Cristovelli Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 I'm sorry but I don't see how the current state of this update justifies a suspension of further hotfixes. There are seriously a lot of new problems, with connectivity, Railjack mission bugs and UI glitches. Can anyone answer me this one question, how do you properly extract from a Railjack mission if the squad decides to continue instead of returning to Dry Dock? If I abort the mission even after the new mission has fully loaded and I've gotten the rewards screen for the previous (showing me Plexus xp and salvage), upon returning to my Orbiter all that stuff is gone, even though Mission Results shows that I earned it. Plexus unchanged, lost the mods, the salvage, everything. Twice now, so clearly either I don't know how to play Railjack properly or something is screwy on your end. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iPathos Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 (edited) 10 hours ago, Petroklos said: WELCOME TENNO! This is the official Warframe Bug & Feedback Tracking Board for PC Update 29.10.0: Corpus Proxima & The New Railjack! This board is used by the Warframe Community Team to track and share known bugs, issues, and feedback reported by the community. "do we post our issues needing fixing to your current Trello Board" No, because we don't post in the Trello Board. "do we wait for you to eventually (potentially) make a Trello board for them" You're welcome to wait for something that they never said is coming, just don't complain when it doesn't come to be. "act on any changes we've been requesting for years" Again, not the point of the Trello Board. Also who is "we" and what are these "changes". "I'm tired of this." Sounds like you've got the wrong approach on how you engage with your entertainment. "Give us a response" The answer has been stated as obviously as possible since before the patch-notes even dropped and the Trello board was ever made public. "deprecate your bug report forums as they're ignored" If only there was paper trail of DE employees, Community Team Members and others, actually responding to the Threads, or Threads being quoted in the Patch Notes. And if only there was the common practice of people going through the forums, relaying and categorizing the useful feedback (aka, not mine or yours post) for internal use, without also having to personally respond to each and every thread. And if only these points applied to the Forums, Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Discord, in-game Messages and wherever else the Devs have some presence. "work to fix issues you have ALSO ignored for years" Do I really need to explain that this is a non-statement? That this implies everything and nothing? You assume that everyone knows what you're talking about and that everyone is one the same page as you. Even if I do agree with what you think needs fixing and how you think it should be fixed, your post tells me absolutely nothing about it. "No, because we don't post in the Trello Board." I am aware of how the board works, the post was meant to ask DE where to post things that do not fall under the cover of the latest patch. "You're welcome to wait for something that they never said is coming, just don't complain when it doesn't come to be." They should act on their own bug report forums then, because in terms of their activity there it's a barren wasteland. "Again, not the point of the Trello Board. Also who is "we" and what are these "changes"." This links back to my statement before about 'Do we post this here or elsewhere'. "Sounds like you've got the wrong approach on how you engage with your entertainment." It's almost like DE touts themselves as devs who listen, or who have ridden that reputation for years to get to this point. As a further note, my playtime has shrunk to about a tenth of what it was before all the "hotfix and devstream changes" etc that happened. This falls not only to my failing health, but largely to DE forcefully ignoring feedback that would be better responded to if nothing else. "The answer has been stated as obviously as possible since before the patch-notes even dropped and the Trello board was ever made public." Then why am I still asking questions about the exact same thing? "If only there was paper trail of DE employees, Community Team Members and others, actually responding to the Threads, or Threads being quoted in the Patch Notes. And if only there was the common practice of people going through the forums, relaying and categorizing the useful feedback (aka, not mine or yours post) for internal use, without also having to personally respond to each and every thread. And if only these points applied to the Forums, Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Discord, in-game Messages and wherever else the Devs have some presence." I simply ask that they either frequent or visibly frequent their own bug report depository. It's chock full of posts that have every bit of info they could ever need to fix given bugs, and that's ignoring my posts about the Furax Amalgam (which by note, doesn't even need a video to check. it applies blast status to enemies in range, and blast was previously a knockdown - while now arcane eruption functions the same, with blast now being a shadow of its former self). I don't ask for a paper trail, simply give us some feedback as we do for them. "Do I really need to explain that this is a non-statement? That this implies everything and nothing? You assume that everyone knows what you're talking about and that everyone is one the same page as you. Even if I do agree with what you think needs fixing and how you think it should be fixed, your post tells me absolutely nothing about it." You're welcome to try to speak for DE in this case, however you're not the one I've been pinging and posting about for months because they are unable to fix something that ACTUALLY HAS A FIX ALREADY IN USE (Arcane Eruption). You're welcome to your opinion, but unless you speak for DE I have no interest in your PoV. I've spent 5 years loving this game and unfortunately the Devs and their attitude of late have lead me to the belief that they don't care any more - or at the very least enough to work on what needs working on. Edited April 8, 2021 by iPathos Clarification about "entertainment engagement". 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
master_of_destiny Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 2 hours ago, Graavarg said: Oh man, you really want to sound like you know things, but it sure does look like a 13-year old copying stuff from the internet. 1) There was no "manipulation" of data, it is an aggregation, just like the monthly, weekly, and daily data are aggregations. Since it is by quarter, it says "by quarter" in the header (😁), and the Q1, Q2 etc. on the bottom axis means "quarter" 😀. 2) Subjective reasoning. Talk about being "thrown out of class"... 😀 3) Well, you were half right. I did it, but what isn't there cannot be seen (not with my eyes anyway). Even if we limit the "playerbase" to cover only the subset consisting of "Steam players", the trend since your subjective 2017 is growing. I don't personally care one way or the other, that just happens to be the mathematical truth. And that is even with leaving out all other PC players, all Twitch players, all XBOX players, all PS4 players (and now also PS5 players). And if don't remember wrong, PS4(PS5 Warframe account are creeping up towards 20 million, so that is a sizeable chunk left out. 4) No. I don't have access to a point cloud, the only cloudy thing here is your thinking. Also, calculating trends for point clouds is pretty standard procedure. However, this is a "measure over time"-trend, the most basic of all basic trendlines you can calculate. That is if you understand the concept of trends at all, you seem to want to calculate trends by first deciding on the trend you want and then selecting data to fit. Tip: that is not the way. 5) Yes, if you apply a polynomial trend it looks different. If you select other trendline options you get different trendlines (not surprisingly, and yes, "funny"). However, they show different things and assume different kinds of relationships between X and Y (a polynomial tries to find the current trend in a know fluctuation, and you put in how many such cycles you data has, it is widely used in economics, among other things to find when the "top" or "bottom" has been reached). If you want to assume that the relation between player numbers and time is not linear, feel free to elaborate (that might be... interesting). Or maybe it all depends on sunspots, like climate change supposedly does (or was that the Q-something thing?) 😀. 6) I was simply responding to another poster claiming that the Steam data (per quarter) shows how the playerbase is declining. I had it available, and it doesn't. Unfortunately I don't have your magical capability of "seeing", so I have to use math. You are pretty quick with accusations, then again they are so... lets say "not very coherent", so it is actually more fun than aggravation. However, not all might feel that way and this is quite off topic (yes, it IS a diversion), so if you want to continue please move the discussion to a separate thread. I promise I'll join and irritate the f*ck out of the "I'm so sore DE doesn't do what I want", "Warframe is dying", "everyone is leaving", "boohoo"-crowd. And really: instead of convoluted and disjointed efforts at criticism => the Steam data is freely available so just prove your point mathematically instead, and stop whining. And no "seeing stuff", trust the math & the data instead. And skip "the playerbase"-concept, since it really is only "Warframe players using Steam". And if someone could explain this strange hang-up with "the playerbase has to be declining"... 1) This is a digression. It's my last answer to this, so feel free to make some bass-ackwards assumptions. Strawmen are easy to knock down. It's also interesting that you believe that everyone is complaining. It's not a problem. Yeah, 29.10.x has really done a lot to fix things....with that 9.5% increase to a player base (in March). Of course, our player counts are still July 2020 levels...in March 2021....so apparently that's a healthy state of being that is sustainable. 2) Definition of manipulation. to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage I'd like to be honest here. You have a pre-supposition. That is that the player base is growing, and has been outlined in multiple different posts. You pull data going back to the beginning of the game, manipulate the data without denoting what you did to manipulate it, and follow up with blatantly misrepresenting any statistical data. You then generate a strawman, by claiming a personal attack on my credibility, because that's obviously the way to win an argument. Fantastic. Your position required one moment of honesty, but instead of doing that you make a personal attack. You'll note I said that twice as an act of repetition. I need to drive this home, as it establishes you as the second half of the definition, someone willing and demonstrably insidious. 3) Let's look at data manipulation, because you apparently need a lesson in that too. How many ways could a summed quarter be expressed? Well, you have three values. The easiest way would be the maximum, but that'd demonstrate a bias. You could choose a minimum, and that would demonstrate the opposite bias. You could demonstrate the median value, which would demonstrate neither bias. Alternatively, you could add all of them up, and divide them to show an average. This manipulates the monthly data, and smooths everything out. It's almost like the goal would be to knock down the highs and fill in the lows, an action which may be extremely beneficial if your point is to glaze over the extreme peaks and valleys that are generated because DE can't maintain new content delivery in any reasonable fashion. You chose to explain none of this...and choose a representation which doesn't accurately represent any value in a quarter. I'd suggest that you really stop a minute here, and instead of trying to win a fight you ask what assumptions you've made. Why someone would have an alternative conclusion. But I'd most appreciate if you thought for more than 20 seconds before responding. The topic is about 29.10.x. It's about how DE squeezed out an update at the end of March, so they didn't have another quarter with nothing and demonstrate abysmal player engagement figures. That's why I'm explaining this, in a post about UPDATE 29.10.x. CLEAR MOTIVATION, ON TOPIC, AND WITHOUT BIAS. You'll note that it's without bias, and I'm assuming you'll take umbrage. Have at it. Thus far you've strawmanned the argument and issued attacks on my person. That's a real winner there. If this were November 2017 I'd be in the camp that the player base was growing, and that with only two months of data my conclusion was that the new model was a rousing success...less so in November 2018...absolutely sure that in 2019 the model was flawed...and in 2020 questioning exactly how DE was planning to address growing flaws in their content delivery. It's almost like a competent game, with about the same mileage as Warframe, in this same timeframe, has been pulling down consistent and increasing numbers. I mean, it'd be sad if I could cite, say CS:GO and demonstrate that it's fluctuations in player count have been less dramatic and demonstrably more consistent over the same time period. It'd be even more interesting if they started slightly before Warframe, and thus can be used as a benchmark for a largely online only experience with shooter components. Yeah, not even sugar coating that one. CS:GO is eating DE's proverbial milkshake in consistency, player counts, and virtually every other metric. If it's unclear, I don't really care about 2013-2017. I'm not going to distort trends by pulling almost a decade worth of data to obfuscate today. It's not about ripping on DE, nor defending them. It's about honest feedback, and why this tactic is not helping the game. 4) I appreciate that you're asking about being thrown out of class. I could point to the strawman again. I could tell you I'm a professional. I could also provide personal information. I'm betting you'd like that. NO. Being abundantly clear, this argument is already lost to you. You've resorted to a personal attack, because there's no reasonable defense for saying something idiotic. I would prefer you simply make this an instance of Godwin's Law. I have the distinct feeling it's where you're going next, but I'll choose to be an adult, and let you hang yourself. 5) You have a point cloud. You seem to be incapable of basic math. Let me explain, simply enough that someone who is failing FST (functions, statistics, and trigonometry; this was the highest level of math required to pass high school when I graduated) could understand. To graph data on a two dimensional axis you need a series of points defined by an X and Y relative position. Now, when given a table with multiple values, you can chose a variety of different ways to express that data, and orientations. If I wanted to demonstrate the peak versus average player count I could do so...as I have 5 different values pulled from the steam chart. You've chosen to represent the X axis as time, and graph the y as player count. You've therefore got a point cloud...that you can graph and start playing with to determine if there are correlations. A point cloud is fantastic...and literally the basis for any two dimensional graph...no matter how you choose to graph it. Let me now ask you why? You seem to need this explained to you, so let me do it as well. Your question is how healthy the game's player base is, as represented by the player counts over time. You then manipulated the data into a quarter value, which was calculated by averaging the already average values. Let me explain some stupidity here...because you really messed up. Average is a monthly value...but each month should be weighted to represent the difference in number of days. Not accounted for. The math....not accounted for. If you're showing data, you explain things. It's almost like you've input garbage, are expressing garbage, and instead of simply explaining your assumptions and admitting error you've doubled down that your opposition needs to be attacked instead of admitting defeat. There is no loss in defeat, unless you're incapable of learning. 6) Let me explain basic math....because apparently you're missing the point. What is the r2 value? It's a calculation of the distance each point in your data cloud has from the trend line. The reasoning is cyclical...because excel calculates the trendline from a minimization of this distance, but for us squishy humans everything is fantastic. That value goes from 0 to 1. Basically any value under 0.9 is a poor correlation to the expressed data, where it only loosely corresponds to any individual point. Why then do we choose other trendlines? Again, this is simple, but not all data is a linear expression. Also, maybe your data is not represented by a linear scale. If you use a logarithmic scale some data can be represented by a line, whilst using a classical constant scale you'd need a power function to accurately represent it. Why is this a concern? AGAIN, RELEVANCE TO UPDATE 29.10.x. The nature of gaming is not a linear value. Warframe has established a trend where player counts largely scale to content infusions (this would be obvious, but given the responses I'm assuming nothing). Said content infusions are largely built around a classical quarter model, so we should expect to see a cyclical model rather than a linear one. Now, let me give you the benefit of doubt, no matter how unearned. Maybe you saw this, or the person you seem to have quoted saw it. Maybe you decided to alleviate the concern, by averaging the quarters. Doubt unearned, but extended as a kindness. Now the problem in your data starts to show. You've gotten everything all the way back to 2013. In 2017 we transitioned content from consistent to biannually. It's fun to poison the trend data with noise....which you did. You know, losing 10% of 100k players still looks like huge gains when you've got years of data where 20k players was a peak. Scrub out the initial data, and choose relevant data. Chose a time period that represents the current input-output model of DE. That is to say, something that can accurately determine the future by ESTABLISHED TRENDS. It now seems like we're not looking at 2013 to late 2017 anymore. It seems like our point of change is the push for PoE. The "dramatic" change that DE brought, with immense ambition, by latching onto the open worlds trend in video games. Of course, AND RELATING TO 29.10.x, that trend has come at the price of heavily buggy biannual releases. So....it's really quite difficult to look at manipulated data, which I had to assume the manipulation of, and come to the conclusion that the player counts are increasing. That, by the way, is your implication. You didn't outright express it, but you did indicate the declining player base conclusion was at best questionable. As a side note, this is the point where a sane individual would likely interject that I don't have console, Epic, or Launcher data. Correct. You may have a valid point here. My only defense would be the Leyou performance reports which existed up until being bought out by Tencent. They paint a picture of decreasing fiscal performance, and inductively agree that things are not looking good. I want to address this not because it's invalid, but because it's fair criticism that we do not have perfect data. That said, inductive reasoning to fill in the gaps indicates bad tidings. 7) You seem to not know math very well. Let me express an understanding that you seem to lack. The trendline is not dictated by where it's used. I can represent data with a bell curve, a linear regression, a power regression, or any other form I desire. Your inability to use them outside of other sources is simply your inability to understand data, or see a trend. If I really wanted to get an accurate representation of this, I'd perform a Fourier transform and use a few dozen terms. What would that actually tell me though? A Fourier transform is great for a describing any one point in time from a finite range, or a natural system with a repeating value. Basically, you get to describe a regular harmonic pattern which doesn't necessarily conform to a sine or cosine function (yay, sawtooth waves). What it does though, is give me a small headache just remembering doing the miserable things. Of course, apparently 13 year olds are now doing them....or that strawman is looking pretty idiotic. 8) "I graphed literally 2013 to 2021, and despite the last section being down, and averaging out performance, the game isn't showing a decreasing player base." This is a simplification of your point. You'll excuse me here, but I must not remember my math. I don't think these statements are correct, but apparently; 105k<70k (that's a visual guess of peak at Q3 2018 and Q1 2021) I can see that you've got what looks like 2 quarters increasing...while the surrounding 6 quarters are much lower than the 2018 peak. Apparently 2 > 6 (quarters increasing substantially, versus those significantly lower. I've not counted one quarter as it drops, but is not appreciably larger than the next given your averaging) HOW DO I RELATE THIS TO 29.10.x? Well, there was an uptick at the very end of Q1....because this update launched. It's almost like DE showed basically two months of minimal positive change. January was a statistical stall. The developer stream at the end of that month basically announced that Railjack was going to be the big focus. February saw about 8.5% more people returning on average, to get the grind done. Another 9.5 came back in March to do THE NEW CONTENT. Let's not mince words though. October (-26,69), November (-3.35), December (-9.83), January (+0.37), February (+8.54), and March (+9.54). I may be missing basic math here....but your largest negative drops you down. The resulting Novemeber is a minimal loss. December is about 10%. January is a draw. February doesn't negate December, and in fact is less impressive because it's 8.54% of a lower number. Ditto with March, as it cannot touch the 26%, and is also 9.54% of a much decreased value. This is all despite the 29.10.x release....and indicates it has not been as well received as would be necessary to regain the player counts. 9) Why not just show my data? You are walking a funny line here. Let me explain: If I graph a relevant period of time (October 2017 to March 2021) the linear regression has r2 of 0.2347. The equation is y = -364.43x+57519. You seem to have a love for that regression, so what does it tell us? Every single month 364 people on average have left the average player count for Warframe since 2017. Funny that, as October 2017 corresponds with PoE and the absolute peak of average player count (barely missing peak player count as well, to the Deimos update which literally only retained those numbers for a single month before crashing). It also indicates that individual months don't correspond well to the trend....but if we're to look at the macro level performance things are not going well. Your conclusion is to go all the way back to the start, and say that the player count is just fine....because for almost 4 years all we had was slow but consistent growth...because the content delivery model was different....but that doesn't matter. I also don't show math because it offers people the ability to strawman. Why? Well, last time I showed any graphics people decided that they could cut out segments, draw bizarro conclusions, and then question me personally about incorrectly entering data. I've not desired doing that again....because simply denoting the issues with other people's graphing and transparency is infinitely easier. You'll note that I didn't denounce your graphs by personal attack...I stated that the peak value I found was insanely higher, then correctly cited that you likely averaged the quarter values. It's almost like I was using my own data....and not showing it because there's nothing to gain. That's or I'm apparently a 13 year old savant who can simply manufacture graphs in my head based upon a chart of data from the internet.... Yeah, not letting that personal attack go unquestioned at every corner, given that you decided instead of being reasonable that is was logical to personally insult me. AGAIN, LET'S RELATE ALL OF THIS TO 29.10.x. It's a rushed release, that's buggy. It's framework for 30.3, which is slated to be our rework for the year. The model of biannual releases, implemented since 2017, is not doing good things to the player base. This is represented in-game as difficulty in getting matches, but being completely frank is generally also being felt when you literally cannot get a pick-up game going on PoE or Fortuna unless there's a Nightwave requirement for them that week. It's also frustrating that you engage with things like railjack....and other game features break. I have video of being on the daily syndicate rescue mission, having a syndicate medallion and ayatan star spawn in an area that constantly forced a respawn because of some overlapping boundary issues, and watched as both respawned on the exit point....and thus out of reach because I couldn't get to them without ending the mission. So we are clear, the old behavior for these issues was to spawn at the start point. That would mean a huge back-track, but solo players hell bent on getting their rewards could do it. In short, 29.10.10 isn't ready. The technique of jamming out an update to artificially inflate metrics is detrimental. I'd gladly choose to give back everything Railjack I've earned, even the 6% drop chance garbage, to go back to update 29.7. If you'd like to join in on the choir that "everyone who doesn't see this as an upgrade, and everyone citing issues with the game is just a whiner," then I implore you to simply swallow your tongue. This isn't a threat, but an acknowledgement that those capable of talking out of both sides of their face should really watch out for the repercussions. This industry is littered with games where absolutely everything was fine....until it wasn't. There's a nice youtube channel that I watch when I start to feel this way. It's here: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nerdslayergaming/videos. If you don't get it, let me explain. Watch two or three death of a game videos. It's rather nutty, but my experience is that nearly all of them have overlap with Warframe. I like Warframe. I don't want it to die, but with stuff like 29.10.10 being the final update until 30.0....I guess maybe a part of me wants to watch DE have to stop being so stubborn and actually deliver. It was refreshing that their developer streams have been curtailed, and placed on a schedule. It's great that they've stopped promising the moon weekly, so that the undelivered promise list isn't getting longer on the wiki. It's even great that nobody has been in a Twitter fight for months, or provided an absolutely insane hot take that has garnered attention. Unfortunately, they're still using the PC as unpaid alpha testers and releasing a beta product. That's 29.10.10....and it's why I take umbrage. It's also possible in the content creator purge that DE simply removed everyone that had the chutzpah to question them. The train man has given up warframe. The potato and Brozime have dramatically walked things back, and one of the two has consistently put out videos that are less than absolutely praising DE. Funnily enough, I haven't heard about a registered user count metric in a long time...as the focus seems to always instead be placed on individuals who form their lives around the game and thus cannot extricate themselves from it. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graavarg Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, master_of_destiny said: 1) This is a digression. It's my last answer to this, so feel free to make some bass-ackwards assumptions. Strawmen are easy to knock down. It's also interesting that you believe that everyone is complaining. It's not a problem. Yeah, 29.10.x has really done a lot to fix things....with that 9.5% increase to a player base (in March). Of course, our player counts are still July 2020 levels...in March 2021....so apparently that's a healthy state of being that is sustainable. 2) Definition of manipulation. to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage I'd like to be honest here. You have a pre-supposition. That is that the player base is growing, and has been outlined in multiple different posts. You pull data going back to the beginning of the game, manipulate the data without denoting what you did to manipulate it, and follow up with blatantly misrepresenting any statistical data. You then generate a strawman, by claiming a personal attack on my credibility, because that's obviously the way to win an argument. Fantastic. Your position required one moment of honesty, but instead of doing that you make a personal attack. You'll note I said that twice as an act of repetition. I need to drive this home, as it establishes you as the second half of the definition, someone willing and demonstrably insidious. 3) Let's look at data manipulation, because you apparently need a lesson in that too. How many ways could a summed quarter be expressed? Well, you have three values. The easiest way would be the maximum, but that'd demonstrate a bias. You could choose a minimum, and that would demonstrate the opposite bias. You could demonstrate the median value, which would demonstrate neither bias. Alternatively, you could add all of them up, and divide them to show an average. This manipulates the monthly data, and smooths everything out. It's almost like the goal would be to knock down the highs and fill in the lows, an action which may be extremely beneficial if your point is to glaze over the extreme peaks and valleys that are generated because DE can't maintain new content delivery in any reasonable fashion. You chose to explain none of this...and choose a representation which doesn't accurately represent any value in a quarter. I'd suggest that you really stop a minute here, and instead of trying to win a fight you ask what assumptions you've made. Why someone would have an alternative conclusion. But I'd most appreciate if you thought for more than 20 seconds before responding. The topic is about 29.10.x. It's about how DE squeezed out an update at the end of March, so they didn't have another quarter with nothing and demonstrate abysmal player engagement figures. That's why I'm explaining this, in a post about UPDATE 29.10.x. CLEAR MOTIVATION, ON TOPIC, AND WITHOUT BIAS. You'll note that it's without bias, and I'm assuming you'll take umbrage. Have at it. Thus far you've strawmanned the argument and issued attacks on my person. That's a real winner there. If this were November 2017 I'd be in the camp that the player base was growing, and that with only two months of data my conclusion was that the new model was a rousing success...less so in November 2018...absolutely sure that in 2019 the model was flawed...and in 2020 questioning exactly how DE was planning to address growing flaws in their content delivery. It's almost like a competent game, with about the same mileage as Warframe, in this same timeframe, has been pulling down consistent and increasing numbers. I mean, it'd be sad if I could cite, say CS:GO and demonstrate that it's fluctuations in player count have been less dramatic and demonstrably more consistent over the same time period. It'd be even more interesting if they started slightly before Warframe, and thus can be used as a benchmark for a largely online only experience with shooter components. Yeah, not even sugar coating that one. CS:GO is eating DE's proverbial milkshake in consistency, player counts, and virtually every other metric. If it's unclear, I don't really care about 2013-2017. I'm not going to distort trends by pulling almost a decade worth of data to obfuscate today. It's not about ripping on DE, nor defending them. It's about honest feedback, and why this tactic is not helping the game. 4) I appreciate that you're asking about being thrown out of class. I could point to the strawman again. I could tell you I'm a professional. I could also provide personal information. I'm betting you'd like that. NO. Being abundantly clear, this argument is already lost to you. You've resorted to a personal attack, because there's no reasonable defense for saying something idiotic. I would prefer you simply make this an instance of Godwin's Law. I have the distinct feeling it's where you're going next, but I'll choose to be an adult, and let you hang yourself. 5) You have a point cloud. You seem to be incapable of basic math. Let me explain, simply enough that someone who is failing FST (functions, statistics, and trigonometry; this was the highest level of math required to pass high school when I graduated) could understand. To graph data on a two dimensional axis you need a series of points defined by an X and Y relative position. Now, when given a table with multiple values, you can chose a variety of different ways to express that data, and orientations. If I wanted to demonstrate the peak versus average player count I could do so...as I have 5 different values pulled from the steam chart. You've chosen to represent the X axis as time, and graph the y as player count. You've therefore got a point cloud...that you can graph and start playing with to determine if there are correlations. A point cloud is fantastic...and literally the basis for any two dimensional graph...no matter how you choose to graph it. Let me now ask you why? You seem to need this explained to you, so let me do it as well. Your question is how healthy the game's player base is, as represented by the player counts over time. You then manipulated the data into a quarter value, which was calculated by averaging the already average values. Let me explain some stupidity here...because you really messed up. Average is a monthly value...but each month should be weighted to represent the difference in number of days. Not accounted for. The math....not accounted for. If you're showing data, you explain things. It's almost like you've input garbage, are expressing garbage, and instead of simply explaining your assumptions and admitting error you've doubled down that your opposition needs to be attacked instead of admitting defeat. There is no loss in defeat, unless you're incapable of learning. 6) Let me explain basic math....because apparently you're missing the point. What is the r2 value? It's a calculation of the distance each point in your data cloud has from the trend line. The reasoning is cyclical...because excel calculates the trendline from a minimization of this distance, but for us squishy humans everything is fantastic. That value goes from 0 to 1. Basically any value under 0.9 is a poor correlation to the expressed data, where it only loosely corresponds to any individual point. Why then do we choose other trendlines? Again, this is simple, but not all data is a linear expression. Also, maybe your data is not represented by a linear scale. If you use a logarithmic scale some data can be represented by a line, whilst using a classical constant scale you'd need a power function to accurately represent it. Why is this a concern? AGAIN, RELEVANCE TO UPDATE 29.10.x. The nature of gaming is not a linear value. Warframe has established a trend where player counts largely scale to content infusions (this would be obvious, but given the responses I'm assuming nothing). Said content infusions are largely built around a classical quarter model, so we should expect to see a cyclical model rather than a linear one. Now, let me give you the benefit of doubt, no matter how unearned. Maybe you saw this, or the person you seem to have quoted saw it. Maybe you decided to alleviate the concern, by averaging the quarters. Doubt unearned, but extended as a kindness. Now the problem in your data starts to show. You've gotten everything all the way back to 2013. In 2017 we transitioned content from consistent to biannually. It's fun to poison the trend data with noise....which you did. You know, losing 10% of 100k players still looks like huge gains when you've got years of data where 20k players was a peak. Scrub out the initial data, and choose relevant data. Chose a time period that represents the current input-output model of DE. That is to say, something that can accurately determine the future by ESTABLISHED TRENDS. It now seems like we're not looking at 2013 to late 2017 anymore. It seems like our point of change is the push for PoE. The "dramatic" change that DE brought, with immense ambition, by latching onto the open worlds trend in video games. Of course, AND RELATING TO 29.10.x, that trend has come at the price of heavily buggy biannual releases. So....it's really quite difficult to look at manipulated data, which I had to assume the manipulation of, and come to the conclusion that the player counts are increasing. That, by the way, is your implication. You didn't outright express it, but you did indicate the declining player base conclusion was at best questionable. As a side note, this is the point where a sane individual would likely interject that I don't have console, Epic, or Launcher data. Correct. You may have a valid point here. My only defense would be the Leyou performance reports which existed up until being bought out by Tencent. They paint a picture of decreasing fiscal performance, and inductively agree that things are not looking good. I want to address this not because it's invalid, but because it's fair criticism that we do not have perfect data. That said, inductive reasoning to fill in the gaps indicates bad tidings. 7) You seem to not know math very well. Let me express an understanding that you seem to lack. The trendline is not dictated by where it's used. I can represent data with a bell curve, a linear regression, a power regression, or any other form I desire. Your inability to use them outside of other sources is simply your inability to understand data, or see a trend. If I really wanted to get an accurate representation of this, I'd perform a Fourier transform and use a few dozen terms. What would that actually tell me though? A Fourier transform is great for a describing any one point in time from a finite range, or a natural system with a repeating value. Basically, you get to describe a regular harmonic pattern which doesn't necessarily conform to a sine or cosine function (yay, sawtooth waves). What it does though, is give me a small headache just remembering doing the miserable things. Of course, apparently 13 year olds are now doing them....or that strawman is looking pretty idiotic. 8) "I graphed literally 2013 to 2021, and despite the last section being down, and averaging out performance, the game isn't showing a decreasing player base." This is a simplification of your point. You'll excuse me here, but I must not remember my math. I don't think these statements are correct, but apparently; 105k<70k (that's a visual guess of peak at Q3 2018 and Q1 2021) I can see that you've got what looks like 2 quarters increasing...while the surrounding 6 quarters are much lower than the 2018 peak. Apparently 2 > 6 (quarters increasing substantially, versus those significantly lower. I've not counted one quarter as it drops, but is not appreciably larger than the next given your averaging) HOW DO I RELATE THIS TO 29.10.x? Well, there was an uptick at the very end of Q1....because this update launched. It's almost like DE showed basically two months of minimal positive change. January was a statistical stall. The developer stream at the end of that month basically announced that Railjack was going to be the big focus. February saw about 8.5% more people returning on average, to get the grind done. Another 9.5 came back in March to do THE NEW CONTENT. Let's not mince words though. October (-26,69), November (-3.35), December (-9.83), January (+0.37), February (+8.54), and March (+9.54). I may be missing basic math here....but your largest negative drops you down. The resulting Novemeber is a minimal loss. December is about 10%. January is a draw. February doesn't negate December, and in fact is less impressive because it's 8.54% of a lower number. Ditto with March, as it cannot touch the 26%, and is also 9.54% of a much decreased value. This is all despite the 29.10.x release....and indicates it has not been as well received as would be necessary to regain the player counts. 9) Why not just show my data? You are walking a funny line here. Let me explain: If I graph a relevant period of time (October 2017 to March 2021) the linear regression has r2 of 0.2347. The equation is y = -364.43x+57519. You seem to have a love for that regression, so what does it tell us? Every single month 364 people on average have left the average player count for Warframe since 2017. Funny that, as October 2017 corresponds with PoE and the absolute peak of average player count (barely missing peak player count as well, to the Deimos update which literally only retained those numbers for a single month before crashing). It also indicates that individual months don't correspond well to the trend....but if we're to look at the macro level performance things are not going well. Your conclusion is to go all the way back to the start, and say that the player count is just fine....because for almost 4 years all we had was slow but consistent growth...because the content delivery model was different....but that doesn't matter. I also don't show math because it offers people the ability to strawman. Why? Well, last time I showed any graphics people decided that they could cut out segments, draw bizarro conclusions, and then question me personally about incorrectly entering data. I've not desired doing that again....because simply denoting the issues with other people's graphing and transparency is infinitely easier. You'll note that I didn't denounce your graphs by personal attack...I stated that the peak value I found was insanely higher, then correctly cited that you likely averaged the quarter values. It's almost like I was using my own data....and not showing it because there's nothing to gain. That's or I'm apparently a 13 year old savant who can simply manufacture graphs in my head based upon a chart of data from the internet.... Yeah, not letting that personal attack go unquestioned at every corner, given that you decided instead of being reasonable that is was logical to personally insult me. AGAIN, LET'S RELATE ALL OF THIS TO 29.10.x. It's a rushed release, that's buggy. It's framework for 30.3, which is slated to be our rework for the year. The model of biannual releases, implemented since 2017, is not doing good things to the player base. This is represented in-game as difficulty in getting matches, but being completely frank is generally also being felt when you literally cannot get a pick-up game going on PoE or Fortuna unless there's a Nightwave requirement for them that week. It's also frustrating that you engage with things like railjack....and other game features break. I have video of being on the daily syndicate rescue mission, having a syndicate medallion and ayatan star spawn in an area that constantly forced a respawn because of some overlapping boundary issues, and watched as both respawned on the exit point....and thus out of reach because I couldn't get to them without ending the mission. So we are clear, the old behavior for these issues was to spawn at the start point. That would mean a huge back-track, but solo players hell bent on getting their rewards could do it. In short, 29.10.10 isn't ready. The technique of jamming out an update to artificially inflate metrics is detrimental. I'd gladly choose to give back everything Railjack I've earned, even the 6% drop chance garbage, to go back to update 29.7. If you'd like to join in on the choir that "everyone who doesn't see this as an upgrade, and everyone citing issues with the game is just a whiner," then I implore you to simply swallow your tongue. This isn't a threat, but an acknowledgement that those capable of talking out of both sides of their face should really watch out for the repercussions. This industry is littered with games where absolutely everything was fine....until it wasn't. There's a nice youtube channel that I watch when I start to feel this way. It's here: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nerdslayergaming/videos. If you don't get it, let me explain. Watch two or three death of a game videos. It's rather nutty, but my experience is that nearly all of them have overlap with Warframe. I like Warframe. I don't want it to die, but with stuff like 29.10.10 being the final update until 30.0....I guess maybe a part of me wants to watch DE have to stop being so stubborn and actually deliver. It was refreshing that their developer streams have been curtailed, and placed on a schedule. It's great that they've stopped promising the moon weekly, so that the undelivered promise list isn't getting longer on the wiki. It's even great that nobody has been in a Twitter fight for months, or provided an absolutely insane hot take that has garnered attention. Unfortunately, they're still using the PC as unpaid alpha testers and releasing a beta product. That's 29.10.10....and it's why I take umbrage. It's also possible in the content creator purge that DE simply removed everyone that had the chutzpah to question them. The train man has given up warframe. The potato and Brozime have dramatically walked things back, and one of the two has consistently put out videos that are less than absolutely praising DE. Funnily enough, I haven't heard about a registered user count metric in a long time...as the focus seems to always instead be placed on individuals who form their lives around the game and thus cannot extricate themselves from it. Yeah, yeah, I already got that you belong to the cult of "Warframe is so bad it is dying". And that you mistakenly seem to believe that a mass of words actually get some weight from the sheer number of letters. And that proving a strongly felt (or maybe "seen"? 🙂) result by cherry-picking data means something (it doesn't). And that seeing strawmen everywhere somehow should indicate a basic logical grasp (it indicates... "other things"). But: I already pointed out that this thread about a small update (with one real fix, two interface fixes and one small change) is NOT the thread to spout (and refute) convoluted conspiracy theories about the "death of Warframe", regardless of the obviously strong feelings (and "seeings") involved, so I won't comment further (here). It is bad manners. If you want feedback, start a specific thread (you can call it "I can prove Warframe is so BAAAAD that EVERYONE is LEAVING!!!!" or "Warframe is DYING and the strawmen are out to get ME because I know the TRUTH!" or something, I'll find it). Edited April 8, 2021 by Graavarg 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iPathos Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 1 hour ago, Graavarg said: Yeah, yeah, I already got that you belong to the cult of "Warframe is so bad it is dying". And that you mistakenly seem to believe that a mass of words actually get some weight from the sheer number of letters. And that proving a strongly felt (or maybe "seen"? 🙂) result by cherry-picking data means something (it doesn't). And that seeing strawmen everywhere somehow should indicate a basic logical grasp (it indicates... "other things"). But: I already pointed out that this thread about a small update (with one real fix, two interface fixes and one small change) is NOT the thread to spout (and refute) convoluted conspiracy theories about the "death of Warframe", regardless of the obviously strong feelings (and "seeings") involved, so I won't comment further (here). It is bad manners. If you want feedback, start a specific thread (you can call it "I can prove Warframe is so BAAAAD that EVERYONE is LEAVING!!!!" or "Warframe is DYING and the strawmen are out to get ME because I know the TRUTH!" or something, I'll find it). Actually reading through said "mass of words" would prove your statements to be false here. I'd recommend you do so, as I have. If you already have...well there are worse things I could say, but it clearly hasn't sunk in. Also, this is the latest update thread, therefore it is by definition one of the places to spout exactly this. It has nothing to do with the update content and everything to do with potentially fixing the issues with the game. Some of us love it to a point that it pains us to see such blatant disregard for player intent and feedback, some of us simply dislike the turns DE has taken getting here, some of us have other reasons. Your reason of choice "warframe is so bad it's dying" is not a good one, nor is it accurate or appropriate. The game simply is bleeding players at the seams, and overall community outcry is again increasing. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BesucherPrime Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 That was some longer reading :) I think it only missed that r2 in % is a human understandable indicator on how much your model can explain the data and I could almost use your comments as a statistics tutorial XD The model of player data over time has another big fault; it litterally says: „Warframe is growing since age 0 because it gets older“. So the hypothesis to that graph would habe been „was Warframe growing after launch?“. The linear model is a bad idea as is starting from „zero“, because any successful game will have more players than at their start in any charts. Ask a bad question - get a bad model ;) I think that dataset of average players/day, patch dates, advertisment budget, and feedback posts could lead to a meaningful partly recursive function. And I am certain it would proof your the point of ‚recently declining steam player base‘. But that is (should be) like apparent from the steam data on sight 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dangermouse007 Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Shame the focus bonus with Convergence Orbs is still bugged, 1st orbs is totally bugged and don't have that much confidence on others could be ok. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SridharStrange Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Please fix tier 3 iso vault cave glitch,so annoying to enter the cave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AvatarShine Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 1 fps dojo still no fix, now it need game resatart to play reailjack without shuttering 👿👿👿 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graavarg Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 (edited) 6 hours ago, BesucherPrime said: The model of player data over time has another big fault; it litterally says: „Warframe is growing since age 0 because it gets older“. So the hypothesis to that graph would habe been „was Warframe growing after launch?“. The linear model is a bad idea as is starting from „zero“, because any successful game will have more players than at their start in any charts. Ask a bad question - get a bad model ;) Actually, no. It is just basic stats, there is nothing strange and no manipulation, and no "model". The trendline is simply a way of showing "playerbase over time"-data in the simplified form of a straightened line. Nothing more, nothing less, just about the most basic statistic tool available. What it allows is just a way to compare the mean overall change over time to the points of the other curve(s). If you want to show or prove that the playerbase is declining or increasing due some reason(s), you need to get some basic stuff in order: Determine a logical cutoff/starting point against which you measure the current situation to determine change (over time). If you look at the fluctuation of the Steam curve(s), it is pretty crystal clear that you can create all manners of declines or increases just by subjectively picking and comparing two points. Subjectively selecting data is a totally crippling error for any type of reliable statistical proof. Determining what "the playerbase" is, and, if only relying on Steam data for analysis, prove that the Steam data accurately reflects player behavior on the other platforms. Otherwise the change might be players switching to PS5, or just about anything. "Not knowing" is still the opposite of knowing (or proving) something. Determining what "leaving the game" means. Is "taking a break" the same as "leaving"? How long has a player to be absent in order to qualify as "has left". Is a player currently logging in only for the daily reward to be classed as "left, not playing" or as "still playing", and how do you relate this to the Steam data? Isn't re-joining Warframe and farming the new Railjack, then leaving again while waiting for Tempestarii an acceptable way of "playing" Warframe, as opposed to "leaving"? And how do you handle such effects/behaviour when normalizing the Steam data to measure the effects of "the "bad" state of the game"? Be able to prove that the change measured in the data is dependent on the factor(s) (or in other words: prove your hypothesis). In order to do this you need to be able to measure your factor(s) affecting the changes in the Steam data set (so you can link and test them). In addition you need to neutralize the effect of all other factors. In other words, regardless of if the number of Steam players is increasing or decreasing over a period of time, you have to show that this is dependent on the factors you assume are driving theat change (and not on anything else). And "show" means "with enough statistical certainty", and there are lots and lots of methodology for this, all well and truly tested and widely used. Once you have gotten your (logically sound) hypothesis and your data in order you can analyze it. That means there is a burden of reaching high enough statistical certainty to actually prove something. Just claiming you "see" something is pure BS, about as far from providing actual proof you can get. And if f there isn't enough mathematical proof the result is simply "not proven to be true", regardless of how a curve looks. All this is sort of the simplest and most basic foundation of modern science there is. The only initial point I made was that a claim that the Steam data shows that players are leaving the game is simply "not true". There just isn't any qualified proof behind that claim (and no, regardless of what magic you are using you cannot just "see it" 😁). If objectively, logically and statistically proven it would be the opposite, it would be "true". There is nothing in-between. Now, apparently this triggered some "Warframe is dying"-cult members (and yes, I know I'm being ironic). Who desperately wants everyone to believe that because they are pissed at DE (or alternatively DE is behaving badly by not doing what they want) a significant part of the playerbase is leaving Warframe for the same reason(s). If I were to sum this up it would as a huge pile of egotistical, millennial BS without a speck of actual proof. I think the whole concept is basically insane (starting from the idea that DE is supposed to do what someone demands on the forum 😆), and thus has more to do with psychology than statistics. Edited April 8, 2021 by Graavarg 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Felsagger Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 On 2021-04-05 at 3:28 PM, FlamingCore said: Please for future updates start testing your content before letting it out. If its in inside the team or opening a beta testing community group then so be it.I'm sure I don't need to explain to you how bringing out any kind of product that is damaged/ incomplete would desatisfy consumers of any kind. With large games it's understandable that SOME bugs will be found. But within each update, more and more content is being brought with larger amount of bugs and they're even more problematic and it seems disrespectful to the community to act as a debugger (which could've been used at least 3 days prior). Since the latest update launched there have been 6 hotfixes in less than a week.During that time, a small group of testers on a small dedicated server could've easily point these out and have the majority of the content tweaked before releasing. This post was not created to bash the devs, but is a protest to the current active system. Either give your devs more time, create a beta testing team or hire more people if you're unmatched to the amount of code warframe has become. This behavior since the introduction of Liches has affected the community's population drastically (Since the arrival of Liches at least it has become more noticable). This might be a factor to look at. I can't say this better. Common sense says "PLAY YOUR GAME UPDATE FIRST THEN LAUNCH THE UPDATE LATER". Start playing your own new content updates. Playtest. Organize a team of play testers so you don't run into a debacle of bugs. Your team most organize priorities and structure how this delivery most be made. To be honest working from home has become an 'illness' of game design. Many of us are aware about the conditions and how problematic has become working from home. Nothing can replace the work area and the workforce in the studio. But for better or worse, it is mandatory a play test team for such content. Some errors could be avoided by simple inspection. We know that developers are professionals but the consistency of these amount of bugs makes it looks like an act of negligence. The structure of revision and delivery on the updates must be reviewed. If not we are going to be stuck in this loop ten more years repeating the same ritual. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
master_of_destiny Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 11 hours ago, iPathos said: Actually reading through said "mass of words" would prove your statements to be false here. I'd recommend you do so, as I have. If you already have...well there are worse things I could say, but it clearly hasn't sunk in. Also, this is the latest update thread, therefore it is by definition one of the places to spout exactly this. It has nothing to do with the update content and everything to do with potentially fixing the issues with the game. Some of us love it to a point that it pains us to see such blatant disregard for player intent and feedback, some of us simply dislike the turns DE has taken getting here, some of us have other reasons. Your reason of choice "warframe is so bad it's dying" is not a good one, nor is it accurate or appropriate. The game simply is bleeding players at the seams, and overall community outcry is again increasing. I thank you for your agreement, and dedication to read. That said, I do want to clarify. I'm not stating that Warframe is dying. I'm not stating that it's the end of the world. I'm also not part of some secret cabal that wishes for its failure. I want to outline all those possibilities, not to miss any angle. What I'd like to state is that I'm looking for the next inflection point. The relatively slow and consistent loss of players has one of two outcomes for an online game. Either the bleed will stop because the remaining audience is functionally incapable of being removed, it stops because the influx of new players matches the levels of the bleed, or it dramatically speeds up because the lack of players effectively means a lack of content leading to a death spiral. So....which will it be? I'm hoping that instead of finding that inflection point, we can implore DE to do something that isn't stupid. Three years and change have demonstrated the biannual release cycle isn't sustainable. Their history is in much smaller updates, with a substantial frequency. If they can go back to that, maybe we can use the 2013-2017 models to get back to either a stability or slow growth. It's odd to say, but that stability would be infinitely better than wild cyclical swings....and likely represent a financial windfall for DE. Regarding the poster....please do not engage. You're welcome to disregard, but I'm asking politely because sometimes it's just easier to let people burn themselves out in a fit of apotheosis when everything is made clear. I say this not as an insult, but as someone who had the same arc. Six years ago the game had just released Archwings (my timeline may be off here, but the events are accurate). My first experience was running through space without an archwing....and failing a mission because it was simply bugged beyond sanity. I found this my breaking point, claimed the game was dying due to being a bug and grind riddled mess, and then took about two years off. When I came back I discovered that the grind was worse, the bugs from years back might still be in the game, and the player counts were actually better so random groups were more viable. It's tempting to view opposing opinions as blatantly wrong. It's tempting to see all of this failure, and assume the game is dying. That said, it isn't easy to prove that. It's very easy to discount people who state that, because you only need to cite a single metric to show "it isn't true." That's not a battle worth having, and it's why I'm not engaging with someone who has obviously decided that instead of a discussion it'd be a more reasonable course of action to hurl personal insults and construct strawmen. I respect people who believe the game is healthy. I will express vehemently that 29.10.10 is not ready for release...and that the consoles actually have it better by skipping 29.10.x entirely. Hopefully DE sees this feedback....but I'm not holding my breath. I'm looking forward to maybe having 30.0.12 as stable enough to enjoy the 30 minute quest...because that's really all that seems to be on offer. Another, presumably grind heavy, Protea like quest. I wonder what the excuse will be once things start opening back up, and the Coof isn't to blame for everything under the sun? Good also to see the Tencent acquisition has changed virtually nothing. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FSK41 Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Am 6.4.2021 um 01:56 schrieb Eienlanzer: His point is for hosting a public match. Many of us want to play with others without having to manually invite friends or clan members. Sure, try recruiting, but who wants to sit in recruiting chat? So what you want is: to play with others but be guaranteed host everytime? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-AncientWarrior- Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 19 hours ago, iPathos said: It's almost like DE touts themselves as devs who listen, or who have ridden that reputation for years to get to this point. As a further note, my playtime has shrunk to about a tenth of what it was before all the "hotfix and devstream changes" etc that happened. This falls not only to my failing health, but largely to DE forcefully ignoring feedback that would be better responded to if nothing else. The first part of this paragraph is sooo true... dev listening to playerbase.. lol 3 hours ago, Felsagger said: Common sense says "PLAY YOUR GAME UPDATE FIRST THEN LAUNCH THE UPDATE LATER". Start playing your own new content updates. Playtest. Organize a team of play testers so you don't run into a debacle of bugs. Your team most organize priorities and structure how this delivery most be made. To be honest working from home has become an 'illness' of game design. Many of us are aware about the conditions and how problematic has become working from home. Nothing can replace the work area and the workforce in the studio. But for better or worse, it is mandatory a play test team for such content. Some errors could be avoided by simple inspection. We know that developers are professionals but the consistency of these amount of bugs makes it looks like an act of negligence. The structure of revision and delivery on the updates must be reviewed. If not we are going to be stuck in this loop ten more years repeating the same ritual. This is THE most important aspect of the pre-launch of any game update.. I was a games tester years ago .. and I mean years ago :) .. but we were hired to play the games prior to release for at least 2 weeks of solid testing.. there were only 2 of us testers but the amount of issues that we picked up prior to game releases were huge .. simple stuff mainly but like WF they affected the game to becomes a real game stopper if they weren't fixed .. this is what DE really need .. "hire" half a dozen good players/testers to spend 40-60 hrs play testing.. the amount of issues would be reduced drastically and would make the playerbase a hell of alot more receptive to the update release. First on the tester list should be Voltage as his understanding of this process can be seen in his posts.. DE find 5 others like him and get them to pre-test your releases and you'll find 50% of issues would be picked up rather than releasing an update that just fails miserably .. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quantum_Blur Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 (edited) Railjack shield ospreys are really unforgiving, like, if I'm not out of range the SECOND they announce they're gonna fire their lightning barrage, my sentinel is dead in two hits. The massive hitbox of the Nautilus just exacerbated sentinel survivability issues Edited April 9, 2021 by Quantum_Blur 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slayer-. Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 11 minutes ago, Quantum_Blur said: Railjack shield ospreys are really unforgiving, like, if I'm not out of range the SECOND they announce they're gonna fire their lightning barrage, my sentinel is dead in two hits. The massive hitbox of the Nautilus just exacerbated sentinel survivability issues Yes that new lightning sentinel the first time I saw it and what it could do I facepalmed thinking REALLY Sentinels have enough trouble surviving now, why introduce an enemy that just electrocutes your sentinel with a massive lightning strike effect, I too was using Nautilus so not sure how a normal Sentinel would go shouldn't make any difference. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BesucherPrime Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 vor 6 Stunden schrieb Graavarg: Actually, no. It is just basic stats, there is nothing strange and no manipulation, and no "model". The trendline is simply a way of showing "playerbase over time"-data in the simplified form of a straightened line. Nothing more, nothing less, just about the most basic statistic tool available. What it allows is just a way to compare the mean overall change over time to the points of the other curve(s). If you want to show or prove that the playerbase is declining or increasing due some reason(s), you need to get some basic stuff in order: Determine a logical cutoff/starting point against which you measure the current situation to determine change (over time). If you look at the fluctuation of the Steam curve(s), it is pretty crystal clear that you can create all manners of declines or increases just by subjectively picking and comparing two points. Subjectively selecting data is a totally crippling error for any type of reliable statistical proof. Determining what "the playerbase" is, and, if only relying on Steam data for analysis, prove that the Steam data accurately reflects player behavior on the other platforms. Otherwise the change might be players switching to PS5, or just about anything. "Not knowing" is still the opposite of knowing (or proving) something. Determining what "leaving the game" means. Is "taking a break" the same as "leaving"? How long has a player to be absent in order to qualify as "has left". Is a player currently logging in only for the daily reward to be classed as "left, not playing" or as "still playing", and how do you relate this to the Steam data? Isn't re-joining Warframe and farming the new Railjack, then leaving again while waiting for Tempestarii an acceptable way of "playing" Warframe, as opposed to "leaving"? And how do you handle such effects/behaviour when normalizing the Steam data to measure the effects of "the "bad" state of the game"? Be able to prove that the change measured in the data is dependent on the factor(s) (or in other words: prove your hypothesis). In order to do this you need to be able to measure your factor(s) affecting the changes in the Steam data set (so you can link and test them). In addition you need to neutralize the effect of all other factors. In other words, regardless of if the number of Steam players is increasing or decreasing over a period of time, you have to show that this is dependent on the factors you assume are driving theat change (and not on anything else). And "show" means "with enough statistical certainty", and there are lots and lots of methodology for this, all well and truly tested and widely used. Once you have gotten your (logically sound) hypothesis and your data in order you can analyze it. That means there is a burden of reaching high enough statistical certainty to actually prove something. Just claiming you "see" something is pure BS, about as far from providing actual proof you can get. And if f there isn't enough mathematical proof the result is simply "not proven to be true", regardless of how a curve looks. All this is sort of the simplest and most basic foundation of modern science there is. The only initial point I made was that a claim that the Steam data shows that players are leaving the game is simply "not true". There just isn't any qualified proof behind that claim (and no, regardless of what magic you are using you cannot just "see it" 😁). If objectively, logically and statistically proven it would be the opposite, it would be "true". There is nothing in-between. Now, apparently this triggered some "Warframe is dying"-cult members (and yes, I know I'm being ironic). Who desperately wants everyone to believe that because they are pissed at DE (or alternatively DE is behaving badly by not doing what they want) a significant part of the playerbase is leaving Warframe for the same reason(s). If I were to sum this up it would as a huge pile of egotistical, millennial BS without a speck of actual proof. I think the whole concept is basically insane (starting from the idea that DE is supposed to do what someone demands on the forum 😆), and thus has more to do with psychology than statistics. The trendline is a model in itself trying to explain the playerbase over time. First of all, I'd say you have the motivation to become excellent at this, so let me give you some input going further with your data model: If you have a model explaining part of the data, here 69%, you can continue on that model by refining it until you reach something as close as possible to 100%. I learnt that the old way without computers, because a long time ago my thesis father was a calculator and pen nerdo, so I personally still do modelling often by making graphs and looking for similarities in other data I find relevant (and finding new hypothesis). It is actually quite easy in principle: Assume you have data that goes 1,2,3,4,5 and found a time trend of x - If you divide your data by your findings you'll get new data of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 with no further variance. The model (time is x) perfectly describes your data, as we can no longer find any variables to better describe the data. Welcome to the visual world of modelling in 2D. Time alone can make for strong models, I see this often with historical data over stocks, where sometimes inflation improves the correlation and voila done is a two factor model for predicting the future of a company's stock growth. It won't help in day trading though and it won't even persuade myself buying only on these two factors. With less in line data, that accounts in your case for 31% of your made data, you now get a new graph that you could refine another line netting a quadratic time trend (to as many power to your x as you may find). Once there is no more explanation possible with time (r2 is not getting better the more lines or whatever you throw at it), you'll need to throw in other data that resembles what you have left over and has some kind of link to it that is still unknown, like for example amplified or reduced marketing spending lagged by a week/a month or whatever (following the hypothesis that marketing spending increase sales e.g. player base here). The problem is finding and identifying relevant data. I find graphs very useful for that, as did my above mentioned nerdo, as one can quickly identify similarities, then test against it and see whether it has good correlation or not. Then you get the relation out as a function and now end up a graph having time and marketing spending as variables. Original data divided by these two are then hopefully all parallel to x-axis (or very rarely y-axis), else the visual hunt continues looking for more relevant data. After all that one could have a model that explains that Warframe will grow by 600 players just by one month passing (people talk about it or whatever) + 3 players for each USD in marketing spending of prior month - 2 players for each negative forum post of prior week and a relations to substitute games that are just popular at the very moment. Do this a few hundred times and you will see trends in data graphs like I do. That's experience that some people deem magic, but at times experience is wrong, so I usually test against it, but not always, as here :) Off topic: My last real modelling work used 2 DVDs of original data, found an relation we didn't expect at the time starting (because they looked too damn close and we could argue a logical dependency) and it saved some money on hedging exchange currencies on Korean won to USD :) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quantum_Blur Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Slayer-. said: Yes that new lightning sentinel the first time I saw it and what it could do I facepalmed thinking REALLY Sentinels have enough trouble surviving now, why introduce an enemy that just electrocutes your sentinel with a massive lightning strike effect, I too was using Nautilus so not sure how a normal Sentinel would go shouldn't make any difference. The lightning ospreys deal such high DPS that they're probably one of the only enemies I've encountered who can kill themselves with reflected damage at higher levels Edited April 9, 2021 by Quantum_Blur 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iPathos Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 (edited) 13 hours ago, master_of_destiny said: I thank you for your agreement, and dedication to read. That said, I do want to clarify. I'm not stating that Warframe is dying. I'm not stating that it's the end of the world. I'm also not part of some secret cabal that wishes for its failure. I want to outline all those possibilities, not to miss any angle. What I'd like to state is that I'm looking for the next inflection point. The relatively slow and consistent loss of players has one of two outcomes for an online game. Either the bleed will stop because the remaining audience is functionally incapable of being removed, it stops because the influx of new players matches the levels of the bleed, or it dramatically speeds up because the lack of players effectively means a lack of content leading to a death spiral. So....which will it be? I'm hoping that instead of finding that inflection point, we can implore DE to do something that isn't stupid. Three years and change have demonstrated the biannual release cycle isn't sustainable. Their history is in much smaller updates, with a substantial frequency. If they can go back to that, maybe we can use the 2013-2017 models to get back to either a stability or slow growth. It's odd to say, but that stability would be infinitely better than wild cyclical swings....and likely represent a financial windfall for DE. Regarding the poster....please do not engage. You're welcome to disregard, but I'm asking politely because sometimes it's just easier to let people burn themselves out in a fit of apotheosis when everything is made clear. I say this not as an insult, but as someone who had the same arc. Six years ago the game had just released Archwings (my timeline may be off here, but the events are accurate). My first experience was running through space without an archwing....and failing a mission because it was simply bugged beyond sanity. I found this my breaking point, claimed the game was dying due to being a bug and grind riddled mess, and then took about two years off. When I came back I discovered that the grind was worse, the bugs from years back might still be in the game, and the player counts were actually better so random groups were more viable. It's tempting to view opposing opinions as blatantly wrong. It's tempting to see all of this failure, and assume the game is dying. That said, it isn't easy to prove that. It's very easy to discount people who state that, because you only need to cite a single metric to show "it isn't true." That's not a battle worth having, and it's why I'm not engaging with someone who has obviously decided that instead of a discussion it'd be a more reasonable course of action to hurl personal insults and construct strawmen. I respect people who believe the game is healthy. I will express vehemently that 29.10.10 is not ready for release...and that the consoles actually have it better by skipping 29.10.x entirely. Hopefully DE sees this feedback....but I'm not holding my breath. I'm looking forward to maybe having 30.0.12 as stable enough to enjoy the 30 minute quest...because that's really all that seems to be on offer. Another, presumably grind heavy, Protea like quest. I wonder what the excuse will be once things start opening back up, and the Coof isn't to blame for everything under the sun? Good also to see the Tencent acquisition has changed virtually nothing. Our viewpoints align for a second time, and it's no miracle. I simply feel that the referenced person is getting some kind of giddy rush from their responses here, as they're constantly referring to the same old trope of "warframe is dying cult" or what-have-you. If they took the time to read either of our posts, they would know that we do this because we don't like to see the game take this kind of turn, the lacking attitude towards player feedback, etc. It comes back to my original statement; why do we even have bug report forums if they aren't utilized by the party in control? I wouldn't even be disappointed if they responded to 10 or 20% of the posts, considering a large majority are duplicates of some kind. This is also why I ask the question about the trello board, because that is something clear and simple that explains what is known and what is being worked on. I don't ask for that in every aspect of the game, I just ask that their own forums (which have been in effect/active for 8+ years as it stands) address what they clearly intend to address. @Graavarg seems to think that their signal boosting around the "warframe is dying cult" is in some way going to give validation to their claims, while ignoring the fact that some of us have spent both countless hours on the game itself - and some of us on the community. It's not a good excuse, and it's honestly a weak foundation to build an argument on. Regarding the statistics specifically - what isn't communicated by any API is the relative loss of experienced players. We see general numbers, but not how many are long-time players and how many are newbies who simply don't gel with the game. Steam is also not the only metric, it's the most easily measurable for sure, but it's by no means the only one. That alone is manipulation of the presented data, as it is currently being presented as the "de-facto" reference model, even if it's not stated as such. I enjoy maths, whether it be statistics or vast quantities of simple equations for a greater purpose. But I do not enjoy seeing this kind of manipulation without statements of proper cause behind it. The given excuses are not enough. Just a note for the "math troll" though, I do this because I love the game, not out of any obligation or any love/hate for the devs. I know that COVID has impacted their cycles, but the problems I've described have been extant for far longer than this current pandemic. I ask again: Why do we even have bug report forums if there's no feedback? Edited April 9, 2021 by iPathos Clarification on an unfinished sentence 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
master_of_destiny Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 (edited) 17 hours ago, BesucherPrime said: That was some longer reading :) I think it only missed that r2 in % is a human understandable indicator on how much your model can explain the data and I could almost use your comments as a statistics tutorial XD The model of player data over time has another big fault; it litterally says: „Warframe is growing since age 0 because it gets older“. So the hypothesis to that graph would habe been „was Warframe growing after launch?“. The linear model is a bad idea as is starting from „zero“, because any successful game will have more players than at their start in any charts. Ask a bad question - get a bad model ;) I think that dataset of average players/day, patch dates, advertisment budget, and feedback posts could lead to a meaningful partly recursive function. And I am certain it would proof your the point of ‚recently declining steam player base‘. But that is (should be) like apparent from the steam data on sight Let me....I think...address some of this. You'll have to excuse me a tad bit if things are already known. With this particular data set we are graphing players versus time. What we are only scratching the surface of is what those player counts actually mean, and what inputs influence their output values. ---YOU CAN SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU TRUST ME, OR DON'T CARE TO READ---- Taken extremely simplistically, content is king. Allow me to define why, with a single phrase that you may have heard. "Fashion frame is endgame." Why does this matter, and why cite it? Warframe has no evergreen content. There is nothing that would be required for a player to do to get better gear, after slapping on the required forma and weapons. As such, Warframe lives by the new content infusions (and the grind people do leading up to them). To cite a very specific example, what was the month with the highest peak player count ever for this game? It was the month before and release of Deimos. Why? The veterans needed to grind out a copy of each frame, gather the resources, and build the things. They then needed to log back in daily to feed the helminth. Almost the day after people could have had everything available, the peak player counts dropped like a stone. Now, I've established content is king. What does that do for me? Well like 29.10.x, we've have various attempts at content delivery over the years. Starting Warframe was very small updates, quickly, where bugs were stomped in a week. You could count on nearly every other week releasing something, if not at the very least something every month. Events were common, like Gatecrash. Smaller content, more often, with responses to the limited player base which amounted to things happening. This spurred slow but consistent growth, where people didn't leave, but given the lack of advertising and a huge content pool you didn't get a huge infusion of players. This represents about 2013 to 2015. In 2015 DE decided to experiment... The ellipses are for effect here. My point is that this was the genesis of the content drought. Things like the New War and Second Dream were large. They were also very much more spread out. In this phase people started to complain of the content drought, but the experimentation largely shifted people in to try the game. This drowned out the oldest veterans complaints, and the success of these quests bolstered DE's financial performance with a flood of new players. Now, the end of 2017 was when we transitioned from less content, to biannual releases. Yes, Cetus and The Plains ushered in the rework in the first half of the year, and an open world in the later half of the year. Great...an inflection point. Things have changed, so we have a new type of output. -----SKIP END----- So, what does that mean? Well, a game with such dramatic player count changes is never going to have a function that is useful in predicting modelling. It's because the release of content is not consistent and therefore a wildly variable input. While predicting the individual months then, our models are going to largely be....horseshoes and hand grenades. In the right ballpark maybe, but not accurate. So, what can we predict? Macro trends would be a good start. I've cited three periods where the content delivery models changed dramatically....and if you graph each data set separately, you can actually get some linear regressions that make good sense. Poor predictive models for any one value, but great for discovering macro trends. If you graph, the line trend from 2013 to 2015 is pretty low rise, but very consistent. 2015 to 2017 demonstrates many more peaks and valleys, but a more steep upward rise. 2017 to 2021 is largely the opposite of the 2013-2015 period...that is to say a slow bleed which has brief and wild spikes based upon the content delivery schedule. HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO 29.10.x? 3 loss months between October to December. 1 stable month. 2 months with weak growth, directly corresponding to DE announcing that 30.0 was going to be a thing and Railjack 3.0 would be coming. Let me predict the future....based upon the trends. April will see the release of the anniversary content, and 30.0. It will see an at most 30% rise in players (looking at you Scarlet Spear, in March 2020) which will either be a minimal change the following month, or a minor negative depending upon how late in April it releases. If you've got a late April release it'll be a 10-15% April uptick, and a May uptick of 20-30%. This is all based upon DE doing a boat load of work on the framework defined in 29.10.x. I say this, because right now the game on PC has fundamental systems busted...and if 30.0 launches like Liches and Railjack 1.0 the 20% will be an extremely optimistic guess. I don't really want to see this. I want to see DE go back to the 2013-2015 model, and maybe releasing a big open world in bi-annual phases to alleviate the need for huge amounts of content. Heck, that's functionally the model they used for Fortuna. What I expect though is that PC players will be ignored. The trends which highlight why stuff like 29.10.x style releases are bad for the game will be ignored as a digression from the topic...because after players listing out the issues, DE opening up a message board outside their dedicated bug forum, and with a thunderous "meh" being the response to Railjack 3.0 I cannot see anyone stopping at 29.10.10. Let me revise that. I cannot see anyone who cares about the consumer experience stopping at 29.10.10 as a good enough release for up to a month before the next patching will be done. That said, here we sit. Edited April 9, 2021 by master_of_destiny minor spelling and grammar changes 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carmelitha Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 Since making npc ( secret agent precisely ) less stupid seems out of condition, could you please replace the brain of the secret agent with a deathwish from sortie mission with the brain from arbitration dude who have enough common sense to follow us around and not stand still against 20000000000000000000000 shooting him from miles away and probably shooting him from next planets too with 100% accuracy, it's already boring enough to babysit him for 10 waves. If you want us to defend a helpless objective then put one of those container not something supposed to have a brain. I know how to cheese the mission and complete it it's just frustrating to not be able to put him out of his misery myself :P Pretty please with cherry on top. be well. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-IGRIS- Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 i want call of tempestari hehe 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iPathos Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 17 minutes ago, UpsyDownn said: i want call of tempestari hehe I want DE to observably show what they intend, but we often don't get what we ask for, so... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FunYourself Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 On 2021-04-05 at 9:20 PM, [DE]Megan said: Corpus Proxima & The New Railjack: Hotfix 29.10.10 In case you missed it, Update 30: Call of the Tempestarii is coming April 2021, meaning we’ll be shifting over to ‘No Hotfixes’ as of this Update (unless there’s an emergency)! Hmmm.... 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graavarg Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 (edited) 14 hours ago, BesucherPrime said: The trendline is a model in itself trying to explain the playerbase over time. First of all, I'd say you have the motivation to become excellent at this, so let me give you some input going further with your data model: If you have a model explaining part of the data, here 69%, you can continue on that model by refining it until you reach something as close as possible to 100%. I learnt that the old way without computers, because a long time ago my thesis father was a calculator and pen nerdo, so I personally still do modelling often by making graphs and looking for similarities in other data I find relevant (and finding new hypothesis). It is actually quite easy in principle: Assume you have data that goes 1,2,3,4,5 and found a time trend of x - If you divide your data by your findings you'll get new data of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 with no further variance. The model (time is x) perfectly describes your data, as we can no longer find any variables to better describe the data. Welcome to the visual world of modelling in 2D. With less in line data, that accounts in your case for 31% of your made data, you now get a new graph that you could refine another line netting a quadratic time trend (to as many power to your x as you may find). Once there is no more explanation possible with time (r2 is not getting better the more lines or whatever you throw at it), you'll need to throw in other data that resembles what you have left over and has some kind of link to it that is still unknown, like for example amplified or reduced marketing spending lagged by a week/a month or whatever (following the hypothesis that marketing spending increase sales e.g. player base here). The problem is finding and identifying relevant data. When you are using the straight relationship between X and Y for graphical purposes, unconnected to any explanation or theory, it is not a actually a model. If someone were to claim that time (alone) explains the increase of the playerbase, it would be a model (of sorts). Without such a claim it is only a (very) basic statistic, the change over time smoothed out as a straight line. I have no motivation whatsoever of becoming "excellent", though I appreciate your reasonable and overall correct explanation. Once upon a time I designed and tested new multivariate methods (for research) and in my current work I evaluate quite complex data regularly (including at meta-level: evaluating expert evaluations of such data). One important aspect of such evaluations is checking for errors arising from what could be summed up as either "fitting your theory to your result" or "fitting your result to your theory". Though the problems generally arise from quite different settings and have a different logical background, they are (surprisingly) common. The first type mostly comes from "scientific results", and is as simple as someone first analyzing existing relationships in the data, then re-formulating the hypothesis/theory according to the results and then testing and "proving" the new hypothesis using the same data set (which in practical terms entails running standard a priori statistical testing that assumes no such prior adaptation has occurred, which makes it a lot easier to reach 0.99 or 0.95 significance). The other type is the time-proven method of trying to influence policy with ("carefully selected") data, where someone starts with the result they want and then select and manipulate the data to produce the "proof". Without getting into specifics, let's just say that the kindergarden versions of both show up on this forum. One "group" doing this time after time after time are players with (very) strong feelings about how bad the game or DE is, but so unsecure in their convictions that they try to buff it with outlandish claims about "the community" and the "playerbase" and how it is "proven" by this or that. Now, if the proof in question would be scientifically and logically sound I would be the first to accept it. But after 4 years of lies and misrepresentation and an overall total disregard for logic, facts and science, and this on a level affecting the whole globe (and empowering like-minded idiots all over the planet) I might be a bit extra allergic to the same type of flawed argumentation and unproven theories showing up on the forum. To sum it up you put the finger pretty well on all this: there has to be a (logical) hypothesis plus relevant data to prove (or disprove) it. The statistical methods can be insanely complex (due to the current computing power available) but logically and structurally it is just basic scientific philosophy (as long as you leave Kant, Kuhn & co out of it). A basic framework and basic rules millions of researchers and analysts are following on a daily basis all over the planet. Edited April 9, 2021 by Graavarg 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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