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On 2/28/2023 at 12:18 PM, Aaron Cain said:

 

Well the option to scrap schematics was a better and simpler one. When flying over the planets a last time the amount of actual stuff there is not just low it has never been so low.

Unfortunately, I think when there were no schematics everyone had their own empire and it was a strain on the servers (I am guessing here). I imagine it is possible but I think we would all be paying Star Citizen prices every month to maintain that (Or at least higher prices).

I do think a tech tree would have been better than a schematic tree, something you would have a second round of 'skills' for to unlock a tech slot (Infinite slots to unlock - assuming the game keeps expanding) and you would assign a tech you want to manufacture to each slot you have unlocked. Different slots for different tech levels. You would then choose to unlock a certain number of slots over a set amount of time (Something like 5 level 1 slots or 4 level 2 slots, etc.). But I guess DU likes the schematic approach.

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A game that can not sustain its server is just a badly designed game. From day one we were told Millions of players would be able to play together in a  single instance universe. Well didnt that bite someones ass.

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On Friday evening there was a battle for the Gamma alien core.  I know a lot of people aren't interested in that sort of thing, but I also know that at least 80 players were involved, possibly more.  People would have begun logging in at perhaps 8pm UTC and I'm not sure how lont the battke went on for, many would have had 2 or 3 hour sessions at least.

If you look at the usage graph on steamdb (https://steamdb.info/app/2000270/charts/) you can see that the numbers aren't very different from the numbers over other weeks.  You can see the downward spike where the servers needed an emergency reset after we had tortured them for a few hours.

 

What you can't see is an extra bunch of players logging in for the fight.  There are around 100 concurrent players there, and even an extra 30 would have pushed the numbers up significantly. 

 

I'm not really sure what this is telling us about the steam numbers but they certainly aren't an indicator of the health or otherwise of the game as a whole.  The steam DU community seems, at a glance, to be disconnected from the rest of us.

 

 

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58 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

 but I also know that at least 80 players were involved, possibly more.  People would have begun logging in at perhaps 8pm UTC and I'm not sure how lont the battke went on for, many would have had 2 or 3 hour sessions at least.

You can see the downward spike where the servers needed an emergency reset after we had tortured them for a few hours.

Servers needing an emergency reset after 80 players meeting for some fun, color me NOT impressed.

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1 hour ago, CptLoRes said:

Servers needing an emergency reset after 80 players meeting for some fun, color me NOT impressed.

More importantly. none of the people who actually play the game were impressed either.  Organising and preparing for that sort of a fight is not a trivial and stress-free task and when the final result is both sides agreeing that they can't fight each other successfully because of the game then that's another huge fail.  For me these types of fights were the only reason I was coming back and it's hard to see that there will be many more in the near future when they end like this, would you want to put in the hours and suffer the stress for that result?

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On 3/12/2023 at 4:57 PM, Zeddrick said:

More importantly. none of the people who actually play the game were impressed either.  Organising and preparing for that sort of a fight is not a trivial and stress-free task and when the final result is both sides agreeing that they can't fight each other successfully because of the game then that's another huge fail.  For me these types of fights were the only reason I was coming back and it's hard to see that there will be many more in the near future when they end like this, would you want to put in the hours and suffer the stress for that result?

ohhhhhh... that's a mess.

 

this game is dead. 😞

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On 3/11/2023 at 6:48 AM, ADCOne said:

Unfortunately, I think when there were no schematics everyone had their own empire and it was a strain on the servers (I am guessing here). I imagine it is possible but I think we would all be paying Star Citizen prices every month to maintain that (Or at least higher prices).

I do think a tech tree would have been better than a schematic tree, something you would have a second round of 'skills' for to unlock a tech slot (Infinite slots to unlock - assuming the game keeps expanding) and you would assign a tech you want to manufacture to each slot you have unlocked. Different slots for different tech levels. You would then choose to unlock a certain number of slots over a set amount of time (Something like 5 level 1 slots or 4 level 2 slots, etc.). But I guess DU likes the schematic approach.

 

IF NQ had implemented their original concept for factories, as presented in Kickstarter... it'd be a singular item that is fed resources and output a finished construct. (See Empyrioin) That would not have created the server load like the MMO version of satisfactory we got did. 

 

At peak my mega factory had 14,000 elements, with at least half of that running full tilt during my peak ship production. I'm sure it created server load .. it definitely ate bandwidth just standing next too and sometimes took 10 minutes to fully load in. 

 

Still sad that DU has a much smaller playspace, and that I can't make the same sort of factories to output finished ship kits without a ton more work/hassle. That was fun for me, and it's largely gone. As a solo player I could spend an hour a week picking up my ore, dump it into my factory, and output ships for a week with minimal hassle... took a lot to get to that point, but in the live game... its much more tedious, ore rates are heavily limited now, and while it was possible with one account in Beta to do what I wanted, not possible in live... with a higher sub cost. 

 

I miss DU, but I miss the DU from beta when we had in ground mining AND mining units AND asteroids... and factories could be largely automated... ya know, when it was easier to obtain resources and spend more time creating cool stuff... without worrying about land taxes, construct slots, and sub time running out and loosing what is created.

 

I can see what players warned NQ about has come to pass, many said going back on their promise of no wipes, raising the price, and reducing game content... might see a spike of hype but will fade... and looking at steam, game is pretty dead looking, with the top comment recommending another dead game, Starbase lol. 

 

Biggest issue... is DU is more punishing that any other MMO I have played if you take a break... you could loose a lot of your built up stuff that you grinded for... meaning that those that leave the game are even less likely to comeback as their personal investment in the game essentially gets deleted. This one reason alone is why I'll never come back, and why DU will likely never recover... I doubt this issue is even on NQ's radar. 

 

Maybe a couple years of solid development... but development feels  non Existent in 2023. 

 

So glad I got to play that version of the game, sad it doesn't exist anymore. Good times, thanks for all the fish NQ. To all the NQ staff I've interacted with, besides one, thank you. I hope your next endeavor is better! 

Edited by BlindingBright
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Well, in practical sense its being dead since 0.23 -- was absolutly clear its goner and will never recover. Majority of RMT guys I had info on "cashed out" shortly before/or just after 0.23, when someone hinted them (for several weeks in advance). Last ones exited on release, selling KS accs and some more interesting tehcnical stuff, lets say. Sure one can say its "bad people" (for a game), but they also are not stupid. -- some are very smart and analytical to earn money that way, no lyrics, just buisness.

 

Rest after 0.23... its more a history of the body, then anything else.

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there's a thing called "global statistics" for everything, which is what i use to estimate any number really, and i'm about 90% of correct.

 

let me explain how it works, it's quite simple really:

look thru about 50 videos on youtube, look at number of views, number of likes, number of comments and number of subs that channel has. all those will come to an average. for example less than 5% of people bother to leave a comment, while only about 10% of people bother to click like/dislike.

most channels get way less views than their subscriber count, because people come and go, which results in so called global average.

 

in-games, look at engagement, it's same average statistic -- only a small % of players use game's official social media, such as forum or in-game chat. this is something i know very well. even look at games like CSGO, if you play a match, only about 10-15% of players bother using chat and only about 5% use mic. i know there's no global chat in CSGO and that's not what i'm talking about, i'm talking about chat in a game. there's usually only 1-2 players who bother saying anything (both teams together).

 

there's another game, insurgency: sandstorm, which actually shows total online players in main menu. last year that number was between 3000 - 7000 depending on day and time of day. if you play around the time that is too late for EU and too early for US, then there's barely 3000, but there's far more players on evenings and specially friday and saturday evenings.

 

then there's another old game i like to play, which is planetside 2 and it also has global chat, but on top of that, it also has 3rd party websites that show exact amount of players in each server, which comes to about 1000-5000 at any given time.

and there you can observe the SAME exact global statistics, where only about 5% of players use global chat. if server has 1000 players online, then you notice some chat, but it's still very slow and gives you more than enough time to read it.

 

you notice same exact global statistic on live streams. i know this from my own experience aswell, because i've done plenty of live streams in past. i never had too many viewers, but usually around 100 and it comes to same thing, i only see about 5-10 people use chat. I've had less viewers too, like 20 or something and same thing, only 1-2 people bother using chat.

 

SO based on so called "global statistic" i can tell you quite confidently that DU has anywhere between 300 - 3000 players online at any given point of time and i'd say about 8000 active players and probably about 15000 active accounts (since some use multiple accounts).

this also reflects from my friends list, i only have about 20 players in my friend list, but EVERYTHING on this planet follows the same global average. i usually see 4-6 friends online, most i have seen was 9 i think.

 

also yes, lot of players are leaving, but i also notice lot of new players join (notice, as in they say in chat they are new and ask basic things, like "where is all the underground ore" and such). I have personally helped at least 3 new players in past 2 weeks (helped, as in given them some free stuff and advice via PM)

 

 

My personal opinion -- most players left due the wipe, in fact if you look at steam reviews, then one negative review that stands out, starts with "i quit because of the wipe" and that review has lots of rewards and up votes.

 

Also DU is the WORST optimized game i have ever seen, which is probably why lot of players don't stay for very long. my pc stats are not important, but i have said it in other topics and also in-game chat, that my pc can run forza horizon 5 in 4k with AMD fidelity upscaler on "quality" and i get solid 60fps with no stutter or spikes, while my GPU usage is only 40-90%, but never 100%.

I can also run dying light 2 in 1440p (2560x1440) or 4k (3840x2160) with AMD fidelity on "performance" (which is roughly same as 1440p).

BUT ... dual universe i'm forced to run in 1080p (1920x1080) and my GPU is constantly under 100% use, even when i look at ground .. there's NOTHING TO RENDER, why is GPU under 100% load? there's NO bottleneck elsewhere either, my RAM is only about 60-80% full and CPU usage is 40-80%. i even tried messing with nvidia settings, but as a pc expert, i can tell you that there's nothing you can really do to improve FPS in DU, because it's just badly optimized .. or well NO optimization at all.

and i think this is also why lot of players quit as they get tired of playing in 20fps or below.

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I generally agree about this "global statistic".

But there is one major difference, and that is that DU is subscription based.

Meaning that the ratio of 'inactive' players will be much lower, since there is no such thing as "taking a break" in DU without either loosing hard earned assets (the grin is real) or continue paying for a subscription that you don't actually use that much.

 

And that is also why the wipe hit so hard (just like we tried to tell NQ that it would do), since it deleted players assets (quanta, constructs, tiles etc) which players had spent both real money and lots of time and effort to gain. Often based on a promise from NQ, that they would not lose them when the game released no less..

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1 hour ago, CptLoRes said:

And that is also why the wipe hit so hard (just like we tried to tell NQ that it would do), since it deleted players assets (quanta, constructs, tiles etc) which players had spent both real money and lots of time and effort to gain. Often based on a promise from NQ, that they would not lose them when the game released no less..

 

Yup. I joined in Beta as a monthly paying member under the promise of a persistant universe with no wipes as the game was a live service. Alpha players quoting NQ's posts about it, JC himself talking about it in video... 

 

That plus the other reasons I mentioned made it REALLY easy to not want to invest into the 'release' version. 

 

It hurts, I loved DU and the concept. There is still nothing quite like it, and as much as I want to play it, the game doesn't respect players investment... this became even more apparent when I went to play other MMO's i had played in the past, one of which went Free to Play... logged in and all my gear was just as I left it, and started playing again without missing a beat. 

 

If I wanted to take a break from DU, depending on your constructs/spread could need to spend hours dismantling, transporting, and storing raw materials your starter tile... a lot of /work/ to take a break. 

 

I have a feeling NQ isn't working on DU 2.0. So hoping another company takes the concepts, lessons learned, and starts fresh with Unreal Engine 5 2 as a starting point. To think if NQ hadn't shied away from unreal 4... DU could potetnially be using Unreal 5 today with their entire server stack built on an engine nearly the entire game industry is using... and finally flexing their patents and putting them to use for the entire industry. 

 

Hindsight is a bitzh. I still root for NQ and this concept to work... but am also not blind to the reality of the situation. 

 

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2 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

Alpha players quoting NQ's posts about it, JC himself talking about it in video... 

 

NQ (JC) never actually promised there will be no wipe. Its a myth. It was "no wipe, if no critical need" blablabla. But people gone so rabid on self-hypnosis from fears to loose stuff, that they completly burned out this most important IF from their brains. And ignored obvious signs of that "critical need" all over the place.

 

These players, with who I had fought for years, lied both to themeselves and fanaticly echochambered wrong idea to newcomers.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, le_souriceau said:

NQ (JC) never actually promised there will be no wipe. Its a myth. It was "no wipe, if no critical need" blablabla. But people gone so rabid on self-hypnosis from fears to loose stuff, that they completly burned out this most important IF from their brains. And ignored obvious signs that "critical need" all over the place.

 

These players, with who I had stuggled for years, lied both to themeselves and fanaticly echochambered this idea to newcomers.

 

 

What was the "need" that was supposed to justify the wipe?

 

Now that it's over and done, In hindsight, what exactly did it solve or fix or improve?

 

They thought that wiping the game and launching it fresh on Steam would bring in more customers.  That's not a need, it's a hope.  They didn't need to wipe, they wanted to.  And their reasoning was wrong.  So whether we want to define it as a need or a want, it was a mistake either way.

 

All it accomplished was diminishing the product that they had already sold, to the people who were the most interested in it.

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

What was the "need" that was supposed to justify the wipe?

 

 

none... And when they did wipe, they did not even do the one thing that was used as a reason for a wipe. Which was to change the planets to something much better then the original.

 

The promise was "no wipe unless absolutely necessary" and that if they where forced to do a wipe, that they would make sure that players would not lose assets from the wipe. So no matter how you look at it, promises where broken..

 

And many players payed subscriptions with real money and put down A LOT of effort based on those promises made.

 

And this was the moment where any respect I had left for NQ, was lost.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

What was the "need" that was supposed to justify the wipe?

 

Wipe was nessesary for another, maybe even larger reason -- situation with exploits, that totally spinned out of any reasonable control.

 

You can believe me or not. But first half of year of Beta, ore market was largerly controlled by several industrial-level dupers, who just endlessly sold duped stuff, keeping prices and earning huge money. Some of them got busted only by spring, but not even all. Damage they done was already unrepairable.

 

"Fun ways" were well known for uncomfortbale quite a lot of people. Many organizations (both big and small), gone very passionate  with duping too, accamulating and creativly laundering "toxic assets". People, ofc, stockpiled endless ammounts of dirty money, expensive parts and ores for "bright future". It was so bad already, that even whole this "free schematics" outrage felt by NQ so irrelevant in scale of economy degradation, that they completly ignored it. 

 

So there was a choice:

 

By some impossible ways investigate all this clusterpack catastrophic scale system hole and, by all means, ban like half of thousand of players (including people well known in community, org leaders, etc) and admit that situation reached this catasthropic level, creating some 100 kt shitstorm with unknown consequences, up to real legal trouble.

 

Or... just silently wipe it all, puting it to history, killing second duck with "new fresh start for steam noobs".

 

Choice is obvious, right?

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1 hour ago, le_souriceau said:

Wipe was nessesary for another, maybe even larger reason -- situation with exploits, that totally spinned out of any reasonable control.

 

 

If that was the reason for the wipe then they wouldn't have wiped talents.

 

And again, even if that was the reason, the reason was still wrong, because it didn't fix anything.

 

The economy isn't better, and the "level playing field" didn't bring back half as many players as it alienated.

 

They promised not to wipe, unless a wipe was needed.  The reason they wiped is because they thought it would bring back or bring in more players.  It didn't do that.  So, the wipe wasn't needed, was it?

 

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7 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

So, the wipe wasn't needed, was it?

 

Yes, you right. But there is two separate things. That are sadly divorced.

 

First -- is NQ logic, what kind of stuff they may come up with and do with problem X or Y, defined by their corporate capability and trackrecord of previous actions. This where my prediction was always negative, like "its gonna be wipe, cuz they just by their company nature incapable of better solution".

 

Second -- reality, where you do things, but consequences nessesary ones you wanted. Yes, flow of new players was weak and not probably even covered loss from alienated old timers.

 

So NQ needed, aiming for wipe, because they were unable to produce alternative in their internal processing. 

 

Like in rpg with optional ways to finish quest you have stats only for one : ) Like kill everyone.

 

Was it all helpful in reality? Ofc - no.

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

Wipe was nessesary for another, maybe even larger reason -- situation with exploits, that totally spinned out of any reasonable control.

if that's true, why not let us keep blueprints and talents?

 

 

On 3/26/2023 at 3:52 PM, CptLoRes said:

I generally agree about this "global statistic".

But there is one major difference, and that is that DU is subscription based.

Meaning that the ratio of 'inactive' players will be much lower, since there is no such thing as "taking a break" in DU without either loosing hard earned assets (the grin is real) or continue paying for a subscription that you don't actually use that much.

 

And that is also why the wipe hit so hard (just like we tried to tell NQ that it would do), since it deleted players assets (quanta, constructs, tiles etc) which players had spent both real money and lots of time and effort to gain. Often based on a promise from NQ, that they would not lose them when the game released no less..

so and so, lot of people have amazon and/or netflix subscription and they barely even use it. it's like car insurance .. you pay it, but you don't always use it.

 

 

22 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

 

NQ (JC) never actually promised there will be no wipe. Its a myth. It was "no wipe, if no critical need" blablabla. But people gone so rabid on self-hypnosis from fears to loose stuff, that they completly burned out this most important IF from their brains. And ignored obvious signs of that "critical need" all over the place.

 

These players, with who I had fought for years, lied both to themeselves and fanaticly echochambered wrong idea to newcomers.

 

 

my source for this, is their publishers. i was invited into the early access / beta / alpha or whatever it was called, one that was released about 3 years ago. as this is mmo, my first question was: will there be any wipes? i was told they will check with devs and let me know, couple days later i got a reply saying that there will NOT be any further wipes.

i know that publisher is not devs, but they must know stuff about the game in order to be able to advertise and promote it.

so that was my source for "no further wipes".

 

16 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

 

If that was the reason for the wipe then they wouldn't have wiped talents.

 

And again, even if that was the reason, the reason was still wrong, because it didn't fix anything.

 

The economy isn't better, and the "level playing field" didn't bring back half as many players as it alienated.

 

They promised not to wipe, unless a wipe was needed.  The reason they wiped is because they thought it would bring back or bring in more players.  It didn't do that.  So, the wipe wasn't needed, was it?

 

i agree 100%, if they did a wipe because of exploited money and items, why not let us keep talents and blueprints?

from experience, i know that most wipes are done due the fact that game mechanics change and it will be very hard implementing them without doing a complete wipe of player built stuff.

one of those examples is space engineers, it's not mmo as you know, but i had a big savegame with a base and ships and then they did oxygen/pressure update and none of that worked on my base, i had to start all over to be able to use those features.

 

however this is not the case in DU, because i don't remember anything being difference from early access. well they did remove underground mining, which would explain why they had to reset planets to their original state. i also believe they removed some planets and pvp didn't exist back then either, but none of this has anything to do with blueprints and talents.

 

if wipe is absolutely necessary in order to implement new features or to fix some issues, then there's no harm in letting us keep blueprints, talents and materials, so we can just re-deploy with ease.

 

if any dev should read this, think of wipe as if someone would wipe your entire DU project from your servers and computer and you'd have to start it all over again, would you have motivation to redo everything?

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Allioth and Madis are the only two planets that have lost claimed tiles over time.  And I would interpret this as the core players are the ones still sticking around.  personally I am not so concerned about the number of players.  Other then low player count means less money, less money means less money going into development and keeping the lights on. We know NQ can turn up and lower server performance. And the way the game has been running seems like they got it running at a bare minimum. 

 

I am more concerned about the lack of development. We are over half a year now on release, And the amount of features that have been added to the game are pretty lackluster. I am not a programmer But I do have over 50,000 hours of game time. And I said it during early beta. Where are the patches that add features?  And when you compare it to the below picture patches released by NQ and patches released by a game that only has one developer. The one guy is doing more then the entire NQ team. So either the team is incompetent, Or the team is one guy, or the team is working on not DU. Right now we are being dragged along on the PVE promise. But NQ's track record does not look great. 

 

Edit forgot to add picture:

image.png

Edited by RugesV
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