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They said steam charts are finally going up
Looks like they are going down again.
Comments
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It's losing players less quickly.
That said, trends like that shouldn't be expected when a significant licesned chapter dropped during that red period, there have been multiple large sales, and they've run several "log in every day for rewards regardless of whether you play a match" events to artificially boost the numbers.
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Ringu is not a "significant licensed chapter".
But this discussion is pointless. Players WANT to see this game dying. They always ignore the fact that the RE-Chapter caused an anomaly with way more players playing than usually. The numbers are basically corrected to the normal number of players in this game.
Other games are also not dying when their big hype is over. They just adjust to a normal value.
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If you look at certain blogs that analyze queue populations you'll see that survivor to killer ratio is 6:1 in the morning (EASTERN USA) and quickly goes to 12:1 and 30:1 during prime time. At night it can reach upwards of 50:1.
This would seem like the game is dying. Only a few people left that actually play killer.
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And looks like its still not enough,who knows,maybe one day they will understand the players wont go up and will slowly decline unless they improve the gameplay experience by fixing the things people been complaining for years.
They will get more players on anniversary but as usual,after it will slowly die out again.
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This Data only showed players in queue, but there were fare more (8-10 times as many, if I recall correctly) players in matches. Which does not add up to a 50:1-ratio.
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How do you think players get into matches?
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The people in matches were in queues before.
Lets make the math, just as an example:
40 Killer in Queue and 2000 Survivors in Queue. This is a ratio of 1:50.
Now we have 20000 players in matches. This is a 1:4 ratio, so we have 16000 Survivors and 4000 Killers playing.
This means, at this point, 22000 Survivors and 4040 Killers are online. So the actual ratio of players playing is around 1:5,45, so for each Killer, 5,45 Survivors are playing. Which is not bad.
You can do that with actual numbers and you will notice that the result is not even close to something like 1:50 or even 1:30 or 1:12. Looking only on the players queuing up is wrong, you have to keep in mind those who are playing, because those who are playing are in the ideal 1:4-ratio.
(Obviously, you have some other things to keep in mind like players just having their game open and not queuing or playing or Survivors requeuing because they died in a game, but there is no way to calculate that)
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What do you mean with "anomaly and that it adjusts to a normal value"? All those people that bought DbD and the RE chapter left. Probably for good, which is honestly a shame. Since more players usually means a larger pool of simultaneous matches and therefore shorter queues for everyone.
There is no "normal value" here. Just because the game had less players before the RE chapter, doesn´t mean it has to go back to those values. The devs should take a look at why the player retention rate is so low. Things like the grind, accesibilty, mmr, balancing, toxicity and queues all come to mind here.
Someone who just bought the game, has a couple of perks unlocked and goes against fully decked players that roflstomp him and say "go uninstall". Won´t stay for long. Especially when he looks at how little bloodpoints he made and how much he needs to unlock anything. Its simply not motivating for new players. This needs to change for the better.
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The RE-Chapter brought a lot of new players and an All Time-Peak. But again, I know that people like you want to see the game dying, they want to see dropping numbers. This is why all screenshots on that matter are cut off at September.
If you compare March 2022 with March 2021, you have around the same number of players. There is a 3k smaller average. Which is not dramatic.
And the numbers will probably go up again with the Anniversary Chapter (and Event), regardless what it is.
But ignoring the fact that the RE-Chapter brought more players than usual is just wrong. And I also dont think that those who started because of RE all quit. Probably many of those quit, because if you are only interested in RE, you might not find DBD fun since it is not a game focussed around RE in particular. Others will have quite because of other reasons. Which happens in every game.
But ignoring hypes and then saying that the game is dying if the player count goes back to normal is misinterpreting the data.
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I see what you are saying.
How is it possible that the overall game population has a ratio of 1:5.45 and yet the queue is 1:50. That doesn't make any sense. Do Killers just drop out of the game after their match that night?
Sure, some survivors die early and enter the queue sooner but in my experience any death that occurs before exit gates or 1 maybe 2 gens remaining is followed quickly by the deaths of the rest of the survivors (2-3 minutes avg unless killer is being nice).
The queue is a reflection of the ratio overall. Survivors wouldn't be waiting 4-5 minutes on average late at night if the actual ratio was 1:5.45.
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Could you quote me on where exactly i said, that i want the game to die, please? No one wants this game to die. If people don´t like the game, they just stop playing and never look back.
Taking the numbers from a year ago and call them the "normal value" is a mistake. I mean, if you stretch the time frame long enough, then the "normal value" could be probably around 22k players. Since thats the returning value of the first 3 years.
I repeat myself, the devs need to improve the player retention rate. Because whats the point of getting a lot of new players that all leave after a couple of months? Just hoping for some player spikes during events leads nowhere if the core issues are not solved.
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The developers could literally announce that the servers are shutting down because there isn't enough revenue generated by the playerbase to keep the game going and people would be accusing you of being a drama queen if you mentioned the game is dead.
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I would like to point out that for the past weeks we had many long in rewards, small events, bloodpoint boosters, etc. New licensed chapter.... Yet the avarage player number keep dropping. Slowly but keep dropping while many in-game things are happening.
That is saying something.
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Please tell me how having 1 Killer to 545 survivors no bad? That would mean there are 541 players unable to play. The current game should have a much better ratio.
Edit
After closer inspection I determine I need my dam eyes checked I take back my previous comment for a more understanding and somewhat funny one at my expense......ahem
I as blind as the Wraith getting hit by a hackers Perma flashlight on a sunny day.....that is all.
Post edited by VikingDragonXii on3 -
Ringu is not a significant license ?
It's the biggest license chapter with Hellraiser and Stranger Things.
For the horror fan, Ringu is in the Top 1.
We do not want to see DbD dying but fact is it is dying just because of SBMM...
Post edited by JeanCharpentier on4 -
They're not talking about 545, but 5.45. A bit less than five-and-a-half.
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Also lately people (me included) came back to try the new MMR tests, they werent worth my time and i had an awful experience in all of them and closed the game right after a single killer game, but still, it says a lot of the game current state
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Survivors leave a match quicker, meaning there will be more within the queue. Killer queues are also much faster, meaning less of then will be in the queue as they are much more likely to find a lobby, thus removing them from the queue.
Therefore, the ratio is no where near as serious as 1:50 because it doesn't account for people within lobbies, the endgame screen, or in a match itself. Simply just the amount of people queuing within that second. And the very fast killer queues make the numbers seem substantially worse than they actually are.
Source: the original poster of the statistics.
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Oh man I didn't even see that decimal point....well now I feel stupid for missing that lamo....now thier post makes more sense I was like how is that ratio fair lmao.
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I would really like to know who is in charge of DbD at BHVR.
Who is the boss letting the SBMM ON while DbD has never known such a playerbase leak since realease ? Is it not obvious that SBMM IS the PROBLEM ?
Half the players are gone, most of us are unhappy with the game and we even start to hate the dev team decisions. It is almost getting personal from some of us... Regarding money made with the game, i guess the impact is really really huge and still no action is taken...
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Some survivors leave the match quicker. The average kill count is 2 per game. The last kill most likely occurs during the last minute or so in the game if it's not a 4K. There isn't much here that would describe such a disparity in the ratio.
Certainly, a small drop in the number of killers can produce a large disparity in the queue ratio but nothing like 1:50. Again, the previous poster provided a good example with numbers indicating a 1:5.45 ratio being possible overall and 1:50 queue ratio existing.
However, my question still remains. If players are exiting matches and requeueing at a constant rate (in near parity, I estimate the avg difference between the first survivor exiting the match and the killer exiting the match at about 5 minutes at most) how do queue times get so large? It's like killers leave the match and disappear.
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Been saying this from the start of these discussions. Resident Evil brought in a record amount of people, so of course there were going to be big losses when the player base re-stabilized. I think DBD will never really die until it's no longer supported. A rock-solid amount of us simply love the game and stick around despite its flaws.
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EZ maths.
Queue times at peak time are around 10 minutes for the survivors (8-10 minutes). It is the lengh of 1 trial.
It means that when 4 survivors are waiting for a match, 4 others are playing a match. So half the survivors are in queue times.
Now let's talk about killers. At peak times they instantly find a trial, all the time. It means that all killers are playing and none of them are in queue.
So peak time is 35k players on steam.
With the data we know we get :
- x = half the # of survivors (one playing, one queuing)
- y = # killers (all playing)
2x+y = 35000 with y = x/4 as you need 1 killer for 4 survivors so for 1 trial you need x survivors and x/4 killer.
2x+(x/4) = 35000 --> (8x + x)/4 = 35000 --> 9x/4 = 35000 --> x = 15555
# of survivors = 31111
# of killers = 3888
Killers only represent 1/8 of the playerbase on PC. On console there are even less killers as it is even more frustrating to play them so globally i would say that killers represent 1/10 of the playerbase.
It is a terribly low number.
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People still ignoring all the reasons mentioned 100 times before to justify there fake news of a dying game. Humankind is doomed.
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It’s gonna keep going up and down period.
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The Friday peak on Steam this week was about 36,000, which is the lowest I’ve seen it in a long time. Definitely not a good sign and is indicative of the continuing trend of people being frustrated with the lack of urgency by BHVR to address key issues that the community have been complaining about for a long time.
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This is really interesting (and not surprising) data. Do you have a link to these blogs where the data are available? I’d be super interested to read. If I’m BHVR, those killer to survivor ratios are alarming but yet we see they remain hesitant to make any quality of life improvements for killers (actually have done the opposite with things like adding boons to the game). It’s not surprising at all that they are seriously looking at adding bots to the public matches. Pretty soon that’s the only way survivors will be able to play without horrendously long queue times.
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As long as MMR stays in the game and constantly nerfing and ruining survivor gameplay, it will continue to lose players.
New players are dead upon arrival.
Game is not fun sweaty. That is not why it became popular.
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Supposedly BHVR is deleting posts that provide the link. They deleted my post on steam that contained the link with no explanation of course. Google "DBD player populations and network traffic" and you should be able to find the blog.
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It’s amazing that there are so many more survivors than killers (sometimes 50:1 at peak times) when survivor is so miserable and killer is so easy. Super weird!
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The blog article I saw had misleading numbers, it was listing lobby ratios which is just players waiting in a lobby for a game and doesn’t include players actually in a game. Lobby counts are significantly smaller than actual players in matches and all matches have exactly four survivors and one killer. So the real ratio is much closer to a a bit under 20% of players are killers than “50 to 1”. (In other words when you have 2 people in a lobby waiting as a killer and 100 people waiting as survivors, but you also have 10,000 matches going, there isn’t a “50 to 1” ratio of killers)
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This is just sad and pathetic if they are removing these posts. Players continue to be frustrated with the lack of transparency from BHVR, so they have to take matters into their own hands to try to figure out what’s really going on with the game. BHVR obviously allow plenty of criticism on these forums, so it’s not like they are censoring all criticism and scrutiny, but there are still examples like this where they are further antagonizing the player base by actively fighting against transparency. Most people who are criticizing the game love it and just want to see it succeed. Be open and honest with the player base about the problems with the current state of the game and let everyone see the data. This would build a lot of trust and goodwill with the community.
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sorry to cut in here, but is this gonna be the new strawman: "you want to see this game die therefore your opinion is invalid"?
im not even saying you're making bad points in your actual arguments, but this whole part where you just assume that anyone speaking against you instantly just wants to see this game fail, etc. is just super unnecessary. it drags down your entire post.
and just because i have to now:
no, i do NOT want to see this game die - if that were the case i would not be here on this very forum.
what i want is that people stop excusing away the alarming drop in player numbers and the devs actually go and do something about it.
i want this game to CHANGE, not die. to go in a positive direction that will stop the bleeding in playernumbers and makes people like me, who quit for a variety of reasons, want to actually return and play this game again.
i want more changes like the most recent ones. those were overall good changes that i am very happy with - something i, sadly, can not say for any patches ever since MMR dropped (including said MMR).
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I logged in to play for the first time since February. Back i February I played an hour and had to stop. That was the first time I had logged in since before Christmas.
So, I log in, jump into a match and get absolutely destroyed for 9 matches. Took 9 matches to get 6 kills for the ritual I was running. It was not until I started playing super sweaty in the last 2 matches that I was bale to break even.
The matches were all vs SWF. I faced 5 know streamers during this spree. My MMR is low, especially since I've been gone and they lower your MMR for the first few matches to ease you back. My first match was a streamer's swf where the lowest member had 8k hours.
Add in the insane amount of CoH and Boil Over and you jave some of the most miserable game play I've ever experienced. I logged out and likely won't return for a few months when I repeat this experience. Maybe I'll follow my wife and all my friends and uninstall the game eventually.
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One issue is that comms are so powerful, any SWF with average/decent skill who actually play to win, should only be matched with high MMR killers, however there aren’t enough killers at that level to be able to do it without excessive queue times, because there just aren’t enough killers in general, resulting in not only average killers but also new ones being matched with them very consistently, which creates an unbalanced and often frustrating experience.
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StEaM ChArTs
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Nah, but everytime this topic comes up it only shows the stats from September until now. The stats before are not shown. The screenshots are always cut at this point.
This is either coincidence or ill intent.
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Agreed on "people want to see the game dying".
Though what steam charts do show is terribly bad player retention, which can never be a good thing considering there has been many issues with the game in the past months.
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50:1 is a huge stretch and how do you even know. Right now is peak time and survivor queue is so much faster than killers.
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Thats why i brought up the "normal stats" from the first 3 years. Which are around 22k players. But you didn´t want to answer to this one.
Weird, almost like it didn´t fit your argument or something like that...
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Small drops here and there but nothing comparable to what we are seeing today
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It all returns to nothing
It all comes tumbling down
Tumbling down, tumbling down
It all returns to nothing
I just keep letting me down
Letting me down, letting me down
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Man you are so adamant to defend your point of view no matter who is right.
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Correction there are 539 players who wont play lol the killer will find 4 survs
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Even if the ratio between killers and survivors were even. 1 killer for 4 survivors. Survivors get killed and can queue up for another game when they die. Killers have to have all 4 survivors dead or out of the exit gates before they can queue up for another match.
Let's do the math with just 4 matches with killers. At the start there are 4 killers and 16 survivors. They get into a match and each of the games 1 survivor is killed. The survivors leave the match and queue up again. Now we have 1 party waiting for a match. Then the second survivor is killed in each group and we have a second survivor group waiting for a killer match, the 3rd survivor is killed and we have 3 survivor groups waiting for a match, and then we have 4 survivors killed. The 4 killers are able to get out of their match and instantly queue up because 3 out of 4 survivor groups have been waiting.
This is a simplified example of what is going on with killer and survivor queue times. For killers and survivors to both have fast queues I suspect that the ratio of killer to survivor players needs to be 3:1 not 4:1
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Dbd has millions of players worldwide but "oh no muh steam charts says game dying!". Don't get me wrong bhvr has got to do some major improvements to this game, but I just find it funny how people keep posting steam charts.
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If you look back up I misread what they were saying it was 5.39 not 539 lmao
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Sure. Games last on average 10 minutes. With an estimate of 2-5 minutes from the first kill to the end of the game. Average is a 2K per game.
There is no way the ratio is going to 1:50 unless killers disappear from the queue entirely after playing a game. Survivors who die early will queue up with other survivors who died early. There needs to be four survivors per killer. Once one killer finishes their game and enters the queue those 4 survivors are matched. If games are ending at a constant rate there is a constant cycle of killers and survivors entering the queue and the ratio will never grow to be so disproportionate.
The situation you described can account for spikes at a single time, but they don't describe why the queue is 1:50 late at night for hours. This indicates something is terribly wrong. A ratio of 1:6 like what is seen in the morning isn't that bad. In fact it's quite good considering the balance in the game. It's probably what is to be expected if there are slightly less killers than survivors and the situation you described plays out repeatedly.
However, again, the queue quickly blossoms to 1:12 in prime time and within an hour goes to 1:30. This just doesn't make sense unless there is a serious shortage of killers.
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The numbers aren't misleading imo, although they might be straight up wrong.
If there are 10,000 matches going on, and the overall ratio of survivors to killers is 5:1, then there are matches constantly ending and survivors/killers rejoining the queue. The queue ratio will never blossom to 50:1 for hours. It may spike up there a couple times but for it to be this ratio for hours indicates that the ratio is a correct representation.
Now if the numbers are entirely incorrect, that is they are not representative of the Eastern US region at all and only a single server from the sources local region the situation you described may be correct. In this case the numbers aren't the queue at all and just a local server. If the former case is true than I don't think scenarios that you've described can exist for hours.
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I think your reasoning is off on the queue times. Matches take 10-15 minutes or longer typically (unless they’re a total blowout). One side or the other will be short on players, for the sake of argument let’s say we have fewer killers than we need. While that’s the case all killers will essentially be getting into lobbies pretty much instantly, so they’ll be in a game within about 60-70 seconds. Meanwhile the excess survivors have to wait for matches to finish for new spots to open up, so they’re only getting into a new game about every 10-15 minutes. So if killers are the short side the killers in queue will always be nearly zero while the survivors in queue will be proportional to the wait time difference which is the ratio of the match time to the minute timer in the lobby basically (10-15 to 1 at peak times). And at off peak times, which that blog article inexplicably focussed on (it’s primary headline went with something like 3 AM for some reason) you will have an even longer wait because there will be times when no killer is waiting for a match simply by chance since there are fewer players to begin with. (That 50 to 1 ratio was the extreme off peak hours figure, not the peak hours number which is obviously the better value to look at since the great majority of players in the overall population play at peak times.)
P.S. It’s easy to actually add up the numbers in the blog plus the numbers on Steamcharts to get what should be the actual ratios. In another thread we did that and at around 4 PM it was something like 1000 people in queue at something like 900 to 100 ratio I think it was and around 41,000 players total on Steam in matches and queue combine. So when you work it out the ratio at peak times was around 32900 survivors to 8100 killers.
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