Server Status - peak population per day

[Macjimm]

Does anyone know where to find a history of the server populations?  Perhaps maximum per hour or even the peak number at any time during each day.

I can see one site that shows them as low.  But it would be helpful to see a record of the actual numbers of people on each server.  I've heard players say that the populations go up and down but I'm curious by how much.  I haven's seen the numbers higher than a few hundred in a while.  Right now there it appears that there is less than 200 players on all of the servers. 

[Chijohnaok]

You should take into account that "right now" was just before server maintenance.

It is also the middle of the night for the North American players and just turning to morning for the EU players.

[Macjimm]

1 minute ago, Chijohnaok said:

You should take into account that "right now" was just before server maintenance.

It is also the middle of the night for the North American players and just turning to morning for the EU players.

Wasn't meant as a criticism or judgement.  Just an example.  I'm not trying to make a statement.  Just looking for an answer.

[Chijohnaok]

I didn't take it as such....Just providing some facts.

I have no idea where (or even if) server population statistics are published anywhere.

[Zoky]

Last night EU prime there was ~450 with maybe 1 hour ~500. During day less then 300 most of the time. Really sad 

[Guest]

Yep, can't remember the last time I saw the server pop as 'Low' on a Friday eve. Maybe the devs will change the low/medium/high brackets to cheer people up

[vazco]

You can find exact stats here:
http://steamcharts.com/app/311310

[Rychu Karas]

680? probably on all servers together?

[Pada]

Relax guys, we are still in testing phase. People leave the game because there is to much changing going on but it's necessary to find out what is best for the game.
The numbers will stabilize itself after release when there are no major changes anymore.

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

 Here is a screenshot from sea trials a week before the open world build was released.

So don't worry about numbers to much before final release.

[Macjimm]

12 hours ago, vazco said:

You can find exact stats here:
http://steamcharts.com/app/311310

Thanks for the link.  I remember seeing that before.  I was hoping to find a site that shows the peak number of players per day. Even a graph.

 

Suppose it is just not available.

And I wholeheartedly agree with Pada.  People shouldn't worry about the numbers.  And it's not helpful to draw conclusions from population stats.

 

[Pagan Pete]

18 hours ago, vazco said:

You can find exact stats here:
http://steamcharts.com/app/311310

TYhe FUN part is, when you click the year stats… wand watch the steady decline towards death.

Dear GL, Fire that muppet of a project manager, and get the old leader back!
From 5,221 down to 822, Numbers like that don't lie… player base is down 84 percent.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Pagan Pete

[Neptune]

Well It's no surprise to see the numbers declining rapidly. A ton of huge AI fleets, way too many forts. Events that encourage ganking when we already had way too much ganking. Well I guess the game Is now aimed towards pleasing big clans & ignoring small clans, groups & solo players. The game is losing all of those players because they are getting crushed by big clans & ganking fleets. Soon the ganking fleets will have no PvP. May be time to do something about this?

If smaller groups/clans are going to be continually ignored I don't see this getting any better any time soon.

 

 

[The_Scipio]

4 hours ago, Neptune said:

Well It's no surprise to see the numbers declining rapidly. A ton of huge AI fleets, way too many forts. Events that encourage ganking when we already had way too much ganking. Well I guess the game Is now aimed towards pleasing big clans & ignoring small clans, groups & solo players. The game is losing all of those players because they are getting crushed by big clans & ganking fleets. Soon the ganking fleets will have no PvP. May be time to do something about this?

If smaller groups/clans are going to be continually ignored I don't see this getting any better any time soon.

 

 

In order to deal with the ganking problem, IF the ganking is perceived as a problem in the beginning, is to understand, why does Ganking actually occur?

Note, just because you see ganking as a problem doesn't mean the guy next door see it the same way.

Is it because people en general fear that they can lose ship and officer dura, and therefore resort to participating in ganking fleets.

Basically you need to carry out a RCA "Root Cause Analysis" in order to understand and deal correctly with a problem.

And based on the numbers from http://steamcharts.com/app/311310#1m

An Analysis should have been carried out already in spring 2016, when the numbers fell rapidly, I fear that it is too late now to do anything about the problem.

In my opinion the game lacks a clear path from the developers, instead they try and implement various player suggestions, kudos for that, but I think that approach greatly influenced the rapid decline in the player base.

In spring 2016, a lot of players argued about big zerg nations, now they argue about zerg alliances - see the problem persisted, though in a different way.

What I mean is, the devs tried to counter big nations vs. small nations problem, and well did they succeed? I answer this myself, no they didn't! but what would the correct approach be then? let the players have a choice in regard to the politics and alliances? for instance let the players decide whether they want to honor the alliances or become a privateer under their own nations flag who can attack alliance partners, but the trade-off is, such players cannot vote for alliances etc. or they are targets also for their own nation, because they are renegades - that would introduce PVP also in home waters, and provide players with an alternative of the black flag, but still a life of being not tied into an alliance they don't support. The trade-off here would be that such players can't enter into alliance held ports for instance.

I don't think just by introducing new shiny things aka ships or special missions / rewards can  bring back people or even hold on to what is left of people.

The developers NEED to look into the core of the game, what makes the game exiting and fun, and in the end attracts people to it, and what elements in the game does the opposite.

No matter what, any game which want's to be successful needs to cater for the average players, not only the elitists.

 

[vazco]

5 hours ago, Neptune said:

The game is losing all of those players because they are getting crushed by big clans & ganking fleets.

The truth is that most of those single players would leave anyway once they rank up, as the only content left for top player is RvR. RvR is a domain of clans. I would bet that at least 80% of players right now are from clans. "Big clans" and politics are not the problem, they're right now the only thing that keeps this game afloat, providing content.

 

Your problem is not big clans. Maybe it is a lack of mechanism incentivising for fair fights in OW.

[Elric]

On ‎12‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 7:02 AM, vazco said:

The truth is that most of those single players would leave anyway once they rank up, as the only content left for top player is RvR. RvR is a domain of clans. I would bet that at least 80% of players right now are from clans. "Big clans" and politics are not the problem, they're right now the only thing that keeps this game afloat, providing content.

 

Your problem is not big clans. Maybe it is a lack of mechanism incentivising for fair fights in OW.

I tend to agree, other games wrestle with the very same issue - I played Diablo 3 for 3+ years - and we saw a big drop in players - then Blizzard implemented 'Seasons' - essentially a wipe to reset and refresh everything with some unique gear for just that season.  You could still maintain the old 'legacy' characters on non-seasons servers - and at the end of each 3-4 month season, the seasonal characters were merged with the non-season characters, your XP was combined and a new season started soon after.  You had the choice of playing seasons and ignoring the non-seasons - or a mix of both - or never playing seasons.  It worked fairly well.  It reinvigorated the players and you saw a massive increase in players for the first few weeks of each season during the mad-dash to get fully levelled up.

[Jean Ribault]

On ‎12‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 2:54 AM, Macjimm said:

Does anyone know where to find a history of the server populations?  Perhaps maximum per hour or even the peak number at any time during each day.

I can see one site that shows them as low.  But it would be helpful to see a record of the actual numbers of people on each server.  I've heard players say that the populations go up and down but I'm curious by how much.  I haven's seen the numbers higher than a few hundred in a while.  Right now there it appears that there is less than 200 players on all of the servers. 

 

This information is certainly available dynamically to the developers, it is updated dynamically in the GUI as we play.  Devs, can you not simply add this info to the API, and update it incrementally during the day (say, hourly?) so someone can create an automatic routine to consult it periodically and construct a graph for each server with the trending information?  Seems easy enough, but what do I know, I'm not a gaming programmer.  Or maybe you can output the data dynamically to a separate file for each server perhaps.  Obviously the daily summaries are available on Steam (averages I assume, or medians) but it's the daily breakdown that might give a better picture of the activity, including peaks and time zone participation levels.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Jean Ribault

[BallsOfSteel]

Ganking PvP could simply be stopped by ensuring BP difference isnt more than 30% other wise you cannot enter battle for the duration the window is open. Simple as that, Im happy to fight to the death against higher odds as required 

An AL signal system where you enable a reinforcement arrival at 15 minutes after entering battle would ad some spice.

[Jean Ribault]

12 minutes ago, BallsOfSteel said:

Ganking PvP could simply be stopped by ensuring BP difference isnt more than 30% other wise you cannot enter battle for the duration the window is open. Simple as that, Im happy to fight to the death against higher odds as required 

An AL signal system where you enable a reinforcement arrival at 15 minutes after entering battle would ad some spice.

 

No, doesn't stop revenge gank fleets.  They can pull you in continuously until you're done.

[BallsOfSteel]

21 hours ago, Jean Ribault said:

No, doesn't stop revenge gank fleets.  They can pull you in continuously until you're done.

Ah the I still drink mum's breast milk gankers

[Angus McGregor]

Welcome to my Ignore List

[admin]

Most games player numbers fall. Even the best games 
For example. Fallout 4 player numbers fell 10x http://steamcharts.com/app/377160#1y. 

[Pelennor]

Guys, name one game which doesn't lose players through time ...

Even if GamesLab devs were perfect (and they certainly don't), they couldn't go against this rule.

[Konali89]

12 minutes ago, rediii said:

Hostilitymechanic sent many away, i can tell you that

And yet i would take the hostility system over the old flag system any day. Besides, the hostility system came in a big patch , so it is just gueswork claiming it came due to that. I also know alot of guys that left the game for a while because the old flag system became a 2nd job/ boring waiting game. And even before the hostility mechanics many players left, who knows why. It can be a variable of reasons.

[Konali89]

1 minute ago, rediii said:

I can say that for sweden. Almost everyone of the old flagmechanic portbattlefleet is not active anymore. (atleast i dont see them in teamspeak anymore)

i dont think the hostilitymechanic is bad too but it needs some tweaks to let people have fun everynight again. It is too much pve at the moment.

yes, that is for sure. But it will be tweaked and balanced. We jus thave to take into account that we are using large scale mechanics with a low server population.

I dispise the old flag mechanics for one simple reason:

Port timers: 20:00- 22:00   , flag gets pulled at 21:59, flag gets planted at 22,59 , if there would be a port battle it would end around 00:30.  That is 4,5 hours waiting and guessing every evening. Far from perfect. Fun for ahwile, routine and boring for the most after a certain while.

I have seen many players leave during the last 2 years aswell. It is a normal behaviour and offcourse some content patches might attract people or scare people away, be we are still playing so they are doing something right:)

[The Spud]

All in all, disregarding the numbers, I think the game is quite enjoyable again. It has some stuff to tinker with, but it certainly fixed that "broken" feeling, I'm not frustrated by anything anymore except the lack of numbers, feels like its going in the right direction again., hopefully once we have some big content back in we'll lure back allot of the guys who have taken a break from the game.

I certainly like the added ranks they'll do when release comes.