Only the users that are online during the ‘peak concurrent user’ moment will be counted in that daily statistic. This includes all the characters that are online all day (such as cloaky campers) and will not include all the characters that happen to be offline at that moment, which is a significant part of all characters, as regular players aren’t online all day and most of them won’t count to those statistics because of that.
On average, a character that is logged in all day (such as an afk cloaky camper) counts like 12 players who are only logged in 2 hours a day, as the chance a 2 hour per day player is logged in during the peak is 2/24 or 8.3%. Or when we consider that there are 50% more players during the peak than in other times of the day, we increase that chance by 50% for a 12.6% chance that that player is counted in the ‘daily peak’ statistics.
The chance that an 24/7 afk cloaky is counted in the peak is 100%. In other words, 8 times more often than a player who plays 2 hours a day.
Add that those AFK cloakers are most likely multiboxing and you’ll see that their stats have a significantly higher effect towards daily login numbers than those of regular players.
Yeah, gotta disagree with your synopses of how it works, mainly because all accounts are counted during the 24 hr period between DT’s and the time period with the largest amount is then classified as PCU.
The PCU is the highest number of accounts logged in at the same time for that day, anyone who doesn’t play, or isn’t logged in, at the exact time that daily peak is reached isn’t counted. Since daily peaks generally happen around EU time zones that means anyone who is in the US and doesn’t play early won’t be counted, UNLESS they have some alt(s) logged in 24/7 for “various uses”.
All accounts are indeed counted during the 24hr period.
But when people are looking at login numbers, they look at the daily peak numbers. Only the accounts that are online during that peak moment are counted in those statistics. All the people who aren’t playing at that moment but at other moments of the day aren’t counted in the daily peak.
It doesn’t happen at the same time, but it happens at a certain moment. Only the users logged in at that specific moment are counted, the ones that are online at other moments of the day but not at that moment aren’t counted.
He’s correct though, you’re thinking about something else. There are two things that are counted:
Users currently online.
The users online when (1) is at it’s peak.
Anyone who isn’t logged in during the peak but is playing at another time of the day is indeed ‘counted’, but they’re only counted in number 1, but not counted in number 2.
As people usually refer to the daily peak statistics, those users who aren’t online during the peak aren’t counted.
And the highest number of UCO of that day IS the PCU. PCU stands for Peak Concurrent Users, not total. Meaning that if you weren’t online at the moment that peak happened you’re not counted.
Heh, just because the PCU amount is stated doesn’t mean nobody else is counted during the 24 hr period which is what you people were originally saying…
In my opinion the PCU amount is misleading since it’s only active for a brief period of time. Viewing the average amount of players online per 24 hr period displayed in Eve Offline is much more realistic view of player retention…
I never originally said that people were not counted during the 24hr period. I said they were not counted towards the peak number.
Correct, the PCU is misleading.
I agree that this is a better representation.
But if we go back to my earlier point of AFK cloaked players showing up much more in the statistics than a regular player who’s logged in only a couple hours a day: if you average the numbers, people who are logged in 24h a day are counted 12 times more towards those statistics than a regular player that’s only logged in 2h a day.
Regardless of whether you use the peak amount of players or the average amount of players, characters that are logged in all day will severely skew your data.
That’s because of how the average is calculated. Simple example:
2 players online total during the day.
One player is active for 24 hours,
One player is active for 2 hours.
What is the average amount of players online during the day?
Most of the time you see only 1 player online. 2 hours you see 2 players.
The average amount of players online during that day is (24+2)/24 = 1.083 players.
(1.000 player of that value is contributed by the player that’s online 24h, 0.083 player is contributed by the player that only logged in for 2 hours during that day. In other words, the player that is online 12 times as long counts 12 times as much toward the average amount of players online)
Yes it would be but that’s not what’s done and not what’s expected because all games like this work with PCU.
Also, if that were the case then the number would be higher. at 6AM EVE time there’s some 15k people online and at 6PM EVE time there’s some 20K online (just some numbers, not saying those are exact). BIG chance a very large portion of those are not the same players so then the player count would be around 35K+, but it isn’t. So that’s not how it’s done.
I didn’t log in the other day because I was working on something I really really didn’t want to be working on and doing it in rather intense heat. So… Yep, you nailed it. I was not having one speck of fun.
