User:Mikado282/Player-Map statistics

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Here are sites that presently provide statistics of active players and the maps they are on.

Two sorts of statistical source sites are employed here, differentiated by their user versus active player counting bases. The reader should recognize that the two methods are not comparable except for illustration of general changes in user/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 over 60-minute intervals"

Cumulative Team Fortress 2 log-ins each hour

Update needed; the following may more accurately describe SteamDB.

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

Update coming: Valve server players can be counted to test teamwork.tf's Valve server player counts. Gametracker has a list of players on maps, but the list is limited to competitive servers; the player count is close to eamwork.tf's numbers on competitive servers.

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.

teamwork.tf Server Statistics

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.

Dr. McKay's player statistics

Dr. McKay runs number on Valve TF2 servers and all servers playing TF2. The all-TF2-servers numbers are comparable teamwork.tf's, but preforms different studies on players on maps who aren't actually playing (e.g, idling, item testing) whereas teamwork.tf just exludes these from their counts of people playing the game.

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 systems

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 minute's-old count from teamwork.tf while he was running a refresh on the Valve Community Server list, from 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.

Valve server populations

The concept here is that more popular maps have more people playing them. The count of maps comes from Valve's Casual Menu with distinction made of events maps that are available only during events (and excluded from this analyis).

It is interesting that the number of maps available for a mode does not strongly correlate with popularity.

I was surprised at all of the time with no one playing at all in some modes.

4 orders of magnitude of popularity between the most and least popular modes.

Players in Valve servers by gamemode, assessed from Aug. 25-Sep. 1
Mode Range Median Count
ctf 1880 4580 3230 7+0
pl 1930 4300 3115 11+4
ad 700 1900 1300 9+2
mvm 800 1600 1200 5+1
koth 430 1440 935 11+7
cp 430 1300 865 17+1
plr 200 670 435 4+1
mm 0 200 100 1+0
pass 0 64 32 3+0
mp 0 60 30 4+0
pd usually 0, but always <24 1+3
tc usually 0, but always <24 1
sd usually 0, but always <24 1+1
beta 0 0 0 0

Notes:

  • Count is the number of maps in the Casual Menu + number of Event maps
  • Counted 2Fort Invation as ctf
  • Counted Probed as koth
  • Counted Snowplow as ad
  • mm == Medieval Mode
  • mp == Mann Up

Player participation and achievement items

Several Community events offer official Valve content rewards for participation. The quantities of these items in backpacks can reflect relative interest in or popularity of Community events. "Participation" items can be a direct count of how many individual players participated in the event. "Achievement" items can indicate that the event was interesting enough that players invested significant time to the event, with the understanding that the actual total number of participants could be much greater than the number of items awarded.

Sources of quantities of items:

Participation estimates

  • Over 80 people participated in the 2020 TF2Maps 72hr Jam; and about 2,700 paticipant medals have been awarded in the six 72hr Jams in 2016 through 2020.[1] $5,168.98 was raised for Direct Relief.[2]

References