Player retention comparted to CK3 first 2 weeks after release

[Brynjar]

Continuing the discussion from another thread where it belongs.

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Well, I'm glad you're self-aware at least.

I'm on my phone right now so I didn't want to bother, but since you're so insistent...

View attachment 976874
(For Stellaris)



View attachment 976875
(For Hoi4)


Note these are the peak numbers, so not only did Stellaris once peak at below 3k, but Hoi4 probably had a minimum player count below that as well.

Did you really never stop to consider that there are probably reasons other than normal player development which caused both HoI4 and Stellaris to have the peak player number plummet on March 22nd 2017, just to go back up again the next day?

Here are the EU4 numbers on that day. Coincidentially they also plummet on that exact day...

And CS:GO...

That said, Vic 3 isn't doing that badly, yet. I made the below chart showing 7 day average peak players a couple of days ago, but couldn't be bothered to post it yet since the most recent Vic 3 numbers are kind of polluted by still including May 1st (which is a public holiday in large parts of Europe and China) for the last few days.

Here is the 7 day average as a percentage of the day 0 peak (Vic 3 is at 8.84%, which is slightly better than Stellaris did 2-3 weeks before the first major DLC, significantly worse than it did a month after that release):

I also had a look at when the games had their minimum 7 day average (Counting starts at day 0, so 129 is day the 130th, 190 is 191st etc). Both HoI4 and Stellaris had it within their first 191 days (I extracted the Vic 3 data when it had data for 191 days).

​	Vic 3​	Stellaris​	HoI 4​
Minimum 7 day average​	6185​	5187​	6828​
Days since release at minimum​	129​	163​	143​
Day 190 7 day average​	6195​	8939​	7293​

It's worth noting that Stellaris had its minimum 7 day average the day before the first major DLC released, while the day 190 average for HoI4 is just three days before the game got its first major DLC, and it is very likely that Vic 3 will have the same.

I would argue that the Vic 3 development looks pretty bad compared to HoI 4, especially when we take into consideration that it only started out with 56% of the players Vic 3 did. So far Vic 3 has been doing similar to Stellaris, but Vic 3 also needs to see some major improvements to continue doing that.

All data was exported from Steamdb.

 

[Star Seeker]

Did you really never stop to consider that there are probably reasons other than normal player development which caused both HoI4 and Stellaris to have the peak player number plummet on March 22nd 2017, just to go back up again the next day?

I did think it was weird, but not relevant to the discussion I was having with Faeelin.

I do note that Stellaris numbers around March 22nd don't look particularly better and it also had plenty of days below 5k in general.

 

[Brynjar]

I did think it was weird, but not relevant to the discussion I was having with Faeelin.

I do note that Stellaris numbers around March 22nd don't look particularly better and it also had plenty of days below 5k in general.

When you are using data which is obviously corrupted to show how bad things were for Stellaris, it absolutely is relevant. Them using the wrong data for Vic 3 doesn't change that.

 

[Star Seeker]

When you are using data which is obviously corrupted to show how bad things were for Stellaris, it absolutely is relevant.

Faeelin was interested in me finding a day that had a minimum player count around 2.5k player, so I just focused on doing that and didn't really noticed the strangeness before posting my answer.

I don't think it's possible to prove the minimum player count of a day with SteamDB, but we can probably guess this day was one of them.

 

[Brynjar]

Faeelin was interrested in me finding a day that had a minimum player count around 2.5k player, so I just focused on doing that and didn't really noticed the strangeness before posting my answer.

You most likely didn't do that though. The sharp decline in player numbers for all games on that indicates that either Steam had issues preventing data to be collected properly, or steamdb for some reason didn't get a full dataset. In other words, the data most likely doesn't show what you claim it shows. What you should have told Faeelin is that they were referring to the trough, not the peak which is what steamdb shows for historical data.

I don't think it's possible to prove the minimum player count of a day with SteamDB, but we can probably guess this day was one of them.

We can find the minimum peak players. No sane person with good intentions cares about how many people plays the game at the daily minimum. When ignoring the day with obviously corrupted data that day was the same day as the minimum 7 day average, the day before the first major DLC, October 19th 2016, the 164th day the game was available to the public.

 

[Star Seeker]

What you should have told Faeelin is that they were referring to the trough, not the peak which is what steamdb shows for historical data.

I did, but they ignored it.

Vic3 didn't have 2.5k daily players, though? That's the minimum player count you're showing there.

No sane person with good intentions cares about how many people plays the game at the daily minimum.

Well, I agree, but Faeelin clearly didn't.

 

[Brynjar]

Well, I agree, but Faeelin clearly didn't.

And the moment you abandoned reason and knowingly posted the corrupted data as proof you were no better. You could just have posted the same chart for Vic 3 as you need to compare Stellaris to, which shows that the number isn't 2.5k for Vic 3 either:

P.S. The average player numbers appears to have been intorduced to the statistics in September 2022, and is therefore useless for comparing Vic 3 to the early days of Stellaris.

 

[Star Seeker]

And the moment you abandoned reason and knowingly posted the corrupted data as proof you were no better.

It wasn't knowingly, though. I said above I only noticed it was corrupted after posting my answer.

 

[Ghostdevil]

Genuine question - how have you been able to put 200 hours into the game?

I put about 70 hours into it playing majors like US / Germany / Japan / Russia up until a bit past 1900 on 1.0 and just couldn't play more countries as aside from geographic starting position it's the same schtick/optimal strategy in every location. Put ~550 hours into V2.

I've got a few folks on steam that own the game - out of the 5 the person who has the most has played 36 hours. I saw that the average playtime is ~100 hours in another post - find that genuinely hard to believe - may just be some hardcore folks playing the game a lot.

The game is fun for me, I got 282* hours and I have only ever played the USA, also paradox players feel weird to me. I put less time in amazing top tier games than paradox games.

*Edited from 200 to 282, just got home to check how long i actually played.