What the excuse for no players today?

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

At a glance this looks pretty flat to me



But honestly I disagree that server population is down by a statistically significant amount to effect lfms. Less lfms is caused by game mechanics that promote soloing.

Flat? are we looking at the same graph? In Feb peaks were near 20000, by april they are roughly 2500 less at 17500 at the end of April heading downward, we're two months further along now.

Anyway, latest excuse duely noted:

Everyone suddenly only wants to solo...

Another night where I spent more time looking for something to do than I did actually playing the game. But I'm not doing it right, expecting an MMO to have people playing it outside of guilds and solo'ing...

So what now:
It's sunday; you're doing it wrong, play on better days?

*BTW let me add LAST Sunday is was "It's a holiday weekend".

[EllisDee37]

Flat? are we looking at the same graph?

I would ask you the same question. Compare the peaks on the left side of the graph to the right side.

[Wanesa]

Flat? are we looking at the same graph? In Feb peaks were near 20000, by april they are roughly 2500 less at 17500 at the end of April heading downward, we're two months further along now.

It can be connected with opening NWO in Beta for all players.

[Charononus]

I would ask you the same question. Compare the peaks on the left side of the graph to the right side.

Exactly for Thelanis the first peak is a hair under 17500, the last peak is a hair above 17500, that's actually backward from what you're claiming.

[Enoach]

Things that we as the player base have come to know over the years:

Divines will set themselves to Annon (I would personally estimate between 30% and 40% most of which probably don't need to but that is a different discussion) - This happened less because of the number of "Tells" but because of the Rash of Blind Invites that would occur. However, tells while in a party or even while inside a quest have its own level of annoyance.

New games tend to draw people away. Games the NWO will draw many who are "Summer Gamers" because it is new.

At one point it was estimated that the average age of DDO player base was in their 30s. This generally puts them in the "Family" category which means vacations are usually planned around School schedules. Beginning of Summer sees a lot of families escaping to more comfortable climates. This will probably be true through July where some are looking to get away from hot/hot dry weather. Also during this time is usually an increase in outside activities - Drive In movies for example.

Other possible reductions could be as simple as Graduation Parties as 8th and 12th graders are getting ready to walk the line.

To determine if we are really seeing a drop or not we would need to see the population from at least 1 year ago, and even more years would help give us better data.

I think it is too early to call doom.

I agree with another poster when they comment on how it is interesting that some people have the most trouble with PuGs while others don't. It is a matter of personality, some people just don't do well fitting in with others, it is a patience thing, some have it, some won't let it develop.

[SilkofDrasnia]

My excuse is Neverwinter, my wife and I are enjoying that game right now. We both are the over 30 and have a family category as such can't really play more than one game at a time effectively. One reason we are enjoying Neverwinter, like others have said, is because it is new.

Another big reason is the new enhancement pass that is coming has us ****ed off and turned off DDO right now. It will break all our toons and quite frankly we don't feel we have the time to be Turbines guinea pigs while they break stuff and then take forever to fix it.

Will we come back to DDO? We used to before when we took a month or 2 break from the game to play another, we would always come back but this time I dunno.

It seems like they are taking away the very reason we always came back to the game for.

[chrisdinus7]

Flat? are we looking at the same graph? In Feb peaks were near 20000, by april they are roughly 2500 less at 17500 at the end of April heading downward, we're two months further along now.

Anyway, latest excuse duely noted:

Everyone suddenly only wants to solo...

Another night where I spent more time looking for something to do than I did actually playing the game. But I'm not doing it right, expecting an MMO to have people playing it outside of guilds and solo'ing...

So what now:
It's sunday; you're doing it wrong, play on better days?

*BTW let me add LAST Sunday is was "It's a holiday weekend".

Actually, the current numbers look marked similar to the per-febuary numbers. Certainly not different enough to declare statistical significance. And, just like retail stores, if we want to pin it down, we should get a year's worth of data, preferably in numerical form.

As to your February peak, that is when U17 - Epic Giant Hold - was released. Since that has been requested for a long time, a slight spike in population then is unsurprising. If anything, this data not only appears to cast doubt on the assertion that population is down (except, perhaps relative to the release of EGH), but also the theory that a large number of players show up for the release and then quickly disappear. The change from that only appears to be 10% or so.

Of course, these are estimates from a graph. If someone can provide the data in numerical form, and preferably going back a year, we can do better analysis.

[bsquishwizzy]

Grouping isn't dead. Grouping with random people is dead. Adapt. What can Turbine do to make me want to join pugs again? How can they assure me that I won't end up grouped with some crazy person who screams and acts a fool over voice? What are the steps Turbine can take to change this?

Yeah, but crazy people acting like a fool over voice has given me some of my best material for this forum.



"YOU NEVER, EVER STONESKIN A CLERIC!!! EVAR...!!!"

[Darkrok]

I was thinking about this while I played tonight. I was farming impossible demands for destiny xp. I do it by dual boxing accounts and honestly I'd never invite another person to it, especially a pug. To get the best time everyone needs to know what to do and the increase of scaling would actually make it much slower. Most of endgame is now grinding epic xp for destinies and since it's better and easier to do this solo or two person, rather than the old endgame where most people needed a fullish group to do any epic, this has probably decreased the amount of epic lfms. The other problem is of course the other epic type people do is now ee farming for favor or gear. The problem here is that puggers in general are probably not going to be of much help in this, and so they keep to all guild/channel.

I'm honestly getting to the same point. It's not PUG'ers. I'm not down on the other players necessarily. There's just quite a bit of grind now between trying to flesh out two toons, getting ED's finished before the level cap goes up, gearing guys up, etc.

When I'm farming ED's it's either in an already running Rusted Blades farm (which I'll create on my Sorc but not on my Drunk...if I'm going to create the group I'm going to be capable of DDoor w/o a hire) or Impossible Demands Hard w/ a dual-box'd account logged in just like you do.

When I'm looking to get comm's I'm either running a CitW normal with whatever people happen to toss one up (I won't lead due to not being able to run a mic in my house without getting wife agro), FoT normal with whoever happens to toss up a group, or FoT Hard with people I know. I may get to the point I'm not running FoT normal at all anymore just because I can complete with people I know every 3 days and get more comm's that way...but right now I'm running it too much to be choosy. Once I get my Pinion I may even stop CitW altogether and just do FoT's for comm's.

I've gotten to the point on EE's that I just don't bother on my Drunk. I just log on to my sorc and hit up one of the 'elitists' on the server when they post a group. Of course by elitist I mean that they won't take any melee toons outside of wisdom-based monks in their EE Tor's. Given that I wouldn't want to bring my own wisdom-based drunk to EE Tor that suits me just fine. I can get my stuns high enough on him but it's just not worth it - unless you're running a group primarily with melee's the stuns aren't needed and if you are running a primarily melee group then you're doing it the hard way at the moment. That doesn't apply to every quest but in EE Tor I'm just prefer the ranged.

So, tl;dr: I think a lot of it is that we're back into farming mode and the things being farmed are either better done solo or with a small trusted group of people. The exception to this is CitW and FoT normal which, while they can't be completed with a bunch of morons, aren't crazy gear/build-checks either. And I've had no problems in getting in to one or two CitW/FoT a day on Sarlona.

[badbob117]

Quoting Cordovan:

"There may be some local differences depending on how and where DDO was installed on your computer. Essentially:

1. Find your DDO game folder.
2. Find the Backup folder in your DDO game folder.
3. Copy all the stuff in it (Control+A to select all, Control+C to copy.)
4. Go back to your main DDO game folder (back out of your Backup folder.)
5. Paste all that stuff into your main game folder. (Control+V to paste.)"

Hope that helps!

Thx man. Managed to do this trick and it patched up my game and logged me in. Got some late night game time in on sunday night finally. ! Thanks a million!

That said , Argo was looking bleak as ever last night. Not to many folks running around in any house. On the bright side with so few people on i did not have much lag... Would be perfect time to unleash the devils on Marketplace to wake everyone up!

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

Exactly for Thelanis the first peak is a hair under 17500, the last peak is a hair above 17500, that's actually backward from what you're claiming.

I guess I have to assume you guys are just honestly not realizing the dates you're looking at, so I can't accuse you three of intentionally ignoring them; that graph ends five weeks back at the end of April, when while obviously declining it did not feel nearly as dead as is does now. In fact back in Feb pre Epic GH things were a pretty slow as well, much like in April, but not to the extent they are now. The late winter numbers (which by themselves are very depressing considering winter) are only an interesting sidebar (that supports my premise BTW). A few weeks after a major Map pack the numbers had ALREADY declined back to where they were MONTHS after the last update. The numbers that matter are the peak for Epic GH (i.e. where the player base is at when it's healthy) and the steady trend downward after it (where the player base is at months after an update and people are bored, or in this case a few weeks after an update where people are already bored).

Saying "see things aren't that bad, a few weeks after they released eGH, the player base was back down to the same numbers it was in late February after a long time with no updates" is more than a little undermining your arguments.

It's not hard to extrapolate from that graph that the numbers declined further, especially considering how little of a peak U18 seems to have generated with it's lack of Epics, and most people only running the new quests for PDK favor once and done. At the same time that they butchered the forums, released a depressingly bad enhancement preview, while NWO went open beta, and summer started... I think it's important for those of you who are arguing that there's nothing wrong and the player base is not declining to realize how completely out of touch that stance is in the face of all this evidence that contradicts you.

Also anyone who's admitting the player base is significantly down by pointing to NWO, Summer, farming for Hello Kittty online plushies whatever; thanks for at least seeing the reality that exists within the game, unlike the people who keep making outlandish and far fetched excuses. Unfortunately saying "they'll be back when they get bored of NWO" or when summer is over or when Hello kittie stops giving away free plushies (whatever I'm making that up don't go looking for hello kittie online!), doesn't help the game right now, right now people such as myself who WANT TO PLAY DDO, are looking for alternatives that don't have as much friction to overcome to play the game. Some players will stay gone when they find something less of a PITA to play.

[Charononus]

I guess I have to assume you guys are just honestly not realizing the dates you're looking at, so I can't accuse you three of intentionally ignoring them; that graph ends five weeks back at the end of April, when while obviously declining it did not feel nearly as dead as is does now. In fact back in Feb pre Epic GH things were a pretty slow as well, much like in April, but not to the extent they are now. The late winter numbers (which by themselves are very depressing considering winter) are only an interesting sidebar (that supports my premise BTW). A few weeks after a major Map pack the numbers had ALREADY declined back to where they were MONTHS after the last update. The numbers that matter are the peak for Epic GH (i.e. where the player base is at when it's healthy) and the steady trend downward after it (where the player base is at months after an update and people are bored, or in this case a few weeks after an update where people are already bored).

Saying "see things aren't that bad, a few weeks after they released eGH, the player base was back down to the same numbers it was in late February after a long time with no updates" is more than a little undermining your arguments.

It's not hard to extrapolate from that graph that the numbers declined further, especially considering how little of a peak U18 seems to have generated with it's lack of Epics, and most people only running the new quests for PDK favor once and done. At the same time that they butchered the forums, released a depressingly bad enhancement preview, while NWO went open beta, and summer started... I think it's important for those of you who are arguing that there's nothing wrong and the player base is not declining to realize how completely out of touch that stance is in the face of all this evidence that contradicts you.

Also anyone who's admitting the player base is significantly down by pointing to NWO, Summer, farming for Hello Kittty online plushies whatever; thanks for at least seeing the reality that exists within the game, unlike the people who keep making outlandish and far fetched excuses. Unfortunately saying "they'll be back when they get bored of NWO" or when summer is over or when Hello kittie stops giving away free plushies (whatever I'm making that up don't go looking for hello kittie online!), doesn't help the game right now, right now people such as myself who WANT TO PLAY DDO, are looking for alternatives that don't have as much friction to overcome to play the game. Some players will stay gone when they find something less of a PITA to play.

So essentially you've backtracked on your go to ddooracle claim that it shows numbers are down to in fact just guessing. It may be a reasonable guess but it is still nothing but a guess.

[Phemt81]

Lunchtime in EUrope and its a ghost town. Again plenty of 1 person lfms

I am playing a FVS and soloing market - no takers for my lfm. How is that even possible?

My guildie is soloing lvl 11 and there are no takers for his lfm

Will I be sued if I do some Facebook marketing so I get someone to play with? Its pretty cheap...

Which server? Ghallanda?

[Pandir]

I guess I have to assume you guys are just honestly not realizing the dates you're looking at, so I can't accuse you three of intentionally ignoring them; that graph ends five weeks back at the end of April, when while obviously declining it did not feel nearly as dead as is does now. In fact back in Feb pre Epic GH things were a pretty slow as well, much like in April, but not to the extent they are now. The late winter numbers (which by themselves are very depressing considering winter) are only an interesting sidebar (that supports my premise BTW). A few weeks after a major Map pack the numbers had ALREADY declined back to where they were MONTHS after the last update. The numbers that matter are the peak for Epic GH (i.e. where the player base is at when it's healthy) and the steady trend downward after it (where the player base is at months after an update and people are bored, or in this case a few weeks after an update where people are already bored).

Saying "see things aren't that bad, a few weeks after they released eGH, the player base was back down to the same numbers it was in late February after a long time with no updates" is more than a little undermining your arguments.

It's not hard to extrapolate from that graph that the numbers declined further, especially considering how little of a peak U18 seems to have generated with it's lack of Epics, and most people only running the new quests for PDK favor once and done. At the same time that they butchered the forums, released a depressingly bad enhancement preview, while NWO went open beta, and summer started... I think it's important for those of you who are arguing that there's nothing wrong and the player base is not declining to realize how completely out of touch that stance is in the face of all this evidence that contradicts you.

Also anyone who's admitting the player base is significantly down by pointing to NWO, Summer, farming for Hello Kittty online plushies whatever; thanks for at least seeing the reality that exists within the game, unlike the people who keep making outlandish and far fetched excuses. Unfortunately saying "they'll be back when they get bored of NWO" or when summer is over or when Hello kittie stops giving away free plushies (whatever I'm making that up don't go looking for hello kittie online!), doesn't help the game right now, right now people such as myself who WANT TO PLAY DDO, are looking for alternatives that don't have as much friction to overcome to play the game. Some players will stay gone when they find something less of a PITA to play.

DDO is purely a solo game to me so i don't care that much either way.
But all the graph shows to me is a small drop off on players going from winter towards summer, which i just guess, is not so abnormal. It also shows to me that NWO had at best a minor influence on ddo.
The thing with vague graphs like this is that people can easily interpret them in a way that suits their viewpoint, so all they really do is add to speculation.
Anyways pet peeve i'll stop derailing now.

[moops]

My excuse is Neverwinter, my wife and I are enjoying that game right now. We both are the over 30 and have a family category as such can't really play more than one game at a time effectively. One reason we are enjoying Neverwinter, like others have said, is because it is new.

Another big reason is the new enhancement pass that is coming has us ****ed off and turned off DDO right now. It will break all our toons and quite frankly we don't feel we have the time to be Turbines guinea pigs while they break stuff and then take forever to fix it.

Will we come back to DDO? We used to before when we took a month or 2 break from the game to play another, we would always come back but this time I dunno.

It seems like they are taking away the very reason we always came back to the game for.

I feel this way.
I have played other games before, but I always still played DDO as I am the quasi leader of my guild. With the coming enhancement pass, and the peek I have into on my cleric, who I play as my main, I just have lost the desire to play DDO at all. The things that I love about DDO they seem to be taking away.

I don't have time to keep redoing characters over and over, to grind them out, only to have everything completely changed. I am still logging on to check on things, and sometimes I think that maybe I will run something, but there really are hardly any groups for what I usually run, so many people I know are frustrated, and they log on just to talk, not to play.

I prob never would of started Neverwinter if they didn't bork my cleric, but playing it has opened my eyes.

The last straw for me is them wanting me to pay $30 for 10 quests. I've already played prob 100 dif quests for free in Neverwinter. I've been a VIP since 2006, and I am actually canceling my sub for the firs time ever.

Still I keep coming here, hoping the DEVs will say, "We have heard you!"

[Chai]

So essentially you've backtracked on your go to ddooracle claim that it shows numbers are down to in fact just guessing. It may be a reasonable guess but it is still nothing but a guess.

Guesses and observations are two different things. People demand evidence when they disagree, then dismiss all evidence brought or attempt to challenge the cred of said evidence. They are the ones in denial here, not those who clearly understand what is happening between each significant update or expansion launch. And the fact that it remains lull after each less significant update gets dismissed as well. People don't even come back for those anymore.

The question isn't if players will be back when the expansion happens. The question is how long will they stay back before they get bored and theres another huge lull.

[Charononus]

Guesses and observations are two different things. People demand evidence when they disagree, then dismiss all evidence brought or attempt to challenge the cred of said evidence. They are the ones in denial here, not those who clearly understand what is happening between each significant update or expansion launch. And the fact that it remains lull after each less significant update gets dismissed as well. People don't even come back for those anymore.

The question isn't if players will be back when the expansion happens. The question is how long will they stay back before they get bored and theres another huge lull.

No evidence would be something like on 6/3/12 there were x logins. On 6/3/13 there were y logins with x>y, and that tracked over a random sampling of days. Since neither he nor I can find that data he is making presenting a claim and the burden of proof is on him. Until he presents that proof I believe he is wrong as I do not have any of the problems he does. Now if he can bring those numbers I will be the first to admit I was wrong but without hard data he's just guessing, to be honest so am I but he's the one crying that the sky is falling.

[fredericko]

The last straw for me is them wanting me to pay $30 for 10 quests. I've already played prob 100 dif quests for free in Neverwinter.

That's the biggest issue I can see in DDO right now. There are last generation AAA MMOs going 100% free to play quest-wise, like Rift or NWO. We're talking games with the latest game engines. I love lots of things about DDO, but the game really shows its age.

Let's hope the game mechanics get stabilized after the enhancement update, because grinding for gear every so often gets old fast.

[chrisdinus7]

Guesses and observations are two different things. People demand evidence when they disagree, then dismiss all evidence brought or attempt to challenge the cred of said evidence. They are the ones in denial here, not those who clearly understand what is happening between each significant update or expansion launch. And the fact that it remains lull after each less significant update gets dismissed as well. People don't even come back for those anymore.

The question isn't if players will be back when the expansion happens. The question is how long will they stay back before they get bored and theres another huge lull.

Not true. I often use evidence to support my points - from testing negative levels, to the Owl Bear's PRR, to summing every quest's experience to show you can't quite do a once and done on elite for a triple TR without any store items, or crawling every guild's renown / levels / membership for discussing the guild decay system, and more. Heck, even here, I have commented only the evidence presented. As you can see from the graph, there is a change of almost 3k players just based on the day of the week. If we did a naive calculation of the std dev, it'd be fair too high to claim statistical significance for he claimed downward trend.

Of course, we can account for that by using the same tactics used in retail - by computing our expectations of similar days in the past. But, if we are going to do it based on the day of the week, we really also ought to do it taking into account the changes due to months, hence the point about wanting a year's worth of data - in numerical form so we could do calculations on it. I'd think ddoracle has this data, though I am not familiar enough with it to get it quickly.

If we don't use evidence, then all we are left with is anecdotal observations (aka, subjective experience) and our value judgements about the state of the game. Unfortunately, as has been proven by researchers (see Philip Tetlock's work), those make for a terrible basis for predictions (like, say, the direction the game is heading). No better then random chance, in fact. Quite literally, we might as well just roll a die to determine what direction we think the game is heading in if we are not going to use evidence and instead rely on subject observations - because it has been demonstrated to have the same level of accuracy.

Even without the cited research, the problem should be evident from the fact that people clearly disagree. For my subject experience, the pug scene is doing quite well. I typically pug 3 - 4 raids a night. They pretty much always fill in 15 minutes. And that isn't just popular ones like CitW and Fot. 2 days ago I did 3 abbots and 1 ToD. All filled with in 15 min. Similar results for shrouds. Likewise with EDQ and Chronoscope. Similar results for regular quests. That isn't to say other folks haven't had trouble. I have no reason to doubt their claims. But subjective experience and value judgements about the state of the game / the direction it is heading tell us nothing about the true state of the game or the likelihood of it doing well in the future.

[Chauncey1]

Can't speak to any other servers, but Orien has been just as busy as it's always been. At least it appears that way.
Several times the harbor and market have been laggy due to so many people. Had to switch instances a few times.