Tree of Savior Forum

Understanding Statistics, and the Downward Player Trend

General Discussion
#1

There are many active ongoing threads that discuss Tree of Savior’s downward trend of players. They are in some ways correct, but also very misleading, with a lot of misunderstanding. I am going to use SteamSpy as my source, as I break down what some of these statistics mean, and hopefully clear up some of the ongoing misconceptions and answer some questions with my own insight.

Let’s jump in with the most cited statistic, and this is where a lot of the confusion arises, peak concurrent players. There is no doubt that a downwards trend is present. On June 3rd, 24000 peak concurrent players were on, as of September 1st the peak was 6500. That’s a huge loss, but that does not mean the game is dead, and that does not mean the panic button needs to be hit. This is just peak daily concurrent players, so this does not account for casual players who may “only” play for 5 nights a week. This statistic also includes casual players who hop on “only” for an hour. We have to take everything into context, the majority of players, even in MMO’s are casual. Just like in League of Legends, Overwatch, and Counter-Strike, most people might only want to play an hour or two a day, maybe taking a day off every once in a while. My point in saying all this is, peak concurrent players must be taken into context, and a more in depth analysis of the other statistics we have access to must also be considered. This leads me to another important piece of information, players in the last 2 weeks. Steamspy estimates about 95000 players in the past 2 weeks. 95000, is an okay place to be for a new MMO, and the number also confirms what I’ve said about casual players hopping in and out. This also explains why IMC isn’t in overdrive trying to fix their dead game, because, it isn’t dead. The owners, so the total amount of people who currently have the game installed is also increasing at 100000 a month. Now to get in a little deeper, of the 95000 players in the past 2 weeks, 30% (28500) have played more than 5 hours in the past 2 weeks, which may be on the more casual side of things, but just further confirms what I’ve said.

While Tree of Savior overall has a downwards trend of players, and what I’ve said does not account for bots (as there is no real way to do that), the game is not as dead as many believe it to be. The reality is, it has problems, and it currently suffers from a bad reputation, but it is far from dead, and is very salvageable.

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#2

Well said chief. /20charswaitingforsomeonetoscreamthegameisdeadbro

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#3

you just described the main reason why the thread are made…

anyone that think they do it for been informative or cause they care/love the game is a fool…

you don’t burn a forest cause you love trees, you do it cause you want to see it burn and you like the heat as you enjoy the flames

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#4

thanks, someone had to do this, its so simple but ppl just derp around steam spy lol

#5

That’s a terrifyingly accurate way of putting it, and I agree. It’s one thing to open a discussion on a declining population, it’s another thing to have a “tos is ded rip” thread.

It was really starting to bother me, so much misinformation that can be corrected with five minutes of research. No advanced understanding required. This is why IMC doesn’t listen to us more, there’s just so much BS on the forums, who wants go through all the garbage to find the good stuff?

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#6

Great post! Unfortunately I think we need more of these posts… To counter all the people that want to ‘burn the forest’. A phenomenon I still can’t comprehend; why lurk around forums from a game that you’ve supossedly left because it was so bad.

Oh well, that’s a whole different matter I guess :slight_smile:

Thank you for your explenation. As can be seen a lot of people are still enjoying the game for what it is.

#7

Thank you. :slight_smile: I’ve noticed the large amount of negativity also, although some of it is warranted, but overall many people aren’t looking at the situation objectively and they spread dishonest information on the state of the game.

#8

I’d love to know how “owners” data goes down on Steam Spy.

28sept - 31sept drops 40,000 “owners”. Can you remove ownership of a game on steam after you’ve installed it once? I’m not aware of being able to remove something from your Library which is what I assume “owning” a game is on Steam. Deleted steam accounts?

That or there’s elements of guesswork being performed by Steam Spy and it’s an algorithm fluctuation?

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#9

TL;DR: The game isn’t dead. It’s only got a regression of players.

Applying statistical knowledge at times can be nice. I’m glad everytime I see they teach some methods of statistics to a wide range of people at universities. Still, it tends to only serve to prove the lack of Know-how in the fields of economics everytime I see someone apply it.
While we’re at it to bring things into context, why not bring up IMCs history before their development of ToS to see whether “95000” recent “players” are “an okay place to be in”? The game had seen a rapid expansion of interested parties for the international version before. Not only Ragnarok or Granado Espada fans, but people from all sorts of groups had taken a liking to it. Looking at the situation from IMCs perspective, they’ve taken a huge blow to their image and on top of that they’ve been struggling to keep this boat afloat in order to at least be able to hope to cover the costs of the project over time. They’re draining from this project what it’s still worth of course, but with player numbers continually dropping over time, it’s likely that at this rate the upkeep of the game alone will lead to red numbers eventually.

And anyway: Why only take a look at metrics, like an incompetent manager would do to secure his job, instead of looking at the situation in the overall context of an MMO environment which ToS finds itself in?
A MMOs population roughly takes about 6 months to settle on a steady number. That is, while the product has not yet reached it’s regression cycle within it’s lifespan, which ToS clearly seems to have prematurely arrived at.
However:

[quote=“Queue, post:1, topic:325336, full:true”]
The reality is, it has problems, and it currently suffers from a bad reputation, but it is far from dead, and is very salvageable.[/quote]
You are right. The game is still everything but irredeemable. You could slowly see bot numbers dwindling while content and balance changes give rise to a sudden spurt of growth in player numbers and revenue alike.
But you can hardly be inclined to believe that, unless you ignore the measures taken by IMC so far everytime they had to solve a problem. Since, looking at the horrible management of this game, the game does seem a rather lost cause.

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#10

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

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#11

You can remove free to play games from your Steam library, but I believe it is also affected by deleted Steam accounts.

This is the SteamSpy about page: http://steamspy.com/about It gives a little bit of basic info, as well as a link to a run down of what goes into determining the data. SteamSpy also has a margin of error in their numbers, I didn’t include them to make things simple and instead gave an estimate within the range it presented.

Unfortunately information isn’t readily available on the games you mentioned, as well as what it costs to run the game and make it a worth while investment. The point of my post is not to say ToS is in good condition financially, or that comparatively it is doing well to other MMO’s. The point of my post is to show there is a significant player base.

I’m looking at metrics because I’m talking about metrics, I’m not gauging ToS success or failure entirely based off them. And a MMO’s life cycle has many factors, all I stated was there is 95000 recent players, so the situation is not as dire as many seem to think.

It is too early to call it a lost cause, we’re not there yet. IMC does have a mixed track record on management, but once again, we simply don’t have enough information on what’s going on behind the scenes. For all we know, the merger of iToS and kTOS is a huge undertaking that uses most of their resources, and as soon as that is done they’ll fix all the problems we have. We just don’t know, but what we do know are the numbers, which say there are 95000 recent players, and a growing number of people trying the game.

Yeah it’s pretty bad right now, this is the kind of thing they need to make top priority.

#12

it is still not “dead” right now, but the declining population will make it die if it continues longer.

it might be very salvageable at this point, but if it continues on like this, i don’t think it will survive.

less players who pay for TP = less profit, less profit = less money to pay for server fees.

and just look at what the staff/gms are doing on these forums, especially the bug reporting section, do they always reply?

yes… but only on TP related issues, and if they reply, it’s a copy-paste generic reply… like a big slap on the face.

i will not be surprised if nobody from their staff or management ever reads these kind of threads or threads that suggest on how to make the game better.


and whenever i check on stats, i use these:

iToS (based on peak players per month) = http://steamcharts.com/app/372000

kToS (popularity only) = http://www.gamenote.com/rank_ongame/?search_mode=monthly
트리오브세이비어 = Tree of Savior
May - August = not under top 100
April = 89
March = 87
Jan & Feb = 75

well… i still got hope for this game on rank 8 update, but if they still screw up and not fix even the FPS issues, then, gotta move on

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#13

That is a wall of texts!!! Tried to read but end up speed reading anyways. Can you try doing sub topic, summarising, or even some charts? Like a company report. Though i myself still learning it as well.

I still remember markiplier said “if you are in a room filled with fools, then you are in the wrong room. Fill yourself with smart people because you will have the biggest margin of improvement”

Imo, forum should be constantly moderated, updated and debates. Everyone should not be a yes-man and blindly follow popular people. Which i see many people in this forum still do.

#14

What is dead may never die.

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#15

If only this was posted 2 months after F2P Transition maybe you could have convinced people to stay.Salvageable I think so but in the long run what It had the hype and everything a ton of people rushing in the login screen will never come again.

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#16

People die when they’re killed!

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#17

TOS won’t die even if it’s killed.

#18

Every MMO have this part of community who play only to shout ‘‘this game is dead’’ :slight_smile: Normal thing.

#19

I think a lot of people here have it right, no, the game is not dead, but you can’t deny it’s on a steady decline and I agree it is salvageable. Sometimes it’s hard to tell though if IMC is able to salvage it though. The lack of any community managers, the disconnect from what players feel is important is huge. I’m pretty forgiving but my confidence in IMC is pretty damn low. A big part of it is a failure to deliver on promises, the biggest one, imo was the merge of patches. I’m glad we’re only a month behind kToS at this point and have things like transcedence and should have R8 at the end of the month, but they said we’d be on the same patch cycle.

I think that really sums up the experience with ToS and IMC well. Poor communication, overpromising and underdelivering. I really do enjoy this game, I have a ton of fun with it, but sometimes it feels like a chore, because I sit there wondering “why am I doing this? This game won’t even be alive in a year.” I spent like 5-6 years playing WoW? It was nice to have an MMO with that sort of longevity. It becomes hard to invest time in playing something when it feels like it won’t be around for very long.

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#20

Hmm, almost everyone here is talking about useful info and peasants that cannot understand the art of statistics.

CCU is a good way to estimate a game’s “health”. Yes, it may fall off between patches/events with people waiting for a new content, but will a game with 100 avg. CCU and 100k players in 2 weeks who login for 5 minutes to recieve an attendance event revard be healthy?

Those players are always present. 7 players playing 1 day per week and 1 such player will make the same difference as 7 players playing every day and 1 such player.

Compared to first 2 weeks and probably depleting? Let’s compare it with another game that started with 30k CCU and still hitting 20-30k after 3 years.

Ok, you just confirmed that this game follows an average MMO distribution. Now what?

You also bringing big numbers here, but some random RO private server with 1k CCU will probably have 20k players over 2 weeks. This is how it works.

  • Will those 95k players help me to find a random party for 190-200 dungeons? (I won’t even mention others)

  • Will they reanimate the market and fill it with a trash loot from unpopular monsters?

  • Will they turn the world map into a place where I can encounter someone? (except my fellow qwerty, asdfgh, zxcvbn)

P.S. Forgive me if I’m wrong, I’m just a lowly peasant who cannot understand how math works.

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