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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire - Part 2
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Well Sir, it's you again talking about absolute numbers, and you do it as a mean to derail this thread.
Xfire is good as a mean for looking at trends, nothing more.
It's not true.
You only need one number of subcribers to make a ratio of subscribers and hours per day as shown in xfire and then apply the ratio to all games, as I explained in my previous post. If you know that EVE has 350.000 subcribers, and you know that EVE has 5000 hours per day on average on xfire. Then you have a ratio of 350.000/5000 = 70. Now you multiply SWTOR hours per day on xfire with this ratio, i.e. SWTOR has 6000 hours per day on average, so 6000x70 = 420.000 subscribers.
The number 70, in fact means that 1 xfire hour / day represents 70 subscribers. (i.e. a game with 100 hours per day has 7000 subscribers -- such as Vanguard for example). WIth this method, you can calculate all games to see that the estimations might be actually quite accurate.
REALITY CHECK
That isn't how this works. One games numbers on Xfire do not mean they are the same for another game. We are looking purely at trends, IE SWTORs Xfire numbers are down X% then the actual population is probably close to down X% as well. It does not mean that 11k Xfire users is equal to 1.7 million people.
That would mean SWToR started with something like 4 million players.
Did you not understand any of the "not's" in the post you just quoted? 4 millions.... I assume you have no other response to the fact that xfire is measuring trends, not absolute numbers, and now you are trolling with fantasy numbers.
IE SWTORs Xfire numbers are down X% then the actual population is probably close to down X% as well. What is that if not 'measuring' trends? If we know that SWToR's population was 1.7 million at a specific point in time, we know that SWToR's population was 1.3 million at a specific point in time, we know XFire's numbers at those specific points in time and we also know the trend that the population is following, we should be able to tell what the initial population was, and what the current population is with some degree of accuracy. For that matter, we don't need to know XFire's actual numbers, just the % that the numbers have risen and fallen. I'm not sure how you expect that to happen without XFire's actual numbers, but let's pretend we don't know XFire's actual numbers and we're just playing with percentages. End of March, Bioware reports SWToR's population at 1.3 Million. From then to now, XFire reports the population has dropped about 54%. That means SWToR's population has dropped 54% to about 500,000 players. Now, move backwards in time from end of March to the start of the chart. XFire's population trend rises 300% from the end of March numbers. This would mean that SWToR's population was 300% higher than it was at the end of March. That puts it around 4,000,000 people. Which is not possible, but whatever, we're sailing around fantasy land here anyway. Oh wait. I forgot, we're supposed to accept that XFire is somehow an accurate representation of measuring trends with no way to measure XFire's accuracy. My bad.
Well Sir, it's you again talking about absolute numbers, and you do it as a mean to derail this thread.
Xfire is good as a mean for looking at trends, nothing more.
I'm talking about XFire's trends. They do not reflect reality. They aren't even close. XFire's information is garbage. It doesn't matter if you're talking about XFire's numbers or XFire's trends.
If the interest is in XFire's trends and not how those trends are supposed to reflect some sort of reality, then this thread needs to be moved to general discussion.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well Sir, it's you again talking about absolute numbers, and you do it as a mean to derail this thread. Xfire is good as a mean for looking at trends, nothing more.
It's not true.
You only need one number of subcribers to make a ratio of subscribers and hours per day as shown in xfire and then apply the ratio to all games, as I explained in my previous post. If you know that EVE has 350.000 subcribers, and you know that EVE has 5000 hours per day on average on xfire. Then you have a ratio of 350.000/5000 = 70. Now you multiply SWTOR hours per day on xfire with this ratio, i.e. SWTOR has 6000 hours per day on average, so 6000x70 = 420.000 subscribers.
The number 70, in fact means that 1 xfire hour / day represents 70 subscribers. (i.e. a game with 100 hours per day has 7000 subscribers -- such as Vanguard for example). WIth this method, you can calculate all games to see that the estimations might be actually quite accurate.
That would, again, give SWToR something like 4,000,000 subscribers on day one.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Just as I wrote in my previous post; you do want this thread gone from the SWTOR section, that's your main objective.
The daily Xfire numbers reflects activity, i.e. active players in some form. Not subscribers.
Your example above are missing a lot of factors, already mentioned several times before in this thread. WIth statistic accuracy you can predict the trends, nothing more.
That isn't how this works. One games numbers on Xfire do not mean they are the same for another game. We are looking purely at trends, IE SWTORs Xfire numbers are down X% then the actual population is probably close to down X% as well. It does not mean that 11k Xfire users is equal to 1.7 million people.
That would mean SWToR started with something like 4 million players.
Did you not understand any of the "not's" in the post you just quoted? 4 millions.... I assume you have no other response to the fact that xfire is measuring trends, not absolute numbers, and now you are trolling with fantasy numbers.
IE SWTORs Xfire numbers are down X% then the actual population is probably close to down X% as well. What is that if not 'measuring' trends? If we know that SWToR's population was 1.7 million at a specific point in time, we know that SWToR's population was 1.3 million at a specific point in time, we know XFire's numbers at those specific points in time and we also know the trend that the population is following, we should be able to tell what the initial population was, and what the current population is with some degree of accuracy. For that matter, we don't need to know XFire's actual numbers, just the % that the numbers have risen and fallen. I'm not sure how you expect that to happen without XFire's actual numbers, but let's pretend we don't know XFire's actual numbers and we're just playing with percentages. End of March, Bioware reports SWToR's population at 1.3 Million. From then to now, XFire reports the population has dropped about 54%. That means SWToR's population has dropped 54% to about 500,000 players. Now, move backwards in time from end of March to the start of the chart. XFire's population trend rises 300% from the end of March numbers. This would mean that SWToR's population was 300% higher than it was at the end of March. That puts it around 4,000,000 people. Which is not possible, but whatever, we're sailing around fantasy land here anyway. Oh wait. I forgot, we're supposed to accept that XFire is somehow an accurate representation of measuring trends with no way to measure XFire's accuracy. My bad.
Well Sir, it's you again talking about absolute numbers, and you do it as a mean to derail this thread. Xfire is good as a mean for looking at trends, nothing more.
I'm talking about XFire's trends. They do not reflect reality. They aren't even close. XFire's information is garbage. It doesn't matter if you're talking about XFire's numbers or XFire's trends. If the interest is in XFire's trends and not how those trends are supposed to reflect some sort of reality, then this thread needs to be moved to general discussion.
Just as I wrote in my previous post; you do want this thread gone from the SWTOR section, that's your main objective.
That's an odd take, but whatever. I'm not sure how I'd accomplish that.
If the discussion is about XFire and not how XFire's numbers relate to SWToR's subscriber numbers, then it should be moved from SWToR's group because it's not about SWToR, it's about XFire.
However, it is about how XFire's numbers related to SWToR's subscriber numbers. Along that subject line, I'm pointing out the ways that XFire's numbers are pure nonsense. They aren't inexact, they're just wrong.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Hmm let's see. XFire SWTOR daily players have been trending down. Server population reports by BW themselves have been trending down. Subscription numbers released by EA have been trending down.
Sounds like XFire has the trends down pretty good. The same happened for AoC and plenty of other games, despite people saying the same things you are.
SWTOR is on freefall on XFire and in reality. I guess it's not so bad a gauge after all. The only ones making absolute claims regarding XFire and subscribers are those trying to get the thread moved or closed. I guess it's possible to have an instance where a game freefalls in XFire numbers, compared to average loss of XFire players overall, but in actuality the game is growing. We just haven't seen that happen yet.
I have used xfire numbers to predict the financial outcome for the next quarter for another game, AoC. There is a large margin of error, especially when the amount of time people use in game is changing rapidly, which is the case for games like SWTOR that launched recently, or for when AoC went F2P and quadrupled the number of xfire players in a few weeks time. For AoC my forcast was within 25% of the actual income for that game*. The two preceeding quarters had such large margin for error that it would have been practically meaningless.
As you (or someone else?) pointed out earlier, you can't take one of the data points (1.3 million y number of xfire players) to calculate the xfirefactor and then use it on the other data point (1.7 million users z number of xfire players). It obviously won't fit. If there had been a third data point you could do a non-linear regression analysis and probably get a good number.
Anyway, saying that the xfire numbers have no correlation with the numbers of subscribers in SWTOR is closing your eyes to at least my experience using xfire numbers.
*The previous quarter had about 3800TUSD income, I predicted a drop to 1500-2500TUSD (average 2000TUSD, the result was 2500TUSD.
As you (or someone else?) pointed out earlier, you can't take one of the data points (1.3 million y number of xfire players) to calculate the xfirefactor and then use it on the other data point (1.7 million users z number of xfire players). It obviously won't fit. If there had been a third data point you could do a non-linear regression analysis and probably get a good number.
Anyway, saying that the xfire numbers have no correlation with the numbers of subscribers in SWTOR is closing your eyes to at least my experience using xfire numbers.
*The previous quarter had about 3800TUSD income, I predicted a drop to 1500-2500TUSD (average 2000TUSD, the result was 2500TUSD.
If the data were actually good, you could use 1 data point and get something related to reality. The numbers either reflect reality, or they don't. XFire's numbers do not reflect reality. If XFire's information had anything at all to do with reality, you wouldn't probably get good numbers, you would get good numbers.
You're trying to say you're not using the numbers because you're using the 'trends'. Where do the 'trends' come from if not XFire's numbers?
You are predicting real world results using XFire's numbers. At the same time, you're saying you can't relate XFire's numbers to get real world results. Please explain how this makes sense. Unless your last paragraph wasn't using XFire numbers...in which case why post that little bit of information in this thread?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Just saying so does not make it so. The fact is that subscribers rate has gone down, by the very admission of Bioware. 1.7 million to less than 1.3 million. That is a downward trend and that is what XFire has been showing as well. Now how much the downward trend is where XFire does not hold up so well because it shows almost an 80% drop in player activity and obviously the subs has not dropped that much.
However it is player activity which XFire measures, and not sub numbers, and by looking at the server status 80% drop in player activity is not all that far of.
My gaming blog
Sounds like XFire has the trends down pretty good. The same happened for AoC and plenty of other games, despite people saying the same things you are.
SWTOR is on freefall on XFire and in reality. I guess it's not so bad a gauge after all. The only ones making absolute claims regarding XFire and subscribers are those trying to get the thread moved or closed. I guess it's possible to have an instance where a game freefalls in XFire numbers, compared to average loss of XFire players overall, but in actuality the game is growing. We just haven't seen that happen yet.
If we're giving credence to XFire's numbers, SWToR's population has stabilized. Growing even.
The population free fall, did it fall 10%? By a third? Half? How much? What's the point of saying the population is in 'free fall' if you have no idea how much? If the actual numbers aren't accurate, and the trends aren't accurate, what's the point?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Just saying so does not make it so. The fact is that subscribers rate has gone down, by the very admission of Bioware. 1.7 million to less than 1.3 million. That is a downward trend and that is what XFire has been showing as well. Now how much the downward trend is where XFire does not hold up so well because it shows almost an 80% drop in player activity and obviously the subs has not dropped that much.
However it is player activity which XFire measures, and not sub numbers, and by looking at the server status 80% drop in player activity is not all that far of.
You are saying that the downward trends do not hold up so well. This makes sense, and 80% downward trend can't be reconciled with reality.
At the same time, you're saying the numbers are not all that far off. If XFire doesn't accurately measure players, how can it accurately measure activity? Both sets of information, hours played and number of players come from the same flawed input method.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Not really, you just need to ignore these border situations, since obviously at the release, people spend a lot more time in game than later, so one player has much higher average in-game time, which deforms the statistics.
Naturally, it does not include other minor parameters, which could possibly affect the final number by even up to 50%. Still 420.000 is a solid base number, and the reality is somewhere around +/- 150k. It would be highly improbable if the number would be outside of this range.
REALITY CHECK
Well Sir, it's you again talking about absolute numbers, and you do it as a mean to derail this thread. Xfire is good as a mean for looking at trends, nothing more.
It's not true. You only need one number of subcribers to make a ratio of subscribers and hours per day as shown in xfire and then apply the ratio to all games, as I explained in my previous post. If you know that EVE has 350.000 subcribers, and you know that EVE has 5000 hours per day on average on xfire. Then you have a ratio of 350.000/5000 = 70. Now you multiply SWTOR hours per day on xfire with this ratio, i.e. SWTOR has 6000 hours per day on average, so 6000x70 = 420.000 subscribers. The number 70, in fact means that 1 xfire hour / day represents 70 subscribers. (i.e. a game with 100 hours per day has 7000 subscribers -- such as Vanguard for example). WIth this method, you can calculate all games to see that the estimations might be actually quite accurate.
That would, again, give SWToR something like 4,000,000 subscribers on day one.
Not really, you just need to ignore these border situations, since obviously at the release, people spend a lot more time in game than later, so one player has much higher average in-game time, which deforms the statistics.
Naturally, it does not include other minor parameters, which could possibly affect the final number by even up to 50%. Still 420.000 is a solid base number, and the reality is somewhere around +/- 150k. It would be highly improbable if the number would be outside of this range.
How is 420,000 a solid number? What, outside of XFire, correlates with 420,000 subscribers?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The reality is not linear and you have the exceptional behavior at boarders. The reality is more complex than taking one or two points and make a linear projection. It’s math, functions and statistic. Anyone with suitable education and experience of working with this kind of figures would recognize the patterns.
Edit:
Edit: I guess you are the kind of person that back in the days would argue with all your heart that the earth was flat, because thats how the reality is.
Anyone with a suitable education would know that you don't look at graphs and 'see' the patterns. That's a load cr@p for which we can thank movies and television.
The patterns, if they existed, and if they were real would not require finding. If the numbers could be reconciled with reality, they would be. If the trends could be reconciled with reality, they would be. They can't be reconciled with reality by any repeatable method. Not even for the same game.
XFire numbers are just noise. If the information was at all valuable, XFire would be selling it. Just the fact that this information is free should tell you it's not worth selling, and it's not worth buying. The information is worthless*.
* A couple people have pulled useful information out of XFire. If nothing else, I'm reasonably sure they've pulled some entertainment out of them.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well, I haven't actually done any calculation, if I did, I think I would get a get a range between 400k and 1000k. It's such a large range, coming up with a specific number like 420k or 600k is a bit meaningless to me. Even with the margin of error, I can easily see that the trend is downwards.
The reasons why I haven't done any calculations is that I actually don't care what number I get, because the developers sacking developers is something you only do if you are getting a negative return.
The reasons why I haven't done any calculations is that I actually don't care what number I get, because the developers sacking developers is something you only do if you are getting a negative return.
See, that's real information. You don't let people go if you're making more money than you really need.
Now, in all honestly, is there anyone besides Bioware who didn't think there was going to be fewer subscribers at 6 months after launch compared to launch day? Other than Bioware, I don't think there's anyone who thought there would be more people playing SWToR 6 months after launch compared to launch. Does XFire add more information to that bit of information? Does it add any accuracy to that information?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Your last post is a big denial because you have no clue about how to apply math and statistics on any figures and that’s why you don't see the "patterns".
Your conclusion: Since Xfire doesn’t sell their information it must be wrong.
Guess what.... they do. By advertisement.
I really don't see the subscription problem as limited to only SWTOR, it's a market thing. Everyone is making less money (in the majority which just happens to be working folks) and because of that people are spending less on things they dont need like monthly fees for games.
They do need to switch this title to F2P but not for the reasons listed here, they need to do it to make it more profitable. Time and time again, the model used by B2P games is the best model for making money from the shop combined with the refusal to sell gear and combined with the ability to farm in game currency that can be used in the store has been the best model to use because it's by far the most popular. It's like LOTRO's current state minus cutting off leveling in certain zones/dungeons.
I'd love to see that come to SWTOR. The populations on these servers would suddenly boom when that happens. it's been shown time and time again.
Since they are still selling their title for $40 a pop it would make sense to do it now, and make improvements as they go along.
The improvements needed to make it a viable subscription game are far too large for the small number of people playing it (small compared to WoW's numbers) so they really don't have the income to make this game complete. (group public quests, skirmish dungeons, random zone event chains, etc etc) you know the things we would expect from a vibrant living world.
Regarding your question about subscribers, Bioware said they needed 500k subscribers (in average over the first year I assume) to break even. With 2million+ sold, and players staying for around 3 months, they have achieved that goal. It's basically impossible to predict how good your game is going to be at player retention before launch. Hell, it was hard even a month after launch.
Anyway, xfire does add some additional information, and currently it's that there is no stop in the downward trend. There has been a slight slowdown though and they might be able to keep enough players to keep a decent number of developers on the game. (Most likely in my opinion).
See, that's real information. You don't let people go if you're making more money than you really need. Now, in all honestly, is there anyone besides Bioware who didn't think there was going to be fewer subscribers at 6 months after launch compared to launch day? Other than Bioware, I don't think there's anyone who thought there would be more people playing SWToR 6 months after launch compared to launch. Does XFire add more information to that bit of information? Does it add any accuracy to that information?
Regarding your question about subscribers, Bioware said they needed 500k subscribers (in average over the first year I assume) to break even. With 2million+ sold, and players staying for around 3 months, they have achieved that goal. It's basically impossible to predict how good your game is going to be at player retention before launch. Hell, it was hard even a month after launch.
Anyway, xfire does add some additional information, and currently it's that there is no stop in the downward trend. There has been a slight slowdown though and they might be able to keep enough players to keep a decent number of developers on the game. (Most likely in my opinion).
Look at the chart that Metenso has been keeping up with. SWToR's players are stable. They're even increasing slightly. That doesn't jive with what you're saying. If you're going to give credence to XFire's numbers, give credence to all of them.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Edit: I guess you are the kind of person that back in the days would argue with all your heart that the earth was flat, because thats how the reality is.
Anyone with a suitable education would know that you don't look at graphs and 'see' the patterns. That's a load cr@p for which we can thank movies and television. The patterns, if they existed, and if they were real would not require finding. If the numbers could be reconciled with reality, they would be. If the trends could be reconciled with reality, they would be. They can't be reconciled with reality by any repeatable method. Not even for the same game. XFire numbers are just noise. If the information was at all valuable, XFire would be selling it. Just the fact that this information is free should tell you it's not worth selling, and it's not worth buying. The information is worthless*. * A couple people have pulled useful information out of XFire. If nothing else, I'm reasonably sure they've pulled some entertainment out of them.
Your last post is a big denial because you have no clue about how to apply math and statistics on any figures and thats why you don't see the "patterns".
Your conclusion: Since Xfire doesnt sell their information it must be wrong.
Guess what.... they do. By advertisement.
Hmmm. It's not denial. XFire's numbers can't be applied to anything in the world. Pick any time frame of statistics from XFire, and you have to use a different set of assumptions to get them to reconcile with reality. Pick any range of data, and what one range of data says is different from what another range of data says. Pick any game, and the assumptions made to get the numbers to reconcile with reality are different than the assumptions used for any other game. Nothing about XFire's numbers reconciles with reality without making up some assumptions. XFire's trends can't be reconciled with reality.
The only available option to make XFire reconcile with reality is to abandon any sort of math and just 'see' the patterns. That isn't statistical science. That isn't science at all.
They aren't selling their statistical information that they are showing the public through advertising. That doesn't even make sense. They are getting people to use their product through the features they've developed or bought. Namely, the chat overlay, Facebook integration, etc. The stuff they advertise on their home page. Then, they sell the people to advertisers. People using XFire are shown targeted advertisements. That's what they are selling.
** edit **
Sometimes I really don't like MMORPG.com's post editor.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Epic youtube video about the rise and fall of the TORTANIC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzc4jgwlT8