Author Topic: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)

Ghostcrawler posted:
Critical History Lesson

In the original combat rules of World of Warcraft, melee classes could get 200% crits while casters could only get 150% crits. This was back when all the designers presumably played rogues instead of mages, which according to the forums is what we all play now (which makes our dungeon testing interesting, I gotta tell you.)

Over time, we added talents to allow various casters to get 200% crits as well. Warlocks ?could? spend 5 points on the Ruin talent, for example, which you pretty much had to do to be a good warlock. As part of the Cataclysm talent tree evolutions we decided all DPS specs should be able to get 200% crits without investing talent points. There are still some inconsistencies though. Death knights can get 200% crits with both their melee and spell effects, while Assassination rogues get 200% crits with their physical attacks but only 150% crits with their poisons. Healers have always gotten 150% crits, both with their damage-dealing spells and with heals.

The overall design could be described as one that is simple to learn but complex to master. Or put another way, you know most of what you need to know if you?re told that crits do more damage. How much extra damage they do is one of those nuances that more experienced players learn over time and one of the things that makes classes feel different.

Or does it?

You could argue that we?re just keeping old rules that don?t really benefit the game. Is it very interesting that rogue poisons or Enhancement Lightning Bolts don?t have big crits? Does it make you feel different when you pick those classes or specs? Does it feel rewarding when you learn those subtle distinctions? I?d posit perhaps not. Homogenization is something we fight against all the time and one of the primary reasons that we don?t make class A?s ability work just like class B?s ability.

Homogenization -- A Dirty Word

If I can be snarky for a moment, players tend to beat the ?homogenization!? drum too emphatically when they are losing something that is overpowered, and like to mock it as ?flavor!? when we refuse to give them a cool ability that another class has.

Too much homogenization is a bad thing, no question. But do weird crit rules really fall into that category? There is a difference between being complex (which adds depth) and being complicated (which might just add confusion). We?d rather spend our ?complexity points? on things that are really meaningful differences. Pick Assassination because you like daggers or poisons or maybe Rupture, not because you like small crits.

There are balance issues to consider too. Assassination rogues are never going to value crit as much as other characters are as long as some of their crits are smaller. We ran into the same issue with the damage-over-time-based specs when their dots couldn?t crit.

Healers Love Big Numbers Too

It can be an issue for healing as well. In Lich King, critical heals were virtually wasted because much of the time they were going to be overhealing. In Cataclysm, where healer mana matters more and even big heals can?t trivially top someone off, crits are more valuable. But they aren?t valuable enough. Getting 10% haste allows you to get a heal to a target 10% faster. Getting 10% crit allows you to heal a target 5% more. Is it any wonder that crit tends to get devalued for most healers? Resto shaman like it, but look at how many talents they have that make crits better for them. We?re strongly considering just letting all heals crit for double, just like most attacks. We don?t think this would have huge PvE consequences. Healers will heal for a little more, but even if they choose to start stacking crit, they?re going to do that at the expense of Haste, Mastery or Spirit. It could have bigger PvP consequences. Most PvP healers don?t have crit chances beyond say 10% or so, so they aren?t going to crit often.

We?ve been considering whether healing is too strong in PvP anyway. You may have noticed that we made the tooltips for Mortal Strike and equivalent debuffs intentionally vague for 4.1. As I write this, those debuffs are still at 10% healing, but we?re concerned that healing is too hard to counter and we might change that number. Changing it back to 50% would probably lead to the Mortal Strike debuff being mandatory for Arena comps again, but we never got much of a chance to see its effects at say 20%. A 20% Mortal Strike debuff could easily counter any excessive healing caused by 200% crits.

Changes Ahead?

Letting rogues and Enhancement shaman get 200% crits with non-physical damage would be a larger change, and not the kind of thing we would do mid-expansion. But it?s definitely something we?re considering for the future. That would only leave the damage spells cast by healers at the 150% crit range. We think we could make those full 200% crits as well. If we want to make sure the DPS specs still do a lot more damage, we have the knobs to do that. For example, we could buff passives such as Moonfury (the damage bonus for Balance druids) or Shadow Power (the damage bonus for Shadow priests) to make sure their spells still landed a lot harder than the healing specs did, even if the healers got big crits.

If we made all those changes, then any crit in the game would be at 200%. It would be a very simple rule, and I?d argue any loss of class distinction is more than made up for by the positive balance ramifications. As always with this blog series, this is just speculation. You?re more likely to see 200% healing crits sooner, but even that isn?t something we?ve fully embraced yet. It?s just the kind of thing we discuss when hanging out at the bar... er, I mean watercooler.

Greg ?Ghostcrawler? Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He crits on a 19 or 20.


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Arcilite_I 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)

Homogenization is something we fight against all the time


w.t.f.? Did he REALLY just go there?

 

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Quazimortal 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
I barely skimmed through that and I can confidently summarize the OP.


Ghostcrawler a.k.a. Guy I wanna kick in the dick posted:
Blah blah blah, I'm a worthless moron who continues to ruin WoW.

 

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Deionnara 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Quazimortal posted:
I barely skimmed through that and I can confidently summarize the OP.


Ghostcrawler a.k.a. Guy I wanna kick in the dick posted:
Blah blah blah, I'm a worthless moron who continues to ruin WoW.




 

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Arcilite_I 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
rofl Deio, well played

 

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Azure-TheBlueOne 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Wow, he's still doing these?

laugh laugh

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
"If I can be snarky for a moment, players tend to beat the "homogenization" drum too emphatically when they are losing something that is overpowered, and like to mock it as "flavor" when we refuse to give them a cool ability that another class has."


Snarky for a moment? He is always snarky and condescending. This guy is one of those people, that in real life, I just wouldn't associate with him. He would be on my "waste of air and time" list. I wouldn't threaten him or want to harm him, no, I would just pity him for being such an ass. I almost get the impression sometimes that he is unaware of his demeanor toward the players instead of using calculated amounts of condescending attitude to drum up attention.


TLDR: I agree with Quaz.

 

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Quazimortal 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Deionnara posted:
Quazimortal posted:
I barely skimmed through that and I can confidently summarize the OP.


Ghostcrawler a.k.a. Guy I wanna kick in the dick posted:
Blah blah blah, I'm a worthless moron who continues to ruin WoW.







I lol'd! grin

 

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kyrv 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
While I understand and empathize with them having to deal with much of the 2% of the player base that are childish morons, would be nice if he understood that the average player is over 30 and not a childish moron and not dumber than he is.

If you want to go after the minority idiots - and I support that - please stop pretending they represent anything other than the dumbest low percentage of your clients.

Now, per your snarky rogue comments, to start there, why in the world would players think devs played rogues early on? Hmm. It's a mystery. Can you crack it GC? Maybe have a wild guess? And are we pretending that the opposite is true, that no dev would EVER help buff a class they prefer? Not buying it.


tl;dr I agree with the above comments.


Edit - Be nice to see more of these that didn't have the Arenas invoked.

Also, and this is just a suggestion, maybe spend less time at the bar. Err...watercooler.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Bot threads: now with 39% more random question marks!

GC posted:
This was back when all the designers presumably played rogues instead of mages, which according to the forums is what we all play now (which makes our dungeon testing interesting, I gotta tell you.)

Translation: you guys have always been jackasses to me, even though I'm right. Because I'm obviously the only person that knows how to employ hyperbole.

GC posted:
If I can be snarky for a moment, players tend to beat the ?homogenization!? drum too emphatically when they are losing something that is overpowered, and like to mock it as ?flavor!? when we refuse to give them a cool ability that another class has.

Right, because the ONLY reason we deplore homogenization is because we like being OP and unique snowflakes, AMIRITE?

GC posted:
Homogenization is something we fight against all the time and one of the primary reasons that we don?t make class A?s ability work just like class B?s ability.

Translation: I'm going to talk about homogenization among classes (like the shaman/paladin thing) where the rules are fairly obvious and completely ignore the homogenization of abilities/talents/etc. which is where most of the complaints have been focused since 4.0 because I'm an arrogant jackass that loves to snipe you guys on minor technicalities in syntax.


This guy's post was already smelling bad by the end of the first damn paragraph. That takes talent and effort. rolling_eyes

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Deionnara posted:
Quazimortal posted:
I barely skimmed through that and I can confidently summarize the OP.


Ghostcrawler a.k.a. Guy I wanna kick in the dick posted:
Blah blah blah, I'm a worthless moron who continues to ruin WoW.








epic win

 

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Quazimortal 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
I laugh every time I open this thread and see that pic. laugh

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
.

 

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ItzyBitzy 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Quazimortal posted:
I laugh every time I open this thread and see that pic. laugh


You'll love the snorkel-shrimp-bit then:

http://aok.heavengames.com/gameinfo/interviews/street

 

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JaconKin 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

 

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Quazimortal 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
ItzyBitzy posted:
Quazimortal posted:
I laugh every time I open this thread and see that pic. laugh


You'll love the snorkel-shrimp-bit then:

http://aok.heavengames.com/gameinfo/interviews/street


Go peddle your links elsewhere sir.

 

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ItzyBitzy 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Quazimortal posted:
ItzyBitzy posted:
Quazimortal posted:
I laugh every time I open this thread and see that pic. laugh


You'll love the snorkel-shrimp-bit then:




Go peddle your links elsewhere sir.


It's not a peddled link! It's a PICTURE of him from AoE in a snorkel outfit. GEEZ!

If aok.heavengames.com is now a keylogger, I'm sure your buddy you called in to report this would have deleted it. Cya, loser. No wonder this place is dead.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
keylogger!! tongue

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Wow. What a jackass.

 

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Quazimortal 
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Don't be mean to Sprawl... sad

 

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Deionnara 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1


Well I wouldn't call that a 'critical hit' ... it's really just steadily retreating to pre-Cata levels. Question is : will it stop there?

It was interesting to visualize the pre-expansion apathy, naturally followed by the spike.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
You'd think that if someone did a job for a long time, surrounded by talented people, they would eventually get good at it. Well, this is the MMO industry, so maybe I shouldn't have been expecting much to begin with.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Deionnara posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1


Well I wouldn't call that a 'critical hit' ... it's really just steadily retreating to pre-Cata levels. Question is : will it stop there?

It was interesting to visualize the pre-expansion apathy, naturally followed by the spike.


Perhaps, the more curious question would be and the one you should be asking did such a drop occur in activity so quickly after Wrath?

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1



WoW. Just 4 months after an xpac and they are already almost down to pre xpac levels with no sign of numbers going back up.

The incredible part is that the nose dive began just one month after the xpac.

Mark my words, Greg Street (ghostcrapper) and others are going to get fired from blizzard, just like Mark Jacobs did from mythic when the swift decline went into full force.

 

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Actually, nm, I am not getting into this argument.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Spookysheep posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1



WoW. Just 4 months after an xpac and they are already almost down to pre xpac levels with no sign of numbers going back up.

The incredible part is that the nose dive began just one month after the xpac.

Mark my words, Greg Street (ghostcrapper) and others are going to get fired from blizzard, just like Mark Jacobs did from mythic when the swift decline went into full force.


I'd hesitate to compare the two people. It's a different day now than it was then.

Don't get it wrong, I don't like Mr.Crab at all, but I wonder what qualifies as a swift decline with an MMO that's enjoyed years of virtually zero market competition.

A loss of 50,000 subscribers for DAoC would have been huge. A loss of 50,000 for WoW is a drop in the bucket.

Still, color me surprised that Ghostcrawler is still around.

 

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Well, now that we know (from another thread) that WoW still only had 12 subscribers as of December 31st (the same number as before the xpac), which was 4 weeks AFTER the expansion released, then Cata did absolutely nothing to boost subscription numbers and in fact, now has caused them to decline.

I don't see how stockholders are not calling for someone's head about now.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

One problem with sites such as this is the small sample size compared to the total population. It isn't just the small sample that is the problem it is the fact that one group (Hard core burn through content fast) is providing the majority of the data that makes it suspect. There were similar population jumps followed by drops with TBC and Wrath mainly fueled by returning players that burned up the content very fast and then left again leaving the rest of us to work through the content at a more relaxed pace.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Acao posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

One problem with sites such as this is the small sample size compared to the total population. It isn't just the small sample that is the problem it is the fact that one group (Hard core burn through content fast) is providing the majority of the data that makes it suspect. There were similar population jumps followed by drops with TBC and Wrath mainly fueled by returning players that burned up the content very fast and then left again leaving the rest of us to work through the content at a more relaxed pace.



I guess you haven't read the other thread. Blizzard's own stock report revealed that there were no jumps in subscription numbers as of December 31st, which was 3 weeks after cata released. Subscriptions remained stagnant (the same on Dec. 31st as they were back in October) so its not a stretch to realize that there is a decline happening.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Not to mention, after every major expansion except Cata they've quickly announced their subscription jumps, and more people bought the Cataclysm expansion at release than any other expansion (there was a thread on this somewhere near the opening of Cata, as someone was trying to claim the amount of boxes they sold was fail - I actually argued in favor of Cataclysm then). And now populations are ALREADY settling below pre-Cata numbers (Horde is definitely under - barring the outlying pre-expansion month).

The ship may not be sinking fast, but it's quite obviously leaking.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Acao posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

One problem with sites such as this is the small sample size compared to the total population. It isn't just the small sample that is the problem it is the fact that one group (Hard core burn through content fast) is providing the majority of the data that makes it suspect. There were similar population jumps followed by drops with TBC and Wrath mainly fueled by returning players that burned up the content very fast and then left again leaving the rest of us to work through the content at a more relaxed pace.



Funny thing is that people believe every single "survey" and "study" they see or read on both Fox News and the more liberal media like CNN and MSNBC, etc. And those are collected the exact same way. They poll a few hundred households, preferably not cherry-picked for certain political views, for opinions and use that to extrapolate a figure over a broader range.

 

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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Bremen_Gaheris posted:
Acao posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

One problem with sites such as this is the small sample size compared to the total population. It isn't just the small sample that is the problem it is the fact that one group (Hard core burn through content fast) is providing the majority of the data that makes it suspect. There were similar population jumps followed by drops with TBC and Wrath mainly fueled by returning players that burned up the content very fast and then left again leaving the rest of us to work through the content at a more relaxed pace.



Funny thing is that people believe every single "survey" and "study" they see or read on both Fox News and the more liberal media like CNN and MSNBC, etc. And those are collected the exact same way. They poll a few hundred households, preferably not cherry-picked for certain political views, for opinions and use that to extrapolate a figure over a broader range.


Which is why I refuse to participate in polls. Never accurate and always misleading.

 

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Kriegprojekt 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Quazimortal posted:
Bremen_Gaheris posted:
Acao posted:
JaconKin posted:
Player Activity takes a Critical Hit:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1

One problem with sites such as this is the small sample size compared to the total population. It isn't just the small sample that is the problem it is the fact that one group (Hard core burn through content fast) is providing the majority of the data that makes it suspect. There were similar population jumps followed by drops with TBC and Wrath mainly fueled by returning players that burned up the content very fast and then left again leaving the rest of us to work through the content at a more relaxed pace.



Funny thing is that people believe every single "survey" and "study" they see or read on both Fox News and the more liberal media like CNN and MSNBC, etc. And those are collected the exact same way. They poll a few hundred households, preferably not cherry-picked for certain political views, for opinions and use that to extrapolate a figure over a broader range.


Which is why I refuse to participate in polls. Never accurate and always misleading.



Yeah kinda like when a news agency polls their own viewers about the President. Fox watches usually poll that the guy is a schumck and CBS polls that hes a saint.

Cant get any "real" numbers when you only ask one side.

 

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GutterSludge 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
As my statistics professor once told me, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.."

IF you obtain your samples in a completely random manner, then you can make VERY accurate inferences about the population as a whole, based on the sample.

If your sample is biased, you will obtain very WRONG inferences about the population as a whole.


So, asking every 3rd person you see wearing orange, walking south on a rainy day in 15 different cities.. who they voted for in the last election would probably give you a very accurate sample to judge the population on..

Standing outside the Republican or Democratic national headquarters and asking the same question as people leave the office would probably not give you an accurate sample.



Blizzard has the numbers for the entire population, there is no need for statistical inference for them to know whats up.

Without them releasing that information, the best we could hope for is a guess.

With that said, however, there are people on this board who play differently, have different goals in mind when they login, and lets face it, even people here who despise each other, all agreeing on several points...

Friends/guildmates are leaving/have left the game.
The game is not as fun as it used to be.
The devs don't care.
Classes are broken (healing)
They have left the game personally for the reasons above.


While this is not a scientific study, to ignore these facts is folly. People that post such things here are seasoned gamers...They are not blind, nor stupid.

They see this decline happening...and it is real.

Based on that, I would wager that even though those graphs are somewhat biased, in that only those with the plugin actually report anything, that bias can be accounted for, and we would find that they are a fairly accurate representation of the population, especially given the size of the sample...(it only takes 30 or so data points for a sample to take on the characteristics of a normal distribution)...


Again it all amounts to a "guess" without some properly and randomly sampled data..but I feel confident that sub numbers are not holding steady, and are not increasing, which only leaves them moving in the direction that these graphs imply....

Downward.

















 

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Bremen_Gaheris 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Well, said Gutter. That sums up my point above.

 

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Spookysheep 
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Subject: Dev Watercooler -- Critical Hits (And Misses)
Gutter just made a fanboi cry and somewhere a kitten has met its maker o.0

 

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