Estimating Relative player count for event using ZOS's own numbers....

moderatelyfatman · October 17

So the numbers went from roughly 9% to 25% overnight as part of the readjustment? This would suggest that the event was projected to be around the 25% mark right now.

9/25 = 0.36 or 36%

So basically, the event over the past week has roughly 36% the number of players that their own internal estimates had budgeted for. Given that ZOS know exactly how many copies of Solstice have been sold and thus make the projections with, this is still a very low turnout.

Given that the events in Phase 1 have generally been considered uninteresting, I think a lot of players are coming in and doing the dailies and then calling it quits for that day. So expect more fudging than your regional candy chain over the next three weeks.

Mathius_Mordred · October 17

It's partially because the rewards are so utterly abysmal. On the first day, it was moving really fast. It then dropped considerably when people realised there was little point in farming the purple boxes for one piece of gear that they already had. So now I guess most people do it once for the glorious box and leave to go back to their usual activities.

Poor rewards are becoming a theme for ESO, The daily login rewards for the past 3 months have had no special items, and almost everything provided goes to my junk. Most of it would only be useful to newbies, and player numbers are definitely down this year.

6 months ago, we had players on a waiting list to join our guild. Now we are down to 430 after kicking the AFKers. It's much harder to recruit. This downward trend really picked up after subclassing kicked in. I think so many people were annoyed that their builds, which they had spent a long time perfecting, were now subpar. The constant nerfs are also an issue that really, really pisses people off, and we've had a lot of those.

You're right, they knew how many people had bought the content pass, but those numbers are based on the vast majority of sales, which would have been when it was released; that's when I bought it. Since then, the above has happened, and even those with Solstice have moved on to other games.

On top of all that, the constant and increasing number of bugs in the game is indicative of a struggling company that can no longer fully test what they create, probably due to the Microsoft hammer slashing a third of the workforce. ESO is not in a good place right now.

Dagoth_Rac · October 17

There seems to have been an assumption that players would grind just to advance the meter. But no one wants to grind braindead fetch quests with meager rewards just to watch a line go up.

The meter should be going up as a side effect of an exciting event. The meter going up is not an event in and of itself. I feel like that is the core of ZOS' miscalculation.

AzuraFan · October 17

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

It's partially because the rewards are so utterly abysmal.

This. It's not an indication of the number of players. It's because people aren't grinding out boxes like they do in other events.

There's no reason to grind blue boxes because they offer crappy rewards. I think ZOS expected grind, grind, grind, and that didn't happen. I've finished the GP, so right now I'm just grinding camp quests to finish up the 30/30 achievement. As of tomorrow, when it's done, all I'll be doing is getting my golden boxes every day and then moving on to something else.

I'd do more quests if the rewards made it worthwhile. I'm not sure why ZOS thought people would grind for one item of overland trash that anyone who's had the content pass for a while doesn't need.

PeacefulAnarchy · October 17

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

So the numbers went from roughly 9% to 25% overnight as part of the readjustment? This would suggest that the event was projected to be around the 25% mark right now.

9/25 = 0.36 or 36%

So basically, the event over the past week has roughly 36% the number of players that their own internal estimates had budgeted for. Given that ZOS know exactly how many copies of Solstice have been sold and thus make the projections with, this is still a very low turnout.

Not players, dailies. Could be their player projections were correct but were based on players doing 2 or 3 times as many dailies.

Kendaric · October 17

Not to mention that WoW has the Legion Remix event going on and New World has a new expansion/update. All of this will cut into ESO's general player numbers, especially the WoW Legion stuff.

Then there is of course the design of the current event phase, which doesn't really motivate anyone to log in and do the event.

colossalvoids · October 17

Some of us quit first day as you'd just buy pages/fragments at the end of event for close to nothing. Some would quit when done with all the new items and barely can imagine anyone actually continuing momentum if they're not just a new player who also bought solstice for whatever reason or insanely dedicated because... reasons.

spartaxoxo · October 17

You're making some pretty big assumptions here. This event is probably not getting the participation from players that definitely exists that they thought it would. Less participation doesn't mean less player count though. The event isn't even popular content and the rewards aren't great.

Danikat · October 17

Kendaric wrote: »

Not to mention that WoW has the Legion Remix event going on and New World has a new expansion/update. All of this will cut into ESO'sgeneral player numbers, especially the WoW Legion stuff.

Then there is of course the design of the current event phase, which doesn't really motivate anyone to log in and do the event.

You could add Guild Wars 2's Halloween event to the list as well. There's no new activities this year and the new items don't take long to get but it's one of the easiest and most popular gold farms, and I know quite a few ESO players also play GW2.

I was worried I'd be trying to juggle both, but I've just been doing 1 daily quest per day for the Writing Wall event, and I'm thinking about stopping that because I'm not sure what I'm expecting to gain from it.