nerfing.

        this is just a quick reply really i should write it all out in one big post that people could read but will never be implements.

        • Treston_Cal

          Destroying an outpost will result in less outposts overall. Do I approve of the grind? Yes. This will keep everyone from killing every outpost they possibly can. But if you want to grief the shit out of your enemies, then destroying the outpost will not give them a place to hide other than POS's – which are a lot easier to kill than SOV mechanics.

          • http://evedreams.wordpress.com/ dreamersofreality

            stations/outposts whatever you fucking call them there all the same. They will never become destructible, in fact the only way to get one removed is to petition CCP to remove it. In which everything stuff that was in XX station is sent to the nearest high sec one.

            Stations are infinite space, you can have as many ships, items, whatever inside it. POS's are Finite space, limited to what can be held in there. That is why POS's are being remade completely. Some say you will be able to dock in a POS much like a station but with limited sizes of bays. A modular design will make it so you can expand the size and amount of people that can "dock". This would be the "destructible" stations people want, but as for the current stations in null….it will never happen.

            Reason for it never happening is because then goons would just steamroll EVERYONES stations and the game would end, forever. The current limiters for such blobs as goons have already been nerfed into oblivion by that very blob.

  • buggrit

    Ripard has one thing right: amateurs study politics, pros analyze demographics.

    Eve needs to increase its access to new players and increase their retention during the critical start – 2 weeks to 3 months.
    CCP also needs to decrease fatigue factors, annoyances that make old players feel like not logging on… until they stop.

  • Fan of EvE not CCP

    The "Depression" epiphenomenon may indicate that EvE player are looking elsewhere for other opportunities, not finding any and subsequently returning the EvE.

    The real concern is the fact that subscribers are looking elsewhere. This may point to a degree of boredom setting in among the growing Bitter-Vet community. A sort of "Babyboomer" behaviour if you want. There are more Advanced skilled players than noobs…

    Bit of a worry frankly…

    • Ashesofempires

      Depression phenomenon isn't limited to EVE players; it happens to nearly all games, MMO or not. When a new game comes out, people try it out, and if they like it they play more of it, and if the don't they go back to their mainstays. It's also not limited to players wanting to try out other MMO's. There was probably a noticeable downturn in average subscribers for a while following every major game release, especially those that offer a competitive multiplayer option.

      In all reality it's not something that CCP can do anything about. People are going to be interested in more than one game, and the attraction of something new and shiny will make people not log in to EVE for a time, while they try out their cool new game. I did it when Fall of the Shogun came out, when Skyrim came out, and when i got into the Firefall beta.

      I think the thrust of Jester's blog is that after dust goes live and we share tranquility with them, CCP isn't going to show us accurate statistics for player count anymore.

  • Crav

    Decline is not about mechanics, it is about content. It is not enough to add a ship or two once in a while. Changing mechanics will not make a difference either.
    What made a difference in graphs above was a content expansion. New events, new items, more NPC story. EVE for new and hi sec players is boooooring. Same mission, same agents, same limitations and risks. Once in a while CCP tweaks some rules and all people need to do is to tweak their fits/find new exploit. I am a 2009 character and the ONLY content expansion I have seen was Incursion… No new stories in EVE universe… just good, old mission running.
    The only place with any dynamics is 0.0 but not everyone wants to go there and CCP needs to finally understand that. Get some GM who will do events EVERY day. Get some proper NPC action going. Make huge NPC corporations battle each other or loose sov, make NPCs in low sec do something apart from exploding…

    • Yarbear

      Have to agree with ya. I know that CCP states that players make the content, which is largely true, but there should be some sort of developer borne seed that gets things rolling, especially for new people that come to this game and are trying to figure out what the hell Eve is all about. I know when I first signed in to this game there was a very long period of "WTF is this?" going through my mind.

  • Adam Duritz

    Mr. Jones stays up very very very very late.

  • http://www.goldenflax.com/ Abraham

    where are players?playing world of tanks,world of planes coming soon..instant pvp.no grifers,15 min action.you can stand up from comp.2 make a telephon call with no danger to lose 1day/1 month of work.and it is free,really free to play.fuck isk/h, get a life.

  • https://www.jacksondieken.com/ Saul Roberson

    Now that that’s taken place, daily logged in averages on Sisi are running at about 1200 with peaks to anywhere from 1700 to 2500 logged-in users. Last weekend, the peak logged-in users on Sisi pushed more than 3000.