Mobile or Steam (A data gathering poll)

Unknown

There has been some discussion on how many players play the game here and additional discussion about how many steam vs. mobile users there are out there. Purely for data gathering purposes take a moment to let us know what platform you play on, thanks!
Included options for multiple accounts for families who all play etc.

Unknown

Missing the select few that have a single account that span both Steam and Mobile networks.

Unknown

Sweenz wrote:

Missing the select few that have a single account that span both Steam and Mobile networks.

Wait that is a thing? I thought it wasn't a thing, i'll add it in sorry to those who already voted, I won't make any more changes I promise.

Raekwen

If it is a thing, HOW is it a thing? I want that to be my thing, damn it.

Unknown

Sweenz wrote:

Missing the select few that have a single account that span both Steam and Mobile networks.

You mean the devs and the beta testers?

Unknown

raek13 wrote:

If it is a thing, HOW is it a thing? I want that to be my thing, damn it.

If you were a Steam version beta tester, the devs manually tied players' mobile accounts to their Steam accounts.

Today, that's an impossibility. You had to be on the forums and opted-in to the beta test for the very short window that they allowed this. The players that participated got to keep this ability as a "thank you". Everyone else, well... tough cookies (well, for us that is).

Raekwen

Bah.. so tired of having to scroll left and right to see AP pools..

Unknown

They don't seem to realise how many of us would play on Steam AND mobile if given the chance. We should petition or...something.

noobprime

Not sure if this will give you a representative sample honestly.
But we have seen that the player base is about 65K, and that Steam has about a peak of 1K. Giving a generous x5 for the number of Steam users across platforms/time zones, I would say that Steam/PC users are at most 5% of the user base.

Unknown

True but the statistic that there are ~750 average steam users at any one time tells us nothing about the total number of steam users, hence a poll to get a better idea of the ratio to go with our gathered data about the overall total.

noobprime

Cryptobrancus wrote:

True but the statistic that there are ~750 average steam users at any one time tells us nothing about the total number of steam users, hence a poll to get a better idea of the ratio to go with our gathered data about the overall total.

The forum base is simply not representative. Any number we get is going to be skewed. I would guess that it may top out at 10% but no more. But it would be a guess

_RiO_

Cryptobrancus wrote:

True but the statistic that there are ~750 average steam users at any one time tells us nothing about the total number of steam users, hence a poll to get a better idea of the ratio to go with our gathered data about the overall total.

It does tell us something.

There are three stretches of approx. 4 hours each day during which Europe, the US and Asia are actively playing. If you have a look at Steamcharts' graph for MPQ, you'll notice a wave pattern of three distinct peaks and valleys over the course of a 24 hour day. The peaks signify prime-time for one of these three regions, while the valleys signify general downtime. The reported peak value of simultaneously active players is going to be in one of those three peaking periods of the day (most likely the US one, as we know that's where the MPQ playerbase is centralized). If we treat players from the downtime as statistically insignificant and assume that all players play for roughly equal length of time, then we can assume that the total number of daily active Steam players won't exceed 3 times the peak value.

For the current peak of 1.3k that means a rough maximum of 3.9k Steam players.
Make it a round 4k if you want to account a bit for the players only represented in the general downtime.

Unknown

Oh, see I posted this in another thread and forgot I didn't explain that here.

Cryptobrancus wrote:
maybe we can do a poll on the forums to try to get some better data, couple that with mischief's work on an estimate for total number of players based on #of 5k person season brackets. True the forum is not a robust sample size but if we are being honest there is a large bias in that the forum cares more about what other forum goers think than the rest of MPQ population.

Yes it is a poor sample size and a biased one at that, but without the devs feeding us actual numbers this is how we try to get rough estimates. Not going to present any of our findings for peer review or anything like that

Unknown

See I have no basis for assuming players play for roughly equal lengths of time, it might be true but there could be twice that number playing half as long as you think. Nor am I assuming that those playing in the off times are statistically insignificant, it is equally likely that those playing in the middle are unique users from less populated timezones, or could be some people playing 24/7 or a combination of the two.

noobprime

_RiO_ wrote:

There are three stretches of approx. 4 hours each day during which Europe, the US and Asia are actively playing.

That was my basic rationale, but I did a 4x giving a double peak to the US and throwing in an error factor of 1x to estimate high for a total of 5x.

_RiO_ wrote:

If we treat players from the downtime as statistically insignificant and assume that all players play for roughly equal length of time, then we can assume that the total number of daily active Steam players won't exceed 3 times the peak value.

3x is a good typical STDEV number, but like you said there are a couple of assumptions to make.

Regardless of guess-ology I think most of us know from the basic numbers that Steam users are but a fraction of the mobile users.

Unknown

Hmm maybe I am reading the steamcharts differently. I am only seeing one daily peak at roughly noon (I am assuming that is EST but it didn't specify anywhere) and for the last several days the maximum is only around 950 but the minimum is still above 500 if the average player plays even 2 hours a day then that is atleast 6k steam users bare minimum. If the average player only plays one hour then that jumps to 12k-18k users.

Yes the forum is largely representative of those who do better than average in events but there are still players filling up every bracket and more than half of them score below 500th in a 1000 person bracket. The amount of time it would take to get top 500 is not that much over a 3 day event. Thus I am hedging my assumptions in the direction that there are more players being shown in these graphs than you think.

FaerieMyst

I play intensely on my phone/tablet and casually on Steam. Totally different mindset.

Steam - play a couple times a day at the office. Totally F2P. No alliance. Maybe play 3-4 days a week. Didn't play for a couple of months after I upgraded my OS.

Mobile - play on and off throughout the day - every day. Top 50 alliance. Top 5 in most PVP events.

It is sooooo much easier now to progress to 2* playing on my Steam account than it was on my mobile account. So many more cover drops and events. I really like the Steam interface. Definitely wish I could play my mobile account on Steam.

over_clocked

I voted Steam only; I do have a mobile account but I play maybe once a month there or even less.
Edit: I wish I could play my Steam account on mobile, though; although mobile interface is lackluster compared to Steam, and I hate touch screens, it would be better than having to be around my home/work laptops when needed.

Unknown

AkaTobi_85 wrote:

They don't seem to realise how many of us would play on Steam AND mobile if given the chance. We should petition or...something.

I know my play would significantly increase if I could play the same account on both. I like the steam version better. But the mobile version is more available to play at any given point in the day(ie - not just when I'm close to my computer). So now, I sit in front of my brand new computer with two widescreen monitors surfing the internet as I play MPQ on a 5 inch screen laying beside my keyboard.