Lycus
Legendary AdventureGuide!
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On top of what Lord Barrius has said, which I feel has made some extremely good points, I would just like to make a few points myself.
It is great to look at numbers of those online at each time, however there are many things to be taken into consideration. For example, right now is the start of the major examination period for many countries across the world, and these will continue to take place depending on the exams that countries use, for the next month or two. With a large number of EpicDuel's players being in examination years, the examination period will inevitably cause a drop in active players, since players will be revising and concentrating on exams. This is in no way a claim that numbers will suddenly spike after the examination period, but it is simply explaining just one of many factors that need to be taken into account when measuring numbers.
The other thing is, there could be 10,000 active players in the months of June and July, with an average of 1,300 on at a time, however over August and September, there could be 20,000 active players, with only an average of 700 on at a time. There are many things that effect numbers online once again, during the times it is night across most of the US, the numbers may drop down to 300 players, during US school time, numbers rise, but do not peak, and after school they may peak. This is mainly due to the main player base being in the US.
You also have different play styles, you have those who come on everyday to get wins for their factions and generally are competitive most the week, but then you have a lot of people who play over the weekend with the latest release, then concentrate on work/school over the week. Meaning an increase in numbers after a release and over the weekend.
As Lord Barrius said, due to the above factors, it is very hard to possibly use them to back up points being made. Background figures and numbers of overall active accounts are the figures that really matter, since they are the ones that give a true insight into how the game is going. That is the sort of data that Lord Barrius is talking about.
I would also like to just use this post to say that balance is extremely important, yes. However if you look at the past where whole updates have been purely concentrated on balance, it leads to players all saying 'we want features, this release was stupid, why you give us nothing to do?' - when we do mainly features and art, the response is 'concentrate on balance, features can wait and so can weapons'. One, quite a lot of the feedback, when looking through release topics is not constructive at all, view this post for clarification on 'constructive criticism' and what this means is that we have to make the decision on what to do, since it mainly is subjective. Some people want features more than balance, others want balance more than features, one party will always pipe up when we release one or another. So as you may have noticed for the last few months, most releases have been features and art, as well as some balance changes, which means that there is a mixture of both - which is the best we can do to appease both demands. Yes, balance is important, but bringing in new features, art and generally developing the game is also important.
Finally, if you feel so strongly about some of these things, please do make a suggestion to fix them. I know that the last few times I have seen someone complaining, I have looked through their past few posts, there are no suggestions being made, just purely complaining about one thing or another. It is great saying that suggestions are not valued, however the true facts do stand against you, you only need to look at the last few updates with the mailing system, all of that was a player suggestion, then the being able to message multiple friends and/or faction members was also a player suggestion. A lot of the things we release are either player suggested or player inspired. Just because it is not your own personal suggestion, does not mean it is not someone else's and that the Devs do not listen to players. With balance, sometimes there just is not the time or it is not possible to release huge revolutionary balance changes as some people suggest and expect. At the end of the day, player suggestions both on balance and general content play a huge part in EpicDuel. However this does not mean every single player suggestions/balance suggestion will be implemented, because that just is not possible nor realistic. The main thing to remember is to be constructive, because most those who complain about not being listened to are those who keep saying 'ranting is the only way to be listened to', yet it is clearly not doing a very good job at getting them listened to. Post constructively and it allows us to know exactly what you like in a release and what you do not like and want changing - this allows us to make improvements. Ranting does not help us at all, 'this feature/change is rubbish' leaves us with so many questions, why is it rubbish? What would you like us to change? What did you like about it and do not want changing? If you leave us with questions, it does not help, if you are clear and constructive, that is when your opinions are most useful and we can actually put an effort into fixing the problem based on the feedback!
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