Is there a way to see how many people are currently playing SoT? I got to 40's on all factions and its hard for me to want to keep pushing into it...because of the fear of a second letdown and knowing I just put that much time into a 1,2 KO. I'd like to see how many people have also dropped off the boat
Player Count
There's no Steam Charts if that's what you're looking for, but I think it's safe to say, even conservatively, SoT has tens of thousands of players online at any given moment if not more, and well over a million unique players per month.
For all it's flaws, don't let the sensationalism get to you mate, Sea of Thieves is thriving, and it'll probably continue to thrive for a long time to come.
Watch media outlets. I would wager that's about the only accurate source you'll receive. Rare do let slip suggestions on data reads on occasion in their videos but I have't seen openly celebrated numbers anywhere that isn't also a skewed impression either for or against the value of the game.
I am new to the Xbox app and have only used it for SoT.
I currently have 49 "friends" in the app but I'm lucky if I see four playing SoT at the same time.
I think they all might just have the game pass and / or have simply stopped playing this game. Maybe I broke them? :/
They're active, but just not on SoT.@admiral-rrrsole Yeah I think that may be a lot of it. A lot of people I added were probably game pass players.....sadly that still somewhat confirms fears...the game didn't retain many of them
@the-warcrombie said in Player Count:
@admiral-rrrsole Yeah I think that may be a lot of it. A lot of people I added were probably game pass players.....sadly that still somewhat confirms fears...the game didn't retain many of them
It's no secret that a good bunch of Game Pass trials were floating around prior to Sea of Thieves launch, but remember that there were a good chunk of Game Pass subscribers before SoT, and there will be afterwards.
Tossing around numbers from our own friendlists won't do much good, it's all anecdotal. Almost everyone on my list still plays SoT regularly.
We're talking about a game with a million users, saying 3 or 11 people on your friendlist isn't playing it is hardly rock-solid market research, you know?@tundra-793 You are correct, it only confirms our personal findings of the people we happen to have added to our list since playing this game.
Although it does pose a question as to how many people actually bought the game at full retail price.
With a game pass it would have been easier for me to turn my back on it long ago but as I bought it outright I'll play the ink off of it to get my moneys worth. lolFair winds and happy sailing. :o)
@the-warcrombie said in Player Count:
From what ive seen personally...ive added about 30 people in total through this game....10% of them are still actively playing the game
Anecdotal, but three of the friends I regularly game with saw the writing on the wall during the Beta and cancelled their preorders. Another three played the first week and quit. I've added a few randoms and only four of them still play. One of my regular gamer friends gave up a couple of days ago. One ONLY plays because I play, but he loathes this game. A couple more guys play sporadically, but they're feeling the grind and cursing the loot nerf so they may not be around much longer.
I still play for the PvP because the voyages are trash. The PvP is pretty sad though. Low population servers that are empty most of the time from people server hopping for skull forts.
If you do see a ship, half the time they just scuttle before a word is even said. Most ships just try to ram and board now instead of fighting because face it, you can fight for hours and get nowhere against competent crews. Ladders are easy to defend so most people save time with a ram then jump around with a cutlass and blunderbuss until they die. Adds a wee bit to the positioning and strategy into the PvP because you have to position to avoid the ram. But that's almost always all they try. Most people I come across are terrible shots.
Ran across my first verified cheaters the other night. Guy boarded and my entire crew lit him up with blunderbuss, pistol, and cutlasses and dude would not die. Lit him up on the ladder as he climbed through/facetanked scattershot, when he got off that he slowly cut us down one by one as we surrounded him and dumped lead and steel into him to no avail. So that was fun.
This was a disastrous launch, despite what the cheerleaders on the forums repeat ad nauseam. The player count on my friend list has gone from 40ish to 4. I know it's anecdotal but that's some serious attrition right there.
@stinerdasfuhrer Fair point. But I don't believe the numbers are skewered to any absurd degree; Rare has the hard data, and the last I heard we were hitting over a million players a month, roughly.
I'm not sure I can buy Microsoft trying to fudge sales figures. The whole point of putting SoT on Game Pass is to maximize player count, which they succeeded in doing.
I was parading the 1 million figure as a semi-safe placeholder, but upon further research, the peak number of players SoT has had since launch, is over 2 million, including all platforms and sales.And considering we're only weeks away from the first large content release, I don't see any reason to be alarmed about playerbase loss.
@stinerdasfuhrer said in Player Count:
@mrgrim67686 the pvp is like brushing your teeth with cake frosting.
You mean it's... Awesome?!
@mrgrim67686 I'm sorry you are experiencing so many problems with this game and you are not enjoying it. I've played over 300 hours in game already and am only half way to pirate legend. I keep coming back for more! I bought the game outright and got my money's worth a long time ago.
@stinerdasfuhrer Alright, I can't deny some misquote, or just outright mistaken statement was made, but 2 million players, including all platforms and Game Pass, is completely realistic mate. 2 million players doesn't equal 2 million copies sold, true. But It just means we got 2 million pirates among us, and like I said we're only weeks away from our first (free) DLC, I don't see that number dropping anytime soon.
@stinerdasfuhrer said in Player Count:
@tundra-793 lol see what you did there nice turn around.
Well you did set it up, someone had to say it.
Of course proper pirates only brush their teeth with rum and brine!
@stinerdasfuhrer said in Player Count:
@mrgrim67686 people also server hop when they see pvp players I do it. The pvp is pointless and time consuming.
@mrgrim67686 the pvp is like brushing your teeth with cake frosting.I absolutely love the PvP in this game. The trick is to know when to pick your battles.
Don't just randomly target ships, watch a ship for a while, and go in for the kill after they've hit 2 to 3 islands.
When a battle does occur, try several different strategies until one works. Then repeat the strategy that worked until it doesn't, then find a new one.
Battles will last forever because 9/10 of those times, both crews keep using strategies over and over that aren't effective, causing the battle to never end.The other morning I sunk a Galleon that had 7000+ gold in treasure, including 2 Chests of a Thousand Grogs.
I spent 10 minutes total killing them and turning in.
In my opinion that was the opposite of a waste of time, at least for me. :P@stinerdasfuhrer Ah dude, Microsoft tossed SoT on Game Pass for launch day, I can't imagine it'll be leaving anytime soon.
Sea of Thieves is a landmark title for Xbox this generation, it's like their baby. I think we're in good hands, and the game will thrive throughout the whole year, and hopefully beyond.@tundra-793 said in Player Count:
@stinerdasfuhrer Ah dude, Microsoft tossed SoT on Game Pass for launch day, I can't imagine it'll be leaving anytime soon.
Sea of Thieves is a landmark title for Xbox this generation, it's like their baby. I think we're in good hands, and the game will thrive throughout the whole year, and hopefully beyond.Indeed! Free content updates f*w!
@evasive-envy said in Player Count:
@mrgrim67686 I'm sorry you are experiencing so many problems with this game and you are not enjoying it. I've played over 300 hours in game already and am only half way to pirate legend. I keep coming back for more! I bought the game outright and got my money's worth a long time ago.
Only reason for me to play is PvP. ...and I do like the PvP. I do not like the low server populations. At all.
Haven't played much lately though. Work, and most of my friends quit.
You're halfway when you reach the low 40s BTW. :p@mrgrim67686 Haha true that. Im 46, 33, 30. So definitely less than half way! As you can see I love the Gold Hoarders voyages.
@stinerdasfuhrer said in Player Count:
@ultimate-powa if the battle is just to sink a ship I'll pass. If I get attacked I rather do drive by sales with my crew scuttle the ship so he can see we sold everything and server hop.
To each their own.
I just recommend sinking the ships or at least get to the point where if you see any ship, you're confident enough not to see them as a huge threat, just an annoyance.
If you let enemy players decide how you are going to play the game, it'll be a whole lot less fun.Kill them and you'll be free to play the game the way you want.
Most people don't keep coming back nowadays, though there are still those jerks.@tundra-793 said in Player Count:
and like I said we're only weeks away from our first (free) DLC, I don't see that number dropping anytime soon.
lol I always find that amusing when people say "free DLC" or "free content upgrades".
No it's not free, we've already paid for it, they have just been slow at completing the game.All of the conflict on these forums are due to lack of in-game content. Even if it's the long on-going arm wrestle between PvP and PvE, or Xbox versus PC. It all starts with lack of content.
I think if most people took a good hard look at what is really at the root of their dismay it would point to the lack luster, anti-climax that SoT's release soon exposed. It isn't the game that many had hoped for.
Many seem compelled to PvP because grinding away at PvE isn't very rewarding and / or hours of time and hard work can easily be lost in an instant.
But then PvP isn't very rewarding either. Some say that there are too many ships on the servers while others say that there isn't enough.
Either way, a bounty system and villainous rep wouldn't hurt.So many suggestions have been offered (good and not so good) in honest attempts to try to spark some sort of life into a very promising foundation of a game.
This must speak volumes to any game developer but alas Rare don't want to stray from their tunnel-visioned game plan which is very debatable as too just how much thought and real world testing in all scenarios have they really done? And why are they happy with it?Naturally the game differs whether you are always playing with the same crew or as a random. And not just between friendly employees having a laugh and giggle to help promote the fun side.
I'm sorry to all the SoT cheer-squad here but let's face it, if the game was so compelling there wouldn't be half the people here on these forums on a daily basis. You wouldn't be here reading this.
The most relevant indicator for an individual player is probably the availability of LFG posts for groups to join.
Total player count is largely irrelevant for a game that has a max of 6 ships and 16 players per server world.
As long as a few hundred people are always online, the game will feel the same in the world whether the player count is 500 or 500,000.
What matters (to me) is how quickly can I find a group using the Xbox LFG. So far, I am always seeing a high number of current posts and I can join a party within a couple of minutes.
LFG is not anecdotal - it’s an indicator of participation for the wide community of players.
The most relevant indicator for an individual player is probably the availability of LFG posts for groups to join.
Total player count is largely irrelevant for a game that has a max of 6 ships and 16 players per server world.
As long as a few hundred people are always online, the game will feel the same in the world whether the player count is 500 or 500,000.
What matters (to me) is how quickly can I find a group using the Xbox LFG. So far, I am always seeing a high number of current posts and I can join a party within a couple of minutes.
LFG is not anecdotal - it’s an indicator of participation for the wide community of players.
@admiral-rrrsole
I remember a time when videogames were about fun, not about reward. It's sad to see that so many people can't seem to enjoy a game for its fun mechanics and beautiful environments, but are only satisfied when they are presented with some sort of 'big numbers' for their 'efforts' of playing a game.
I get it, being rewarded feels good, but people should let go a bit and try to have some fun once again. Don't treat videogames like work, guys!@the-warcrombie said in Player Count:
Is there a way to see how many people are currently playing SoT? I got to 40's on all factions and its hard for me to want to keep pushing into it...because of the fear of a second letdown and knowing I just put that much time into a 1,2 KO. I'd like to see how many people have also dropped off the boat
I'm pretty sure you have nothing to fear:
- The game sold pretty well as far as I can tell
- Rare shared content plans for the entire year, should be enough to get those 10 levels even if you only play a couple of hours a week.
- Players needed to populate one server is about 16-24
- The amount of active users on these forums and SoT subreddit alone are already enough to fill 10+ servers
- Microsoft is in the cloud hosting business, keeping a few SoT servers running for years to come to keep the community happy won't be a problem.
So enjoy your sailing and become the legend you want to be!
For an online game like this, I feel Xbox LFG provides good data on how popular it is and atm there seems to be a new post every few seconds.
Considering that it is probably a small percentage of users whom use LFG and each post would be looking for 1 - 3 players, I would say the game is still very popular at the moment. I know that when either myself or friends put up a post, we usually get a fair amount of people interested in a short space of time even when the post is quite specific and says something along the lines of 'doing gold hoarder missions and completing them including riddles'.
@kashaarafall Just on my personal perception based on the general hype around the game, the number of streamers playing the game, the amount of SoT videos on youtube, the buzz about the game on the forums here and on reddit and the messages Microsoft released about Sea of Thieves being their most succesful IP with 2 million active players with first week (this probably includes a majority of gamepass users) and best selling Windows 10 store game.
Also:
It's never stated what the actual sales numbers are, but Aaron Greenberg does state that it's the fastest selling 1st party Microsoft IP this generation not including game pass. Which means it sold faster than Gears of War 4, Halo 5 or any of the Forza games.@kashaarafall Did the "as far as I can tell" being my first bullet not give that away?
I think Microsoft claiming it's the fastest selling 1st party IP and best selling MS Store game, does at least state that a decent number of people bought it.
I'm not claiming here that there's millions of people playing the game, I'm just telling the OP that his fear of the servers being shut down any time soon or not finding anyone to play is a unwarranted fear.
I was pretty pessimistic after launch.
I also know a huge number of players tried it, felt similarly disappointed, and left but like all major titles it will still likely be on their radars if the game gets engaging content.
I stuck around to whine and complain because this game is one of my top 5 all time dream game concepts and I have been gaming for more than 40 years. So I was not ready to let go of the dream. I have been waiting for an open world pirate game since I was old enough to say "aaaaaarrrrh".
The fact that Rare has made the next three content patches a priority, and the teaser details seem pretty cool, with the addition of a new ship type, makes me feel much more hopeful about the future of this game.
I think we will see a return of tens of thousands of players with the content update next month. And by the end of summer there is a solid chance this game will have recovered a large percentage of their base.
@rarden said in Player Count:
@fishst1ck
How many had applied for a refund within that first week is a number I'd like to see.I'm not really trying to make the point that they sold millions of copies, just that enough copies were sold to not fear server shutdown anytime soon.
@fishst1ck
I only raised that point to highlight that 90% of those applied and got refunds. I'm one of the 10% that still love this game and I'm here for the long haul.
I've only one issue that could make me go and that's crossplay only servers. If an option is not introduced then I'm off also.
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