Homecoming Provided Shard and AT Breakdowns to Massively OP

[Lunar Ronin]

In case anyone missed it, Homecoming provided stats of how many characters have been made on each shard, as well as how many characters of each AT have been played in the past three months.  You can find it here.  No real surprises here, personally.  Hooray for Mastermind, the fourth most played AT.

Edited March 7 by Lunar Ronin

[KaizenSoze]

5 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

In case anyone missed it, Homecoming provided stats of how many characters have been made on each shard, as well as how many characters of each AT have been played in the past three months.  You can find it here.  No real surprises here, personally.  Hooray for Mastermind, the fourth most played AT.

Thank you for posting that!

 

Alas as I expected:
Arachnos Soldier: 4,957
Peacebringer: 4,353
Arachnos Widow: 4,118
Warshade: 3,414

[FFFF]

Brute being the most popular is unsurprising. It's arguably the most new player friendly of the ATs and the farmer AT of choice.

 

Defenders and stalkers being relatively unpopular is a bit of surprise. Though upon recollection, you rarely see the blue shield nowadays. I think I might have seen a stalker on a team perhaps four months ago. Stalkers are definitely around, but they seem to be helmed by soloists.

Edited March 7 by FFFF

[sbloyd]

I am a special little dark Kheldian snowflake!

[FupDup]

Stalkers are around, they're just hidden. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

The only thing about this that bothers me is the we've been asking the developers to update this information for years. No response. Then they talk with MOP and just hand it right over.

 

But they couldn't have taken 2 minutes to drop that same info into a forum post?  ☹️

[Coyotedancer]

38 minutes ago, FFFF said:

Defenders and stalkers being relatively unpopular is a bit of surprise. Though upon recollection, you rarely see the blue shield nowadays. I think I might have seen a stalker on a team perhaps four months ago. Stalkers are definitely around, but they seem to be helmed by soloists.

 

 

I suspect that's it, yeah. Most of the other Stalker players I run into are solos.

Stalkers... The Few. The Proud. The Stabby. 😎

 

Stalker: 15,033

 

[Glacier Peak]

Those are fun stats, thanks for sharing the article! Not only do I play on Indomitable, the lowest population North American server, but I also play an Arachnos Widow, one of the least popular Archetypes. And I created it years ago, before any of the sweet recent changes were implemented.

 

Fortunata Non Grata

 

Edited March 7 by Glacier Peak

[Jiro Ito]

Thanks for sharing!

[Monkeyking]

The only really surprising numbers here are Controllers. That AT was rather unpopular on live, back in the day, or so I remember. Guess people have turned around on it.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The only thing about this that bothers me is the we've been asking the developers to update this information for years. No response. Then they talk with MOP and just hand it right over.

 

But they couldn't have taken 2 minutes to drop that same info into a forum post?  ☹️

 

That was my thought as well. Strange we had to get it from third party site.

[Krimson]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The only thing about this that bothers me is the we've been asking the developers to update this information for years. No response. Then they talk with MOP and just hand it right over.

 

But they couldn't have taken 2 minutes to drop that same info into a forum post?  ☹️

The HC team might not see any benefit in sharing the information with the player base.

[GM Crumpet]

17 minutes ago, Krimson said:

The HC team might not see any benefit in sharing the information with the player base.

More like the team is so busy it takes something like this to actually take the time out of their day to collate the information. I'm on the periphery but the people with access to this information (not many) are generally doing several things at once and prioritise the important stuff. Plus having full time real lives that limit the time they can spend on everything they need to do. It's not that they didn't want to, it's more one of those things they had in the to-do list that kept being put off due to more urgent things needing their attention.

 

Edited March 8 by GM Crumpet

[Krimson]

2 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

More like the team is so busy it takes something like this to actually take the time out of their day to collate the information. I'm on the periphery but the people with access to this information (not many) are generally doing several things at once and prioritise the important stuff. Plus having full time real lives that limit the time they can spend on everything they need to do. It's not that they didn't want to, it's more one of those things they had in the to-do list that kept being put off due to more urgent things needing their attention.

 

I guessed that out of everything HC staff has to do, updating the forums is low on the priority list. I certainly don't expect status reports on every little thing. What they do release seems very informative and extensive. I apologize for my previous post, I could have written that much better.

[ZamuelNow]

6 hours ago, FFFF said:

Brute being the most popular is unsurprising. It's arguably the most new player friendly of the ATs and the farmer AT of choice.

 

Generally curious, what makes Brutes more new player friendly than Scrappers?

[Techwright]

Curious.  The article lists 42,000 players, but then we have Number Six's comment from yesterday that tallies up to over 71,000 computers (or more accurately, operating systems) being used.  Are the majority playing on two computers?

 

 

 

Edited March 8 by Techwright

[Glacier Peak]

11 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Curious.  The article lists 42,000 players, but then we have Number Six's comment from yesterday that tallies up to over 71,000 computers (or more accurately, operating systems) being used.  Are the majority playing on two computers?

[Number Six]

36 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Curious.  The article lists 42,000 players, but then we have Number Six's comment from yesterday that tallies up to over 71,000 computers (or more accurately, operating systems) being used.  Are the majority playing on two computers?

 

No, that's launcher stats, and that's why I said it's a rough guess, because it can only disambiguate based on source IP. But people change IP address within a month all the time, either playing from a different computer or moving to a different network. It also counts people who simply open the launcher - maybe to check for news - but never actually run the game.

[Parabola]

9 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

 

I suspect that's it, yeah. Most of the other Stalker players I run into are solos.

Stalkers... The Few. The Proud. The Stabby. 😎

 

Stalker: 15,033

 

The irony being that in my opinion stalkers are one of the most team friendly archetypes in the current meta. Any discussion of bad pug experiences tends to bring up the common habit players have of blowing up the minions and moving on, leaving bosses behind for squishies to deal with. Resurrecting bosses just makes this worse. Turn up to a team with a character specifically designed to delete bosses and a willingness to actually fight them and you are making a huge contribution.

[Carnifax]

10 hours ago, FFFF said:

Though upon recollection, you rarely see the blue shield nowadays. I think I might have seen a stalker on a team perhaps four months ago. Stalkers are definitely around, but they seem to be helmed by soloists

Yeah people seem to still think stalkers = soloists despite the changes. I still see a lot of fellow stalkers with the "open with AS from hidden" mentality. 

 

To me it's more "I'm a meleer with crits on demand who can stick myself RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE for my opening, build-up-fuelled 50% critting AoE". And have a decent chance of having another Build Up ready almost straight away. 

 

I can usually pull off build up, frozen aura, AS the boss, ball lightning or Frozen touch in the same time build up + AS from hidden takes. (What a waste of build up & the proc)

Edited March 8 by Carnifax

[GM Crumpet]

5 hours ago, Krimson said:

I guessed that out of everything HC staff has to do, updating the forums is low on the priority list. I certainly don't expect status reports on every little thing. What they do release seems very informative and extensive. I apologize for my previous post, I could have written that much better.

No problem. sometimes what we hear in our head when we write comes across a little sharp when it's on the page. I do it all the time 🙂 

[KaizenSoze]

As I have been learning quite a bit of SQL lately. The numbers in that article would be simple to generate. My suspicion is that the devs are working on a more complete breakdown like like this post from 2020.

 

 

[Techwright]

7 hours ago, Number Six said:

 

No, that's launcher stats, and that's why I said it's a rough guess, because it can only disambiguate based on source IP. But people change IP address within a month all the time, either playing from a different computer or moving to a different network. It also counts people who simply open the launcher - maybe to check for news - but never actually run the game.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[FFFF]

12 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

 

Generally curious, what makes Brutes more new player friendly than Scrappers?

 

I think rage is somewhat overpowered at low levels (not in a bad way). With my brutes, I can one-shot a lot of lieutenants with essentially unslotted attacks. Eventually, around level 10, you stop being able to do that since bad guy hit points scale to assume you have enhancements in your attacks. Rage is also a mechanic you can control whereas crits from scrappers are random. Moving from mob to mob at low levels don't really hurt you as a player whereas at high levels, you may want to be a bit more considerate depending on mob type.

 

With that said, these are minor advantages I'm talking about. Scrappers work great for new players. It's like arguing whether apples are pears are sweeter.

[skoryy]

10 hours ago, Parabola said:

The irony being that in my opinion stalkers are one of the most team friendly archetypes in the current meta. Any discussion of bad pug experiences tends to bring up the common habit players have of blowing up the minions and moving on, leaving bosses behind for squishies to deal with. Resurrecting bosses just makes this worse. Turn up to a team with a character specifically designed to delete bosses and a willingness to actually fight them and you are making a huge contribution.

 

Between the ability to delete bosses, the crit chance bbnuses you get for sticking around the team, and that even at low levels you still get crits and assassination, stalkers are possibly the most all-purpose non-EAT in the game: Solo, team, hard mode, or exemp!