Some analysis of atWar's activity (or lack of)
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AtWar has a built-in analytics system to tell us how many players are online at any given time. Normally only mods and admins have access to it, although it's not really secret information. In fact, I've shared screenshots from this system myself, in previous posts. I've also shared it with people genuinely interested in knowing what's happening behind the scenes of atWar. I think it's fair to say I've been as open as I can with the community.
Despite this, certain people with axes to grind have recently been sharing screenshots from this system, as if it were some clandestine thing. I don't know what they hope to accomplish, honestly. But that's okay. Let's look at some charts together, and then everyone can make their own decisions. Sound like a good deal?
(By the way, if you read this whole post I have a nice surprise for you, so stay tuned!)
I've seen screenshots going around basically like this:
This shows the last 1 year of players online. I've added a marker at the point where I bought atWar, but otherwise it's unchanged.
What do you see in this chart? My detractors would probably say it proves I've "ruined" atWar, or some other nonsense. They're entitled to their opinions. As for me, I can only tell you what I see, and this chart tells me several things. I'll explain more in a moment, but lets start with the most obvious one: atWar has been in decline for a long time.
The 2 year chart makes this obvious:
You'll note I've drawn 2 lines. The red line marks the lowest point. The yellow line is a crude representation of the overall trend: down. (If I actually took the time to export this data into better charting software, I could do more informative things like moving average lines, but for now we'll just have to make do with my line drawings...)
The 5 year chart makes this even more obvious:
Bottom line? atWar has been in decline for a long time.
Now I've been here for what, 7 months or so? I told everyone at the outset that I thought it would take at least a year to turn things around. There's just so much work that needs to be done to reverse the trend, it can't happen overnight.
Now let's look at the first chart again, and I'll show you the other things I see:
In no particular order:
1) I see "support" around the 110-ish level. By "support" I mean there is a level of regular users who aren't affected by whatever drama of the week is going on. Over the last year, our daily average (the blue line) has never dipped below this 110 "support" number. That tells me our base is holding stable. (now, if the blue average were to drop below 110 I would be concerned, but so far that hasn't been the case, which I take as an encouraging sign....)
2) There was a boost in activity around the time of the ownership change. I think a lot of people were excited, and word got around to some people who hadn't been online for a long time. I might also call this the "honeymoon period". This seemed to gradually taper off after 2-3 months, but it was nice while it lasted.
3) From early-March to mid-May I tested out some new ad campaigns. The goal was to see what kind of traffic we would get, and what our "conversion rate" would be. In other words, for every $X dollars we spend in ads, how many new users would we gain? And how long would they stick around?
I can summarize the results of this in a few sentences. Our click through rate, or the number of people who clicked on our ads and came to the atWar website, was pretty good. Our conversion rate, or the number of people who actually stayed around and played games, was terrible. The lesson here? We need to make improvements so new users will stay around more. Otherwise the money I spend on ads is just going down the drain, and unfortunately I'm not rich enough to justify that!
4) Since then, the number of players online hasn't really changed much. In fairness, I was gone on vacation from late-May to mid-June, so nothing much happened during that time.
After I got back from vacation, I had a sit-down meeting with my marketing director, and we drew up a list of what we feel are the most important changes and improvements that need to be made, before we can justify another ad spend. I am currently working on this list. (I'll reveal what the new things are as they become completed, but if you've been paying attention to what I've publicly discussed of my plans already, what I'm doing now won't be too much of a surprise...)
So there you have it. You've seen some charts, and my analysis of them. Now it's time for the surprise I promised you. Don't take my word for it, check out the charts for yourself:
https://atwar-game.com/system/online.aspx
Enjoy!
If you have any questions, feel free to reply here and ask. Any serious questions will be considered!
Despite this, certain people with axes to grind have recently been sharing screenshots from this system, as if it were some clandestine thing. I don't know what they hope to accomplish, honestly. But that's okay. Let's look at some charts together, and then everyone can make their own decisions. Sound like a good deal?
(By the way, if you read this whole post I have a nice surprise for you, so stay tuned!)
I've seen screenshots going around basically like this:
This shows the last 1 year of players online. I've added a marker at the point where I bought atWar, but otherwise it's unchanged.
What do you see in this chart? My detractors would probably say it proves I've "ruined" atWar, or some other nonsense. They're entitled to their opinions. As for me, I can only tell you what I see, and this chart tells me several things. I'll explain more in a moment, but lets start with the most obvious one: atWar has been in decline for a long time.
The 2 year chart makes this obvious:
You'll note I've drawn 2 lines. The red line marks the lowest point. The yellow line is a crude representation of the overall trend: down. (If I actually took the time to export this data into better charting software, I could do more informative things like moving average lines, but for now we'll just have to make do with my line drawings...)
The 5 year chart makes this even more obvious:
Bottom line? atWar has been in decline for a long time.
Now I've been here for what, 7 months or so? I told everyone at the outset that I thought it would take at least a year to turn things around. There's just so much work that needs to be done to reverse the trend, it can't happen overnight.
Now let's look at the first chart again, and I'll show you the other things I see:
In no particular order:
1) I see "support" around the 110-ish level. By "support" I mean there is a level of regular users who aren't affected by whatever drama of the week is going on. Over the last year, our daily average (the blue line) has never dipped below this 110 "support" number. That tells me our base is holding stable. (now, if the blue average were to drop below 110 I would be concerned, but so far that hasn't been the case, which I take as an encouraging sign....)
2) There was a boost in activity around the time of the ownership change. I think a lot of people were excited, and word got around to some people who hadn't been online for a long time. I might also call this the "honeymoon period". This seemed to gradually taper off after 2-3 months, but it was nice while it lasted.
3) From early-March to mid-May I tested out some new ad campaigns. The goal was to see what kind of traffic we would get, and what our "conversion rate" would be. In other words, for every $X dollars we spend in ads, how many new users would we gain? And how long would they stick around?
I can summarize the results of this in a few sentences. Our click through rate, or the number of people who clicked on our ads and came to the atWar website, was pretty good. Our conversion rate, or the number of people who actually stayed around and played games, was terrible. The lesson here? We need to make improvements so new users will stay around more. Otherwise the money I spend on ads is just going down the drain, and unfortunately I'm not rich enough to justify that!
4) Since then, the number of players online hasn't really changed much. In fairness, I was gone on vacation from late-May to mid-June, so nothing much happened during that time.
After I got back from vacation, I had a sit-down meeting with my marketing director, and we drew up a list of what we feel are the most important changes and improvements that need to be made, before we can justify another ad spend. I am currently working on this list. (I'll reveal what the new things are as they become completed, but if you've been paying attention to what I've publicly discussed of my plans already, what I'm doing now won't be too much of a surprise...)
So there you have it. You've seen some charts, and my analysis of them. Now it's time for the surprise I promised you. Don't take my word for it, check out the charts for yourself:
https://atwar-game.com/system/online.aspx
Enjoy!
If you have any questions, feel free to reply here and ask. Any serious questions will be considered!
I stopped doing it because of high ranks using the invite link to troll. Then they sat in spectator and harrassed the newbies. It was stressful to maintain without constent moderator supervision.
----  We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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Hope you'll push that game in steam. Amok and Ivan have rejected this several times, because they wouldn't share their revenue. But steam has tens of thousands of potential customers when I look at the games like EU4 or HOI4.
---- "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." ― Carl von Clausewitz
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As far as Dave's administration goes, I'm not going to go out and scream "Dave ruined atWar" or anything, but it feels like he hasn't really done anything decisive... I don't know how much time he's investing on improving the game, but it doesn't seem to bear any fruit. To being with, the two requests/suggestions I've made to him since he bought the game (Namely, an advanced tutorial and fixing the maps that are currently unplayable due to errors) were, from my point of view, thoroughly ignored. He tried to adds some strats but, really, do people truly care about new strats? Who was truly excited about learning that insurgency or that industrial whatever came out? As for the number of players staying around after joining the game, there's a number of steps that can be taken to improve that. First off, an advanced tutorial, what I asked for long ago, would much better integrate people into the game. The unbearable low ranks that don't even wall their cities would be non-existent, and leaver/wallfucker numbers would be greatly culled. This would make both beginner lobby games much more fun, and would help beginner lobby people with integrating into main lobby. When it comes to actually getting already-active and contributing players to stay as such... I have little knowledge of fields aside my own community (scenario players) so I'll only comment on that. First let's take a good look at the map editor: It is a mess. For real. Non-mapmakers might not be aware of the true extent of the map editor's descent into oblivion, but because I hang out with people who have made lots of maps, and because I've tapped into the map editor myself, I can tell you that only someone with nerves of steel can make anything worthwhile with it. Borders disappearing after you spending hours on drawing them (Take a look at Pyrrhus' RotK scenario. You see Harad, in the bottom-right of the map? That border was deleted twice, and had to be redrawn twice, before the map registered it), maps suffering errors just because you edited them (The fate of Aetius and Pyrrhus' Rise of Rome 4 scenario, it was restored, but only a week after the event; You can't have a healthy, developing mapmaker community when whatever change you make in a map takes a week to register, how are you supposed to do tests?), to the fact that the HTML5 map editor is WORSE than the silverlight one (You can't add event units to neutrals, WD's WW2 map would've been impossible to make in the new editor). It is still possible to get a functional and worthwhile map but it feels like the game is trying to punish you for trying. Onto the players now... I've already ranted about how WW1fags are a destructive force bent on destroying atWar plenty of times so I won't bother with that. Aside from that, there's a problem with rankism too. Obviously if a r5 suddenly joins as Germany in a WW2 game they'll be kicked, but people tend to kick people out of sports simply if there's a better person spectating, which is disgusting and very counter-productive for the game. High ranks also tend to pick the small countries meant for low ranks first, while the low ranks themselves tend to choose the high-rank countries first, leading to disaster.
---- Someone Better Than You
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A good solution to your final piece would be to allow individual countries to be restricted by rank. It would even give low ranks something to work twards, like grinding to rank ten to try germany in ww2 for example.
---- We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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I appreciate your feedback and I understand where you are coming from, but this is exactly the kind of thing that frustrates the hell out of me. 1) Do you know how many "requests/suggestions" have been shared with me since I bought the game? I've lost count. Many that I agree will be done (if they haven't already), but it fucking takes time. Just because you don't see it happen overnight, does NOT mean you were ignored. It only takes a few seconds for someone to offer a "suggestion", but it takes a lot more than that to actually develop it, and people just don't understand this. I have enough "suggestions" already for probably the next 2-3 years of development. 2) Specific to the ideas you mentioned -- I'm working on the tutorial because I agree it's one of the problems why we have low new user retention, and I've been fixing maps this whole time. Unfortunately fixing maps is a painstakingly slow process, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every map that's bugged is bugged in different ways. Sometimes I can fix it really quickly, sometimes it takes fucking hours, sometimes it's so bad I can't figure it out at all. I've spent literally hours fixing maps for people, and I know the people I've been able to fix them for appreciate it. I'll probably be fixing maps for years at this rate. 3) Now I do get why you would think nothing is happening, because so much of what I've had to do is behind the scenes. Fixing maps, server issues, improving mod tools, the new help system and supporter chat, fixing bugs, hacks, and exploits, DDoS attacks, just to name some. But unless/until there's a big new shiny button for everyone to see, most people wouldn't know what I'm doing. 4) ...which is why I started adding strats. They are easy to do, and it's something obvious that everyone can see and play around with. They're just a distraction to keep everyone happy while I'm busy working on more important things! I don't really think adding strats will magically save atwar, although some people were genuinely excited about them so it wasn't a bad thing. So anyway, I understand why people might think nothing has changed, but I'm working my ass off as fast as I can and I wish people would just be patient. (And if the certain losers out there that keep trying to hack the site got a life, maybe this would all go a little faster....) Edit: I'm not really mad, but re-reading what I said sounds like I am. I'm just frustrated.
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Yes, I want to do this. I'm not ignoring the idea. But it will be many months before this is possible, because there are so many other things that need to be fixed first.
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Needs several years of development to fix several bugs and mechanics, otherwise would flop in steam.
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>several years More like 6 months
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It is good to hear that you are actually doing things and making progress and improving the game, but well, that's the thing, it is good to hear it, and now's the first time we hear of any of that... As a note, when it comes to maps, could we get a log on which ones have actually been restored since? Most people, myself included, have completely discarded any map that's been suffering from errors, it's not like people regularly check on them to know when they're back.
---- Someone Better Than You
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I don't know if maybe you've seen it already but I have been keeping an Updates Log: https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=39941. I don't record every little gnats ass update or thing I do, but it does cover the highlights....
A reasonable request. I haven't been keeping a log of maps I've fixed but I can go back and try to figure it out (or most of them). When I have a chance I'll do this and start a log for that. If I forget.... please remind me
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I'm not sure if it would take a year or 2 or maybe 3, but your point is exactly right. If we put it on steam today it would flop, but once we get it fixed up it could be a very good thing.
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I stand corrected. I was unaware our resident software engineer Tunder had reviewed our codebase. Since he's 10x the developer I am, he'll fix all our problems in no time. This is truly a great day for atWar! That's enough for this thread. Locked.
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