I am - look at the numbers from last summer/fall to this summer/fall. Both charts are in monthly increments.
Maybe Equinox has done for EVE, maybe not. I don’t really care.
Many EVE players seem to have recollections of some version of ‘The Good Ol’ Days’ (not the UK TV show…). Mine was 2013-2016. I don’t know what the figures were for that period, but we never lacked targets in Highsec and there were thriving OOG communities. People wrote guides (and even updated them…), there were blogs a-plenty for all tastes and interests; it was great.
Now, things seem less vibrant in Highsec. It doesn’t matter to me if the number of players online is as much as 60k; if few of them are available to me as targets, then for me that represents a decline. I still have choices, of course.
I’m sure there’s a critical level at which Pearl Abyss would consider flicking the switch, but as I wrote, above, I don’t really care. One of the reasons for that is my refusal (or inability) to become emotionally invested in a video game, which is essentially a plaything, or any of its participants. I have never made a friend of someone I haven’t met in person.
Make hay while the sun shines!
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Can’t disagree with you there (one of my favorite time periods as well).
And the forums didn’t suck.
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IIRC, a bit less than a year ago we had both a giveaway of free Omega in November, and some further updates in the Havoc expansion. Along with the usual increase in numbers during winter-ish months, that combination drove player numbers higher than they’d been in years.
Equinox may have had a modestly negative impact on player counts but comparing it to last years peak isn’t really germane at this time.
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There has been multiple points in time in the past where SP farms have become break even or not worth it financially. Now if youre paying for your SP farms in 1 month increments youll definitely lose out and have to subsidize the account with isk from other sources, yet with the longer term PLEX deals its fine. I think CCP moved to create longer subscription cycles than monthly with those deals and the current market prices for things, namely PLEX, injector and extractor pricing that fuel the entire SP farm economy. Then the huge extractor deals in the past, both isk sales and real $$ sales, created an investment opportunity and an oversupply issue to drop prices to create a stable profit margin for extractor/injector cycles.
AS for increasing PLEX prices thats entirely normal as if you look at the trends going back before PLEX was split 1:500 the prices increased year over year very linearly and has always grown. To think it would remain stable in light of inflation is just plain stupid but thats just my opinion.
SP farms will always remain profitable if you put in the time and effort to actually play on the account as well as actually doing the SP farming. Be that PI, manu, R&D, homefront, FW, etc. Yet the time needed for each activity per day/week/month is different as well as how much youd like to make in profit changes as well. The purpose of the account in question and if its needed or just luxury for the player will also drive personal decisions to keep it going or mothball it for the future.
Imo I look at accounts as investment opportunities with time/effort requirements with ROI issues in real time and because of that inherently to scale up or down or ramp up/down and in which avenue is always something to consider as the investment opportunity map of Eves activities ebb and flow due to CCPs dev cycles in the different landscapes of Eve. I dont think Im alone in that thinking.
So I hate those thinking oh you should only play such and such because its bad for the game. People will innovate in many different ways. I realized early on in game that SP were the building blocks of Eve within characters. Its the only way you can DO things in game and that gives it the greatest power imo, even above that of isk as it allows one to “earn” and “create” isk.
Come November (and in the following months) we’ll have a better indication whether this is a “blip” or a permanent hit with the player base.
But this is cherry picking which bits you want to notice. And on top of that, making comparisons with some obvious short term spike due to an event…rather than notice the general trend. That is precisely why proper statistical analysis uses fixed period like quarters or years…to avoid anyone creating arbitrary start and end points. On a yearly basis, the figures are unmistakably up.
I compared this summer to last summer, so it’s hardly “cherry-picking”. Pre-Equinox we were around 35k; post-Equinox we’re around 30k. Time will tell if this recovers or continues to drop…
And a drop of 5k active (concurrent) players translates into a loss of a lot more than 5k accounts… It could be as low as 10k or as high as 100k…
Sorry, you wrote “compare jan/jan to jul/jul” which is not the same period.
Compare jan to jan, and jul to jul.
Summer 2023 compared to Summer 2024. You can see the spike just prior to Equinox and the decline through July and August (roughly a difference of -5k players - excluding the pre-Equinox spike). Basically we’ve fallen back to the numbers from last year.
There’s always a bit of a dip over the summer - but this year it’s much more pronounced. Maybe this will recover somewhat as we approach the November release - maybe not.
No.
This graph clearly shows an increase this year.
Before the lowest (0th centile) was 14k. Now it’s 18k.
The highest (100th centile) was 30k. Now it’s 35k.
I guess the median is also increase.
Yes, overall average numbers are up this year (25k) compared to last (21k) - at least insofar as the data indicates for the first 8 months of this year. However, we’ve now fallen back to 2023 numbers (<30k) when up to Equinox we were hitting (35k).
The “valley” this summer is fairly obvious compared to last summer. As I said, only time will tell if this reverses before the end of 2024.
But that is cherry picking. You have to compare like for like. So you are not actually doing so when you bring in a random event like Equinox. A better comparison would be to say that the figure now is just marginally higher than a year ago. That is a valid comparison.
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Yeah this.
You need to define your criterion before having the data to analyze.
Otherwise confirmation bias “If I look at it like that I can pretend I’m right”.
Is daily login now better than one year ago ? Is something you can give criterion for before having the data.
Not that it talks about anything else ^^
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Last summer we went from highs of 25k to 20k over the summer and it returned to 25k in the fall. This summer we went from highs of 35k (excluding the pre-Equinox spike of ~40k) to 30k - and it hasn’t recovered. Yet (emphasis on yet).
This isn’t “cherry-picking” - I’m directly comparing this summer to last summer. So yes, if numbers consistently return to 35k by this fall then it’s moot. Otherwise…
so we went from last year 20k to this year 30k. This is better ?
Yes it is. You search for a specific interpretation of data to be presented as negative while the numbers are actually positive.
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Indeed…that’s why one keeps seeing all those graphs where people deliberately pick some highest point and then deliberately look for some lowest point. One has to compare like for like. Either a year or a quarter as a whole…or the same general period between years. That is how one avoids confirmation bias.
I give up. You can let me know in the fall where the numbers stand.
It is cherry picking…because if you actually look at the graph the figure for now is little different ( possibly a bit more ) than a year ago. The fact that it rose for some event…well of course it did…and for every other event in years past in which it then fell again. The fact that it falls after some event is not exactly new.
If the FT Index rises by 10,000 points for a week and then falls back to where it was a year ago…is that really a drastic fall ? No…its just a blip in the data.
Why ? You are the one picking numbers.
I personally don’t care about those . However I can see that you are looking for a specific interpretation of the number to make them look bad.
You are right that we can compare the effect of an event based on time period comparisons.
However this makes no sense in the case of a singular event.
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