Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
WE can agree to disagree, based on what is see in the current disccusion there isn't really good faith and its more self centered. Last I'm going to say on that.
There is often a lack of good faith in discussions on these forums.
That is a result of the people, not the medium.
Good faith requires the knowledge that you may be wrong. Engaging someone in discussion on a topic but then refusing to answer points from them that prove you wrong is bad faith.
If bad faith exists in a discussion, the medium that discussion happens in does not matter - the bad faith exists regardless.
I have had you on ignore for years, so... I miss the vast majority of your posts.
I have a very low opinion of your comprehension abilities, so I'm rarely trying to engage you in any kind of meaningful discussion.
Sometimes I see your quotes in other people's posts and use your quote typically as a counterpoint that helps me explain to others why your position is incorrect.
You can try to re-post whatever numbers you're claiming don't work.
It's gonna be many, many, many pages any time Noanni, Mag7spy and I are not in agreement.
One of the main reasons I have Noanni on ignore. Helps prevent me from constantly trying to correct him.
(And Endgame Dungeons and Raids.)
If you reply to someone in a thread, and then do not reply to valid points they then bring up, that is bad faith on your part. You having that poster on ignore is not an excuse - you are the one that replied to them in the first place.
Either fully engage people in discussion, or do not start engaging them in discussion.
Picking and chosing is - again - bad faith.
If choosing when to respond to you and when not to is bad faith - I will happily embrace bad faith.
It does not take a genius to figure out that 25%/75% are broad guesstimations rather than precise calculations.
If you want to say 4x rather than 5x, we can go with that.
Same difference. The exact math is not relevant enough for me to waste brain space on.
It's also not intended to line up precisely with 25%/75%. It's really a separate guesstimation from the data.
And the primary data is from NW. There was also another peak population source, but I don't remember off the top of my head which one I checked.
I definitely did not check EQ2 data since I stopped playing EQ\EQ2 10 years ago and barely consider EQ/EQ2 relevant. I'm not expecting EQ2 to get a Battlepass - mostly because I consider EQ/EQ2 to be outdated and mostly obsolete. And I'm not expecting Daybreak to innovate much on those games.
Unbroken subs are not the same thing as peak population. I typically stay subbed for several months of not playing before I cancel my sub.
That being said... yes. I think EQ/EQ2 and WoW are also dealing with population issues (which we know they have from server merges and low pop servers) by offering "Classic" Modes as an alternative to "Retail".
So Battlepasses aren't the only method of player retention. Although, I didn't claim that Battlepasses are the only option for retaining players.
We can expect Intrepid to want to maximize population since it's a PvP game - and higher population provides more targets for PvP.
If other people want to drill down into precise evaluations of player retention they can do so and share the numbers. Sure.
I mean, sure - the problem is you attributed the figures the wrong way around.
You claimed 75% of players leave the game at the level cap, when data suggests that this number is closer to 25%.
Your inference was then that ony 25% of players stay in the game at the level cap, but the actual data suggests that this number is closer to 75%.
If you want to estimate things, that is fine. I don't expect you to have the figures on hand as I do. However, when you are wildly inaccurate with your estimates, you should expect to be corrected.
And that is my point - your numbers were wildly inaccurate. This is not the first time you have been spouting this notion that players leave games en masse when they hit level caps, and is also not the first time I have pointed out that you are objectively wrong.
You can claim EQ2 is not the most relavent game to pull this data from, but we have it for all Daybreak games (which is why I stated a 65 - 80% range, that is the range of their games).
So, unless you want to come up with some reason as to why Daybreak games have around three times the player retention between expansions than what you claim to be the case for MMO's in general, or until you can produce similar figures for other games, then this data from Daybreak is the best factual data we have, and you have no recourse at all to refute said data.
A such, you have no logical option other than to accept it - or admit that you are not interested in factual data.
LOL. You guys are practically the same person.
A less refined person might call the personality type as 'know it all blowhards that use semantics and mental gymnastics to never "lose" an argument'.
At least Noanni is actually planning on playing the game, which, even though I disagree with almost every condescending post he makes, gives him the leg up, imo.
Love you guys.
Until the game out you can't be sure who is and isn't going to play. Noaani has said his group had little or no interest in AoC from what I gathered from past post at that time.
I wouldn't say he has a leg up at all, even more so in this disccusion saying a battlepass is a loot box.
I stand corrected. At least, though, he does not bring it up in every (or nearly) thread. or does he? I tend to not even read his posts most of the time anymore.
You would have to dig through hundreds of pages of post. I'd say he doesn't say it all the time. But also Dygz says he will be testing the game in AoC. Which is kind of something that is needed. Playing the game and testing are two different things. So though he won't be playing it, he still will be testing which all the people that are testing will help with the development of the game and bring it to launch.
Doing your usual "reading posts as you want them, rather than how they are".
I didn't say battlepass are lootboxes. I said they are a replacement for them (Epic was forced to remove the aspect of loot boxes that made them so profitable, and so developed battlepass for Fortnite). I also said that in the future there will be random aspects to Fortnites battlepass, akin to lootboxes.
However, I specifically did not say that battlepass is a loot box.
You may actually be a fairly intelligent poster about gaming in general - but until you learn to properly read and understand people's posts, you will do nothing other than continue to come across as the exact opposite of that.
I understood it perfectly well and you are still going on about battlepasses as loot boxes
See, you are the reason the forums are as they are.
You know what you are saying is bullshit. People wanting to point out that what you are saying is bullshit are then required to spend an inordinate amount of time doing so, and others on the forums simply skipo over posts.
You really are single handedly ruining the forums - and I am saying this knowing full well that @Vaknar may well ban me. Quite frankly, if you acting the way you are on these forums is what we all have to deal with, I don't care if I get banned.
Grow the fuck up.
Issue is actually you, you want people to agree with your takes on good faith so it can't be pointed out to be wrong. And you start to twist disccusion by trying to inject loot boxes in it, impossible to even take you seriously when you get to this point. Throwing away integrity to say anything to try to make your point seem right or good.
The one acting like a child right now is you btw that is the definition of a tantrum. When you have a good point I have no issue liking it if it takes sense or having a disccusion. but I'm not running around in circles with you. Pretty sure there is a reason why most people are not responding to your every point int his thread. You also don't need to reply to my every point.
Take a breath and have some self reflection.
I expected a post similar to this from you.
While there have been times I have misunderstood posters (specifically you), any time that misunderstanding has been cleared up (which you often refuse to do - I can't do anything in those circumstances), that is the end of it.
The only time I continue on with a misunderstanding is if and when you opt to not correct it.
Don't come along and accuse me of injecting something in to this discussion that you had already started talking about. If you thought that me bring loot boxes in to this discussion made it impossible to take me seriously, what does it mean now that you know you mentioned them twice in this thread before I did?
How can you take yourself seriously at this point? If it was you that did something that you just claimed made you unable to take someone else seriously, where does that leave you?
Some self reflection is indeed warranted...
When someone asking how i feel about loot boxes, doesn't mean you derail a thread and start talking about the future is they will be doing loot boxes so BP are bad because you are making things up saying they will be loot boxes now. When i was repeatedly said to you no one is arguing for loot boxes in the thread.
You are so desperate to try to win conversations on a forum in your mind you will start to make things up to try to say you are right. Its kind of a meme imo at this point.
You need to stop trying to win arguments in your own mind and understanding people. I'm hoping self reflection will help with that. Which will lead to less going in a circle, trying to warp what someone else says to fit a narrative you are trying to create over trying to understand someone else, etc.
It was that post of yours that turned it from being a comment on the side of the discussion to being something that was the main point of a number of posts.
Again, that whole reflection thing. I'm less concerned with winning arguments than I am concerned with people that want to participate in them
arguing in a logical and decent manner.
I've happily concieded a number of points in discussion with other posters (NiKr comes to mind as the most frequent recently), and agreed to disagree with a number of other posters (Depraved - while he are actually fairly good debators in some topics, this doesn't hold true for all topics, when he cares about a topic though, he always brings up very good points).
It's just you that doesn't see this
You turn in to what you have been in this thread (making blatantly false claims about what others have said, for example) long before the discussion has been exhausted. You seem to think that people should flip their opinion based on almost any comment at all, rather than thinking those people should have an actual in depth discussion on the matter, and consider it from many points of view before abandoning their position. Further, you think that people whom are doing exactly this are instead trying to "win the argument" when all they are doing is exploring the opposing view in order to decide if it is a better opinion to hold or not.
From my view, "winning" an argument isn't about being right, you win an argument when there is a conclusion - either people agree that they have different positions on it, or when either party agrees that the opposing opinion is a better opinion to have and so switches to that. That is a debate that has a winner - not one where people bring in bullshit in order to "be right" which is what many consider to be the "win condition" of a discussion.
This is why you never convince people of anything - you can't stay focused in the debate long enough.
If you have a truely good point, and are truely correct, let people debate against it all they want. Point out where the faults in their argument are and give them time to realize that they are wrong. If that person is debating in good faith, they will realize.
If they are not debating in good faith, well, you need a mirror, because that is you when I am simply arguing my point and showing you the issues with your perspective. Rather than debating it because you think you are correct, you decend in to childish behavior - and you know I am not the only person on these forums that has called you out for it (though I am the only one calling it shildish behavior, I believe).
I have never posted anything on these forums that I have made up, other than in discussions where I am talking specifically about ideas.
If I talk figures, it is because I have those figures. You may not, but that is your problem, not mine.
Just so you are aware, this is a document containing a number of figures I have stated on these forums recently. There are many ways to get actual figures on matters pertaining to MMORPG's, and documents like this is but one such way (earnings calls are another great method). I'm showing you this more in the hopes that you will realize that there is real data out there that you can find, rather than making things up in an attempt to support your argument - something I know Dygz is well past being capable of doing. This is a 'benefit of the doubt' type thing. - I'm hoping you take this on board.
When I say things like "Epic are developing battlepass to replace loot boxes", that is something else I have solid reasoning for as well. Again, you may not have that information, but that is your problem, not mine. Epics HR listings are fairly public, you can see what kinds of skills they are looking for. if they are looking for people with experience in gambling, and if they put those people with that experience to work on battlepass rather than loot boxes, it isn't all that hard to draw conclusions that are fairly accurate in regards to where they want to take battlepass.
As far as I'm concerned that loot box question was directed at me which you than quoted me and tried to spiral a reasoning against BP and tying it to loot box or more so trying to use fear in the future of what it turns into. Which isn't even relevant at all to any current conversation. You are just being disingenuous and ruining the conversation trying to use that as your point.
Naa you are in this to win and you are looking for people with the same view point as you. You aren't looking to understand another view point you can tell by how you engage in discussion. Idk why you are talking about you are conceding points when both you and Nikr are on the same side. Just shows even more so you are looking for a echo chamber to reinforce your points. And the reason why made up points get brought up, with you trying to use loot boxes as part of the staple in your argument (if you were not you would have given up on pushing that point and said it wasn't strong or just say you were wrong).
Me saying you are making up points isn't isolated to it not existing, but you trying to make false comparisons, or use some sort of fear mongering as they both are not relevant and are made up. What is the game doing, what is the norm of the current landscape of monetization, how is it effecting things in general and content. Staying in reality is pretty important else you are just making a disccusion a fantasy argument on the level of who would win in an anime character fight.
*edit
As far as this data post that be up to dygz to look into it. For me yes data is good but imo the purpose is meant to make it look good and appealing and doesn't mean all elements are exactly true. I have a strong feeling this could be picked apart IE battleside 2 carrying most of their numbers but them trying to not make that clear. Even if some older games are dead.
But I'm not really going to get into that 0 desire to do the work required or more important things i could be doing. Surprised you being anti corpo and taking corpo charts at face value though.
Sure, I did direct a point in relation to loot boxes towards you, but that was well after you had started talking about them, and after I had mentioned them to someone else.
At that point, you have no grounds at all for claiming - and I am obviously directly quoting you here;
Again, you bought these up before I did. You can not complain that someone else mentions them to you when you are the one that bought them up.
This is a problem you exhibt a lot in discussions. You seem to just want to ignore the actual history of the discussion.
You need to learn the difference between a false comparison and an analogy.
Analogies are used to get a person to understand an unfamiliar concept - but only a specific aspect of that concept. As soon as you take an analogy to a second step, the analogy itself is already broken (even though that analogy can often be taken to that second degree to illustrate a counter-point).
The reason I believe this is something you need to learn is because I use analogies on occasion, but I rarely use actual comparisons.
If you are getting the two confused, or do not understand the difference between the two, that is an actual problem that you need to address. I assume you mean Planetside 2.
Feel free to TLDR to the last paragraph if you like, but I will continue.
And no, Planetside 2 is not holding Daybreak up.
Some of the numbers in that document are illegal to mis-represent. EBITDA is one such figure (even though it isn't a GAAP reconized metric, you still can't misreport it), and is essentially an alternate method for determining net profit.
Planetside 2 makes up only 6% of EBITDA.
EQ makes up 30% - thus if any one game were able to be said to be carrying the company, it would be that game. DCUO is the second, LOTRO is third, and EQ2 is fourth, DDO is fifth, and Planetside 2 is last.
If you contrast that to the bookings per game graph (basically, the revenue of each product), you can make some interesting comparisons. If you take the percentage of a games revenue, and compare it to the percentage of each games EBITDA, you can get an idea of how much development time each game takes to generate that revenue (comparible only to the other games in that document).
DCUO is taking in 38% of revenue, yet is only responsible for 28% of EBITDA, thus it is taking up more developer time to maintain that game at that state than other games are.
However, if you look closer at other figures, you see some other aspects come to light.
DCUO has almost 420k monthly active users, but less than 10% of those players are subscribed to the game. Part of the reason DCUO has the largest number of active users is because it is the game that is available on the most platforms (PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch). However, with a comparatively low percent of subscribed users, and witha middle-of-the-road per user revenue, it is understanable tht DCUO may well have costs that are incurred that are higher per paying user that the other games in the stable simply don't have, thus a lower ratio of bookings per game in relation to EBITDA is understandable.
If we then take that close a look at Planetside 2, we see a very different picture. The game is available on two platforms (PC and PS4). It also has almost 200k average monthly users. However, it's subscribed player count is almost as low as DCUO's, with only 25k subscribed (second lowest count in the company). Planetside 2 also has the lowest per paying user monthly revenue, at only $35.70 per. It also has the lowest player retention of all games in the company, with only 65% of it's members having been subscribed for 3 years or more.
While Planetside 2 does have the highest percentage of it's players being new to the game (though not the highest number outright), it also has the lowest ratio of converting those new users in to long term users, at only 10%.
All of this combined is why Planetside 2 has the worst ratio of bookings to EBIDTA of the six games in that document. It is making 6% of EBIDTA (or profit), yet it is taking in 11% of revenue - meaning less of it's revenue is profit in relation to other games.
Then if we look at EQ2 (since I talk about it often). The game has a lower player count than either of the two above, but it has easily the second highest ratio of subscribed users in the entire company at 72.4%. It has the second highest average spend per paying monthly user at $52.30 (DDO having an average monthly spend of $65.20 is actually crazy). It has the highest long term player retention of any game listed, with 80.5% of all paying users being subscribed for 3 years or more. It has the highest rate of new user conversion (turning people new to the game in to paying customers) at 42%. This all adds up to an incredibly healthy, profitable, but still small, MMORPG.
It is worth pointing out that if you combine EQ2 and Planetside 2, you have a total revenue for Daybreak of 20%, and a total EBIDTA of 19% for the company - meaning the argument could be made that EQ2 is proping Planetside 2 up, as when combined they roughly make equal percentages of revenue and profit.
Everything from when I said you can TLDR to this point is just to point out to you the wealth of actual data available to those looking for it - there is so much you can learn and understand - and know - on things like this. The claim that I bring in false facts is just outright incorrect - I do, however, bring in facts that you were unaware of, and so next time there is a fact I mention that you were not aware of, consider it to be just another of these facts that are new to you.
If it was before around page 20 im not looking through every page to see which one it is not that it matters. As it leans into my point is you are injecting bs into the conversation trying to say loot boxes are going to be battle passes in this situation. Its not relevant information and again more fearmongering with you trying to paint a narrative.
No you really do make false comparisons, that is actually a fact. You can try to twist it all you want, if you don't realize you are doing it that is something you need to work on and understand. Or simply not to add things that are not really relevant to the conversation or work on making your skills better to clarify it. Though you 100% do that and will continue to bring false compassions to discussions as you normally do in general.
You are literarily trying to say BP are bad because they will do this. You are making comparisons on what you think is the future of loot boxes. Though this has nothing to do with AoC with what people are arguing about with loot boxes. And you are injecting falsehood into the conversation and trying to hint at gambling so AoC shouldnt have BP. Bloating the convo with nonsense and a false comparison.
I didn't say everything you say is false but you manipulate points in a dishonest way. This is exactly one case of it where you are trying to say look where i got my information its not false. Meanwhile this has nothing to do with my point on these numbers you are pulling from. You are just trying to misdirect here when you know I'm talking about the loot box element. And id have to go through other threads to hand pick different topics though its not need since there is already an example in this thread.