We just got a whole new socket set and three new maps... What the hell are you smoking dude?

Opinion Piece:

Lets see this weeks dip started on the 10th

Possible External factors cites KH 1.5, killzone Mercenary, NHL 14, Pro Evo Soccer 20134 demo, Puppeteer, & Sanctum 2.
Possible Internal factors End of Caldari Boot Camp Event.
Notables of the week: Weird down spikes throughout the day, modulation changes, reverse frequency climb and decline.

As the week progresses the numbers slowly climb back up, this is a bit untraditional as usually the day after cap reset are the heaviest in general. This would mean that external factors are likely a possible cause and that players are have slowly consumed the content they bought, or reshuffling their time over to make room fro the new games and Dust 514. There is also still the major game release of Diablo III the week before which likely was a major factor of the dip BEFORE the patch hit. There is a projected temporary loss with more upcoming games in the near future however some of those losses will compound each other if the game starts being perceived as being too underpopulated. This is what is and now currently killing Hawken, an MMO that by any standards should have been a smashing success but for unknown factors is flopping and shutdown of the game is looming ahead as their development team is dismissed.

1.4's initial reaction was not well received due to the large amount of changes to the current content and some players are refusing to adapt. While this may disenfranchise older players this is likely to have a stronger impact of newer players coming into the game who were never familiar with how things were. Known industry facts that attempts to retain veterans is generally a futile and near fruitless endeavor in by cost per hour per player retained is factorially too high especially in traditional MMOs which have content that is clearly labeled "End Game."

However Dust 514 is untraditional in MMO terms as there is no endgame content and under most known models our veterans look after themselves mostly and there is truly no specific way to retain just them. Which is why any improvement to the game aimed at new player retention benefits the veterans as well in the long run as they're presented with more targets and better features to apply themselves onto those said targets.

CCP knows their own numbers better than anyone outside the company has access to. For example we have no idea how many unique players log on every day. However since CCP does know it would be an awful mistake to believe they're ignoring those numbers. Throughout the MMO world there is a not well known standard known as the 1 day, 7 day, and 30 day retention rates. Every mmo team that is aware of this concept tries different ways in tackling this problem.

The more recent amount of failed MMOs have awesome 1 day (tutorial more epic than endgame) retention or great 7 day retention (ran out of content, players managed to burn end game in a week) which in the end destroys the 30 day retention number to being abysmal.

While Dust 514's team is aware of it, admittedly they know their numbers are not great and are attacking it on multiple fronts. For example NPE battle academy changes are most likely based on graduation numbers which factors into the 1 day and 7 day models. If players aren't even graduating they're not experiencing most of what the game has to offer so changes to the Battle Academy started. I have said it before opinions of veterans have no impact on these because they cannot simply speak for those who just throw the controllers down and never picked up Dust 514 again. While I would love to state actual numbers for the results of the Battle Academy changes so far NDA forbids me from doing so. CCP will continue to change up the BA until a sweet spot is obtained as it is something that can be easily done until other features ship such as possibly a proper tutorial environment or the likes.

Addressing the 7 Day and 30 Day fights are entirely different though, mostly reliant on content, context, social, and number of other improvements.

Bottom line, CCP most likely has a graph nerd, he has access to more numbers than eve-offline can ever share, and I am also sure it is his job to find out why numbers are going awry and he's fluent in market speak which is a scary type of english language and a bit alien at times and I am sure the big boys in charge are getting earfuls as to why and making the pushes in the direction needed in order to fix. This has not only been an going process for a while but its akin to a train, only so much can be done a month and to derail the process now will definitely cause a wreck and in order to reverse a change may require a new train to be loaded up instead. Overall the players are not yet comfortable with 1.4 yet, I am beginning to record a third shift in behavior but I haven't seen enough fielding of said fit to verify if its a new behavior shift.

+1 IWS. That was a good summary article. It's sad to see Hawken struggling like that, imo their devs produced a solid mech shooter right out of the gate - one wonders what it could have developed into if they had the time to grow and refine it.

DUST, like other online multiplayers, is seeing the effects of multiple big releases and the start of the school year. Our numbers should be a lot lower, tbh.

My interpretation of this is that two factors are at play: new player retention has improved owing mainly to the revamped/refined shooter mechanics, and DUST, flawed as it is, has more staying power than traditional mmos.

Regarding the NPE, i'm finding it hard to gauge the effects of the academy, even at an intuitive level.

And as far as match making goes, my purely subjective impression is that when online population goes above ~4000 peeps matches start to get more balanced and more fun. Below ~3300 it 'feels' like the matchmaker is struggling. I'm joining matches solo and the matchmaker most likely identifies me as an average player - peeps on the far ends of the spectrum or squads are prolly having a rougher time of it.

And the record of over 9k players was 4 days after game launch, player count's didn't even start till it's official release. Beta had numbers far exceeding that.

CCP has proven this wrong through EVE and some adversity in DUST probably won't sway them.

EVE for its first 5 years was considered an open beta by every MMORPG review or website. Because of non stop expansions and massive patches every few weeks and months.

CCP in general was just a small office of 20 people in Iceland.. and now is growing to be one of the biggest grass route developers...

Their choices and ignoring people who told them exactly this was gonna happen was aggravating because it was the consensus and they did it anyway.

Through CCP's track record of EVE shaking bad review's have been their specialty... It has put most developers bankrupt, but CCP seems to buck that trend.