Spiral Knights - Does OOO have a problem with this?

Does OOO have a problem with this?

48 replies [Last post]

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 13:43

Klipik

http://steamcommunity.com/stats/SpiralKnights/achievements

This is just Steam players, but even so, the drop-off rates of player progression are fairly sickening. Here's some stats from the list:

-78% of players got to the rescue camp. aka, 22% of people downloaded this game and never played it.
-55% of players completed the tutorial and made it to Haven. Only a little more than half of the people who got this game finished the tutorial.
-24% of players deposited a mineral into the gate construction.
-14.5% of players heated any item to level 10.
-13.2% of players crafted a 1* item.
-12.6% of players beat Snarbolax.
-10.4% of players got T2 clearance. Only 10% of people made it 1/3 of the way through the game.
-3.8% of players defeated the Royal Jelly.
-2.8% of players defeated The Roarmulus Twins.
-2.1% got T3 clearance.
-1.4% got to the core.
-1% defeated Vanaduke.
-.5% of people obtained a full five star set.

Is this what you want, OOO? Do you want .5% of people who download this game to get to the point where they would regularly spend money and provide stable revenue?

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 13:52

Shamanalah

my 2 cents

Trick question:

How many mules are in there and did not even made it past the tutorial?

At least 6 in my case... so... there you go...

Stats are stats... Take them and understand them... don't just check them and see low scores and *instant panic attack*

The fun part for me is: I got all the achievement with my main

Edit: And I got all my stuff 5* as a F2P... and know a lot of people who did too

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 13:52

Tin-Foil-Hat

Not an accurate assessment.

Not an accurate assessment. Pretty sure more people play this game outside of the steam client than with the steam client, even if thats not the case, theres a huge amount of players unaccounted for who arent using steam.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 15:07

Klipik

@Sham, steam accounts are based on entire profiles, and you can only have one steam account. So, unless you created a steam account for the sole purpose of making an SK alt, all your achievements from all your character slots will be counted as one user.

@TFH: I agree and acknowledge that many players don't use steam, but it should be at least somewhat representative of the larger playerbase, right?

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 15:12

Neodasus

As a steam player, I'm fairly

As a steam player, I'm fairly certain people only played this game to get the hat or the achievement for winterfest.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 15:16

Klipik

@Neo

Only 32% got the hat, and only 9.8% got the winter achievement. (you had to get to the first CW terminal to get the hat.)

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 15:28

Xtweeterx

Not to mention the Mission

Not to mention the Mission Accomplished Achievement of 32.1% which suggest some of this played it just for teh TF2 hat. Which is just sickening to both communities.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 18:33

Vesperaldus

HINT HINT

Now you know why OOO doesn't care about us endgame players. We "only" make up .5% of Cradle's population.

Oh, and I do believe OOO has overall statistics of this as well as other things we aren't specifically aware of.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 18:36

Neodasus

I'm pretty sure more than

I'm pretty sure more than 0.5% of ACTIVE players are T3

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 18:54

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

I'm afraid that could be what it is...

A large amount of past content was aimed at new players because no one was getting that far? The problem is that now people will go a short distance and then dump it due to lack of content once hitting the grind wall.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 18:56

#10

Klipik

@Neo again

That may be true, but the number of people who ever got to T3 is a very small fraction of those who got the game. That's not a good retention rate.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 19:03

#11

Aumir

Well

I think it is due to not only being a "TF2 hat" game, but because not just endgame, is progression itself in this game that is horribly paced. Tier 2 end hits you like a truck with those 400CE (which due to unsolved continous inflation have got even harder to get for newbies) 4* pieces that require extensive monotonous grinding and locks you out of Tier 3 Missions onwards, which if OOO would have strengthened Arcade and made it a place to give REAL random gameplay with interesting rewards would keep players interested instead of "mainstreaming" it all with Mission support.

Even if OOO adds a new level with a chance to come out, it is just a level that may come out in Gate Generation or not, and adding a new enemy (Gorgos) only adds it to their respective levels, which is just a bandage and not a true solution. Also, new gameplay mechanics coming like Shieldbash and Dash as well as Battle Sprites will spice things up, BUT we need somewhere to use all of that, or else Spiral Knights will keep on being "grind boss levels/arenas ad infinitum".

All in all, I think that this game needs a real random dungeon. Something that can mix everything and anything in a continous stream of levels, that encourages teamplay if possible due to its random generation and continously increasing difficulty. This should keep players entertained, have the select level feature of the Missions, the themed levels of the Arcade, and this 100% random dungeon. Which of course should have an interesting amount of income to make it an alternative to boss grinding or arena grinding.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 19:06

#12

Narfle

erhm

Well, last time I saw the statistics, there was an average of around 2k active SK players on steam (there were a little over 1k steam players in-game a few hours ago when I checked last). If we assume steam is a fair representation of player behavior, that means when you add all of the other venues for SK--Kong, etc.--you could pretty quickly wind up with around 10k active players on average, of which (again, using the steam achievement statistics) only around 500 are fully 5*? Mmmmm no, there are way more than 500 fully 5* players in-game. My guild alone, adjusting for activity, still accounts for more than 100 fully 5* players.
Long story short: what Sham and Tin said. Fun fact: just under a year ago was the 3 million account announcement.

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 20:27

#13

Xxpapaya

The papaya giggles

@Narfle
Lol, 1 Skylark has crashed XD
Still, I wonder how many players Spiral Knights has right now..................

@Aumir, @Xtweeterx, @(anyone who mentioned the word "hat" in their post)
I don't understand why people even BOTHER getting the hat (Spiral Sallet to be exact), to be honest, out of all the time I've spent playing TF2, I've only seen about /thinks back to the time when I was playing TF2, 5 people actually wearing the hat. So let me get this straight (directed at people who play Spiral Knights just to get the TF2 hat)

You download Spiral Knights, which takes about 15 minutes
You go through the tutorial, which takes about 5 minutes
You complete all of the missions and get to Haven, which takes about 20-45 minutes
You get the hat
You then, forget all about it

Wah? Fails to see logic

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 20:35

#14

Narfle

The skylark had a lot of seats ;)

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 21:08

#15

Xxpapaya

The papaya giggles

@Narfle
And a lot of escape pods XD 3 million!?(maybe more now XD)

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 01:31

#16

Gravelord-Caste

Take off your mask. Then show us your Smile.

I don't see how these numbers are indicative of the No. of active Steam players.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 02:53

#17

Misten

I don't see why

I don't see why some people are counting those who are just demoing the game as real players, and then used it as a case against active players.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 07:24

#18

Klipik

It's not about only active players. This is all steam players since June 2011, when the game was released on steam. 0.5% is the number of those players who made it to 5*. Which means 99.5% of players who played on steam quit somewhere in there. With 3 million accounts, if you assume this is representative of all playerbases (which it isn't quite, but they should be at least similar), then it shouldn't be 500 active players who are 5*, like Narfle said. Most likely people who make it to endgame stick around more than people who don't. So, it makes sense that more than 0.5% of active players are 5*. If you use this statistic and this percentage, there should have been 150,000 accounts that have gotten to 5* out of 3 million. Keep in mind, that 3 million includes alts.

Even if you discount the people who never made it to haven as demoers, there's still a large percentage drop. That doesn't say good things about the progression, if only 20% of players who made it to haven made it to T2, and only 20% of those made it to T3.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 07:35

#19

Little-Juances

As a free game, I'm sure many people with no interest in MMOs or the like downloaded SK one boring afternoon just for kicks, then never played it again. Because free stuff is free stuff.

Keep in mind SK was also the first free game on steam (not counting TF2 conversion). Everyone wanted to see what this F2P thing was.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 08:14

#20

The-Worst-Knight

http://store.steampowered.com

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 17:30

#21

Misten

Yes, the key point is that 3

Yes, the key point is that 3 million includes alts and alts don't strive to be T3 (too much effort to do so). There are less effort and some reasons (like free gifts to different tiers players) to get alts to be T2. Just buy all the 2 stars stuff from Ah and baam you are T2 now. If you considered how many alts are created just to mist craft, 1 main to 4 alts ratio is not far stretch (doesn't mean the real main to alt ration is 1:4, just that it skew the picture).

My main point is that, the statistics obtained this way is useless. A big alarm should sound when you notice 22% of people downloaded this game and never played it. That is how irrelvant the statistics are.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 10:08

#22

Tin-Foil-Hat

Most steam players probably

Most steam players probably played it for the Spiral Hat in TF2 and not the game for the actual game, soo i dont know. Originally my intention was to do what i said previously but i began to enjoy the game quite a bit after giving it some time soo i never stopped playing it after getting the hat.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 10:17

#23

Fehzor

And what percentage of accounts are crafting alts?
...Only played the game for the lump of coal/tf2 hat?

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 13:03

#24

Aumir

Wait...

...so everyone then uses alts? Then let us see, if all 0.5% 5* used 3 alts multiboxing for max crown grinding, then it would mean that a whopping 2% of the population... wait that leaves 98% free yet. Still a 97.5% isn't 5*.

And about the hat: well, the same reason people hoard Sonic sets and Regalias, to sell them. Dunno if it is bound, but after all SKnights is used for CE trading to Steam games etc, so I doubt it isn't the same for the hat.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 13:16

#25

Fehzor

Some of that .5% hold an

Some of that .5% hold an exuberant amount of alt accounts, and many more non-5* players make an alt just to try having more than one going, but then fail when they realize that they can't run them all on the same computer due to the mist restrictions.

Another part of this is that many people play the game, see the energy and leave. You can say what you'd like about them, but they're potential 'customers' or at least players that aren't any more.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 13:34

#26

Paweu

What do you get for getting a

What do you get for getting a full 5* set? Is there a prize for getting it? You might not realise this but there are people in this game who played since the launch and still don't even have a single 5* piece. Unless you want to farm KoA like a farmer there isn't really much point in getting your gear that far for most players because they play for fun, not to work fulltime in a game. They craft random stuff, have fun with it, you know. You can also enjoy most if not all of the game content with 4* stuff.

And of course you have to substract all the people who just joined for the achievements.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 13:40

#27

Gravelord-Caste

Take off your mask. Then show us your Smile.

Can I just say this? That .5% might not account the 5* people who don't care about a specific weapon type or types, the 1% who defeated Vana may not be 5*, and the same goes for the 1.4% who got to the core.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 14:33

#28

Gwenyvier

There are many, MANY more

There are many, MANY more people on Steam that downloaded the game just to do the 2 achievements than to actually play the game. One was to get a Firecracker, the other was to hit somebody with a snowball in LD. They installed the game, got the achievement, and promptly uninstalled it. I believe one was for the Spiral Sallet in TF2, the other was part of a contest where you had to get certain achievements in a few free games and you got something for doing it. I was not on Steam at the time and don't know what the "something" was.

Meaning the numbers for Steam players on SK are extremely flawed. You have all those accounts that just joined for the 2 achievements clogging up the real numbers. It is like a game I saw in an app store. If you gave the game a 5 star rating they'd give you something in game... so the numbers are artificially altered.

~Gwen

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 15:36

#29

Flowchart

For that 5* achievement you

For that 5* achievement you need a gun and bomb. Not all 5* players bother to do that.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 16:29

#30

Wodanct

The snowball achievement was part of a contest on steam for their christmas contest. Getting that achievement gave you a piece of coal on Steam. 7 Coal crafted together (i think) = a coupon or low chance of a free game. Keeping your coal instead gave you a chance of -all- games on Steam being yours for christmas. Not to mention each coal was a chance for a daily prize of coupons or free games also.

My coal from that achievement ended up giving me Half-Life 2 Episode 2 >.>

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 17:32

#31

Klipik

@everyone talking about people who just joined for achievements

Achievement for getting Spiral Sallet in TF2 - Mission Accomplished - 32.1%
Achievement for getting Firecracker bomb - Star-Spangled Bomber - 9.1%
Achievement for getting Coal - Son of a Nutcracker - 9.8%

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 18:08

#32

Fehzor

Perhaps people install the game and then forget about it though... that would inflate the statistic a bit? Because there is no way that 20+% of the players are unable to get to the rescue camp... I mean, finding a username and walking 30 feet can be difficult, but..

So predicting that that percentage should be 100%, how would that change them?

22/100 = not played
55/100 = made it to haven.. but 22/100 is objectively seperate from that 55/100.
So: 55/78 = 71/100 made it to haven after playing the game.

(I think I'm doing my math correctly.)

10.4% of players heated an item fully- = 10.4/78 = 13.3%

Its still rather depressing.. So what if you took out the other portion of people?

78 - 55 = 23. 23/100 players that installed the game and made it to the rescue camp were lost in the tutorial, or got bored before completing it. Or just didn't complete it. The rest? 55 players of 100 made it to haven.

10.4/55 = 19%. 19% of the players that got to haven were able to find something else to do, and were able to heat any item to level 10.

19% represents the number of knights that, after making it to haven, came back a second day to play Spiral Knights and liked the game.

Compare this to 71% of players, that made it through the tutorial mission without just quitting because they didn't like the game.

This means that:

No more than 29% of players are lost and don't make it to haven due to incompetency
No more than 81% of players simply put, didn't like the game because of some other reason. And who knows what that reason would be.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 17:54

#33

Byas

The ones that didn't cross the rescue camp are probably mostly composed by the ones trying to get "son of a nutcracker" that gave up after seeing it can't be done right when you start the game.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 19:07

#34

Misten

Mist crafting alt don't need

Mist crafting alt don't need to

-deposit a mineral into the gate construction.
-heat any item to level 10.
-craft a 1* item (unless to gain access to 2* Hall of Heroes for recipes).
-beat Snarbolax. (unless to gain access to 2* Hall of Heroes for recipes)
-get T2 clearance (unless to gain access to 2*Hall of Heroes for recipes)
-defeat Royal Jelly.
-defeat The Roarmulus Twins.
-get T3 clearance.
-get got to the core.
-defeat Vanaduke.

Please stop using this set of numbers unless you can separates the alts account.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 19:07

#35

Pine-Fresh

I am part of the 1% :O

............

Time to take down those "down with the 1%" signs on my lawn xD

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 19:11

#36

Wodanct

Are people still trying to imply people made alternate steam accounts to make alternate SK accounts instead of just using the vanilla client?

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 19:29

#37

Klipik

Agreed with Wodanct, people don't create entire steam accounts just to make a mist alt. Or at least, not many. Definitely not enough to make a large difference in these stats.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 20:39

#38

Byas

There are alts to get steam masks though.

Thu, 05/09/2013 - 11:01

#39

Adamosaur

Also note that Steam has this

Also note that Steam has this habit of placing games (free to play ones) in your game library without you placing them there. Of course, you still have to click to begin the download, but just the fact that it is there might be enough for players to download the game, play it (or not) then leave after they run out of 100 mist (mostly from doing a few missions and crafting things for missions). If they don't join an active guild or make friends in that time (or play SK with friends otherwise) they are unlikely to stay. Unfortunately SK is not that inspiring anymore, especially when you see an endless wall of missions you have to do with your mist regenerating at +1 per 13.2 minutes.
I only noticed this because steam decided to place TF2 in my steam library (greyed out since I had to install it, but still there and annoying) so I had to go to some lengths to redelete the item from my games....I don't like having wasted space there with games I don't play.

Currently there are about 900 players playing Spiral Knights through steam (logging in with steam accounts).
Hopefully this will go up up up once it reaches 2-5pm in the states, as players aged 13-18 (lol 13 minimum) come home from school.

Personally I have my main account with full 5star gear and all achievements. I have made a 2nd account but technically that isn't another player with these stats since my one steam account (tied to both accounts) cannot get an achievement twice. I seriously doubt that many people are making new steam accounts for alts (running two steam clients at once? hope you have 2+ computers), but eh, I've never done it so it might be here or there.

EDIT: Oi, what happens when I'm busy for a few days and don't have time to keep up with the reading. Sorry for the delayed post by a few days.

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 02:19

#40

Xxpapaya

The papaya giggles

I swear to vog, that Spiral HQ is trolling us, and they have a Skylark positioned right above us, constantly dropping escape pods with knights in them :P

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 09:26

#41

Mikeyye

The 0.5% should be rounded up only because people can specialize in just gunning and disregard swords and bombs (vice versa).

EDIT: Gosh if they need a stable revenue, why not add another promo? I'm just waiting to blow money on a promo. Them GMs be complaining about dey paychecks. :(

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 05:18

#42

Grugwasasailor

Occupy OOO

Numbers inflated, cross promotional content.

I went to america and I saw all white americans, therefore all americans are white.

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 05:44

#43

Dutch-Oven

Installed TF2

Played it once and haven't touched it since.

Now I keep getting drunken texts at like 3am from Valve.

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 07:32

#44

Dendios

I am enjoying watching all these percentages, but still thinking:

"Dayum... I am from the 1% that has beaten Vanaduke..."
"Gusta"

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 07:42

#45

Rage-Pillows

OOO should ask Sega for some

OOO should ask Sega for some help in developing some CG cinema. There should be an intro one and maybe one for every recon module?

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 15:40

#46

Klipik

Recon modules are like journal entries, they don't need cutscenes. It might look cool though...

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 17:16

#47

Usevnsevnsixfivfor

Why gun and bomb?

Just like Flowchart said, you need a 5* gun and bomb. I don't have either a 5* gun OR 5* gun, yet I would qualify for a 5* loadout. Remember that the .5% of people might be around 3% if the achievement changed into "reach Vanguard rank".

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 20:02

#48

Tenkii

Normal.

@OP:
-78% of players got to the rescue camp. aka, 22% of people downloaded this game and never played it.
-55% of players completed the tutorial and made it to Haven. Only a little more than half of the people who got this game finished the tutorial.

This kind of thing is pretty normal in f2p games ¦3

If for some twisted reason, you ever look up things that social games (you know, those terrible things on facebook that are free to play, use energy systems and premium currency of some sort? hurhur) care about, you might run into things like "day 2 retention" - statistics of how many people come back after trying the game for the first time. That kind of cold statistical data can give the developers hints of whether or not something drives players away when they first start the game - like did they quit when they ran into enemies for the first time, or if they were unable to get past some puzzle (though they'd have to keep in mind that there are different subjective reasons, like whether or not it's their type of game to begin with). Last I was told, a healthy percent is around 15-18% making it past the first day? With that in mind, "A little more than half of the people who got this game finished the tutorial" is surprisingly healthy.

Add some secret hidden triggers/tracking abilities here and there and developers can figure out more specifically just when players are quitting and maybe try to do something about it.

Of course, you're looking at overall (forever) data and not something like current monthly users or something more relevant like that.

And you know what? They know more about current data than we can even speculate about, and with some insight (...hindsight!?), I can tell you they've done things about it.

I posted it recently in another thread, but in F2P games, it's expected that maybe 5% of them will pay any amount, and there's an even smaller amount within that group that pay a LOT. If you don't believe in the existence of that group, just look towards any of the popular guilds and ask them how much real money's worth of CE their guild halls cost. While they can't really do much to increase that percent in the long run, they can do these:
- find ways to push the people who are on the edge of paying money INTO paying
- increase the active playerbase (the percentage might stay about the same, but it's still more people)
- find ways to get more money from the players who have already paid money or have habits that lean towards it.

And let me tell you, I can see it.

> Problem, fence-sitters? Say hello to limited-time sales and new costumes.
> Problem, Haven? Hello mission system, character customization, and new camp.
> Problem, hardcore gamers and whale friends? Say hello to energy system, shadow lairs, Punch+Lockdown, and Guild Halls.

----
While I don't know Spiral Knights' data, I'm gonna go by my hunch that the Clockworks aren't thriving (in popularity and in taking people's energy) as they did when I first started (and why would they now, with the mission system holding peoples' hands?), so they thought "hey, if we come up with some cool feature, it might open up some new possibilities of making money!" --> hi guild halls.

And it's not all direct-money grubbing either. Crown sinks are a way to encourage the paying players to spread CE for the free-to-play people, and those guys can eventually get to the point that they can start spending money on cosmetic stuff like costumes, pets, guild halls... yeah.

¦3

not sure why i'm on an f2p/reality rant, but whatever.

I promise, I'll convert over and spend money some day, when I have time to enjoy playing games again.

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Does OOO have a problem with this?