Population Severely Declining?

[Lord_Argus]

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

[anonym_dwPXzz2asd6M]

It's because CVs are so fun to play against that everyone is rushing to tier ten for maximum fun and engaging game play. 

Keep clicking that downvote icon, you're not fooling anyone but yourselves. 

[Boomer625]

4 minutes ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

I too am having trouble finding t4 random games. I think its because the majority of players still have not unlocked random battles in their account level or they are all playing CO-OP

[Taichunger]

After WG flooded T3-4 with CVs many, many players reduced or ended their low tier play, while others quit once they realized that the CVs at T4 were never going away. Thus, WG has been forced to insert bots in low tier matches to fill them up. It's sad, because T4-5 are really tons of fun. But the devs want players to move out of those tiers as quickly as possible, so they made them unpleasant to play by flooding them with CVs. Pure idiocy.

[CylonRed]

Low tier games have been that way for a long time.  Not as many new people coming in, a lot of players use FXP to skip all of the low tiers, but server population has generally been steady when I have been playing - 11-14K players.

[Snargfargle]

21 minutes ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

Depends on when you play. It's always been slim pickings at low tiers late at night. A couple of years ago I'd go play low tiers at night for the fun of getting into 1v1 and 2v2 games. Now, of course, such games are filled with bots.

If you look at the server numbers there are still more playing that have played on average over the life of the game.

Last month -- 8592

Overall -- 7847

https://stats.wotapi.ru/stats/wows/na/total

[RainbowFartingUnicorn]

8 minutes ago, Taichunger said:

After WG flooded T3-4 with CVs many, many players reduced or ended their low tier play, while others quit once they realized that the CVs at T4 were never going away. Thus, WG has been forced to insert bots in low tier matches to fill them up. It's sad, because T4-5 are really tons of fun. But the devs want players to move out of those tiers as quickly as possible, so they made them unpleasant to play by flooding them with CVs. Pure idiocy.

CVs do make low tier play fairly miserable, but the other thing is that almost no missions, campaigns, or directive tasks can be done in ships <Tier V. So the only people playing there are people trying to grind out as fast as they can, seal clubbers, and those few people who enjoy low-tier play. That last group gets steadily smaller with the wait queues plus the double CV games with no effective AA.

[xHeavy]

And people researching points on reground ship trees... I just did a three through five just now and found many bots. It should not take too long to finish the tree and see what the RP comes out to. In other words the low end below five really has no contribution towards RP and can be skipped if you have the Fxp.

[Doombeagle]

30 minutes ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

In answer to your question, since you have been gone, the great and glorious rebirth(or afterbirth as the case may be) of carriers happened. After that the server population count that used to be displayed in port was hidden, operations were nerfed, or outright removed, bots were added to lower tier randoms, the list of forum users online became permanently broken, forum contests were created to increase traffic and abandoned for lack of success, and each patch  sees more effort expended on recruitment rewards without any commensurate increase in said recruitment. So you be the judge.

[KilljoyCutter]

It's going to be like this until WG realizes that they need to fix AA, and go with gameplay over quasi-history at lower tiers by giving those ships some AA efficacy. 

And the Skill Rebork is going to make it worse, as the captain grind is made longer for less actual benefit.

 

[Taichunger]

8 minutes ago, RainbowFartingUnicorn said:

CVs do make low tier play fairly miserable, but the other thing is that almost no missions, campaigns, or directive tasks can be done in ships <Tier V. So the only people playing there are people trying to grind out as fast as they can, seal clubbers, and those few people who enjoy low-tier play. That last group gets steadily smaller with the wait queues plus the double CV games with no effective AA.

That's true. But I used to play lots of T4 before the ReBork.... now I hardly ever do. 

[Pirate_Named_Sue]

27 minutes ago, Taichunger said:

After WG flooded T3-4 with CVs many, many players reduced or ended their low tier play, while others quit once they realized that the CVs at T4 were never going away. Thus, WG has been forced to insert bots in low tier matches to fill them up. It's sad, because T4-5 are really tons of fun. But the devs want players to move out of those tiers as quickly as possible, so they made them unpleasant to play by flooding them with CVs. Pure idiocy.

I mostly agree here. By low tier, I am talking 3-5. I don’t think I’ve ever seen many players in 1 or 2 but my own experience there is super limited. 3-5, I really liked playing those games while grinding the ships. Unfortunately the double cv every game thing happened and it’s not fun anymore so I skip it and start at tier 5 or 6 now. I think a lot of players do the same. It doesn’t help there are basically no missions for the low tiers. I disagree that the devs gave the boot to players from 3/4 intentionally by flooding with CV, but intentional or not; the result is very few play them. 

[Helstrem]

54 minutes ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

They changed low tiers so that up to the first 250 matches for new players are protected from more experienced players and enabled bots in low tier matches.  These things, combined with the effect of Tier IV CVs has made low tier play bot filled and terrible.  It is not a reflection on the general population of the game.

[FrodoFraggin]

WG doesn’t want people playing low tiers - if making it untenable gets people to stop and play high tier only, better in their eyes.  I deeply disagree with WGs attitude in that regard.  I don’t think they care about my opinion, and increasingly, I don’t care about their game.

[Compassghost]

Low tiers have had protected matchmaking for more than a year. You can't play with genuinely new players in low tiers anymore, for better or for worse. The only people in low tiers any of us will see are basically clubbers and regrinders. If you create a new account, you'll probably also have a similar experience in the new player queue. That's just the price of protecting the seals from the clubbers, which may or may not be a good thing.

[SkaerKrow]

No, the sky isn’t falling, you were just trying to seal club and weren’t aware that the seals have been moved to tier V.

[mfumukoskoldpadda]

Just now, Helstrem said:

They changed low tiers so that up to the first 250 matches for new players are protected from more experienced players and enabled bots in low tier matches.  These things, combined with the effect of Tier IV CVs has made low tier play bot filled and terrible.  It is not a reflection on the general population of the game.

 

1 hour ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

What Helstrem said is true, the pop for wows has been quite stable for a while now. Using low tiers as a measure doesn't quite work anymore as mentioned above.  
Here is the chart for NA from 2015 to now.

[WarStore]

1 hour ago, OuijaApologist said:

It's because CVs are so fun to play against that everyone is rushing to tier ten for maximum fun and engaging game play. 

That is the reason I loathe low tiers and won't play it unless extremely necessary. Even so, sometimes I do coop instead of randoms.

Sad, because without so much cancer, it is actually fun

[0ldRichard]

11 minutes ago, mfumukoskoldpadda said:

 

What Helstrem said is true, the pop for wows has been quite stable for a while now. Using low tiers as a measure doesn't quite work anymore as mentioned above.  
Here is the chart for NA from 2015 to now.

Assuming you believe their numbers.

It's easy to inflate them. A couple of virtual machines running multiple instances, and poof! You're popular.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

1 hour ago, Lord_Argus said:

I normally play at Tier 10 but today I wanted to do a mission that required me to play a lower tier ship. I chose a Tier 2 and tried to que for Random battle. It took over 3 minutes and they inserted 4 bots on our side to help fill the spots. Then I tried to play a Tier 4 ship and again same thing, took almost 3 minutes and 2 bots were inserted. I don't have any problem finding tier 10 groups today but the lower tiers have me a bit concerned. This is a Saturday and typically weekends in most games is when the most amount of people are on. If it's this bad on a Saturday, what are low tiers like on a Monday or Wednesday? I have to imagine its even worse. 

Is the population of the game declining that bad? I recently returned from a long break away from game and I don't remember anything like this 2 years ago.

Im exploiting this...

Play a game early on a weekday morning, select my Mikasa...wait 5 minutes...get put into a match with one human on the other side...get a Kraken or better and farm achievement flags.

Its the best way to stay stocked up on econ flags...

...and its all thanks to WGs myopic obsession on tier 10.

Thanks WG!

[skhend25]

I know I'm playing less, and when I do play I can't play more than a few games without reaching my fed up meter limit. 

A lot has to do with the way CVs work now (I think Jingles is spot on), but there are a multitude of reasons for me. (same old maps, MM needs modernising, etc...) So, I don't doubt for a second that the number of players is dropping.

But not my game, they own it and do what they want with it my voice won't matter...

[_Average_Joe]

57 minutes ago, Doombeagle said:

 After that the server population count that used to be displayed in port was hidden, operations were nerfed, or outright removed, bots were added to lower tier randoms, the list of forum users online became permanently broken, forum contests were created to increase traffic and abandoned for lack of success, and each patch  sees more effort expended on recruitment rewards without any commensurate increase in said recruitment. So you be the judge.

I can't tell from your post if you know it or not, but if you hit 'Esc' from the port screen the number of people playing is shown there.  If you meant WG made it harder to see how many people are playing, you are right, they did.

 

[Snargfargle]

4 minutes ago, skhend25 said:

So, I don't doubt for a second that the number of players is dropping.

Again, anyone can see for themselves that the player numbers aren't dropping but few people today believe facts, they all just want to believe their "feels." 

[Snargfargle]

5 minutes ago, Joe_918145 said:

I can't tell from your post if you know it or not, but if you hit 'Esc' from the port screen the number of people playing is shown there.  If you meant WG made it harder to see how many people are playing, you are right, they did.

 

Hitting a single key isn't all that hard to do (you can also click the gear icon at the top left of the screen). The info is readily available, it just doesn't clutter up the main screen.

[Tokamak_Raven]

7 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

Again, anyone can see for themselves that the player numbers aren't dropping but few people today believe facts, they all just want to believe their "feels." 

 

5 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

Hitting a single key isn't all that hard to do. The info is readily available, it just doesn't clutter up the main screen.

nice cope