G Torq
ALTA B2O
802
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Posted - 2014.05.04 11:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Following the recent announcement that DUST514 is set to become a Legacy product, this will be the last DUST514 Market Review post from me.
A rather exceptional category in the market-place is that of Skillbooks - while weapons and suits are sold in the many-tens-of-thousands every day, Skillbooks are each only ever sold once to each mercenary.
This fact allows us to look at some different statistics from the world of New Eden.
This article, as usual, is available in a more easy-to-read version.
Corporations
Likely the least-used type of Skillbooks, the Corporate Management set of skills gives us a look into how many characters are at least technically able to be the CEO of a Corporation,
Corporations - 304.681
Megacorp Control - 18.446
Transstellar Empire Control - 720
This actually means that beyond the NPC corporations, the corporations of New Eden can host at least 4.994.950 members, and up to 5.570.950 members, across up-to 304.681 player-run corporations. Of cause, there are likely quite a bit fewer corporations out there, as some have merged, some moved on and some were simply temporary.
Across the potentially 720Transstellar Empires, there can be as many as 936.000 members, with up to 1.300 members in each.
A timeline of these Skillbooks being sold.
It does look like sales have plateaued around the 450-600Skillbooks per day. If this translates directly to new corporations, that is a not-insignificant number of new corporations being created constantly.
Weapons
One place to look is just what Weapon Skillbooks are sold, and in what quantities. Looking to the Operation skills of Light Weapons, we can get a first picture:
Assault Rifle - 579.723
Sniper Rifle - 349.732
Scrambler Rifle - 165.648
Laser Rifle - 161.871
Mass Driver - 114.381
Rail Rifle - 98.195
Combat Rifle - 85.390
Shotgun - 84.061
Swarm Launcher - 69.867
Plasma Cannon - 38.373
1/2 a million Mercs have bought the Assault Rifle Operation Skillbook, in part due to it being both the initial weapon for everyone and for a while the only rifle outside of the Sniper Rifle. 1/3 of a million Mercs bought the Sniper Rifle Operation Skillbook, which could help explain why there are always people camped out in the hills.
Plasma Cannon lounging last, at less than 40.000 says something about how specialized a weapon it is.
Weapon Operation is only part of the picture - true dedication shows up when people skill into Weapon Proficiency.
Assault Rifle - 91.317 (15,7%)
Sniper Rifle - 55.307 (15,8%)
Rail Rifle - 11.472 (11,7%)
Scrambler Rifle - 11.172 (6,7%)
Combat Rifle - 8.680 (10,2%)
Laser Rifle - 5.483 (3,4%)
Shotgun - 5.451 (6,5%)
Mass Driver - 5.015 (4,4%)
Swarm Launcher - 4.671 (6,7%)
Plasma Cannon - 1.002 (2,6%)
Suddenly the picture has changed. Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle are still in the lead, but Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle have overtaken Laser Rifle, and Rail Rifle even surpassed the Scrambler Rifle despite Scrambler and Laser Rifles having had a lot longer time on the market. Just as importantly, while Scrambler Rifle rank 4th in sheer count, it is ranked at a shared 5th when looking at the percentage of Scrambler Rifle users with Proficiency (6,7%). The other weapon on 5th place is the Swarm Launcher, a weapon that really requires Proficiency skill (and perhaps the one benefitting the most from it). Laser Rifle users only come in at 3,4% having trained any Proficiency, and unless there is suddenly a significant uptick in Caldari Wabbits to go hunting for, this is not likely to improve.
Another thing it shows is the relatively low commitment to going to the Proficiency skills. 11,4%, or 1 out of 9, of all light weapons are taken to that level, meaning on average(!) people have skilled into 9 light weapons, but only taken 1 of these into its Proficiency skill.
A Graph!
Part of the explanation here is certainly that players skill into multiple weapons, but only specialize in 1 or 2 of them. Another one is that it takes time until new players have enough skill-points to get into Proficiency, though after a while they should be catching up. Finally, there is simply the option that new players stick around long enough to skill into 1 or more weapons, but not long enough to get to Proficiency skills.
Team Fairy DUST
HTTP://Dust.Thang.DK/ - DUST514 Fitting Tool based on DUST SDE
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G Torq
ALTA B2O
802
|
Posted - 2014.05.04 11:32:00 -
[2] - Quote
Vehicle Command
The Vehicle Command skilltree is special, since it was reset, along with the Vehicle Upgrades skilltree, on December 10th, 2013. This means that we have no reason to look back beyond that date, and that the values are more representative of the current player-base.
Firstly, let us look at how many even skilled into vehicles, instead of (only) relying on militia-level equipment:
Vehicle Command - 138.764
LAV Command - 40.319
HAV Command - 27.217
Dropship Command - 40.041
Assault Dropship Cmd - 13.062
With it recently reported that GÇ£DUST still has 100,000 active players every dayGÇ¥ , we can see that something approaching 1-in-4 players have skilled into HAVs, but a frankly astonishing 40% have skilled into Dropships. Of cause, a recent poll about Dropships only got 65 responses, so it is tempting to question how many of those 40.041 actually see themselves as Dropship Pilots.
Timeline
A similar 40% are skilled into LAVs, which points to people being willing to try using them for more than throw-away transportation, while also hinting at far from all current players having LAV blueprints.
Dropsuit Command
With 32 different Dropsuit Command skills, we need to find a way to limit what weGÇÖre looking at. Due to this, IGÇÖm going to only look at the 5 specialization archetypes.
Assault - 21.453
Logistics - 20.884
Scout - 16.690
Sentinel - 13.672
Commando - 11.071
Data is extracted from March 25th onwards, the day Uprising 1.8 was released, and the Dropsuit Command skill-tree was reset.
It seems that Assault Suit are the most popular to skill into, followed closely by Logistics. It is curious that over the lifetime of DUST, 579.723 mercenaries were skilled into Assault Rifles, but only 21.453 mercenaries have skilled into the most-skilled suit since the recent reset (a 1:27 relation). It may be that no-one bothers skilling into Specialized suits, but even if we assume that no-one skilled into more than 1 type (giving us 83.770 mercs) and everyone who ever played skilled into Assault Rifles (both flawed assumptions), we get that only 1 in 7 mercs are currently playing. As not everyone skilled into Assault Rifles, and not only did less-than everyone skill into Specialization, but some skilled into more than 1 type, we need to look elsewhere.
A look at Dropsuit Specialization, over time, cumulative.
This doesnGÇÖt reflect the actual number of mercenaries with Dropsuit Specialization, only the number of Skillbooks sold in total; the number of mercenaries with these skills is lower.
Looking at the rate of Skillbooks being sold instead.
Neither are really giving us a good picture of just how many mercenaries skilled into dropsuits.
Instead, we can look at the root of the Dropsuit Command skill-tree: The Dropsuit Command skill itself!
Complete history
We, of course, only need to look from March 25th and forward, so let us zoom in a bitGǪ
This may be easier to read as a cumulative value:
Wait - earlier we noted that CCP GamesGÇÖ Julien Bourbonnais stated to Kotaku that 100.000 players log in daily, but it took DUST514 18 days to sell 100.000 (100.501 to be exact) copies of the Root Skillbook for a fairly critical skill-tree, that had just been reset. This is even ignoring the average of ca 2900 copies sold every day for the previous month, i.e. the GÇ£noice-leve...
Team Fairy DUST
HTTP://Dust.Thang.DK/ - DUST514 Fitting Tool based on DUST SDE
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