Trying to determine the number of global players

I’ve seen this number (or similar numbers in the three millions) quoted a few times on the forum. Where did it come from?

I’ve seen this post that looks at 30 cup players

I also searched quickly and found this post that shows 13Kish wasn’t good enough for top 1%

I’ve heard that 3 million was “before Telly”. But this raid tournament was before that and raid tournaments weren’t close to 3 million.

Is 3 million the rough number of total players versus active players?

When I played, folks would send a mini alt into an event, RT and MT to get a tiny score. It would show the ranking for an account in last or almost last place. If a tiny score was 3,573,922st place then that is at least the number of accounts participating in that game feature.

I recall about 3.5 or 3.6 million but don’t have screenshots. It is possible whatever that number is was previously provided in the forum.

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Here’s a post from the first Mythic Titan. It shows 2.7 million players

I can’t find much in other mythic titan threads, but I guess we can keep tracking going forward.

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This might help the conversation here. This is results from my F2P account that only has 3*.
I only complete the first stage in each rarity for the challenge events, only one floor in the Tower, and take only one hit on the Mythic Titan.

This gives some indication of active players in the events

I still find it interesting to look at the 30-cuppers which has fallen drastically since I posted this analysis last year: Is Empires & Puzzles Dying or Flatlining? — Empires and Puzzles Books - YouTube

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I would go with the info contemporary to that time over my poor recollection.

Iirc, it was ScndStar who took an alt in on that first MT, one tiny flag, and had a screenshot of final placement and rewards (the rewards were goofed and I believe “last place” got top 5% rewards chances). Maybe that info is posted somewhere on MT rewards threads from that time. While it would be there for fixing a rewards bug perhaps the other data is also in any posted screenshots.

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@JekylandHyde What is the current number of 30 cup players?

I don’t have it all summarized nicely like you do, but here is my tracking across various events where I score 0 with an alt.

Challenge Event players:

Mythic Titan players:

Ninja tower:

Also Clash of Knights players

Clash of Knights Players
1 October 2021 1,401,028
2 January 2022 1,112,234

Just screenshot this one … lol…my bad eyes… that is 39 … that makes it a bit worse. lol

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That one is 30 cups …

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:point_up_2:

Well…
They didn’t go in and,
“Clear out inactive accounts”

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Why do you include inactive accounts ?

We are trying to determine the active player base. That determines the health of this game, it’s possible lifespan going forward.

It’s nice to know that 1.7m accounts have at least 30 trophies. How does that help us to determine whether this game is still hale and hearty ?

Even Zynga/SGG relies on their vaunted DAU n MAU metrics. Plus zealously study their monthly revenue reports from both play stores.

Those are more reliable indicators.

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I don’t do MT. Here is my summarised MT ranking based on 1 flag, zero damage.

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There’s also nothing reliable to give an idea of how many people are tied at that mark it doesn’t appear to me to be something that can be adequately be used as a marker.

I still think one of the best markers is bottom of the 1% in raid tournament as it can be easily extrapolated out to the hundred as irrespective of how many people tie at bottom it does still show a minimum number of players.

Also it isn’t something tied to needing to be in an alliance to participate such as mythic titan and clash of knights, but does require an active decision to join so would exclude inactive accounts. This is unlike events which don’t require anything and as not based on a % for ranking it’s harder to gaug.

Enough players will also tie with score >zero.

Everything is just an estimate. It’s not iron-clad.

Iron-clad is Zynga’s DAU and MAU. We don’t have access to that.

All I am saying is that inactive accounts shouldn’t be considered. That’s all.

To each their own method in getting the answer they want. I am confident that the real or correct answer will lie amidst all our “answers”.

Do we really need the exact accurate number ? Or do we just want a ballpark number ?

If I follow your method, the answer is still around 1 million. And your answer would still have inaccuracies unless you can prove that extrapolating rank based on the bottom of 1% is devoid of ranking-ties above that very last rank.

According to info provided, it’s also around 1m for RT. See… the answers tally sort of.

I monitor @Ruskin505 ’s table for participation in rare tier for challenge events. That is (to me) the best indicator so far. Thank you @Ruskin505 for doing this.

MT is a good indicator for more experienced players. Above Level 20?

Ditto for NT and ToM.

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Lol I was agreeing with you about the 30cup thing being pointless. If I was to try use that as a methodology for some figures in work I’d be laughed out of the meeting.

Yep they all have an inbuilt error in some form. It really comes to to personal preference for which of the errors you feel are most impactful to the numbers

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Good to know we are on the same page. :grin:

Interesting times ahead. :laughing:

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We need none of those.
We just need the differential of any “active” metric.
The actual number is not particularly relevant in estimating the health of a population in a dynamic system, as we are very far from any form of saturation (which is a very unlikely event in scalable virtual systems).

It is more important to know that a sound metric is dropping than knowing its reliability as an estimate of the actual active player base.

Lowest points in RT are sound because

  1. they require you to sign in which is a fair assumption of activity
  2. they provide a lower bound to active player base
  3. it is rather easy to monitor and not subject to noise

As player base is shrinking (going down) the lower bound is realistically what we are actually interested when estimating the game’s health.
And that’s also because scoring 1000 in RT takes a certain amount of effort and apart from those of us interested in tracking these data it’s highly unlikely for anyone to score 1000 unless it’s on purpose.
You might make a point of wondering if a 1k scorer in RT should be considered active.

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The 1.7M with at least 30 cups includes stale/inactive accounts. The concern, to me, is the rate of decline of the 30 cuppers. Fall 2020, there were 4 million of them. Something was apparently “adjusted” in the new year of 2021 and that drops to the high 2s and has been declining quickly ever since.

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Adjustment ? As in SGG doing something to those inactive accounts ?

There was a change in their TOS regarding inactive accounts.


Iirc, the pre Zynga SGG ToS also had a 180 day inactive account purge provision. It is unclear if they ever implemented it.

Based on @JekylandHyde ‘s observation, this could be happening. To save on costs.

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