For whole "target audience" and mr. L Bernd

[steelgrey75]

dzhedzho - your wasting your time, in some aspects I think you will find Roger to be inflexible. He believes reviews need to be withheld until the games is "fixed", and that current scores are unfair. And now he will argue that statistics are meaningless also.

[TinkerToy]

It's not very common that a game's "critic score" and "player score" is vastly different on Metacritic.

It's not very common that almost every published review of a game gives it a score of less than 5 out of 10.


In truth, nobody can "disprove" the hypothesis that "most Rebirth players play offline". It's highly unlikely, but it's impossible to disprove.


We don't know how many copies were sold.
We don't know how many refunds were given.
We don't know how many players are still interested in playing.


All we do know is that the daily activity on Steam is steadily dropping. And that is most likely not a good sign.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

dzhedzho - your wasting your time, in some aspects I think you will find Roger to be inflexible. He believes reviews need to be withheld until the games is "fixed", and that current scores are unfair. And now he will argue that statistics are meaningless also.

Don't read too much into what I have said to date, you are wrong.

IMO - The nature of usage of the given statistics is invalid, the reviews are fair given the current state, but since the state of the game is well-known as being poor at this time the game probably deserves a second round of reviews from the same reviewers at a suitable point in time (e.g. when the game is truly ready).

The nature of usage of the statistics and reviews by the anti community is tantamount to harassment of those that actually like the game and/or believe it can succeed. (at least IMO)

Erratum #1: Fixed a grammatical error that was bugging me.

[steelgrey75]

Maybe they will review it at a later date, perhaps an expansion pack or something. The problems is though that of course the many bugs are mentioned in all the reviews, but they also single out a lot of the new things introduced to the game as being a problem. Granted statements made about these features are purely the opinion of the reviewer and not necessarily the views of everybody, but the new features are Bernds pride and joy. He crows about them on his videos and speaks about them in interviews, yet its those very features that have turned the game into a long drawn out affair. The removal of most automation for instance is what Bernd wants, he wants you to fly around constantly looking for trade offers, these are not likely to be changed in patches, they are a core design element to the game. So even if it was reviewed later, it may score higher due to more stability, but the game itself wouldnt be that much different than it is now.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

but the game itself wouldnt be that much different than it is now.

You are drawing conclusions here, ok that is your opinion - only time will tell if you are right.

I would say things I expect to not change significantly:-

• Mini-games through out (Highways/Smalltalk/Loot finding)
• Nature of trading
• Albion Skunk
• General approach to UI

Some of the things (not exhaustive list) I do expect to substantially improve (other than general bugs and performance):-

• Fleet control and associated AI
• Overall balance (subjective measure and no doubt there will be disagreement on this)
• Mappable player controls and functionality.

In summary, not the fundamental nature of gameplay but certainly game usability/playability.

[dzhedzho]

IMO - The nature of usage of the given statistics is invalid

If you cannot understand the pub example, and how discrete data points can be turned to averages and what's the value in doing that I am wasting my time.

Each time a sample is taken, person contributes to the statistics. Let's take the simple example of hourly samples. In this case if you sum up the peak player values for a time period, you will get a fairly accurate approximation of TOTAL game time, spent in the game (by each person who played online). The more samples you have the smaller the error will be (and yes, you'll need to adjust for number of samples). How big the error is it would depend on the volatility of the peak.

This is very relevant usage statistic. Likely more relevant than the number of individual users logged in a day. That would show the number of people who decided to start the game, but will not show how long they played. And while the first metric does not show how much each player plays, it takes into account time played.

Even your proposed "unique players a day" is temporal when we look at more than a day. Unique user will replace each other, so again you will not know whether 2000 people play, or 3000.

An your thread example makes no sense, because a player either plays a game for an hour or does not play it for an hour. I think it's irrelevant if they play it intensely or hard, or are flying about.

But this is beyond pointless. If Roger says peaks and averages are invalid, metrologists, investors, economists, meteorologists, stock brokers, logisticians, and countless others I won' mention are doing it wrong...

[BinarySlave]

... investors, economists, stock brokers and countless others I won' mention are doing it wrong...

The first time I would agree with you 100%. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.

[dzhedzho]

It's not very common that a game's "critic score" and "player score" is vastly different on Metacritic.

It's not very common that almost every published review of a game gives it a score of less than 5 out of 10.


In truth, nobody can "disprove" the hypothesis that "most Rebirth players play offline". It's highly unlikely, but it's impossible to disprove.


We don't know how many copies were sold.
We don't know how many refunds were given.
We don't know how many players are still interested in playing.


All we do know is that the daily activity on Steam is steadily dropping. And that is most likely not a good sign.

No, but the absence of evidence is not evidence of the contrary.
As I said, I doubt it, as as you said highly unlikely.

The fact that the time players spend in the game (collectively), does not exactly mean they are bad. Though it's often indication of how long it takes to exhaust the content, their re-playability, competitiveness with other titles and ability to get new converts.
And steam sales are pretty great on getting new converts... Often for another game.

[birdtable]

I think you will find Roger is enjoying his little quotation ...
"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

And the truth in this instance is that Roger is not even playing X Rebirth..... just practising his word play and being pedantic for the fun of it.

[dzhedzho]

... investors, economists, stock brokers and countless others I won' mention are doing it wrong...

The first time I would agree with you 100%. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.

Oh no no, the smart ones aren't. Haven't you noticed lots of them actually got richer? I think most know what they are doing, it's just different than what we think they are

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

An your thread example makes no sense, because a player either plays a game for an hour or does not play it for an hour. I think it's irrelevant if they play it intensely or hard, or are flying about.

You missed the point - but lets try and clarify - 1 statistic on it's own means nothing, the statistic I proposed helps to understand the first not replace it. This is what I was getting at with the multi-threaded example.

If interpreting statistics and trends was as easy as you are intimating, the world economy would not be in the mess it is in and weather reports would be 100% accurate everywhere.

Either way, all this discussion seems like an attempt from some quarters to tell those that like the game what to think.

[BlackRain]

Locked due to too many personal attacks and overall tone of thread. Keep threads civil please.