Activity monitor - how many players online

[Cyninja.2954]

@neoteo.3975 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:Would love to be able to see some players activities stats, why is this a secret?

Imagine if we can see how many players online in the whole game, and also on each map.

I don't understand the premise of the thread. What are you hoping to gain by seeing these statistics? How relevant are they to the game playing community? Would they really affect your playing of the game?

Imagine if you cannot see who is online in your guild, knowing when more people play, obviously helps to create habits, if these numbers are available, we could build graphics and maybe organise our life's to play when most people do. Just like we do in our guilds. Knolage is power.

But you can see who is online in your guild. The average player will not go trough any of those lengths. To assume as much is to be disingenuous. Activity numbers are not active players and many MMOs give data on how active servers are at given points in time, just not exact player numbers. So that information is made available.

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

I'm sure we don't need to be shy of our numbers, many times the maps are full and we have massive groups of people playing for the same goal, in meta or world bosses, how many games in the world put that many people playing together in the same map? I think none.

The simple fact that you automatically assume it is only due to possible negative backlash shows: you understand these numbers could get used in such a way but are arguing that this won't happen.

Welcome to the internet. There is an african prince who has some good investment opportunities for you. Don't assume.

Given every single time when quarterly financial reports are released, some people see the world ending for the game or the lay-off panic earlier this year, it should be very evident how illiterate a vast majority of people are in both understanding data as well as reacting in a reasonable manner, there is good reasons to keep such information need to know. This is not a GW2 isolated issue too.

[MetalGirl.2370]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

Literally every MMO (and a lot of non-MMO games) shows its online numbers on Steam .. and it's where majority of MMOs are. So yes, they do show.You're just desperately trying to defend Anet here ... like @Dalec.9853 said - We'd never hear the end of ArenaNet boasting about being the most active remaining MMO etc, because that is what happens. Good news is loud, bad or uninteresting news is quiet or hidden.

And he is right - on launch they gave us this huge stats list and said how many accounts were there and what not.With HoT they saw spike because it was the first expansion so people wanna see what it is, but HoT was almost a self-destruction cuz they promised a bunch but instead gave half of it for full price... We only just got the last legendary, that we paid for with HoT years ago - and the fact that they chose not to make uw legendaries literally tells us that they are aware no one cares for their uw content - which was one of the selling points back before GW2 launched.With PoF there was nothing to brag about so they just gave some small list of which mounts are used the most and some mobs kill count.

[Cyninja.2954]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

Literally every MMO (and a lot of non-MMO games) shows its online numbers on Steam .. and it's where majority of MMOs are. So yes, they do show.You're just desperately trying to defend Anet here ... like @Dalec.9853 said -

We'd never hear the end of ArenaNet boasting about being the most active remaining MMO etc, because that is what happens. Good news is loud, bad or uninteresting news is quiet or hidden.

You do realize that:A.) the steam numbers are based on people running the game through the steam client right?B.) a vast amount of MMOs are actually NOT on steam. Given the behemoth among the MMOs World of Warcraft is not on steam, I'd say your assumption is very flawedC.) Steam displays current active players, not active accounts...

Given you can't even get some very basic facts right, I refer to what I said earlier:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Given every single time when quarterly financial reports are released, some people see the world ending for the game or the lay-off panic earlier this year, it should be very evident how illiterate a vast majority of people are in both understanding data as well as reacting in a reasonable manner, there is good reasons to keep such information need to know. This is not a GW2 isolated issue too.

[MetalGirl.2370]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

Literally every MMO (and a lot of non-MMO games) shows its online numbers on Steam .. and it's where majority of MMOs are. So yes, they do show.You're just desperately trying to defend Anet here ... like @Dalec.9853 said -

We'd never hear the end of ArenaNet boasting about being the most active remaining MMO etc, because that is what happens. Good news is loud, bad or uninteresting news is quiet or hidden.

You do realize that:A.) the steam numbers are based on people running the game through the steam client right?B.) a vast amount of MMOs are actually NOT on steam. Given the behemoth among the MMOs World of Warcraft is not on steam, I'd say your assumption is very flawedC.) Steam displays current active players, not active accounts...

If the game is on steam ofc it's gonna be ran through Steam, what does that have to do with it ....Blizzard also stopped showing their numbers because they are low .. so if they can't pull big numbers neither can Anet.... and it's harder to quit their game because you have to pay for it - I know I'd be thinking - well I threw hundreds or thousand+ dollars into this, no way I'm leaving ...

As for your C: - that's the whole point, this thread is about showing current players in the game and you're glued to this overall number of accounts ... OP didn't ask to know how many accounts are there, but rather the number of people playing the game right this second.

[Cyninja.2954]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

Literally every MMO (and a lot of non-MMO games) shows its online numbers on Steam .. and it's where majority of MMOs are. So yes, they do show.You're just desperately trying to defend Anet here ... like @Dalec.9853 said -

We'd never hear the end of ArenaNet boasting about being the most active remaining MMO etc, because that is what happens. Good news is loud, bad or uninteresting news is quiet or hidden.

You do realize that:A.) the steam numbers are based on people running the game through the steam client right?B.) a vast amount of MMOs are actually NOT on steam. Given the behemoth among the MMOs World of Warcraft is not on steam, I'd say your assumption is very flawedC.) Steam displays current active players, not active accounts...

If the game is on steam ofc it's gonna be ran through Steam, what does that have to do with it ....

Lol, oh my god. Yes, and most of those Steam games have stand alone launchers. Many players prefer a stand alone launcher over having steam in the back ground.... it's a faulty statistic which should scream and pull up red flags for any one worth their salt in data analysis.

Blizzard also stopped showing their numbers because they are low .. so if they can't pull big numbers neither can Anet.... and it's harder to quit their game because you have to pay for it - I know I'd be thinking - well I threw hundreds or thousand+ dollars into this, no way I'm leaving ...

True, yet they are still by far the biggest kid on the block.

As for your C: - that's the whole point, this thread is about showing current players in the game and you're glued to this overall number of accounts ... OP didn't ask to know how many accounts are there, but rather the number of people playing the game right this second.

This thread is about active accounts just as much as current players. Read the original post again.

[MetalGirl.2370]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

This thread is about active accounts just as much as current players. Read the original post again.

I did read it... and he is asking for currently online in the game and on each map. And also asking to know if NA or EU is more active atm ....Nowhere does he ask for - how many accounts are registered or active over X period

also the fact that you say people don't like Steam launcher is funny.. considering people are extremely mad over Epic buying exclusives because people don't want to use anything other than Steam

[Cyninja.2954]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

This thread is about active accounts just as much as current players. Read the original post again.

I did read it... and he is asking for currently online in the game and on each map. And also asking to know if NA or EU is more active atm ....Nowhere does he ask for - how many accounts are registered or active over X period

also the fact that you say people don't like Steam launcher is funny.. considering people are extremely mad over Epic buying exclusives because people don't want to use anything other than Steam

Did you skip the first sentence?

@neoteo.3975 said:Would love to be able to see some players activities stats, why is this a secret?

Given how the most common metric for MMOs is active accounts or server capacity limits (both which are not measured in concurrent users), I'd say those metrics make way more sense than current active users (which makes way more sense in competitive games or games which constantly rely on human opponents like CS:GO or DOTA to take your examples).

Yes, people are not happy with epic. There is a multitude of reasons for that, their approach to exclusives is one of them. Another is the simple fact that many people do not want multiple launchers for their games (or unnecessary launchers unrelated to the game in general). How does that in any way disqualify my assessment that people might not run the Steam launcher? On the contrary, if people were fine with having launchers or multiple launchers open in the background, the entire Epic debacle would be way smaller.

[Rasimir.6239]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:If the game is on steam ofc it's gonna be ran through Steam, what does that have to do with it ....Nobody in my family, nor any of my friends plays ESO through Steam, and we all play that MMO (some more often, some less). You won't find our numbers if you just look at Steam statistics.

[Astralporing.1957]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@neoteo.3975 said:

In the times we live in, not knowing this information is a crippled game design imo, remember this is a mmo, most people play gw2 because it's a mmo, what stands out in a mmo compared to non mmo? It is massively multiplayer. Knowing how massive it is, is very important, hiding that information does more damage than showing weak numbers imo. People are not dumb, if we consider people are smart as they are, we get respect and gain from that respect.

Given that almost no MMO developer or publisher provides these numbers, I'd say your assumption is not shared across the industry professionals.

Literally every MMO (and a lot of non-MMO games) shows its online numbers on Steam .. and it's where majority of MMOs are.Those are only steam numbers. They do not cover those that play through non-steam versions of the client. And those not only do exist, but usually cover a large part of the playerbase for major MMORPG games. Steam also doesn't cover console clients, if you haven't noticed.

[Holgarf.6581]

@neoteo.3975 said:Would love to be able to see some players activities stats, why is this a secret?

Imagine if we can see how many players online in the whole game, and also on each map.

EDIT: could be a device that we purchased on the gem store for 1000 gems, so it would be less exposed. Or only show to payed accounts. We don't have to put those numbers outside of the game.

The problem with revealing player statistics is that a lot of people will see a certain number for a given server and decide to not invest if they feel it isn't high enough, out of fear that the game will pancake and they'd have wasted time, money and effort. So basically, it could put new players off from joining the game. Not only that but it may encourage some to venture elsewhere if they feel numbers are falling, which may perpetuate the problem.

All in all, as long as you see people roaming the world, you know people are playing. Playing during peak time for the specific region is always best of course and for that reason, it is best to stick to your local regions so you have lots of people to play with during peak hours.