Thread: 18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That is not how you measure growth. Growth is a trend metric, and as such you do not measure it by taking two points in exclusion to the rest of the set. Doing so has a high likelihood of giving you an erroneous result. The only thing you can determine from noting that a more recent point is higher than a previous point is that a growth period had happened between the two points. You can not conclude that it is still happening or that it had not reversed at some point between the two points.

To accurately determine the trend of a data set, you must look at the entire set.

As a practical example, consider this chart of the stock market which shows the 1929 crash(Cropped for readability). If I were to look only at the points I have marked in red, using your proposed methodology, I might conclude that the market was in a period of growth at the latter point. When in actuality, the second marked point is towards the beginning of a massive decline.

And still excludes the growths and declines the market has experienced since. It also doesn't mention factors that influenced the sharper value changes.

In reality, it's all a guessing game. We cannot know which direction things are going. We can only view things clearly in hindsight. High populations now may be low in 6 months then higher in 12 months or vice versa. It depends on player engagement and other game releases.

People need to stop worrying about how many other players are active. The important question is "Are you having a good time?" If you are, great. If you aren't, why are you paying money to have a bad time?

Originally Posted by Jojoya

And still excludes the growths and declines the market has experienced since. It also doesn't mention factors that influenced the sharper value changes.

In reality, it's all a guessing game. We cannot know which direction things are going. We can only view things clearly in hindsight. High populations now may be low in 6 months then higher in 12 months or vice versa. It depends on player engagement and other game releases.

People need to stop worrying about how many other players are active. The important question is "Are you having a good time?" If you are, great. If you aren't, why are you paying money to have a bad time?

Shhh, don't say that too loudly or people will realize that you can't accurately model the future.

Originally Posted by Striker44

Actually, right, right, right. Sadly, what you're describing is exactly the utterly flawed approach used by the negative echo chamber around here, where they cherry pick completely arbitrary data points, ignore the context, and then try to act as if it means something. "Hey! There were more people playing this game at Point A (when ShB first launched) than at Point B (a random spot in a late-patch lull for EW). The game is dying!" It's worthless.

Meanwhile, the person you were responding to (Ren) provided a thorough, valid, thought-out analysis using precisely the methodology you claim to want. He looked for trends in entire data sets and consistently compared similar points in time across multiple expansion (i.e. looking at the population precisely after Patch X.2 launched, or right before X.4 launched, etc.), and the data over and over shows steady growth from expansion to expansion, with EW being the most populated one yet at every comparable point along the way.

So, your commentary in general makes a great point, but I'm utterly confused why you're directing it at the person who is actually doing the valid comparison you apparently want, while ignoring that the doomsayers are exactly the people using the invalid approach you show is flawed.

After reading your post multiple times, I have come to the conclusion that you are illiterate and did not understand what I said or the context in which I said it. Good day and may you fix your illiteracy problem soon.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The main cause of the drop was a significant reduction in returners. But a decrease is only really significant if it is maintained long-term and lower than at comparable periods in the previous expansion.

Isn't it alarming that 6.4-6.45, which is probably one of the most feature-rich patches in EW, with IS update, new Variant/Criterion, a new raid series, and BLU only sees a decline in returners? Seems like this is the start of a new trend which will continue as we get to the REAL content drought in 6.5. Pray, look forward to it.

Originally Posted by TheNight

Isn't it alarming that 6.4-6.45, which is probably one of the most feature-rich patches in EW, with IS update, new Variant/Criterion, a new raid series, and BLU only sees a decline in returners? Seems like this is the start of a new trend which will continue as we get to the REAL content drought in 6.5. Pray, look forward to it.

That's the thing, it's the last patch with interesting content.
The biggest players are done with it and since there's no Bozja, no content to farm, people just stop playing.
People don't see value in doing BLU or criterion, hopefully SQEX will figure why and fix it rather than giving up on it.

Also for instance, there's still more player in 6.41 that there was in 5.41.
So yes, the game does keep growing.

Originally Posted by TheNight

https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57719554.html

"The game keeps growing guys"

Why do you frame this as a bad thing? With all your posts, I figured you wanted the game to fail, so you should be celebrating.

Originally Posted by CStrife912

I mean you'll say its copium but its almost like in those 8 weeks a lot of big games came out that garnered attention.

I'm not sure this can explain the drop, since (compared to Steam for exemple) the survey is very generous and you basically only need to log once and do any activity in the last two months to be counted as an active.
While Totk and Diablo IV released right at the start of the survey, XVI happened in the middle of those last 8 weeks, so people who logged in the weeks before would still be counted.
It can't be the only explanation.