How many people are really going to play this game?

Ungood

This comes up quite a bit. Often in the forums of how Battles will unfold, how crowded areas will be, etc etc, etc.

Well from what I know, their is a cap... that each server will only handle a fixed number of Characters. Now I say.. Characters, as opposed to players, because of the Offline Player Character mode, this unlike other games, every character will be in the game all at the same time, all the time.

Thus the cap would be on Characters, not accounts.

So, given that Alts will be involved, and while some people may have 1 character they focus on, others may invest in several, after all,, a King should have a younger brother.. you know.. just in case things happen.

Anyway, so.. we will just randomly guess that on average,  there will be 2 Characters per Player.

Thus to fill a sever, would only take 50K players.

Now with time zones and the like, We can wager that only about 10% of them would be playing at any given time, with spikes of 20% during some major peak times.

So, we can look forward to 5K players, playing at any given time, which would be around 10K Characters being active at any given time, with half being at least semi-AFK.

Does this sound about right?

bcbully

I will if it is as the devs have described.

Phry

Too early to say, once the game is made and released then that is the time when find out whether it is going to be worth playing.

Bestinna

literally zero assuming it launches

btdt

Ungood said:

... how crowded ?

... there is a cap on Characters

,,, 2 Characters per Player

... only 50K players

... only 10%  playing

... spikes of 20% during peak times

Which Means

... 5K players playing 

... 10K Characters active

... with half semi-AFK

Does this sound about right?

Too much time analyzing a game you've already decided not to play.  When was the last time you actually saw 5K players AFK or otherwise standing next to you in a game?   Game is great!  Has 1 billion players!  I only actually interact with 5 of them at any given moment!

Put the spreadsheets down people.  If you are willing to throw $180 at a pre-alpha test just to try a game before anyone else, clearly you can afford the loss of $50 on any random game that happens to pop up.  And if it's free to play, you didn't lose a dime.  And yet, wasting money on alphas is totally worth the investment, but a few pennies on the actual game is just ludicrous.

Kyleran

In its heyday EVE was estimated to have around 400K active subs one on "server" with perhaps a 100K on a separate China server. 

Active players online back then reached a peak of 65K, (on a Sunday afternoon) but the daily average was more like 45K as I recall.

Since math is hard this early in the day, lets round down to 40K.

So we could say if split across four 100K subscriber servers there could have been 10K players actively online on average.

Many players log in daily right after server restart and "station spin" for much of the day, and while present in the game world, you won't see them other than a name entry in the station they are docked in except for the few hours they actually play.

Some subscribers rarely log in btw, EVE's passive skill training encourages them to keep paying for a sub even if they currently aren't interested in playing but they won't show up in the concurrent log very often.

So yes,  the OPs numbers seem within reason, but just because you build something doesn't mean anyone will come visit.

Cheers

Ungood

btdt said:

Too much time analyzing a game you've already decided not to play. 

What the hell are you talking about.

Ungood

Kyleran said:

In its heyday EVE was estimated to have around 400K active subs one on "server" with perhaps a 100K on a separate China server. 

Active players online back then reached a peak of 65K, (on a Sunday afternoon) but the daily average was more like 45K as I recall.

Since math is hard this early in the day, lets round down to 40K.

So we could say if split across four 100K subscriber servers there could have been 10K players actively online on average.

Many players log in daily right after server restart and "station spin" for much of the day, and while present in the game world, you won't see them other than a name entry in the station they are docked in except for the few hours they actually play.

Some subscribers rarely log in btw, EVE's passive skill training encourages them to keep paying for a sub even if they currently aren't interested in playing but they won't show up in the concurrent log very often.

So yes,  the OPs numbers seem within reason, but just because you build something doesn't mean anyone will come visit.

Cheers

Thanks.

I was kinda wondering what kind of scope this game would have, because unlike games before it, it will have a direct population cap.

This means, that quite literally, once that cap gets met, new players will not be able to even get into the game, until a Character Dies and no new Spark of Life is bought for it.

To me that is a fascinating concept that they are willing cap the game like that.

But it also makes me wonder what kind of population it will really have.

Paulolino34

Not me, but A Happy Few

Theocritus

I might take a look at it if  it ever releases and has a f2p option so we can try it at least....Otherwise no

Mendel

I really don't know about the population size.  People (maybe not all CiG employees or staff) have used numbers as high as 200k people per server with 5 servers.  I wonder where all these people are going to come from and what they are doing now.

I also am very hesitant to count alts as people.  I always tried to be very particular in my posts when I mention people and characters.  People pay for the game, not alts.  CiG is really going to be conscious of their income.  Alts don't respond (or only responds in script-limited ways) to people.  I expect there will be a lot of characters generating frustration among people -- send a tell and get no reply.  If that's not incentive to start a war against the scriptoids, I've never heard one before.

Slapshot1188

Caspien’s update from Dec 2016 said he planned for a million member community by the end on 2017.
I think the last official update we got in Jan 2018 was 16k accounts.(definitely less than 20k)
Are you asking what we think the population will be or what SBS thinks?

Also, servers are broken down by timezone. West Coast US, East Coast US, Europe and Asia.

Thus prime time on each server should have much more than 10%.  Folks may not login every day but the vast majority of those that do login will do so at the same time. Similarly if you are trying to forecast how many will be online for a battle it will be most of those affected.  In every game I have played, sieges and wars have massive participation.  Even with The Old Timers Guild (as pacifist as you will find) in Darkfall there would be 70 or 80% that would login to fight.  

I have to read up on how alts are handled.  If you must purchase souls for each I’d say the average player will not have multiples.   Today’s player doesn’t even want to pay for one since “F2P” has created the perception that games should be free and selling a box or sub is greedy.

Ungood

Theocritus said:

I might take a look at it if  it ever releases and has a f2p option so we can try it at least....Otherwise no

it's going to be B2P. 

Mendel said:

I really don't know about the population size.  People (maybe not all CiG employees or staff) have used numbers as high as 200k people per server with 5 servers.  I wonder where all these people are going to come from and what they are doing now.

I also am very hesitant to count alts as people.  I always tried to be very particular in my posts when I mention people and characters.  People pay for the game, not alts.  CiG is really going to be conscious of their income.  Alts don't respond (or only responds in script-limited ways) to people.  I expect there will be a lot of characters generating frustration among people -- send a tell and get no reply.  If that's not incentive to start a war against the scriptoids, I've never heard one before.

Well in this game with OPC (Offline Player Character), it makes the most sense to me that the population would be capped by Characters, not Accounts/Players.

Which , really is kinda wild, as it would limit the number of alts someone could have as well. I mean. Imagine you can only play a single character because someone else owns 4 alts, and the population is capped on that server.

Also, in this game.. Everyone is a "Scriptoid" at some point, as OPC is set up so that when you log out, your character will stay in the game. What scripts you run will be up to you, but your character will stay active in game no matter what you set up.

I also wager that if you sent a tell to a OPC, you would get some canned responses like "(name) is in OPC mode" much like how other games you could flag AFK and if someone sent you a tell, they would get a canned response that you were AFK.

blorpykins

I'll play it.  I think what they're trying to do is different at least.  If it all ends up being a disaster then I'll be sad for gaming, not because I lost any money on backing them but because the way they talk about story arcs, choices, and all their proposed gameplay mecahnics in general seem like something gaming needs.  I hope they can pull it off.

Wizardry

The numbers seem close but i wouldn't worry about offline,that would simply be some statistics/math working,that shouldn't take but a very small load and not influence anything.
The level of detail,animations,depth of view will determine how many can be in one area without lagging every player.
VG for example tried to open up the view a lot and it cost the game a lot,Where as a game like Wow or FXi are very low end graphics and can handle a lot more on screen.

Back to your guess of 5k at one time,that is a good number if a grouping game taking on content,if this is mostly just pvp,it could go down to 2k and still be decently populated.
Not sure the worry about numbers anyhow,if you like a game and the business behind it,you support it,otherwise don't.If your worried about total population and if goes down to one server,my guess is this game won't have but more than 150k maximum peak and begin to drop off from there,so maybe 3 servers at launch or maybe one big one,i'm guessing one server.

cjmarsh

It's far too early to predict any kind of accurate numbers for this game as the development and marketing drive have barely begun. One crucial thing to consider is not how many players will join but how many will group together in the same place, because that will determine if their tech can even withstand the pressure. Eve Online's couldn't and the instanced nodes crashed when large fleets entered, prompting them to create a system where large fleet commanders could "schedule" the fights with CCP to make sure there was enough processing power, and surely other mechanics, in place for it.

OrangeBoy

Just the concept and early demos alone caught my attention. Too bad their awesome early start led us to these boring dev journals (which are ironically filled with everything other than development and instead infested with useless lore and like garbage).

If this year is crunch time for Caspian and CoE, then I hope they prove everyone wrong and get the game out but nothing to this point has convinced me they are capable/competent. Caspian, especially, does not seem to me like a well-adjusted person when it comes to critical questions. Really, from the posts I've read, he seems like an overly-sensitive cry baby.

If anything of personal value does come out of them possibly failing, then it would be the intelligent and insightful posts that had to do with the development, reasonable criticism, logistics /comparisons with other MMOs and some cool readings of the MMO industry as a whole.

If anything of personal valye does come out of them possibly prevailing, then it would be all of the above + an awesome game.

Hope they succeed.

Phry

cjmarsh said:

It's far too early to predict any kind of accurate numbers for this game as the development and marketing drive have barely begun. One crucial thing to consider is not how many players will join but how many will group together in the same place, because that will determine if their tech can even withstand the pressure. Eve Online's couldn't and the instanced nodes crashed when large fleets entered, prompting them to create a system where large fleet commanders could "schedule" the fights with CCP to make sure there was enough processing power, and surely other mechanics, in place for it.

One of the reasons why CCP developed TiDi in Eve was to help in those 'unanticipated' large scale encounters, though we are talking thousands of players rather than hundreds, i would be very surprised if they have to handle those kinds of numbers with this particular game, though its questionable exactly how many will be supported per server at this point anyway, early statements of intent are not necessarily the same as the numbers that will actually be supported when the game is finally released, a lot can change after all between design stage and implementation.

Kyleran

Phry said:

cjmarsh said:

It's far too early to predict any kind of accurate numbers for this game as the development and marketing drive have barely begun. One crucial thing to consider is not how many players will join but how many will group together in the same place, because that will determine if their tech can even withstand the pressure. Eve Online's couldn't and the instanced nodes crashed when large fleets entered, prompting them to create a system where large fleet commanders could "schedule" the fights with CCP to make sure there was enough processing power, and surely other mechanics, in place for it.

One of the reasons why CCP developed TiDi in Eve was to help in those 'unanticipated' large scale encounters, though we are talking thousands of players rather than hundreds, i would be very surprised if they have to handle those kinds of numbers with this particular game, though its questionable exactly how many will be supported per server at this point anyway, early statements of intent are not necessarily the same as the numbers that will actually be supported when the game is finally released, a lot can change after all between design stage and implementation.

CCP also put a hard cap on the the number of players who could enter Jita,  a little over 2100 as I recall.

Nothing gets the blood pumping like flying a Deep Space Transport into Jita with 2B Isk in ore and getting bounced off the gate and told to "please wait"

You can just "feel" all of the hostile cargo scanners locking in on you 

genaknosc

Believe it or not, I will totally play this game if it comes out within 70% of what they describe. I just have no faith it will be launched, and wish some other more competent and experienced people had come up with the idea.

Ungood

genaknosc said:

Believe it or not, I will totally play this game if it comes out within 70% of what they describe. I just have no faith it will be launched, and wish some other more competent and experienced people had come up with the idea.

I am sure many other people came up with a similar idea.. but.. this is the person that had the balls to try and pull it off.

Albatroes

I'm already playing it....in my head since that's where most of the project still seems to be at the rate they are going. How long has this game been in "development"? From my understanding, it wasn't until late last year that they were even attempting to find serious investors in order to get started on the project and that the kickstarter funds were only for building a protype in order to show said potential investors. Its like asking people on kickstarter to give you money so you can get a job....Then again people have tried to start kickstarters and gofundmes for dumber stuff, like that one person who tried to start a fund so they could buy packs for this game.

genaknosc

Ungood said:

genaknosc said:

Believe it or not, I will totally play this game if it comes out within 70% of what they describe. I just have no faith it will be launched, and wish some other more competent and experienced people had come up with the idea.

I am sure many other people came up with a similar idea.. but.. this is the person that had the balls to try and pull it off.

Or the lack of mental competency to realize they couldn't do it. Not sure I would conflate that with "having balls".

In the end, if it falls flat on its face, what do we get? In actuality another serious blow to the legitimacy of crowdsourcing and even less faith from publishers or consumers that large scale MMO's are possible or desirable in this timeframe.

I'd rather the people trying to *spearhead* MMO dev projects be people who have experience. A la, Mark Jacobs, J Todd Gordon, etc. Maybe some of their team members will start up an MMO in a few years.

Who is Jeremy Walsh? And why does he call himself Caspian?

Albatroes

genaknosc said:

Ungood said:

genaknosc said:

Believe it or not, I will totally play this game if it comes out within 70% of what they describe. I just have no faith it will be launched, and wish some other more competent and experienced people had come up with the idea.

I am sure many other people came up with a similar idea.. but.. this is the person that had the balls to try and pull it off.

Or the lack of mental competency to realize they couldn't do it. Not sure I would conflate that with "having balls".

In the end, if it falls flat on its face, what do we get? In actuality another serious blow to the legitimacy of crowdsourcing and even less faith from publishers or consumers that large scale MMO's are possible or desirable in this timeframe.

I'd rather the people trying to *spearhead* MMO dev projects be people who have experience. A la, Mark Jacobs, J Todd Gordon, etc. Maybe some of their team members will start up an MMO in a few years.

Who is Jeremy Walsh? And why does he call himself Caspian?

The other major looming thing too is, lets pretend they do get something to actually launch. How does it realistically sustain itself while also producing something new in a realistic timeframe, say 6 months to a year? The whole thing lacks any real forethought especially since they are having a hard time to raise enough funds to even start working on SOMETHING. Dreams are fine to have, but as was mentioned earlier, sometimes things remain dreams because they simply cannot conform to reality's standards.

mystichaze

Albatroes said:

genaknosc said:

Ungood said:

genaknosc said:

Believe it or not, I will totally play this game if it comes out within 70% of what they describe. I just have no faith it will be launched, and wish some other more competent and experienced people had come up with the idea.

I am sure many other people came up with a similar idea.. but.. this is the person that had the balls to try and pull it off.

Or the lack of mental competency to realize they couldn't do it. Not sure I would conflate that with "having balls".

In the end, if it falls flat on its face, what do we get? In actuality another serious blow to the legitimacy of crowdsourcing and even less faith from publishers or consumers that large scale MMO's are possible or desirable in this timeframe.

I'd rather the people trying to *spearhead* MMO dev projects be people who have experience. A la, Mark Jacobs, J Todd Gordon, etc. Maybe some of their team members will start up an MMO in a few years.

Who is Jeremy Walsh? And why does he call himself Caspian?

The other major looming thing too is, lets pretend they do get something to actually launch. How does it realistically sustain itself while also producing something new in a realistic timeframe, say 6 months to a year? The whole thing lacks any real forethought especially since they are having a hard time to raise enough funds to even start working on SOMETHING. Dreams are fine to have, but as was mentioned earlier, sometimes things remain dreams because they simply cannot conform to reality's standards.

After CoE launches there is no intent to create new content in the sense of DLC like other MMOs. Rather new content will be dependent on what and how fast the players are researching and experimenting in the creation of items of their desired products. For example, if several players are researching building Ships, the game engine will track their process/desire and SBS will gradually implement the tools/mechanics the players need to eventually be successful in building seaworthy Ships. 

Ungood

genaknosc said:

Or the lack of mental competency to realize they couldn't do it. Not sure I would conflate that with "having balls".

I am not sure where I head this, but, in my college days, we would say the only difference between Ballsy and Stupid.. is how successful you are.

To be fair.. often alcohol was involved.. and bad ideas..