On Console, probably. My question is how small is the PC community?

PC NA has by far the lowest pop of all. Just seeing how many servers get filled for Cyro on the other platforms and EU is great and sad at the same time.

Telel finds the mudcrab numbers far more telling.

You sickos.

That is most likely the amount of accounts that have been created since the game launched, companies always pad those numbers, he did not say active players.

Grunim wrote: »

I wonder if even 20,000 players ever ventured into Cyrodiil on PC NA and completed the Intro to Cyro quest. Our PvP community is tiny.

They probably look at these numbers and say, "People just want to PVE"
Instead of "The PVP in our game is not compelling or deep enough to attract people to it"

Which is weird, since the worldwide PVP community is at least 100 - 1000x the size of the PVE community if 1000 is even enough. The reason I say this is WoW jumped to the same conclusion looking at its PVP numbers as an indication of the interest of the playerbase in PVP. Right over their heads that people aren't PVPing because it sucks in their particular game.

hmmm...

Vangy wrote: »

holosoul wrote: »

Every single one of the world's most popular games (league, cod, chess, poker, blackjack, ...) is a PVP game, without exceptions.

Every.
Single.
One.

Dang... Here I was thinking Skyrim was pretty popular...... Or was there a PvP mod that I totally missed out on =(

Not only is that a single player game (Solitaire) Skyrim's total sales don't relate to games people play for a long time actively. League of legends for example has 5 million players logged on simultaneously at peak times.

Chess (the most balanced PVP game) has over 500 million players worldwide

So I stand by my statement that the "most" popular games are PVP games.

Yet they all paid $$$. So it doesn't even matter if they continue to play

minimum €55 x 7m + monthly subs + store sells woosh

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

holosoul wrote: »

Should we even talk about sports?

Competition between people is truly human nature

Not necessarily. IMHO it's not a natural thing, just a strong cultural trend of our times.

The debate whether human nature is collaborative or competitive is still open and unlikely to be closed anytime soon.

In the mean time, we must aknowledge the fact that in every single game where there's both PVE and PVP, the overwhelming majority of players choose to PVE only.

That depends on the game, as someone said above chess has PVE but it's certainly not the majority. My entire point is that people won't PVP in a game where the PVP itself is not compelling. Not because PVE players are any kind of majority in society. People who want competitive play will quit games like WoW and ESO because the PVP is not balanced nor competitive, the maximum skill cap is far too low, and the competition lacks depth.

If you take the opposite example of ESO and again look at League of Legends, league has PVE but no one plays it. The PVE is not compelling and the PVP is both compelling and balanced (albeit creatively)

P.S. I'm surprised candy crush has so many downloads, that counts as a contender. Angry birds does not (@ 5mil total, not even active)
Interestingly enough most candy crush players are Chinese (over half of all downloads and 80%(!) of active players), I found that strange.

Edit: Remember my entire point here is that the ESO PVP population is low because the game is a bad framework for human skill competition. Which is almost always the case for MMOs, some rare exceptions (EVE)

holosoul wrote: »

Also, please name a culture without sports since you have posited that it is a "cultural thing"
Edit: any culture since the dawn of civilization is fine

Depends what you call "the dawn of civilization". There were humans before "civilization". I believe it is this so-called "civilization" that brought the notion of "competition" in human cultures. But I won't discuss this matter in depth here : not the right place.

Also : sports and competition are not synonyms and not even necessarily related. Companies on free markets compete with each other all the time, people compete for salaries, etc... that doesn't involve any sport. Inversely, many people practice sport without any competition (jogger next door being one example among millions).

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Depends what you call "the dawn of civilization". There were humans before "civilization". I believe it is this so-called "civilization" that brought the notion of "competition" in human cultures. But I won't discuss this matter in depth here : not the right place.

That's cool, we could get kinda philosophical with that one, I see where you're going with that.
At the same time I would argue that civilization itself is also a product of human nature (Tribes, etc)

Also : sports and competition are not synonyms and not even necessarily related. Companies on free markets compete with each other all the time, people compete for salaries, etc... that doesn't involve any sport.

This does not support your argument.

Inversely, many people practice sport without any competition (jogger next door being one example among millions).

Jogging is not a sport, your neighbor is "exercising"
What he is competing with is the gene pool and old age.

My argument was never that PVE players don't exist, it was that PVP players are not a 1% minority, and such a statistic shows that ZOS has failed at PVP design, not that a 99% majority of players (in contrast with the rest of society) prefer PvAI

I understand perfectly well that you don't like competition, maybe you don't even like to play poker with your friends. I don't know who you are or what your life is like. That was never my point.

My point is that ZOS shouldn't look at the lack of PVP participation as a lack of demographic. As a PVP player myself (I would rather eat a live cockroach than run a dungeon) I can see the blatant problems with PVP and I fully appreciate and understand why someone wouldn't want to do it, and would rather just quit the game.

I trimmed the beginning part because I don't want to argue about that, we can just agree to disagree if that's ok

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

I think the question you raise should be split into two aspects for more clarity :

Ok, I agree

- If someone purchases ESO with primarily PvP in mind, what makes him be disappointed and not stay ?

This is what I had in mind with the points listed above. Lag, low skill cap, low combat depth, built in imbalance, reliance on PVE content, grinding, etc; poorly designed PVP system (although siege is cool, I like that) and animation cancelling added some depth and skill check, it's just not enough that in 3 years we won't have every regular PVPer at the built in limit of skill for such a flat system, even if they are semi casual. There's just not enough to combat. My 2 cents anyway.
Edit: clarification-- It's important that you should never be able to master the game, which isn't the case right now.

- If someone purchases ESO with primarily PvE in mind, what could attract him to try (and remain in) PvP ?

Nothing.
Just like there is no content ZOS could add that would make me want to PvE, it doesn't matter what features get added or how amazing the combat becomes, you probably will remain a PVE player unless you burn out.

I burned out on PVE a long time ago myself, being a hardcore member of PVE guilds for a long time. For example with server first trakanon kills and server first 4horseman kills, I've had my 20,000 hours of PVE raids and grinding/farming consumables to spam infinitely to get through unchanging static content with AI that can't learn. I don't find it challenging or fun anymore, but I feel like I can always find a player who is my superior and if not then being a champion at the #1 spot is also fun in its own right.

My opinion is that ZOS, without completely giving up on PvP, clearly sets the priority on PvE, and more precisely, the roleplaying, solo, casual aspect of it. And they probably choose this based on demographics and player behaviours.

I think they give serious consideration to PVP, and simply failed to achieve a deep and balanced game.

Even if PvP is given some more care / expansion in the future, I bet it will be casual oriented. Hence the trend to nerf OP skills or powerful combos fine tuned by players, instead of offering counters.

By definition a competition of skill cannot be casual oriented in the sense of removing skill from the equation. This way that you're talking about sounds 'newbie' oriented, or catering in other words to PVE players who can't compete with others if there is a skill curve. If PVP has no skill level, then anyone interested in PVP will essentially not play, even the most dedicated of fans. Then the PVE players this may have attracted also won't play, because it will be a ghost town.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think 1 shot combos are skill; that is what killed WoW PVP. They removed the depth of skills by cutting half the skills from every class because it was too intimidating to new players, and then designed the system so that a low skill player could execute a macro combo (with built in macros in the game UI!) and 1 shot someone once a minute on their cooldowns. Essentially dumbing the system down so far that even the world champion arena players make fun of it (See pro team with name: "Pop CD no skill")