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strawman

Fountain of Youth/Stone Nerf Combo: Fatality

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Just now, Adfax said:

But it isn't; correlation is an excellent indicator. It just doesn't prove certainty; but what does?

Re-read the OP's last sentence. They conclude and imply that the specific reason(s) for the decline are due to the changes listed above. They used correlation AS causation. Whichas I stated before does not hold water on its own.

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6 minutes ago, Nari said:

Re-read the OP's last sentence. They conclude and imply that the specific reason(s) for the decline are due to the changes listed above. They used correlation AS causation. Whichas I stated before does not hold water on its own.

Ah, now I could say you're making a strawman by assuming the OPs intentions, like you attempted to do to me when I assumed yours. 

Read the last sentence again and you'll see that the OP said nothing certain. They said "I think I know".

Did they say "this is killing the game"? No. They're letting the evidence speak for itself. And it speaks volumes.

No one said correlation is a CERTAINTY. It is just highly unlikely that high correlation doesn't indicate the true cause.

If the op came out and said "this is definitive proof that this is killing the game", then yes. In that instance, that would be false.

Edited by Adfax

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3 minutes ago, Nari said:

They used correlation AS causation. 

I also used the extreme negative reaction online and my own personal experience as a player, then backed it up with this data. If you have a better argument than FoY/stone for why people are leaving at a faster rate now than they were two weeks ago, I'd love to hear it.

Looking closer, I noticed that last week's peak actually came on Sunday with about 800 more people than the Saturday peak, but using that peak doesn't change the trend - only indicates that it was a sharper decline this week than my original numbers indicated.

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1 minute ago, strawman said:

If you have a better argument than FoY/stone for why people are leaving at a faster rate now than they were two weeks ago, I'd love to hear it.

If I had the energy and desire to pour into this theory then I would but I don't. Which is why I instead opted to point out the flaws with the reasoning and correlations. But since I don't plan to offer anything other than that I'll digress.

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8 minutes ago, Nari said:

If I had the energy and desire to pour into this theory then I would but I don't. Which is why I instead opted to point out the flaws with the reasoning and correlations. But since I don't plan to offer anything other than that I'll digress.

The reasoning is sound. The only time it wouldn't be sound is if it were said with 100% certainty. Lets be honest here, what the evidence suggests is pretty much certain. People have been complaining about these issues on reddit/steam/official; if it were not one of the main contributing factors to why the game is declining in population, i'd eat my hat.

Edited by Adfax

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3 minutes ago, Adfax said:

The reasoning is sound; the only time it wouldn't be sound is if it were said with 100% certainty.

Fair enough. Except for one thing. A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true.

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Just now, Nari said:

Fair enough. Except for one thing. A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true.

There is no way of knowing the premise is true unless we ask every person who left the game, and they told us the truth. 

In this particular case, the devs have to make decisions; they don't have the luxury of determining if something is certainly true or not. In which case, all they have to go on are liklihoods. 

It would be foolish of them to ignore this one given the amount of indicators.

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7 minutes ago, Adfax said:

There is no way of knowing the premise is true unless we ask every person who left the game, and they told us the truth. 

In this particular case, the devs have to make decisions; they don't have the luxury of determining if something is certainly true or not. In which case, all they have to go on are liklihoods. 

It would be foolish of them to ignore this one given the amount of indicators.

You can take a poll. Doesn't have to be everyone that left for these specific reasons but obviously for accuracy the more the better. If the numbers line up even slightly then guess what? There's another pound of correlation to add to scales. You still have more work to do. That's the issue with jumping to conclusions on topics like these. Its difficult to build an accurate representation of reality.

Edited by Nari

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16 minutes ago, Nari said:

You can take a poll. Doesn't have to be everyone that left for these specific reasons but obviously for accuracy the more the better. If the numbers line up even slightly then guess what? There's another pound of correlation to add to scales. You still have more work to do. That's the issue with jumping to conclusions on topics like these. Its difficult to build an accurate representation of reality.

People who use the forums are in the minority. The player numbers are a much more accurate indicator; especially given the timing.

There are instances I've seen on forums where the general people posting are misaligned with the general majority who play the game. Not for this game as of yet, but I've seen it in other games. It is pretty rare, but it happens.

But of course.. All avenues should be utilized for a more accurate estimation on what the correct course of action is.

Edited by Adfax

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16 minutes ago, Adfax said:

People who use the forums are in the minority. The player numbers are a much more accurate indicator; especially given the timing.

There are instances I've seen on the forums where the general people posting are misaligned with the general majority who play the game. Not for this game as of yet, but I've seen it in other games.

Correct but it is a better approach than grabbing the first data set you can find and then posting that data with a conclusion based soley off correlation. I've already seen multiple people quote 30day numbers saying things like "I knew the game was dying here the proof" Except it's not substantial and threads like these perpetuate that perception. Any data is better than no data at all but more data is even better. That's why these forums exist in the first place. Companies used to be sheltered from their consumers but now we're on their doorsteps 24/7.

Edited by Nari

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Today for the first time in Atlas mind you, rage quit. 

I hit 92 years old, sailed to the FOY location twice, both times got instant griefed among the 400 sunken ships on the shore. With the beds destroyed, Nakeds blocking the FOY entrance, a fire elemental and about 10 lvl +100 crocs about, the FPS drop due to all the busted up ships in render, I just shut the game down. I don't find the mechanic to be fun or rewarding enough to bother going through all that.

I'm not one for the FOY mechanic, I think it opens the game to more dangerous power creep. I get that it has a strategic aspect to it (the company that controls it gets the buff), but holy shit... no.. just.. not like this, no, make it a 150 or 500 gold potion from a free port or something (i'll spend 3 hours doing treasure maps for that, it's way more rewarding), the servers can't handle it and the game mechanics can't do it right. My experience was absolute aids, I won't put a single more minute of my gameplay time forwards the current implementation of FOY, never have I seen such a poorly designed and horribly thought out RPG mechanic in an MMO. 

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You don't even need these numbers to know that people quit because of the early direction of the game. All you have to do is ask people.  I watched one by one every single person I played with quit, I watched a company who built beside me quit, and a team whom we fought with everyday all quit.  I have not played in days, I see less and less people coming through, a few chinese seemed to have built a farming area and have not logged on in days, and despite days of playing online my base hasn't been touched, not even a boat.  Anthem is releasing, Division 2 is releasing, means very few testers for a game that needs full servers to really be tested and bugs reported for all the islands.  I'm afraid the game was simply released too early, had a horrendous launch, and those like myself that are not from the Ark community got a good taste of this company and dev team.  They may or may not care, but without a doubt the future of this team to make money has been significantly tarnished, that's their problem not ours. It's the cumulative effect of it all really.  But the mind boggling direction they seem intent on taking their game is what scares me off from wasting too much more time to test their game or help improve it.  They seem dead set on making nothing more than another survival game with a bunch of servers tied together. It has very little depth and insane decisions like requiring sap for stone when islands have no sap for grids is just horrendous and pointless.  So it's just the SMH reaction to changes that has been the final like what am I doing wasting the time they are requiring for what?  To offline raid someone?  Grief someone?  Attempt to PvE god awful content...  Like you just have a big sandbox that is too grindy and grindy without real purpose of any kind. That's not hard to create, and it's even easier to put down for other titles. 

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Maybe as an idea the power stone islands and the FOY sound like a good idea or game content.  The experience however is so bad that yes it works it resets the age now lets make a change because doing that once a month no thanks.  So of the major problems are the mobs and the agro, the server load and lag due to high player volume, cheesing the whole thing and naked running till you make it, there is not pvp on that tile it is grieving someone blocking the cave entrance punching to be toxic or killing ships which are spawn points for the naked mass running to cheese the process and make it to the FOY.  The idea is good how the online experience is needs to be changed because right now it is not pve or pvp it is just can i get lucky enough to not get grieved and make the run?

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Predictions for Next Week:
A 15% decline by next weekend is in-line with prior numbers, maybe a little too optimistic. Assuming no further changes to gameplay, that would place next weekend's peak players at 25,557.

The Good:
If my observation is correct, that much of the decline is directly due to the stone and FoY changes, a "miracle patch" this week could reverse the trend entirely as players who liked the game but not the changes return. Simply reversing the stone change and putting Fountains of Youth in each freeport, for example, would probably not be enough; players were expecting other changes to gameplay which have not happened. To really offer an olive branch to the former players, Grapeshot would probably need to address some of the major issues that have lingered since launch and affected most or all players - for example, overhaul the claim system and add offline protection for ships.

The Bad:
If another deeply unpopular change happens this week - say they were to double cannon damage to ship planks and add organic paste to the recipe - the trend suggests the bleed rate will get even worse. At that point, Atlas, which billed itself as an MMO supporting 40,000 concurrent players, will probably never recover.

The Ugly:
Doing nothing will make things worse, because the Fountain of Youth is a ticking time bomb. Despite the reduction of the Old Age debuff, Grapeshot seems not to see the psychologically negative effect of having an unavoidable debuff guaranteed to happen on a timer. Like many others, I played from the beginning and got lucky hitting the FoY immediately, when it was too laggy for the local monsters and wildlife to fight back. My character is already back in his 40s, and I'm logging in less than I used to; I don't plan to keep playing after I hit "Old Age" again.

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18 hours ago, Herkin said:

If this is only tracking official servers, which I believe it is. Like was said above, this can't accurately depict the game as a lot of people have moved on to private servers. 

Shouldn't the fact that an increased rate of players are moving to private servers (which can be modded to negate the age debuff) be a clue as to further prove the OP's analysis true?

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Just now, Tobias said:

Shouldn't the fact that an increased rate of players are moving to private servers (which can be modded to negate the age debuff) be a clue as to further prove the OP's analysis true?

Steamcharts is just going by the current-users data Valve provides for each game on Steam, I don't think it matters what server people are connected to (or if they're connected at all)

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