PA Stats usage statistics

EDIT: updated data 21.1.2015

So in a response in another thread I made this stuff, but I think it's interesting enough for an extra thread instead, so this is my general response to some vocal "PA will die soon" people.

Your imaging things and spreading a constant "it's gonna be dead" based on subjective personal feeling is doing simply nothing at best or at worse becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If the players of a game constantly cry about how the game is gonna be dead, not because they want it to be dead, but because they are pessimists, it is gonna have a considerably higher chance of really going down.
So if you like a game you should not constantly spread negativity about it.

So let's look at numbers that I know of: PA Stats usage statistics. If we have a sharp decline in players/whatever, then surly PA Stats should see something of that?

this is a by day graph:








The following graph shall help to make a relation between new pa stats users per day and the overall active pa stats user base.







Yes PA Stats does not observe everything, but that just means the real numbers are even better. Also pa stats users tend to be "core users", not casual ones, so more users on pa stats means more users who bothered to read the forums.
Is the cat dead?


Also personally to me the forums does not feel dead, apart from a bunch of people constantly telling us the world will end soon. I hate that behavior.

Sliding window over full weeks for player count please? That number should reflect pretty closely the total number of competitive players still active. There are enough PA Stats users to make that number significant.

1400 players seen by PAStats is quite a few players, I bet there are even more who just don't play multiplayer.

In fact, hasn't uber said that the majority of players never play multiplayer, meaning actual numbers of players is far far higher than those suggested by the graphs.

Added to OP in a sec...

EDIT:
I'd like to put pa patches in a graph too -I think the weekly bumps may be patches that caused interest-, but I dunno how to do it best and I really should do other things now, but here is the raw data, maybe somebody has an idea:

Code:

pa_version,release_date
unknown,2013-08-15 20:21:00
52512,2013-09-01 01:27:42.223
52973,2013-09-04 09:19:48.542
53072,2013-09-05 22:39:55.043
54382,2013-09-26 22:05:54.099
54412,2013-09-26 23:57:12.291
54459,2013-09-28 02:13:14.51
54497,2013-10-01 02:56:12.741
54574,2013-10-02 03:12:43.458
54631,2013-10-03 01:43:54.084
54696,2013-10-04 03:24:59.51
54757,2013-10-05 01:32:42.009
54994,2013-10-10 00:21:20.522
55089,2013-10-10 07:11:31.42
55430,2013-10-16 21:55:58.124
55493,2013-10-18 05:00:41.473
56310,2013-11-02 01:33:25.692
56387,2013-11-05 06:11:21.375
56516,2013-11-07 01:26:18.579
56821,2013-11-12 22:06:44.826
57047,2013-11-15 06:30:23.389
57164,2013-11-19 04:05:25.175
57449,2013-11-22 22:09:03.638
57703,2013-11-27 02:24:12.546
58197,2013-12-11 00:45:32.481
58678,2013-12-18 02:59:54.308
58772,2013-12-19 04:05:16.613
59549,2014-01-16 22:09:35.413
59607,2014-01-18 01:13:16.54
61250,2014-02-19 19:40:06.472
61450,2014-02-21 08:08:05.348
61694,2014-02-26 00:55:13.491
61941,2014-02-27 02:56:38.135
62037,2014-02-27 11:06:28.768
62110,2014-03-01 02:55:18.499
62165,2014-03-02 07:34:59.873
62168,2014-03-02 23:52:12.664
62225,2014-03-04 03:22:03.091
62318,2014-03-05 10:23:37.169
62350,2014-03-06 00:26:12.179
62409,2014-03-06 23:01:41.578
62443,2014-03-07 02:17:57.756
62519,2014-03-08 03:36:17.278
62857,2014-03-14 20:18:48.332
63180,2014-03-20 23:12:43.262
63234,2014-03-22 20:13:08.459
63475,2014-03-27 05:53:23.536
64498,2014-04-21 22:55:04.19
64624-balance,2014-04-22 21:37:27.632
64758-balance,2014-04-23 22:54:39.426
65048-balance,2014-04-30 05:55:46.451
65103-balance,2014-05-01 10:57:24.722
65198,2014-05-02 13:04:11.155
65240,2014-05-03 00:05:04.476
65407,2014-05-07 02:35:43.084
65588,2014-05-10 02:16:13.159
66503,2014-05-22 21:32:43.481
66516,2014-05-23 03:53:15.58
66567,2014-05-24 00:44:38.548
66660,2014-05-29 00:04:35.427
66705,2014-05-29 08:20:28.081
66770,2014-05-30 08:58:10.507
66830,2014-05-31 00:41:14.742
66863-main,2014-05-31 23:56:24.842
66943,2014-06-04 22:19:09.214
67053-main,2014-06-06 04:19:27.723
67099-main,2014-06-07 04:42:07.46
67249-main,2014-06-12 02:26:51.231
67269-main,2014-06-12 20:43:11.911
67342,2014-06-14 00:15:14.291
67457,2014-06-17 03:43:24.424
67523,2014-06-18 00:48:13.558
67998,2014-06-25 16:55:53.549
68079,2014-06-26 08:29:12.863
68253,2014-07-01 09:11:19.407
68331,2014-07-01 23:51:14.403
68568,2014-07-08 23:18:10.993
68767,2014-07-11 08:12:03.559
68772-main,2014-07-12 09:58:16.674
68964-main,2014-07-16 07:01:41.853
69025-main,2014-07-17 04:41:16.846
69170-main,2014-07-18 20:47:43.253
69280,2014-07-22 03:53:20.08
69306,2014-07-23 00:12:18.962
69370,2014-07-23 06:11:08.104
69411,2014-07-24 04:41:37.194
69515,2014-07-25 05:04:56.594
69564,2014-07-26 01:35:18.447
69672-main,2014-07-29 13:03:50.761
69721,2014-07-30 05:31:17.622
69994-main,2014-08-04 22:56:45.593
70126-main,2014-08-07 06:18:48.649
70243,2014-08-08 04:20:04.303
70289,2014-08-09 02:38:23.983
70560-main,2014-08-14 21:29:07.557
71459,2014-09-01 19:01:44.607
71544,2014-09-03 19:08:31.178
71673,2014-09-05 00:51:45.574
71729,2014-09-05 09:10:21.35
71937,2014-09-10 23:50:57.697
72332,2014-09-17 09:19:26.229
72908,2014-09-27 02:04:38.574
72996,2014-09-29 21:27:49.014
73319-main,2014-10-02 18:14:03.127
73441,2014-10-03 23:17:10.667
73532,2014-10-07 03:02:41.74
73687,2014-10-09 02:15:51.016
73737,2014-10-09 23:00:09.159
73823,2014-10-11 00:56:21.125
73939,2014-10-15 22:49:24.014
74358-main,2014-10-27 21:41:57.7
74416-main,2014-10-28 04:24:37.614
74484,2014-10-31 09:33:50.416
74525,2014-10-31 19:18:11.231

unknown,2013-08-15 20:21:00 is the release of PA Stats itself, hehe

I think something to keep in mind is that the people who have pa stats are usually dedicated players and optimistic about PA.

Which means there are other casual players not on pa stats, and even more who play offline/singleplayer.

And which means that the number of those optimistic players is growing, as usage of pa stats increases.

100 percent behind this thread. PA is a great game, and it just gonna get better.

Thanks for the graphs Cola, interesting stuff. I'd be curious to hear some numbers from Uber as well, although not sure if they are willing to give out that kind of data. Steam stats only tell so much:

http://steamcharts.com/app/233250#1y

Curious to at least know the ratio of players that use the Uber launcher and those that use Steam.

Anyway, yes, positivity, good game, going to get better with each update, still having fun playing it despite a few relatively minor grumbles

Yeah, the Steam Charts I would say are probably a lot stronger statistic to base any kind of inferences about growth/decline on vs PA stats usage. PA stats usage will reflect a very small subset of players that are very different from the general playerbase - primarily hardcore/competitive players.

The Steam Charts however tell a bit of a different story (http://steamcharts.com/app/233250#6m):

Steam users aren't really the only players though, considering PA stats has over 200 active users per day I don't think PA stats is as small a subset as we used to believe. Considering Steam says there is less than 1000 day on Steam. That 200 is of course most likely mixed between Steam and Uber store. It seems there may be more Uber players than we previously thought. Maybe, just speculating.

PA Stats arguably reflects how many people play PA on a more than "vs AI" level. That means it reflects the players you can count as being part of the online community. That's a very important metric, isn't it? It's actually THE metric if you ask yourself how healthy the online community is.

The big peak you are seeing in may was the Galactic War update, that brought in a ton of vs AI player, most likely a lot of which had kickstarted the game and were waiting for a "vs AI" gamemode. You can see that peak on pa stats as well as on the steam graphs, during that time pa stats recorded a TON of GW games as well.
Those "vs AI" players however tend to not actually stay very long with a game, as "vs AI" games just very rarely are good enough to play for month after month, so many of them left obviously. So the peak in may looks big on steam, but it's just a bunch of "vs AI" players rushing into the game, playing probably a few dozen hours, try a multiplayer game or two, and then move on to whatever next game they play.
PA Stats usage in turn makes comparing the active group of online players much easier, it removes all the pure single player-players noise. And that shows: The amount of players in that area is not going down, it's peaking on every important update and even keeps some players from every peak.
"vs AI" players obviously won't stay for that long. At least not the majority of them. Yes they are important for sales, but sales are not reflected in either the steam charts nor the pa stats charts. You could have the same 5k players playing all the time to generate all of these charts.

Yeah, we can all interpret the data however we want. Personally, I don't think PA is growing at all. My two reasons for thinking this:
1) Steam Charts suggest this
2) PA has been out of the top 100 sales list on Steam now for over a month now for the first time in the last ~6 months (from memory last time I checked)

My hope is that Uber put out some major PA updates (personal wishlist: improved biomes) that attract new people and push it back up the sales list/player charts.

I don't actually play PA much anymore. Neither does my brother who I brought a copy for and some of the other people I know who own it. The potential is there but I'm just not enjoying myself much...so I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. Hopefully many of the others who are also not playing it today are like me, and are waiting for their own personal wishlist to get fulfilled and will then jump back in.

By the way I'm not a competitive player but I'm on the forum.

Yep, you're absolutely right and I agree with you. And I see how competitive players would like this. I've been a part of some other small more dedicated multiplayer competitive scenes as well (Red Orchestra & Insurgency)...what I have seen having been a part of those communities however is that things tend to stagnate a great deal if new blood isn't always entering the ranks. Hopefully that happens here as well.

I'd argue the growth in pa stats users is new competitive players joining.
Seriously just put away your pessimistic view of things, being pessimistic leads to so many bad things in general

The community was a little more active during the summer months when people were less busy with school. That's not so surprising.

What is this school you talk of that affects gaming? one of these days it will be the latest batch of OAPS getting sent to care homes that kills another wave of gaming - ok thats about 25 years away but ....

But it's not only about the trend, in this case raw numbers are important too.
And these numbers indicate that there are only about 3k unique players participating in the multiplayer component of the game over the course of an entire week.

That's barely anything, and I have no clue how Uber wants to monetize such a small group of players without resorting to F2P mechanisms. Yes, they won't have trouble paying for the servers, but that's least of their concerns considering that they have to pay at least 50-100k$ salaries per month in order to continue development with the full team. That userbase is just about a full magnitude to small to maintain the business, the recent layoffs didn't happen without a reason. (And seriously, that discussion should not take part in the public parts of the forum.)