I caught myself moments ago, telling the same thing to one more player, the second in the span of a few days. Therefore, I thought that it would be best to communicate this to everyone.

It concerns your perspective of active players. I have seen some ironic posts, during the fantasy draft voting, about the actual number of players in this game. I am concerned about this. I have spoken for this before, I will do this again. As players, you cannot have all the details of a game. Some things are better left concealed. As veterans, you deserve to know -at least- why this happens.

First of all, PG is a 1-world massively multiplayer game. It is an old-school game and it maintains a lot of the characteristics old school games had and newer do not.

A key difference is how newer games manipulate their game worlds numbers. We are speaking about games in the same category here, not games who use a leaderboard and up to 10 players in a single battle. PG is not leaderboard-based, it is a game where all compete in the same time.

When you join PG, you have one option; to join 1 world. Once you join, you realize that you are among the last of a game that has like 16.000 players, as the initial screen informs you. The world, indeed has 16000 more accounts alongside, with which you can interact with one way or another.

Newer games do NOT do this. They advertise that their world has 100.000 accounts or 1 M accounts but in fact, they spread their counts among multiple worlds. If we did this, we would advertise 120k players and then each world would have 100 accounts. So, at current counts, we would have like 160 Avonmoras, instead of 1.

Additionally, they do not provide full list of accounts or full ranking. What they do, is to produce a top 10 which weirdly enough, is close enough to your score. That's because the world is probably new enough, like 1 or 2 days old. Once 100 or so join in (depending on the game policy), they open a new world.

There are many reasons why they do this but obviously, they do this because it works. I am not here to analyze this but to analyze the manipulation that most players there will not realize. They will think that they play at a world of 1M people, while the world has around 100 players.

It is really hard to find open worlds, where more than 100 players compete at the same time. PG does this. In PG, you can cooperate in the same time with 30 more people against one target, in the same time. This is how old school games are.

So, PG has indeed 16,000 active characters. Most of them will be deleted within short time of inactivity after all. Now,are these characters played by active players? That's another question that we choose not to reply. First, because of the competition. It is hard to monitor active players without defining who is an active player after all.

What really matters is not the actual count of active players, as this can be tainted easily by advertising. What matters and is hard to change, is the number of COMPETITIVE players. NEVER BEFORE, PG had SO MANY COMPETITIVE players.

I mean, we had more active players (players active at least once within a week) around April 2017 than we have today. However, we had less veterans back then. A game value is counted by the number of active veterans as these can produce great competitive game at the end. What's the point in beating a newbie?

We are aware that it is a tough period for veterans. As you grow better and better, you are in need of better war tactics to beat the other battle-hardened players around you. The top competitors are after all just as good as you or even better. So it is hard to beat them and the game at some points might not seem sufficient.

This is something we will look to improve. This is our current objective.

CJ forum activity and game activity can be very different. I stayed out of the forums for a LOOOOOOONG time but was active in the game

Lets look at the number of votes on the draft as a example. Lets also look at the challenges faced in drafting a team of true active players. The honest truth is that there are probably only around 100 people that truly ACTIVELY play this game. When I say active I mean log in once daily. Sure there may be more out there but if you log in pop your party cards and log out only to log in 24-48 hours later, you bring little value to the game experience. The decline is evident even in the less than 2 years I have played. I remember several active forum threads a day with constant responses, a bustling guild chat, plunder boards full. Now the only time a plunder board has more than 1-2 ships on it is if someone was lit up in the last several hours and a few people hit it and even then it tends to be the same old faces and its maybe a half dozen folks. At current rate, there will be about 50 of us sitting around the docks at Vaasburg soon talking about the glory days.

I don’t know. For a few years I avoided the forums because every time I posted, I got attacked in the game

PhoenixKnight wrote:I don’t know. For a few years I avoided the forums because every time I posted, I got attacked in the game

My assessment isn't based purely on game forums. I do believe that are a facet that needs to be included in the equation but I find that looking at plunder boards is a good indication as well as usually you will see a lot of fleets in Tzogos, Tortuga, Aiora, etc when new players are joining because the tutorial missions tend to put danger on the new fleets.

It doesn't take much to figure out the numbers and you don't even need to consider the forums, although the forums do give you a relatively good idea when you consider the Fantasy Draft Poll.

There are some numbers that you want to look at when you think of activity:

1) Total distinct logins for the day
2) Number of new players (signed up within last week) that logged in during the day
3) Number of players that have logged on today and on 2 of the previous 3 days.
4) Number of players that have logged in multiple times during the day.

Now without admins, you aren't going to get this information accurately, but points 3 and 4 are where your competitive base comes from and for the most part these players can be deduced without the need of the admins.

PhoenixKnight wrote:I don’t know. For a few years I avoided the forums because every time I posted, I got attacked in the game

I have experienced the same. Keeping a small profile helps fend off attacks.

As a new player, you don't have many reasons to post anywhere else than the Help forums. Tavern could be a place to break the ice.

Adam smith wrote:

PhoenixKnight wrote:I don’t know. For a few years I avoided the forums because every time I posted, I got attacked in the game

I have experienced the same. Keeping a small profile helps fend off attacks.

As a new player, you don't have many reasons to post anywhere else than the Help forums. Tavern could be a place to break the ice.

If you are in a good enough guild, you don't even need to post in the Help Forums.

That's true.

Judging mostly from my guildmates, they are all very active and friendly. I rarely see them post here and the ones who post are usually the more advanced ones.

methinks the only way to save competitivity in the game is to redistribute the wealth in gold, credits, ships, technology, voodoo, and resources equally among all players! it's only fair!