Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
When does the "player population" not count?
anemo
Member RarePosts: 1,903
I'm curious about when the people here consider the population in an MMO doesn't count or matter. Though counting and mattering are likely different things in this context.
There are a few ways to go about the discussion:
- For instance you could consider that the player numbers are either paying for the game, or acting as a brag count to attract people that do pay. Meaning they would always count, since they all ensure the future survival of the game.
- On the other hand if you have players always off in private instances, and never in the world you could start to say that they hardly count as players. Since if you never see them, and they have no way of ever affecting you they're hardly worth counting.
- I think in virtually all cases most people would be able to agree and say that bots don't count as players, and are likely even worth negative player counts over the long run.
- After playing the single player game CrossCode (which adds bots that act like MMO players), I'm sure some people could make fair arguments that with current out of game chat/voice functions that everyone uses... Most players play and feel like playing with maybe-competent AI players, except when someone rages or leaves on a wipe.
_________________________
Personally I'm probably a little "lightly" on keeping players out of instances, since I remember the reason why I stuck with something silly like Runescape as my first MMO was because you got to see other people doing other people stuff (even though the game was objectively worse than the single player games I could play). And as someone that plays MUDs occasionally I see properly scoped games staying alive for decades with under 200 concurrent max players, and probably a few thousand active (though I don't see much of a reason to hate on people that expect 'more' and that would therefore require player counts being a higher priority)
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Comments