Source
r/DFO•
Talonos

Max concurrent users? MMOs.com is claiming 450.

Hi,

This guy at https://mmos.com/news/dungeon-fighter-online-has-earned-over-15b-in-life-time-sales-highest-grossing-video-game-of-all-time wrote an article that says DFOG only has a max of 450 concurrent users. Thing is, he's basing this on the steam numbers, and we all know that steam users are a significant minority in the community.

I tried to call him on it, but he said he's justified in using those numbers because they're the only ones available.

Does anybody know if more accurate numbers are available? Maybe one of the devs mentioned it on an exstream at some point? Even an off-handed remark like "only 10% of our users play through stream" would give us a big clue.

It seems weird to me that Neople would invest resources into a DFOG team if we've only got a couple thousand players if they've got millions overseas. Our cera purchases would be a drop in the bucket and hardly seems worth the effort. If our peak concurrent numbers are actually only a couple thousand or so, then what's Neople's strategy, d'you think?

Please note: I'm not trying to sic a reddit mob on this guy's article; just get better numbers for the guy. I'm looking for citations, not social pressure.

Posted Aug 11, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

650
ForteFZ•

Putting it out there now that starting a fight with this writer in the comments of the article (not pointing fingers, and hes not wrong, technically, hes just missing info) only makes us look worse as a community, worse than many of you already claim it to be. If one reacts to everything negatively and bases their experience and day to day reactions about only seeing the bad, you run the risk of simply letting it define yourself rather than to look at things critically and accept compromise and open the dialogues for change.

Discussions are built on a mutual desire to understand rather than trying to rip each other apart. Its great to be passionate or desire to clear up misunderstandings about a game you like (or dont like) but there's nothing to gain if its done the wrong way.

edit: he added an extra blurb acknowledging steam.

16
EleIsanaki•

This. I wasn't even expecting this thing to end up here. The article-writer did a great job talking about DFO and was to the best of his ability open to changing the numbers. Let's please not harass him. He does NOT deserve it.

7
freecomkcfRiskyClickPub/tay zonday https://discord.gg/DgZx7wb•

i legitimately felt a headache coming on seeing you in the Disqus comments of that article doing what i assume is damage control, i'm like "of course our community would actually be this toxic"

3
TalonosOP•

Yeah, I really messed up there. I'm sorry that I did, and it certainly did make us look worse as a community.

I flipped when he claimed that other guy's educated opinion had "no basis in reality." That seemed uncalled for, and I got baited.

I'm glad I mic-dropped and left before I did even more damage. I've not checked the thread since to avoid getting pulled in again.

Again, I'm sorry guys. It started off a simple attempt to help him understand that his numbers were an order of magnitude off, and ended up in a giant pointless embarrassing argument. I've not deported myself this poorly online in a very long time, and I feel humiliated.

2
TalonosOP•

Community Advisors: What do you suggest I do now? Is there anything I can do? Or is the damage done, and I should just stay away from this mess?

2
EleIsanaki•

I would just leave it alone. It's not like you did anything horribly irreversible, but it would probably just be best to leave it alone now. The writer was kind enough to include a revision at the end of his article.

2
Nekoworkshop•

You're upset that an article dedicated primarily about the financial success of DFO didn't put extra context around the game's playerbase outside of Steam, despite literally no official data existing and the original claim SPECIFICALLY citing Steam data. lol. You don't care about 'quality of reporting'. You only care about shilling your favorite game, which you're welcome to do in the comments section.

To be honest the writer sounds like a really nice and reasonable person.

0
stokkebye•

they probably grabbed them from steam using steamcharts. i dont think theyve ever said the total population but its more populated than that.

9
xboogie•

Does it really matter? DFO as a whole is a top 5 grossing pc game every month. I'm sure the player base is more than enough in global seeing as we have had DFOG for like 5 years. They tested the waters during beta and early on. They felt it was sufficient.

There are some decent whales in global even if they altogether spend less than a single CDNF player. I'm sure it doesn't cost that much to translate the content over with a few unique to global events or content occasionally. Even more so when you consider how much they make from china/korea.

I don't think you'll find numbers unless you ask neople directly. If you are worried about the game shutting then I'm sure we'll get decent notice unlike in the dark ages of Nexon.

I don't have any answers just saying that it doesn't seem like something to be concerned about.

6
Khanjali_KO•

They actually didn't consider the beta test for DFOG successful. It was stated in a Facebook post after the beta ended in 2014 that they didn't reach the numbers they were looking for (something like only 80% of what they wanted) but decided to move forward with releasing a global version anyways.

1
xboogie•

I mean if it was actually a failure the game wouldn't be in global right now 5 years later. It was good enough to continue which is ultimately my point.

Global isn't some gold mine of success but it has enough of something to warrant it still being around and updated.

8
FubukiYukiI hate, hate, hate it, so I can’t help but sneer all the time•

not to mentioned we dnt know the exact number they were expecting either, couldve been going off of china numbers or basing it off of another popular game for all we know

5
Disownedr/dfopvp•

They probably went ahead with the launch on DFOG anyway because CDnF and DnF make so much money that any loses on Global wouldn't matter.

2
OOLuigiOo•

CDnF alone

1
Killan50•

~5k actively playing. Got this figure from one of the past events. There was a table of records common for the entire server and a new account that had never participated in an event was about 5-6k position.

6
DMG1Ora x3•

I think I know what event you're talking about (gacha tower?), but how accurate is that number? Like if multiple accounts never played, or only cleared a single floor in the same time, would you simply tie placements or randomly be given a placement among the group that tied you?

1
Killan50•

Yep, it gacha tower. If an account has been in the tower at least once, I consider him alive. I checked several accounts and accounts of friends who did not do the event. Of course, I can't guarantee for the accuracy of these figures, but they seem realistic to me.

1
The_Brimada•

I took this screenshot on an alt account I ran a floor on near the end of that event. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/520371598088339466/743460338380308560/DFOPLAYERS.png

1
LordAltay-•

Author here - OP is either deliberately being disingenuous or has difficulty reading. The article linked specifically says 'the Steam version averages 450 players online at any given time', which is a factual statement, yet the thread on here says 'DFOG max 450 players'. No where in the article did it say DFOG maxes at 450. It said the STEAM version AVERAGES 450. It's also mentioned the game exists outside Steam, but I can't speculate on the audience there.

I like DFO and love the art style, but I don't get the defensiveness of some folks (namely OP). The point of the article linked was to discuss the game's financials. DFOG playerbase numbers were only mentioned at the END of the article while discussing Nexon's poor financial performance outside of China/SK. The point of the article was DFO's incredible financial success. Very few people know it's the highest grossing game in the world!

Despite this, NNexon has been losing money in NA/EU for 9 years now. Just read their financial reports - they're publicly traded and have excellent disclosure and report revenues/profits by region. Got an older article discussing their NA operations up until 2016, but 2017-2020 so far has been losses every year as well.

https://mmos.com/editorials/nexon-america-continues-bleed-money

5
Nekoworkshop•

I like DFO

Says someone directing the readers to the steam store page instead of https://www.dfoneople.com/ kekw

To be honest gaming journalist is a tough job considering less and less people are giving a shit about you guys. I hope the extra page views from reddit can brighten up your day a bit.

1
LordAltay-•

If you don't realize that the Steam version is a 'gateway' for new players, you're hopeless. A lot of my buddies won't even download a free game if its not on Steam. A ton of people will NEVER try DFO if they can't grab it easily on Steam. They can migrate later. I also linked it off Steam as well a little further down.

You sound very angsty. I recommend watching some youtube food videos or something to relax a bit.

2
freecomkcfRiskyClickPub/tay zonday https://discord.gg/DgZx7wb•

If you don't realize that the Steam version is a 'gateway' for new players, you're hopeless.

considering some of the horror stories you'd likely find about the Steam launcher on this very sub it's more of a noob trap than a gateway

not that that matters, since DFO Global's small team repeatedly shoots themselves in the foot regarding new players anyway

1
LordAltay-•

It's clearly not good, i've read some of the reviews on Steam. Better to have it than not have it though. It's weird how 'attached' people are to Steam these days. I have no problem DLing games outside Steam, but so many people tell me they can't be bothered to play something if its not on Steam. Its weird and definitely not a good trend

3
TalonosOP•

Oh, hi! You're here!

While you're in this thread, I want to really apologize. I deported myself exceptionally poorly on Disqus.

The first comment I posted was done in an attempt to help your numbers become more accurate. So was the second. When I saw you tell that other person that his experience had "no basis in reality," I misinterpreted it as an unprovoked attack on somebody who I felt knew what they were talking about, and it angered me. I went all "paladin lawful-asshole" on you trying to defend the guy's position, and became super aggressive. This was wrong of me, and I'm sorry. In retrospect, it's actually kind of humiliating.

Part of the reason I mic-dropped at the end there was because I needed to disengage. I found myself becoming too heated. Because of that, I don't know what's happened to your article since then. I hope people came in with fire extinguishers instead of flamethrowers and that you didn't get dragged through the mud anymore.

What would you like me to do? If you want, I can go through and delete all my incendiary statements. (Or if you feel like you came out on top after I dropped the mic, I could leave them there as a way of owning up to my social mistakes.) Besides that, all I think of to do is to just apologize for my indefensible behavior.

For the record, I think you should believe the community when we say the steam launcher is a minority, and you should edit your article to mention that the steam numbers are misleading, but man! In the end, that's a pretty slight fault, and you certainly didn't deserve the amount of vitriol I spewed at you!

Wishing you the best, and now harboring no hard feelings,

~Talonos.

1
LordAltay-•

I think you're missing the point of the article and there's enough context in the article (and more context in the comments) for readers to understand what's up with the game.

You can leave your comments. Additional context never hurts, so I'd prefer to keep it there. As I said though, the main point of the article isn't related to DFOG's English #s. It's about DFO's financial success.

Anyway, fair enough! We all get heated sometimes and I'm not at all offended and welcome to disagreements/extra context!

1
RuneLai•

All you can say is that a large chunk of the population is not on Steam. He should put an asterisk by the number with a note that it's not accurate, because he knows he's missing some unknown volume of players, but DFO doesn't release actual numbers. I seem to remember a post being made here that suggested our numbers are bigger than Arad Senki in Japan, but I don't think it had anything like concurrent users.

4
FubukiYukiI hate, hate, hate it, so I can’t help but sneer all the time•

iirc that post was on how much money was made, global made more then jp and afaik every other server tends to either have more expensive packages if not incentivizes whaling much more so then global ever did so global doing even more then jp can be considered a testament to us having more players then we think

1
fates4productionsGimmicks? UNGA BUNGA BIG DICK DEEPS•

Global is just more p2w than jp

y'all just haven't realized yet :(

-2†
fates4productionsGimmicks? UNGA BUNGA BIG DICK DEEPS•

It's more concurrent users if we include bots :)

-1
GGHard•

but he said he's justified in using those numbers because they're the only ones available.

The role of a journalist or reviewer is to gather more than enough sources to make their claims. Judging by the fact that this author stopped at "well, this is all I got" is the most unprofessional reviewer I've fully read.

4
freecomkcfRiskyClickPub/tay zonday https://discord.gg/DgZx7wb•

i'm reminded of when MMO Hut (i think that was the channel) did a quick look of DFO and mostly just button mashed basic attack the whole time, then based their review on that

1
GGHard•

I had a friend of mine who wasn't aware of Armor Mastery, and then played a gunner back in NEXON era, he told me, "how come they sold this class as a Fast Action Character, but I shoot so slowly and deal so little damage"

We looked around and realized he was just equipping anything with a higher number, than what the Armor Mastery was at the time.

1
SeIfRighteous•

Whenever I see threads like this I tend not to really bother, but I'll say my piece this once (mostly because you seem like you are genuinely curious).

No, there is no way of knowing what the actual player numbers are. I'd wager a guess we're somewhere around 3k ~ 4k players, but that's just a guess—I'm being generous at that. DFOs steam client is awful so the majority of players will not be indicated on steam. I wouldn't say this game is doing as well overseas that a lot of these articles (or the general public) claim to think. It's doing far better overseas population wise, but having millions of concurrent players? No, I don't believe so. DFO also has a negative connotation in Korea (the home country of the game), but they've been trying to do better at that in the recent years.

Many MMOs are still around despite population numbers being small. Look at: Vindictus, SoulWorker, CloserS, Kritika, Tree of Savior, Kurtzpel... the list goes on. You're also right in saying that "Our cera purchases would be a drop in the bucket". There are other reasons for games being around other than to make huge profits. I can hazard a guess as to some reasons, but they'll all be baseless opinions on my part. In any case, DFO global makes enough money to keep the game kicking and also clearly receives support—albeit not as much as the playerbase would like.

2
Laggoz•

I think DFOG has really hard time growing outside its' loyal whalebase. The fatigue system is major deterrent for new players (they don't play long enough to see it's a non-issue), the endgame being so strictly limited what you can do daily kills the retention and the P2P prevents PvP and grouping effectively. It takes a special mindset for a westerner to actually enjoy the game.

If they are not going to westernize the game it's just better to milk the current whalebase. They could i.e.:

=> Remove fatigue from leveling process (adjust gold gains and quests requiring gold accordingly )

=> Ease the weekly/daily lockouts to allow people to grind more relevant content daily

=> Allow more sources for epic drops or create systems that promote grinding (dark dimension was a good idea but executed effin poorly)

=> Create channels for regions so players can have some control over their party connection

Or they can just keep doing what they are and milk the whalebase :)

2
SeIfRighteous•
  1. Fatigue has always been an issue western players were so divisive on. DFO Nexon removed the fatigue system a long time ago and replaced it with a different one called the Blitz point system. You could run dungeons infinitely without end but eventually you would be capped (say 170 blitz points) and any subsequent runs you would receive less rewards. This system did not bring any new players and in fact caused many concurrent players to leave in droves due to the rampant gold botting that took place following this.

In a perfect world you can say that all neople has to do is have a more intelligent bot detection to catch any would be botters. Of course their CURRENT bot system is horrendous and already struggling to find actual botters and real life people, so I doubt this could ever work.

I don't want to make the excuse that "fatigue prevents bots" as the main argument. I sincerely believe that even with the removal of fatigue this would not bring in more players to the game. Korean MMOs have always been disliked by the west because of the p2w elements and "anime" visuals that they tend to have. People would just find a different excuse to complain about something else. I would rather they try to retain their current playerbase OR attempt to draw older players back, which is what they seem to be doing.

  1. I'm not sure this will really help. For some content like Operation Hope they could maybe increase the limit, but increasing raid limits or Oculus/PWar wouldn't really fit with how the game is structured. Maybe the game needs a giant restructuring to fit this format, but even if it did again I doubt western players will be willing to play this game.

  2. They are already doing this. In Korea you can purchase a random Epic Box with Black Crystal fragments (from 2+2) along with Sirocco raid dropping random epics and such.

  3. I don't think this would work. Back when neople just re-released DFO we had a west and east coast split. I was a part of the Delezie west coast server but it was difficult to find any party content. The majority of players would go to East and eventually they just merged the servers. The reality of the situation is there isn't enough of a playerbase for them to split servers.

I don't think westernizing the game is the right answer. I guess you could say I have a defeatist approach, but I do not think DFO can expand any further than they have to the western market. A previous post on this reddit a few months ago had a youtube video of a known gaming website that didn't even acknowledge DFO when they were recording/talking about it. The interviewer even said something along the lines of: "I'm surprised games like these still even exist", because the truth is western gamers want a different type of game entirely from what korean games put out.

I wish that DFO had more social things to do outside of dungeon/fatigue grinding. Every MMO nowadays is stuck in a content loop where they add new dungeons or raids. Everyone remembers Maplestory's social aspects in the past, going from the boat ride from Ellinia to Orbis or hanging out in Henesys. There was a game I used to play called Lunia that had slime racing as an activity to do outside of the frequent grind. Where players can bet gold on slimes and just have a good time. DFO used to have social aspects too in PvP. My most fondest memories of DFO was hanging out in PvP Elimination matches and chatting with people before your turn was up to do battle. These are the things I think DFO (and the majority of MMOs) are lacking. Of course these kind of changes would never happen, but I could dream.

8
Laggoz•

  1. Fatigue is a instant pass for surprisingly many western players.

  2. The current system for casual players is basically 2+2 -> Pit -> Buy Oculus Hard -> Oculus(2xW)-> PW(2xW) which is an absurdly low amount of content. When you get epic weapon, ditto and talismans it basically 2+2. [[Sure you can grind gold/time stones but that's far from interesting]]. Western players essentially want to play and grind as much as they want over artificial time-gates.

  3. Black fragments aren't actually grindable (2+2 untradeable material). We need more content like Dark Dimension but with actual farming capabilities and realistic paths to upgrades without a massive RNG. Another major turn off for players is the over-reliance on RNG over smooth progression.

  4. Was talking about channels, not servers.

While it would be hard to grow DFOG, I don't think it would be impossible. But in the end they'll just keep DFOG running as long as the whales keep buying and they are really not going to do much development for us. Even the "unique experience" of Dark Dimension update was such a low effort :/

I do like the direction the game has taken in KR and hopefully the next gear reset (lv105/lv110) will be a whole new experience.

3
SeIfRighteous•

  1. Again, Nexon DFO removed the Fatigue system but where did all the people who said fatigue was the problem go? They certainly didn't go clamor to play DFO. If they wanted to remove the Fatigue system then they should've done it at the start. It's far to late to do it now.

  2. I understand the sediment behind this, but I don't see it ever changing. I don't believe adding more content or allowing western players to grind as much as they want is the answer. I still think if they want to fix this issue they need to add content outside of the fatigue system and make it available. PvP comes to mind, but with how p2p works it would never actually be a thing.

  3. Linear progression was a thing of 95 cap, but it seemed a lot of people didn't like it. Not just in KDnF and CDnF but also DFO global. A lot of players that quit during the transition from 90 cap to 95 cap has since returned back during 100 cap. I liked the linear progression, but it seems the majority of DFO playerbase does not like the system.

  4. I don't really think this will affect anything.

5
CptBlackBird2Literally the only mlauncher main•

I do wish there would be more things to grind after/if you get your full epics

1
Quo210•

I wish that DFO had more social things to do outside of dungeon/fatigue grinding. Every MMO nowadays is stuck in a content loop where they add new dungeons or raids. Everyone remembers Maplestory's social aspects in the past, going from the boat ride from Ellinia to Orbis or hanging out in Henesys. There was a game I used to play called Lunia that had slime racing as an activity to do outside of the frequent grind. Where players can bet gold on slimes and just have a good time. DFO used to have social aspects too in PvP. My most fondest memories of DFO was hanging out in PvP Elimination matches and chatting with people before your turn was up to do battle. These are the things I think DFO (and the majority of MMOs) are lacking. Of course these kind of changes would never happen, but I could dream.

I can't really understand this.

How can the appeal of a game be mainly the social part???

Like. Seriously, if you want to socialize then go outside and talk to people.

You wanna watch slimes racing while betting virtual currency on it? What do you get out of that? You're on the passive role of the observer, bound to the luck of RNG, powerless to decide, unable to interact. Jesus. I have a hard time trying to imagine a worse "game" activity.

Perhaps western market just have too many alien concepts for devs from other cultural backgrounds to even fathom.

-6
SuplexZero•

Honestly more than anything I'm amazed there's over 450 steam users.

2
XTRIxEDGExF•

I get his choice, but i do disagree with it. I've been following Remotay since the MMOHut days like 13+ years ago, so i don't think hes doing anything in bad faith. Probably just thinks its correct enough to use. There are definitely NOT any solid numbers and we will probably never get any. Maybe we can get some throwaway comment from an ExStream at some point or we have, but i doubt it.

If our peak concurrent numbers are actually only a couple thousand or so, then what's Neople's strategy, d'you think?

To this point i'm not really sure, IIRC wasen't the global release more so a passion project of one of the higher ups? It's been a long time and i don't remember much at all from what was said from Neople in 2015 but thats what i remember. It has to be making enough in return to stick around for 5+ years though. While not published by Nexon directly they're still owned by them and i doubt they would let this project go on if it was hemorrhaging money.

1
LordAltay-•

Author here - you'd be surprised. Nexon's entire North American division has been hemorrhaging money for a decade now. It's clearly listed on their financials. NA/EU have been awful for Nexon.

1
softhackIcyBoii•

Let's hope Nexon KR is kind to Project BBQ.

3
XTRIxEDGExF•

Interesting. I wasent aware things were this bad. Although thinking more, wouldnt the earnings from DFOG be included in Nexon KR earnings since they have nothing to do with the NA branch? Thats my assumption anyway since DFOG has no association with the NA branch of Nexon as far as we know. They're just a subsidiary of Nexon as a whole.

1
LordAltay-•

Good question, I'm not sure sure where they're booking the revenue for it.

1
-strykerF•

Eh, the real number is probably way above 15.000, but thats just a wild guess. And no, i'm not even joking. there's just so many players online at peak times

1
PM_Best_Porn_Pls•

450 max is a bit weird because looking at steam chats it was usualy more max concurent users. Nowdays I would say total is around 4-5k. Its not big by any means when it comes to mmo numbers but its enough as long as we have whales fueling their pockets.

Also dfo is huge in asia. Its most played mmo in the world because of it. Kinda cheating when its such a big title in china. Back in the day I remember seeing that they even had TV channel dedicated to this game, it was such a weird experince.

1
LoveDeer•

DFOG is kinda like the WNBA.

Even if we were hemorrhaging money, the other version, mainly CDnF, makes so much they could easily keep us around.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
demonicdan3SAI! MASAKA!•

Vast majority don't use steam to launch DFO since creating an account through steam is buggy as fuck and leads to unnecessary headaches

1
freecomkcfRiskyClickPub/tay zonday https://discord.gg/DgZx7wb•

as someone in the article's Disqus comments put it, they probably haven't revealed any numbers for Global because it'd likely look bad on them

0