User:Mikado282/Player-Map statistics
Here are sites that presently provide statistics of active players and the maps they are on.
Two sorts of sites are listed here, differentiated by their player counting bases. Recognize that the two method are not comparable except for illustration of general changes in player populations, particularly the daily and weekly cycles of player populations, broad declines or increases in players, and significant unique events.
The units of measure of the two methods are different; one is "instantaneous players on maps" while the other is "total unique Team Fortress 2 log-ins in 60 minutes"
Cumulative Team Fortress 2 log-ins each hour
STEAMCHARTS is Steam's ongoing analysis of "concurrent players". It provides enterprise-level statistics of unique Steam Account log-ins running Team Fortress 2. It measures how many log-in events to Team Fortress 2 occur in each 1-hour interval It does not report, or event appear to measure whether each log-in is actually playing on a map.
This is not a measure of how many people are actually playing on maps moment by moment. Neither is there any provided measurement of map usage or game mode popularity.
Sampled occupancy of Team Fortress 2 maps
These sites periodically scan each Team Fortress 2 game to identify the hosted map and the occupancy of the map at that moment. The occupancy can be resolved into players and bots. This data can be aggregated to give running measures of how many players are on each map across all servers hosting it and totals of all players playing at the moment.
- Valve's list of Community server occupancy
This is list of Community Servers provided by Valve through the Main Menu Community Server. It only lists the occupancy of each hosted map, that is, with no statistical service provided. However, the list of maps can be filtered to a smaller set of interest. At one time Valve's servers were included, but no longer.
Every 10-15 minutes, this site scans servers playing Team Fortress 2 and records the map hosted at the moment of the scan and the number of players and bots on the hosted map. This site provides several statistical break downs, including player count by Valve, Community, and Competitive servers, player count by continent, player count by game mode, and present, average, and record occupancy history of each map.
- Community event monitors
Community sites or groups can provide statistics of current map occupancy for their servers.
- A case of this is Potato.tf's servers list, which shows the current occupancies of the maps they are hosting at the moment.
Accuracy of sampled occupancy
Consider Valve’s Community server list; experience should adequately demonstrate that Valve’s real-time player counts on each map are accurate enough for player purposes - the occupancy shown for a map on a recently refreshed list is reasonably close to what the player finds when they join. The only perceived inaccuracy is when the immediate player count changes just after the user has refreshed the list. The accuracy of Valve’s Community server list is a basis for assessing the accuracy of other sources.
Users can confirm accuracy of the teamwork.tf measurements by selecting a custom map on their site and filtering for the same map on Valve's Community server list. The user should find the reported occupancies the same or close on the two sources. When a Potato MvM event is running, the occupancies reported on the Potato server list can be compared with the teamwork.tf and Valve’s Community server list values.
- Complete comparison of Valve’s Community server list with teamwork.tf’s Community map statistics
On August 22, 2020, around 12:15 PM CDT (UTD+6), Mikado282 captured a minutes old count from teamwork.tf while I was running a refresh to the Valve Community Server list, which he then counted the players and bots in about 20 minutes.
| Valve’s Community server list | teamwork.tf’s Community counts |
|---|---|
| 8893 players | 8680 players |
| 1686 bots | 2555 bots (player-occupied maps) 866 bots (empty maps) |
| 10579 total | 12010 total |
The numbers are reasonably close, especially the player count.
