Mmmmm Data

[Brokkr]

I'd prefer some statistics about player habits that would dictate a change.

How many characters get created
Have karma spent
Real life time before death
Time spent before making a new character
New character karma spent
Typical breakdown of class / subclass / race

Mmmmm data

Here is some data that gets at some of that.

[MeTekillot]

Could you further separate this into how active these characters are? Also, you're posting the albums in the img tags instead of the hyperlink to the image. Pretty telling that there are the same number of dwarves as elves but 6x as many humans. I was just about right with my 1 in 7 guess (was I the one who said that?).

[Marauder Moe]

Here is some data that gets at some of that.

FIX'T

[Brokkr]

This data is from July 3, 2018 until today.  Classes outside the rubric have been taken out.

No, I am not going to put activity in. It is harder to get that, and the data looses meaning at a consolidated level...and I'm not going to give out data that isn't at a consolidated level.

[Marauder Moe]

Do d-elfs count as karma race?

It's very telling that elfs are so rare when they're supposed to be by far the second most populous race in the game, and in cities.  Seems to numerically confirm that the role is not healthy right now.  (Then again, maybe they are dying off and being interbred out of existence?  Heh.)

I'm not surprised to see that stalker is a very popular class.  That collection of skills is pretty sexy.

I am surprised to see that Fighter is also tied for most popular class, though.  I figured that Raider would easily beat it out, given how scope-limited it is.  Then again, I guess it's easy to make up for that with a subguild.

Laborer seems strangely underplayed.

'Rinth merchants seem underplayed, but not really surprised there.

With "touched" being a thing, I'm really shocked to see magick subs under 1:10.  I think that's fine, though.  People were complaining about the game being overrun with hidden 'gicks.

I'm also really surprised to see Linguist as #2.  Like, why tho?  Is it just because nowadays you can actually start with a character that knows 5 languages?   

[Heade]

This data is from July 3, 2018 until today.  Classes outside the rubric have been taken out.

No, I am not going to put activity in. It is harder to get that, and the data looses meaning at a consolidated level...and I'm not going to give out data that isn't at a consolidated level.

Without activity, a lot of the statistics are skewed, though. Because this is counting all the people who create a character and never log in, or log in once and never return. It also counts characters people make just to piddle around IG as a throwaway character while they await karma regen, only to store with very little time played, or die to something silly.

It's also rather telling that it appears over half of all heavy mercantile PCs ended up selecting the custom crafter sub.

And heavy mercantile is currently the least played of all class types. I wonder how many of those heavy mercantile sorts were created closer to July than to today, once people got more of a feel for the new classes.

[Miradus]

I loves me some data. Thanks.

It's a little difficult to extrapolate intent from those numbers (other than the playerbase thinks hunters are DA SHIT), but it looks to me like ... if you have karma ... you go for magick.

It also looks like the playerbase largely agrees with me that miscreant/stalker are the way to go.

[Rumor]

Brokkr, thanks for the all the information. Super interesting to see the spread at this level.

[Brokkr]

It's also rather telling that it appears over half of all heavy mercantile PCs ended up selecting the custom crafter sub.

Does it?

19 Heavy Crafters
6 Light Crafters
5 Survival
2 Light Combat
2 Heavy Combat

Looks closer to 25% to me.

And heavy mercantile is currently the least played of all class types. I wonder how many of those heavy mercantile sorts were created closer to July than to today, once people got more of a feel for the new classes.

Taking 9/8/2018 as the midpoint:

Artisan:  24 before / 14 after
Dune Trader:  15 before / 9 after
Fence: 8 before / 6 after

[Marauder Moe]

Heavy combat custom crafter?  For the warrior who also wants to be a middling-yet-creative chef?   

[Lizzie]

Heavy combat custom crafter?  For the warrior who also wants to be a middling-yet-creative chef?   

For when they want something constructive to do when there's no one to kill

[Marauder Moe]

Ya but the only crafting skill they get is cooking... and at journeyman.

[Heade]

And heavy mercantile is currently the least played of all class types. I wonder how many of those heavy mercantile sorts were created closer to July than to today, once people got more of a feel for the new classes.

Taking 9/8/2018 as the midpoint:

Artisan:  24 before / 14 after
Dune Trader:  15 before / 9 after
Fence: 8 before / 6 after

Hmm, looks like there is a marked decline in creating heavy mercantile in the latter half of that time period. I wonder if the newness of the classes started wearing off, and people became disillusioned with the idea of heavy mercantile without custom crafting.

I mean, honestly, you're better off taking virtually anything else as a custom crafter. A stalker/master armor maker would be a far better Salarri armor crafter than any of the core mercantile classes would be if they choose anything other than custom crafter. And the stalker could actually do a LOT of other things very well.

I don't think asking that heavy mercantile be allowed to perform the core function of their class, while still getting to choose a subguild is such an outrageous request, as to be met with so much resistance.

[Marauder Moe]

Maybe.  Mercantile types tend to live a long time, though.

[Brokkr]

Do d-elfs count as karma race?

Desert elves are counted in the karma races category, not elves category.

[mansa]

oh gawd this is amazing

I will look deeper into this tonight. So deep.

[Miradus]

I'm also really surprised to see Linguist as #2.  Like, why tho?  Is it just because nowadays you can actually start with a character that knows 5 languages?   

I did it once on a fence. The premise being that if all you can do is craft and social, then be really good at the social.

It was less impressive than I'd hoped. Nobody is stunned into submission by knowing you can speak dwarf or switch accents on the fly. In fact, few even notice.

[Narf]

I'm also really surprised to see Linguist as #2.  Like, why tho?  Is it just because nowadays you can actually start with a character that knows 5 languages?   

I did it once on a fence. The premise being that if all you can do is craft and social, then be really good at the social.

It was less impressive than I'd hoped. Nobody is stunned into submission by knowing you can speak dwarf or switch accents on the fly. In fact, few even notice.

It was a lot more useful when Tuluk was still in the game. It can still be useful if you need to maintain multiple identities, but most people don't have to do that.

[Miradus]

That's what I was trying to do, maintain multiple identities.

Either I didn't do it well or you just can't expect other people to go along with it. A short, blue-eyed guy is ALWAYS Joe, like you've got your social security number tattooed on your forehead.

Anyway, it was a useful trick. Once. Kind of like fence itself. Once you've done it, you can't really see the purpose of doing it again.

[Heade]

Maybe.  Mercantile types tend to live a long time, though.

Some do. A lot more get apartment PKed before you ever hear of them. If you played merchants, you'd probably know this. Also, even for GMH crafters, they often get knifed down in the street, or killed while grebbing or something.

Actual MERCHANT PCs, who are GMH family members, often live awhile. But many times, they aren't even crafter classes.

oh gawd this is amazing

I will look deeper into this tonight. So deep.

Bear in mind, Mansa, that there were 371+ new accounts created in that time period, so a significant number of those mundane PCs created in those numbers might not have ever played the game, or were throwaway characters of people who were awaiting karma, but wanted to see what the RPT shenanigans were about, or otherwise just piddle around and pickpocket people.

If we assume that only half of those new accounts created a PC (185.5), and half again as many PCs were throwaway PCs of longer-term players awaiting karma regen/role apps (92.75), then that is 278 of the 611 mundane PCs that weren't actively played as "real" PCs.

That would shift the subclass numbers to:

Mundane, 0 Karma PCs: 333
1 K, 2 K, and Magick: 130

Without playtime statistics, it's impossible to say for certain, but I imagine I'm being pretty generous with only assuming 92 of the 611 characters were throwaways with few days played.

This puts the percentage of karma classes at roughly 28%, but it could certainly be higher if we looked at playtime statistics.

This also has implications impacting race statistics.

[mansa]

Wait.  I get 882 characters created since July 4th.

You can't correspond accounts created with characters created.  That data isn't available on the website.


Breakdown Percentages of Subclass Karma Spend

[Brokkr]

Slipknife is now 2.  As is cutpurse.

Huh.  Some stuff never got changed.

[Miradus]

Mansa is a nerd's nerd. I'm loving this data breakdown.

I'm going to throw some suppositions out here based on these ...

-It would seem a lot of people have the notion that "If karma > 1 play magick ELSE play hunter."

-Stalker is the class to be if you want the most wilderness utility.

-Grebber is far and away better than anything else 1 karma has to offer.

What I'd love to see is a breakdown of guild/subguild combos.

Like a breakdown of the subguilds commonly played with each guild.

[mansa]

Slipknife is now 2.  As is cutpurse.

Fixing.  Thanks.bad charts

[Heade]

What is this one supposed to be showing, because it doesn't look accurate. You have craftsperson reflecting a "98", but every other class actually has more than it, with the exception of like, the 4 least popular classes.

It would probably make the most sense to have the chart reflect percentages instead of however you did it here, simply dividing the number of that class made by 741 to come up with the percentage.

Wait.  I get 882 characters created since July 4th.

That's not reflected in the numbers Brokkr gave us. His number is 741.

You can't correspond accounts created with characters created.  That data isn't available on the website.

But we also can't ignore the significance of the impact simply because we don't know the numbers. You're right, we don't have all the information. Those 371 new accounts could ACTUALLY have created 400 of the mundane PCs, all with less than a day played, which would REALLY skew the numbers. But we don't know that, so we'll have to do our best to estimate with the data we have available, unless someone wants to provide playtime statistics for us.

[Brokkr]

There were also a handful of the other classes, which I took out.  The most populous being Gladiator class.

[mansa]

What is this one supposed to be showing, because it doesn't look accurate. You have craftsperson reflecting a "98", but every other class actually has more than it, with the exception of like, the 4 least popular classes.

It would probably make the most sense to have the chart reflect percentages instead of however you did it here, simply dividing the number of that class made by 741 to come up with the percentage.

I made a typo when I transpode the numbrs

new fart:




My takeaways:

Race:   Players choosing humans more.   That's pretty standard across most fantasy MMORPGs.   Compare that to D&D stats:  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/

Classes: Fighting is more popular than crafting.  Again, compare that to D&D stats it's pretty similar.

Subclasses:  This is were things are more interesting.   Not surprised at Slipknife, but Grebber is high up on the 1 karma.  Interesting.  0 Karma - Surprised at Hunter, Linguist, and Thief.  I've never chose any of those subclasses!   2 Karma - Outdoorsman is top!  Wow.  I would of suspected one of the subclasses that gives advanced chopping or slashing.

Mansa's most surprising stat:  Custom Crafter is 5th chosen 0 karma subclass, and 6th overall!  5.6% of the 0 karma subclasses are this.

[Nao]

If we assume that only half of those new accounts created a PC (185.5)

Stop right there. In January, less than 26% of new accounts created an application. There is no reason to believe that these numbers doubled since january. Your entire guesstimation is off by a factor of 2.

And where is the estimation that there are roughly the same number of throwaway PCs coming from?

[Bogre]

I think Outdoorsman reflects Hunter popularity in that it's likely being picked by city/stealth classes to give some outdoors utility.

I actually am not surprised it's taken more often than the warrior subclasses, because if you're going to go for higher level combat skills it's pretty easy to just take a heavy combat guild. Of course, if those subclasses bump your starting weapon skill it might be useful. (don't know if this is the case for these subclasses, but in the past iirc you might get a bit higher start with subguild skills). Though there is certainly utility in rounding out weapon skills for the non-heavy-combat guilds, I think it's probably more common to go combat / utility sub than the other way around.


Gonna estimate that 5-10% of active characters, then, are magick subguilds, which doesn't seem too crazy. Looks like ~6% of created chars are magick subs, but I imagine those characters are much less likely to be throwaway, and obviously aren't new account's chars.

All in all, the breakdown seems pretty reasonable. I agree with Heade that the heavy mercantile folks will probably see less utilization than the other guilds.

I wonder if there will be settling in the future, though I would bet that for a durable amount of time people will be experimenting with class / sub mixes and thus will probably keep a good amount of variety in people's choices. And with the huge amount of choice (squeee!) there's a lot of cool options to try!

[Heade]

Stop right there. In January, less than 26% of new accounts created an application. There is no reason to believe that these numbers doubled since january. Your entire guesstimation is off by a factor of 2.

Ok. That was from a one time sample, showing percentage of new player accounts converted to character applications for a very limited period of time(1 month). The data that mansa often shows, shows that there are frequently large fluctuations in various statistics over time. Do we have further samples to draw from in order to establish an "average" conversion percentage, or has staff only ever released the one report? If we do, link them to me and I'll be happy to use that average to reconsider the numbers here.

I'm absolutely interested in seeing accurate figures. That's what I've been arguing for. So if my estimations are demonstrably off, I'd like to know that and adjust the figures accordingly. But I don't think the figures from 1 month around the holidays proves that. Let's look at a year of data and get the average conversion rate.

Or, better yet, let's get one important piece of data: Of ALL purely mundane PCs created during our sampling period, how many had less than a day played? Less than 3 days played? Less than 5 hours? The same for Karma PCs.

It'd also be nice to see how many were stored or killed in the same time period, vs. how many simply weren't played much. And how many player accounts were responsible for the creation of those 611 Mundane, 0 karma PCs. How about the same data for karma PCs?

We could use averages, even, if Brokkr didn't want to release class-specific playtimes for worry of identifying IC information of rarely played classes.

But this information is pretty important in drawing any real conclusions from the data that we have. Basically, the data we have so far could be very helpful, but only if we have further data that we may use to analyze it. Currently, it doesn't do a whole lot for us without the additional data points.

It's undeniable that any of these playtime statistics will push the number of mundanes actually played, way down. No one spends karma on throwaway PCs under the current system. No new players who don't play are apping Karma PCs. So the numbers can only be changed in one direction. Let's take an accurate look at just how far in that direction they change.

These playtime statistics could tell us how many of those mundane, non-karma PCs were "real" PCs, vs. newbies who didn't stick around, throwaways awaiting karma regen, or otherwise one-shot PCs people didn't actually want to keep, for whatever reason. To pretend that these things don't matter, or that they don't impact the IG environment that the class selections cultivate would be asinine.

I'm all for accurate data. So let's look at that. No reason to wear blinders, here, when it comes to incredibly relevant data.

[Vex]

I'd like to see the numbers, for how many of those mundane subs were utilized, by 0 day accounts.

Overall, I feel as though, there is something just not right about it, especially the elf numbers. There simply aren't enough elves around to be comparable to dwarves and half-elves, unless the number is, largely, made up of "throw away" elves, or new account elves, who never make it into the game / never log in more than a couple times.

Raw, compressed numbers are nice to look at, but aren't in and of themselves especially useful data. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

[Heade]

Raw, compressed numbers are nice to look at, but aren't in and of themselves especially useful data. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Exactly! Glad to see someone finally getting what I'm saying.

[mansa]

What's the problem statement?  What's the rough idea that we have, that we want to prove with data?


This was my thoughts that I had:
"Are players decided to wait until their karma gets 'restored' before creating a new character.  Are they 'on break' until the timer runs out."
The last thread had 20 unique GDB accounts posting their opinion about it, out of a playerbase of approximately 200.  That's 10% of the playerbase talking about something, but they weren't all agreeing.   Is that enough to extrapolate and say most of the playerbase acts like the sample represented?

"Is there a lot of magick characters in the game?
Should we lower or increase the number of magickers we have?  Should karma be adjusted for them, either lower or higher?


"How many players are choosing a subclass that allows for mastercrafting?"
Is this a thing that players actually want to do, or is it just the voice of a few loud players?
55 out of 741 characters created (7.4%) had the ability to mastercraft (even though nobody choose master woodworker and master crafter)

[Synthesis]

Hunter is the most popular subclass because grinding critters is still the easiest way to increase your combat skills, and now few classes get the skinning skill, which gives you an excuse to go out and grind critters.

Even though jman skinning is complete trash.  That's just more justification for grinding harder, though.

[Dar]

Whoa. There I go, picking a class thinking will be unpopular, and it ended up being in top 5. Go figure.

[RogueGunslinger]

According to this there's as many elves as dwarves or half-elves. That surprises me.

[Heade]

According to this there's as many elves as dwarves or half-elves. That surprises me.

And that's not including delves.

[Delirium]

Eh, Analyst 101: Context is important when displaying data, so the more detail the better. With more in-depth data, your extrapolations are more likely to be accurate and thus you can better inform your strategies moving forward.

[Brokkr]

I deal with highly ambiguous and fluid data on a day to day basis.  You make the conclusions the data can support.

Context is important, but it isn't the actual data which gives you context.  Context is the stuff surrounding the data.  Like the fact that you can't currently regen karma without logging in a character. Not creating a character because you are waiting it out to be able to choose an ESG is pretty self defeating, because those options only get updated currently when you log in a character, not simply your account.

[Marauder Moe]

Surely that isn't by design...

[Heade]

Context is the stuff surrounding the data.  Like the fact that you can't currently regen karma without logging in a character. Not creating a character because you are waiting it out to be able to choose an ESG is pretty self defeating, because those options only get updated currently when you log in a character, not simply your account.

Which even further encourages apping a throwaway character you have no intention of playing. This is an example of why play time statistics before death/storage are important to these numbers.

[Miggy]

I deal with highly ambiguous and fluid data on a day to day basis.  You make the conclusions the data can support.

Context is important, but it isn't the actual data which gives you context.  Context is the stuff surrounding the data.  Like the fact that you can't currently regen karma without logging in a character. Not creating a character because you are waiting it out to be able to choose an ESG is pretty self defeating, because those options only get updated currently when you log in a character, not simply your account.

Can you elaborate on this please? So, if I'm currently dead, waiting for karma regen is not going to happen?

[Brokkr]

Yes and no?  You still regenerate your karma along the timeline.  It is just that the thing that looks at your account chargen options and refreshes them is tied to your character logging in.

I recognize this is not optimal, but until a way around the issue that caused things to be implemented this way is figured out, this is the way it is working.

[Heade]

Yes and no?  You still regenerate your karma along the timeline.  It is just that the thing that looks at your account chargen options and refreshes them is tied to your character logging in.

I recognize this is not optimal, but until a way around the issue that caused things to be implemented this way is figured out, this is the way it is working.

Just an idea, but could you make the game check the database against the timeline of karma regen on reboot? That way, while not ideal, it would still happen and update periodically without having to create a throwaway character to get your karma options.

[Bogre]

Presumeably the staff would restore your options if you had waited the requisite amount of time and you sent in a request until the issue is resolved.

[Eyeball]

Maybe we don't see elves because they're a bunch of sneaky bastards.

Or maybe they just tend to die faster but the people choosing to play them keep apping them.

[Delirium]

Maybe we don't see elves because they're a bunch of sneaky bastards.

"I don't see any elves!"

>scan
>look

*a very tall strange shadow is here*
*a tall strange shadow is here*
*a very tall and thick strange shadow is here*

"Oh. Nevermind."

>flee self

[Nao]

Maybe we don't see elves because they're a bunch of sneaky bastards.

Or maybe they just tend to die faster but the people choosing to play them keep apping them.

When I played a rinthi elf, the majority of them either never went to Allanak proper, or just went there for work or when they had to for other reasons. The majority of the time, they would be in the rinth. There were also a lot more celf PCs from the 'rinth than Southsiders.

[Dar]

my last celf survived for 2 rl years. Though I've taken multiple breaks throughout those years. But I can roughly say that in between those breaks, I easily knew 40-60 elves. Although maybe 30 lived beyond 2-3 days and maybe 20 lived longer then 5 days played.

[Heade]

my last celf survived for 2 rl years. Though I've taken multiple breaks throughout those years. But I can roughly say that in between those breaks, I easily knew 40-60 elves. Although maybe 30 lived beyond 2-3 days and maybe 20 lived longer then 5 days played.

Are you guestimating how many days played they have? Because I imagine people probably, by and large, have no clue how many days played my PCs have when they RP with them IG.

I expect that people would probably seriously underestimate my days played, quite often.

[RogueGunslinger]

This thread summoned Gimf!