General Discussion - Number of players decreasing - Forum

" Mivo wrote: " CaptinSupreem wrote: If you agree, then steam is hardly indicative of a reliable source of info on the topic, now is it? Game. Set. Match. Almost, but no cigar. The global achievements include any Steam user who downloaded, or started to download, the client, even if they never launched it. This practice is quite common on Steam (I have about 700 games in Steam, 600 of which I never ran even once). The Steam user chart, on the other hand, only includes player who have actually ran the game at least once. Furthermore, the other post, as well as yours, ignores the fact that there is a steady decline since release. It is almost linear if you use the daily average, which does indicate that people stop playing after some time. Why they do it is a matter of speculation, and the reasons may be varied anyway. The numbers only tell us that people do stop playing after some time. I'm not surprised that most people don't get past act1/normal. I found the introduction to the game rather off-putting myself and needed several attempts to keep playing after Lion's Eye Watch during CB and OB. It was too dark, too bland, the perspective seemed off, the starter quests weren't appealing at all, the combat felt off, etc. It wasn't before act2 that I actually started to get sucked in. That's good to know, I'm not very familiar with steam so I didn't know people who just downloaded but never played the game still count. But even if we assume 100% of the players who played the game killed Brutus in normal difficulty (which would mean 56% of the players who downloaded the game never launched it) still only 7,7% of the players reached endgame if we define endgame by reaching lvl70 (there's an achievement for reaching lvl70, so I just used it as an arbitraty way to define 'endgame'). Also, I never wanted to argue player decline. I merely wanted to say that for the majority of steam players bad/grindy endgame wasn't the reason why they quit. Last edited by Reizoko#4460 on Mar 5, 2014, 3:37:13 AM	Posted by Reizoko#4460 on Mar 5, 2014, 3:35:30 AM Quote this Post
" CaptinSupreem wrote: Is this pretty little fact included as part of the calculation of people who have supposedly stopped playing? People who never launched the game are included in the achievement statistics (because the game is in their file library and they "own" it). They are not included in the Steamchart statistics, which only consider users who actually played the game. If I downloaded the game and never launched it, and you downloaded, played it and beat Brutus, then the achievement statistics will say that 50% beat Brutus. The Steamchart will say that 1 person played and it's irrelevant whether I downloaded the game or not because I'm not part of those statistics.	Posted by Mivo#2486 on Mar 5, 2014, 3:37:26 AM Quote this Post
" CaptinSupreem wrote: Could you link me to where it says that people who have not run the client are not included please? There are games that give achievements for starting the game or doing anything in them. An example is Cave Story, which has an achievement for picking up a weapon, which unlocks directly at the start. Only 78% have that: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/cavestory/achievements/ 22% don't, which suggests they never played. (Tidalis has one for winning a tutorial battle, which 51% have.) Since PoE is a F2P, the number of people who add the game to their library "for later" is probably substantially higher as there is no cost (presumable people are more eager to play games they have paid money for, unless they are as silly as me). The Steamchart statistics simply look at how many people are playing the game at a given time (which shows in one's online status). Steamchart, being a third party site, gets its information from here: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/	Posted by Mivo#2486 on Mar 5, 2014, 4:14:08 AM Quote this Post
" CaptinSupreem wrote: " Mivo wrote: The global achievements include any Steam user who downloaded, or started to download, the client, even if they never launched it Is this pretty little fact included as part of the calculation of people who have supposedly stopped playing? Spoiler If so, this is quite detrimental to your argument, as the supposed decline of players includes those who never bothered to play in the first place! Which means steam is even more unreliable as a source. EDIT: To be clear, the chart, as far as I understand it, includes those players who downloaded the client, and ran the game at least once. The achievement system includes those that downloaded the client, but did not run it. So where can I find the % of people who ran the client and did not kill Brutus? No, it does not include the people who failed to kill brutus on normal, or quit even before starting, unless they failed to kill brutus over a 4 month period. Steamchart is pretty clear: there used to be average 30k players logging to PoE around launch for around 1 month. After that it was a linear decline. Probably the last 5k players on steam are the ones who were playing in OB and switched to steam with release to boost numbers.	Posted by symban#2593 on Mar 5, 2014, 4:16:59 AM Quote this Post
Look, i really appreciate the civilized arguments, but when i referenced Steam Charts i mentioned that it could possibly represent global trends. In no way did i say that these charts should be taken as pure fact and is 100% accurate. -.-' There is no harm in using them as a guide since we don't have anything else substantial. Last edited by darklordof1#2636 on Mar 5, 2014, 4:29:40 AM	Posted by darklordof1#2636 on Mar 5, 2014, 4:24:48 AM Quote this Post