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Post by Danjal on Aug 29, 2014 21:16:29 GMT
Several interesting things to note about Steam's statistics: 1 - The games always jump up shortly after an update and then slowly die down as people get bored of the current batch of content. (barring outliers) 2 - Steam statistics rely on "online at the same time" for most of their statistics, which means that the actual statistics can differ greatly for some games. While it is true that Godus does indeed fall right in the center of the bowl (especially given the examples you picked out), it is the exception in that it received so much negative review by both professionals aswell as players. Ultimately, our views will always be tainted by our experiences. I'll admit that. Yet its hard to ignore the massive amounts of negative feedback surrounding Godus. Its also hard to object to the utter lack of content that the game itself has. For the most part its a collection of concepts loosely put together with no real balance to speak of. And an utter refusal to take responsibility for its own promises by the development studio. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Aug 29, 2014 21:23:56 GMT
Several interesting things to note about Steam's statistics: 1 - The games always jump up shortly after an update and then slowly die down as people get bored of the current batch of content. (barring outliers) 2 - Steam statistics rely on "online at the same time" for most of their statistics, which means that the actual statistics can differ greatly for some games. While it is true that Godus does indeed fall right in the center of the bowl (especially given the examples you picked out), it is the exception in that it received so much negative review by both professionals aswell as players. Ultimately, our views will always be tainted by our experiences. I'll admit that. Yet its hard to ignore the massive amounts of negative feedback surrounding Godus. Its also hard to object to the utter lack of content that the game itself has. For the most part its a collection of concepts loosely put together with no real balance to speak of. And an utter refusal to take responsibility for its own promises by the development studio. Definitely (which is why I prefaced it with possibly skewed data and somewhat acknowledged the update bumps below the table), but it's nevertheless very interesting to see how the raw data compares to the outspoken criticism (both from us and game sites). I think this is especially important to consider given that this is probably a majority of what 22cans will be reviewing a little more so than our criticism. Also if you think there may be better "normal" Early Access games to draw data from so it doesn't seem so drastic, I'd love to hear of them. I just went with games that I've seen frequently and ones that I've been keeping an eye on. |
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Post by nerdyvonnerdling on Aug 29, 2014 21:36:37 GMT
A few things to note on that front - with this last settlements update, Godus received a boost in PC sales. It had been hovering very low on the Early Acces top sellers, and briefly jumped into the top ten. It's now back down in the mid-30s, which is still substantially higher than it had been in the preceeding months. That's part of what you're seeing with the current 'average players' numbers - an influx of new players. The past few months, July in particular, had seen dismal average player numbers.
What this means is, it's already lost a huge percentage of those initial number of players that saw it's all-time peak of 6k. What it also shows us is that the new influx of players isn't being retained, either - the numbers since the settlement update boost have been in steady decline, and continue to do so. No surprise there, the game has a short, frustrating half-life. We're what, 3 weeks out since the settlement update? The next month will paint a pretty telling picture, one way or another.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2014 21:44:17 GMT
Several interesting things to note about Steam's statistics: 1 - The games always jump up shortly after an update and then slowly die down as people get bored of the current batch of content. (barring outliers) 2 - Steam statistics rely on "online at the same time" for most of their statistics, which means that the actual statistics can differ greatly for some games. While it is true that Godus does indeed fall right in the center of the bowl (especially given the examples you picked out), it is the exception in that it received so much negative review by both professionals aswell as players. Ultimately, our views will always be tainted by our experiences. I'll admit that. Yet its hard to ignore the massive amounts of negative feedback surrounding Godus. Its also hard to object to the utter lack of content that the game itself has. For the most part its a collection of concepts loosely put together with no real balance to speak of. And an utter refusal to take responsibility for its own promises by the development studio. Definitely (which is why I prefaced it with possibly skewed data and somewhat acknowledged the update bumps below the table), but it's nevertheless very interesting to see how the raw data compares to the outspoken criticism (both from us and game sites). I think this is especially important to consider given that this is probably a majority of what 22cans will be reviewing a little more so than our criticism. Also if you think there may be better "normal" Early Access games to draw data from so it doesn't seem so drastic, I'd love to hear of them. I just went with games that I've seen frequently and ones that I've been keeping an eye on. I think the very nature of the game lends itself to show slightly inflated "currently playing" numbers. After all... in Godus, what does "currently playing" even mean? Usually, for me it entails leaving it on in the background while I play real games, simply to wait out a timer. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Aug 29, 2014 21:51:11 GMT
A few things to note on that front - with this last settlements update, Godus received a boost in PC sales. It had been hovering very low on the Early Acces top sellers, and briefly jumped into the top ten. It's now back down in the mid-30s, which is still substantially higher than it had been in the preceeding months. That's part of what you're seeing with the current 'average players' numbers - an influx of new players. The past few months, July in particular, had seen dismal average player numbers. What this means is, it's already lost a huge percentage of those initial number of players that saw it's all-time peak of 6k. What it also shows us is that the new influx of players isn't being retained, either - the numbers since the settlement update boost have been in steady decline, and continue to do so. No surprise there, the game has a short, frustrating half-life. We're what, 3 weeks out since the settlement update? The next month will paint a pretty telling picture, one way or another. Wasn't aware of the PC sales boost (explains a lot). I noticed the massive drops that you mentioned though, and I certainly expect that to recur, unless as I noted they push out some additional updates with substantial content/content changes sooner rather than later. |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 29, 2014 21:58:42 GMT
Speaking of inflated numbers. With steam counting "online time" for each game you're running. And with a decent number of people running multiple games at once (be it because games such as Godus run in the background or because they're trying to unlock steam cards), I'd imagine that the total "hours played" on the average persons steam library is a bit skewed aswell.
Not to mention, I'm not sure how well it tracks people running the game while in offline mode. (I know I for one have run Godus for quite some time in offline mode during the latest update because my network cable was connected to my laptop rather than my PC...)
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 30, 2014 0:11:09 GMT
Last Saturday I left it running for somewhere around 9hrs., almost entirely by accident. So I totally skewed the numbers.
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Post by rubgish on Aug 30, 2014 1:37:10 GMT
I'm 99% certain it's player retention and not sales. I mean, just take a look at a game currently sitting above Godus in the sales charts ( overgrowth), it has a peak player numbers of 88 in the past month. Another better selling game, maia, has an all-time peak of 97 players. So unless the sales are somehow super weird for those games, then it can't be sales keeping the player numbers up. The peak we had after the update looked pretty typical for an update too, so I kinda assume it just has to be a lot of existing players playing? Maybe the publicity around the mobile launch has reminded people they have the game on steam, and so a lot of people who bought it months ago or even backed the kickstarter have come back to steam to play it. Or of course, people may enjoy the game so much that they are still playing it 4 weeks on from the update, but I don't think anyone here is going to believe that one  |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 30, 2014 1:44:51 GMT
The peak we had after the update looked pretty typical for an update too, so I kinda assume it just has to be a lot of existing players playing? Maybe the publicity around the mobile launch has reminded people they have the game on steam, and so a lot of people who bought it months ago or even backed the kickstarter have come back to steam to play it. Or of course, people may enjoy the game so much that they are still playing it 4 weeks on from the update, but I don't think anyone here is going to believe that one The most recent peak was significantly higher than any peak Godus has had previously after updates. It also stayed for significantly longer than the previous times. I suspect that the mobile launch might well have had something to do with that indeed. And the inclusion of the pit of doom likely accounts for another part of the short-term retention. As for playing it for 4 weeks and still enjoying it? That really would only work if they either didn't mind mindless expansion or if they played REALLY slowly. Otherwise you'd run out of content long before then. (If I had continued after the initial week, then 3~4 weeks in I'd have covered the entire map and likely crashed the game under the sheer volume of followers.) |
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 30, 2014 2:00:38 GMT
I suspect that the mobile launch might well have had something to do with that indeed. And the inclusion of the pit of doom likely accounts for another part of the short-term retention. I actually fight the urge to log in just to murder sacrifice my followers [for gems]. It's just somehow sickly satisfying boosting those PoD usage analytics (and has nothing to do with enjoying their screams of pain, is what I tell myself). Although, I did notice that the last update has caused some issues with either the Pit or the AI pathing/targeting; many of them often walk through the Pit and wander about unable to find their destination. As for playing it for 4 weeks and still enjoying it? That really would only work if they either didn't mind mindless expansion or if they played REALLY slowly. OR... or... ok, I play kinda slow - damn distracting sculpting. And, actually, I also log on occasionally in order to reproduce/check something (bugs) or take some screen shots for support tickets. Otherwise you'd run out of content long before then. (If I had continued after the initial week, then 3~4 weeks in I'd have covered the entire map and likely crashed the game under the sheer volume of followers.) I did run out of cards. Trying to see how many followers you can get sounds like a challenge though. |
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Post by rubgish on Aug 30, 2014 11:40:24 GMT
The peak we had after the update looked pretty typical for an update too, so I kinda assume it just has to be a lot of existing players playing? Maybe the publicity around the mobile launch has reminded people they have the game on steam, and so a lot of people who bought it months ago or even backed the kickstarter have come back to steam to play it. Or of course, people may enjoy the game so much that they are still playing it 4 weeks on from the update, but I don't think anyone here is going to believe that one The most recent peak was significantly higher than any peak Godus has had previously after updates. It also stayed for significantly longer than the previous times. I suspect that the mobile launch might well have had something to do with that indeed. And the inclusion of the pit of doom likely accounts for another part of the short-term retention. As for playing it for 4 weeks and still enjoying it? That really would only work if they either didn't mind mindless expansion or if they played REALLY slowly. Otherwise you'd run out of content long before then. (If I had continued after the initial week, then 3~4 weeks in I'd have covered the entire map and likely crashed the game under the sheer volume of followers.) It's actually the lowest post-major update peak ever, not that we've had many major updates. The only real comparable one is the V1.3.1->2.0.0, which peaked at 2100, this update peaked at 1600. It's actually quite interesting, if you check out the godus reddit, I feel like there have been quite a few screenshots of people with huge population numbers. (eg. Pic 1, pic 2). This suggests that people are playing for a long time & just building up really big populations/settlements. |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 30, 2014 14:09:18 GMT
Well its not like its hard to reach high population... You just have to leave the game running and it pretty much does it for itself.
With the final card needing several thousand followers, thats the main motivation for people to do it (that and increase your belief).
Most people that speak up keep playing because they hope that somehow it'll get better. Others keep playing because they want to test things.
Then there's the people that cheat... (1397k belief is not likely to be legit, 520k is questionable)
So while it is possible that people indeed play for that long, its more likely that they didn't do so because they 'enjoyed themselves that much'.
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 30, 2014 20:18:47 GMT
Well its not like its hard to reach high population... You just have to leave the game running and it pretty much does it for itself. Really? I thought you had to build more abodes or settlements to increase population? I currently have over 500k, through contentious abuse of the Pit of Doom. Although, anyone on the iOS that has that much I would think is questionable about their "methods".[/quote] |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 30, 2014 20:39:13 GMT
My main reasoning for saying that its not likely to be legit is that I've gotten there myself, half a day or a full day of pure belief gathering.
Then harvesting that belief. Then all that belief gets spend on creation of a settlement.
The settlement created doesn't provide that much belief by itself (the initial settlement version did that and they've tuned down the numbers since then).
So unless someone has been gathering belief for days without actually 'playing' or 'expanding', they're not gonna have that much.
The massive settlements just cost tons to create.
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Post by rubgish on Aug 30, 2014 20:46:36 GMT
Massive settlements cost a lot to create, but if you have 2-3k population in decent housing (not in settlement), and then collect than a few times a day, you easily get a huge amount of belief.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 30, 2014 20:58:34 GMT
Tell me rubgish - if someone has been collecting belief for a few days and not spending it. Are they still actually "playing the game"? If someone is purposefully trying to see how big of a population they can get, would they make the shot after waiting for days to "collect a million of belief"? Or would they expand a ton and then let the game run while being AFK to have population grown (or even use the pit of doom to gem-buy their way to max). Considering the number of shots I've seen by people who did indeed cheat (quite a few) versus the ones I've seen who've gotten there legit (none really...), the results seem quite conclusive to me. Very few - if any - people who have been open about it have gotten there legit. |
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Post by rubgish on Aug 30, 2014 21:34:08 GMT
Well, take for example the 15,000 population picture (1397k belief, 3204 food & 2984 ore) I linked earlier. If you look carefully, you'll notice it's actually a mobile or tablet picture (bottom right corner is a shopping bag, thus iOS version). Now you can probably put the clock forward to gain bonus belief on the iOS version, but it's going to be much more difficult to actually get in to edit the memory values like you can on the PC (which explains the low gem numbers vs high everything else). This suggests that the numbers are all realistic, just possibly time-compressed.
I also decided to log onto my current godus world, which has 400 pop in shitty housing. I checked and found out I get about 6-7k belief an hour. For the 15k pop player, they have 151 farms and 187 mines, (151+187)*10 = their pop in settlements = 3380. Lets say 5k pop in settlements for some of them not having spawned. That leaves 10k pop outside settlements, which assuming it's as good as mine at belief (it's actually likely better quality housing which increases the rate), then we are talking in the region of 150,000 - 200,000 belief an hour. So it's not waiting days, it's waiting a few hours. Of course that's not including the fact that the houses will store up overnight, so this could be a picture after the morning.
Basically it's all attainable without cheats, mainly by spending a lot of time actually playing the game (i.e. collecting belief/wheat on cooldown etc)
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stuhacking
Master
Posts: 170 
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Post by stuhacking on Sept 1, 2014 12:37:34 GMT
Well, take for example the 15,000 population picture (1397k belief, 3204 food & 2984 ore) I linked earlier. If you look carefully, you'll notice it's actually a mobile or tablet picture (bottom right corner is a shopping bag, thus iOS version). Now you can probably put the clock forward to gain bonus belief on the iOS version, but it's going to be much more difficult to actually get in to edit the memory values like you can on the PC If you have a jailbroken device you can usually find add-ons for f2p games in the unofficial package repos (e.g. to add gems/coins.. I take it they behave like installing an in-app purchase...), so maybe a few have appeared for Godus already? In general there are few restrictions on what you can access on jailbroken devices: Once you have filesystem and terminal access, it's basically no different to a unix-based PC. |
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Post by rubgish on Sept 1, 2014 15:29:51 GMT
Well, take for example the 15,000 population picture (1397k belief, 3204 food & 2984 ore) I linked earlier. If you look carefully, you'll notice it's actually a mobile or tablet picture (bottom right corner is a shopping bag, thus iOS version). Now you can probably put the clock forward to gain bonus belief on the iOS version, but it's going to be much more difficult to actually get in to edit the memory values like you can on the PC If you have a jailbroken device you can usually find add-ons for f2p games in the unofficial package repos (e.g. to add gems/coins.. I take it they behave like installing an in-app purchase...), so maybe a few have appeared for Godus already? In general there are few restrictions on what you can access on jailbroken devices: Once you have filesystem and terminal access, it's basically no different to a unix-based PC. Sure it's not impossible, but it's much less likely than the equivalent on the PC. The much more likely explanation is that people are just playing a lot. |
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kez
Hesitator
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Post by kez on Sept 2, 2014 0:54:37 GMT
This was on March 18th, making the estimated release at that point in time (and lets be generous here) April 18th 2014. Which subsequently is 16 months after (December 21, 2012) their kickstarter funded, 7 months after the game reportedly would've been released according to said kickstarter. Also 7 months after the SEA launch. Not to mention shortly after the period of silence (which ended shortly before GDC with the v2.0 release) that preceded the v2.0 release and its accompanying "official shift in focus" to mobile. Ofcourse at that time 22cans was still in full denial mode, claiming that the PC platform was not abandoned at all and that 22cans was focusing their efforts on completing their "unfinished" game and that people should not be so harsh on it. Its not completed and still in alpha/beta/development afterall. (Cue the subsequent articles that pointed out that the 'alpha' status of Godus is a bare technicality as the 'game' is barely sufficient to be a proof of concept or tech-demo.) This is but one clue of a company that has not got everything together and is going to fail - the marketing/design team say one thing and the programmers are more than a year behind, all the time. Why trust them for anything else? We have all seen enough games to know that they are mostly smoke and mirrors and should just invest our time elsewhere. Regarding cheating on the IOS, I was able to get 1M+ belief, 3K+ wheat/ore easily on the iPad version without paying or cheating. I just massed mountain cabins for a week each time I logged on and it just steamrolled from there. I made sure to sculpt the land so they could build one cabin perfectly squished up against existing ones. I didn't make any settlements or farms for a week, so the belief and population built up pretty quickly, and I checked them every ~5 hours to collect huge amounts of belief and create more places for them to build. |
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