Planetside 2 Server Hourly Population Statistics

[Sirisian]

I decided to use the API to gather some statistics about the servers and compile it into a site for others to view. I hope others find this useful. It allows you to see server populations over a given hour and compare them. This also has faction populations which I know some people were curious about.

Planetside 2 Population (http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php)

(I'm not sure how good my server is at handling the traffic, so if it dies check back later).

This is more of a test of the API. If for some reason the data seems to drop unexpectedly, like it does on March 4 2013 4 PM +0 UTC, that is outside of my control. It happens when their API has outdated information. During that time my logs indicated the service was unavailable. I'm not sure how common this bug is, but it's important to keep in mind. My algorithm automatically collects small amounts of data every hour so you should see the data updating every hour. Note that the far right data is streaming in, as mentioned on the site, so it's not always accurate until 30 minutes past the hour.

[Hamma]

Very cool stuff! Been waiting to see what you came up with.

[GraniteRok]

Very interesting info there. Thanks!

[Sledgecrushr]

Looks like connery is completely full for about an hour every day. I really didnt know that it was that busy.

[Jaybonaut]

Cool!

[Loban]

That's pretty cool. Looks like the peak on Helios happens right around when I am able to play in the evening. Good to know. I'm in the midwest and I play on a West server so I was afraid I was logging off right as things were picking up, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guess I don't have to move after all. :)

[Phantomdestiny]

seems like Miller is still the most populated server even after the merge and miller getting no merge

[unAimed]

Looks like connery is completely full for about an hour every day. I really didnt know that it was that busy.

Well, that's because it isn't... 2.000 peak population means it's a 1/3 of it's capacity (3 Continents each able to hold 2k means 6k would be full).

Even Miller, which is still the busiest Server only reaches 4.500 at peak which still isn't that great in my opinion.

[Sirisian]

Looks like connery is completely full for about an hour every day. I really didnt know that it was that busy.
Remember this is over an hour. Even if a player only logs in for a minute it'll count them. It's possible to have a lot of transient players that login for short periods of time or overlap their playtime and get counted. The number is just a little higher than if you tried to say at X hour there was Y number of people logged in since my graph shows for the past hour how many characters logged in.

[Phantomdestiny]

so now we know there is 23000 people playing ps2 (at peak time ) . i really wish it was a higher number. this game deserves much more

[Ghodere]

Looks like connery is completely full for about an hour every day. I really didnt know that it was that busy.

Connery peaks at 2000. Helios at 2700. These values were for the weekend, it can probably be assumed that those are the highest the values will get outside of special occasions. The developers have access to the same data.

Conclusion: Merge imminent.

[Assist]

Poor VS :<

[Sledgecrushr]

Well, that's because it isn't... 2.000 peak population means it's a 1/3 of it's capacity (3 Continents each able to hold 2k means 6k would be full).

Even Miller, which is still the busiest Server only reaches 4.500 at peak which still isn't that great in my opinion.

Thats my dyslexia acting up. We need moar people on connery!!!

[DirtyBird]

love your work Sirisian thx.

[ChipMHazard]

First off, fantastic work Sirisian!

Well, that's because it isn't... 2.000 peak population means it's a 1/3 of it's capacity (3 Continents each able to hold 2k means 6k would be full).

Even Miller, which is still the busiest Server only reaches 4.500 at peak which still isn't that great in my opinion.

Yeah, kinda dissapointed about that in fact. Was hoping to see some pop locks after the merging.

I am a bit surprised about the NC being the overall most played faction. Oh and don't pity the VS, they always work best when outnumbered:D

[Stardouser]

If a continent can hold 2k each and we actually had enough to have 6k, then continent locks would mean server splits.

[Hamma]

Keep in mind also this only reports characters and not unique players (ie: station accounts)

[Satanam]

Agreed that we need more people... We should push the servers until they're often almost completely full. But I have no idea how to do it, and even worse: how to maintain it.

Nice job, Sirisian!

[SGTAce]

Very nice, you should make scale sticky to browser window, to make count read easier.

[itzCujo]

Great work...but makes me even more depressed to play on Woodman.

[Fishy]

So it seems the max number of total players on all worlds peaked at around 22K, even if you triple that number (just because I was looking at last night, a non weekend night), the fact that most players do not pay a sub makes me wonder if SOE is getting enough revenue to keep things going at a high pace. Looks like they learned their lessons from PS1, but on the other hand the numbers are just OK, not great.

[Sledgecrushr]

So it seems the max number of total players on all worlds peaked at around 22K, even if you triple that number (just because I was looking at last night, a non weekend night), the fact that most players do not pay a sub makes me wonder if SOE is getting enough revenue to keep things going at a high pace. Looks like they learned their lessons from PS1, but on the other hand the numbers are just OK, not great.

From what Ive read on the official forums there have been about 300k characters played on average over the last couple of months. I see what soe is doing and i believe in it.
1-vr training area
2-a built in training program for new recruits
3-real advertising for planetside 2

Our numbers are going to go up and retention of new players is going to get better. I think soe is on the right track here.

[MrBloodworth]

Connery peaks at 2000. Helios at 2700. These values were for the weekend, it can probably be assumed that those are the highest the values will get outside of special occasions. The developers have access to the same data.

Conclusion: Merge imminent.

On Matheson last night, both Indar and Esamir had Cues. That would be Monday night.

[Silent Thunder]

Quick question, do the servers never exceed 4000, or is that just a limitation of the chart?

[Fishy]

From what Ive read on the official forums there have been about 300k characters played on average over the last couple of months. I see what soe is doing and i believe in it.
1-vr training area
2-a built in training program for new recruits
3-real advertising for planetside 2

Our numbers are going to go up and retention of new players is going to get better. I think soe is on the right track here.

I surely hope so.

[Bags]

Was hoping to see higher #s given its budget, but now that we've seen the release it's not surprising why.

I have a friend who can't play due to performance issues with a mid ranged PC. Says he gets like 10 fps on low.

[Sledgecrushr]

Was hoping to see higher #s given its budget, but now that we've seen the release it's not surprising why.

I have a friend who can't play due to performance issues with a mid ranged PC. Says he gets like 10 fps on low.

Core 2 quad @2.4ghz
3gig ram
Win vista 32
Radeon hd 5570

I get between 20-60 fps with everything either turned off or at its lowest setting.
Saving to upgrade of course.

[Bags]

Core 2 quad @2.4ghz
3gig ram
Win vista 32
Radeon hd 5570

I get between 20-60 fps with everything either turned off or at its lowest setting.
Saving to upgrade of course.

That's great, I'll tell him it runs well for you and he'll probably get more fps.

IDK he said it was fine last patch and is shit now.

[Sledgecrushr]

That's great, I'll tell him it runs well for you and he'll probably get more fps.

IDK he said it was fine last patch and is shit now.

I deleted and reloaded ps2 recently and had shit fps until i turned my monitor resolution all the way down. Might help.

[typhaon]

Cool...

But it's like the exact same as every other chart like this that I've seen for an online game.

Sat/Sun are the high pop days... Tues (or I've seen Wed, when that's maintenance day) is the low pop day... highest daily pop time is evening at about 8/9pm.

It will be interesting to see trends, however.

[Sirisian]

Quick question, do the servers never exceed 4000, or is that just a limitation of the chart?
There is no limitation. The numbers are just what the API gives me.

[Thunderhawk]

Shame on Miller the VS seem to need more recruits :(

[maxxlight]

Great work...but makes me even more depressed to play on Woodman.

...me too... since Jan Update Vanu is underpopulated.

[Silent Thunder]

So is this link officially dead? Can someone else confirm if its down or if i's just on my end?

[Sledgecrushr]

The link seems to be having some issues. It took me a few times to get infor on Connery this morning. 8 ) pops are rising at least on Connery!!!!

[Hmr85]

The link seems to be having some issues. It took me a few times to get infor on Connery this morning. 8 ) pops are rising at least on Connery!!!!

I'm glad I am not the only one who noticed that. I was telling some outfit mates the other day that it seems like the VS and TR have had a big boost in pops over the last week or so. I am really enjoying the fights.

[Phantomdestiny]

MLG i'm calling it . MLG is actually bringing some players

[Sirisian]

Yeah sorry about the performance and errors. I told someone else on IRC that I need to rewrite some of it. I'm still collecting data, but the data seems to be getting a tad large and even with indexes on my database it's having issues keeping up. That and the API goes down randomly a lot now so my data in my database is sometimes sporadic causing small issues. I need to set aside some time and look into it.

[EVILoHOMER]

Planetside 2 is so dead now, I wish we could go back to launch when it was every cont locked all day.

[Hamma]

You don't even play the game and said so in another thread. How would you even know? I've been seeing tons of cont locks.

[ChipMHazard]

So have I. Every alert that I've seen so far has brought with it a pop lock (I assume we're referring to the continent population cap being met).

[Snipefrag]

Because hes a douche bag who adds nothing to PSU imo.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[Artimus]

You don't even play the game and said so in another thread. How would you even know? I've been seeing tons of cont locks.

I know Waterson gets server lock on the reg. now.

[DirtyBird]

This still working Sirisian?
I couldnt bring up any stats at all and wondering if its my end or its simply not longer working.

[Pella]

Down for me.

Try this for now.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmUavphHXmIxdFhHUzJfN1VYalRnWS0xMnBUdTJpM 1E&gid=54

[DirtyBird]

Thx Pella I tried that one but its last data pull was 19th April.
Although that data will be good to compare to because it was before GU08.

[Sirisian]

I had some free time so I implemented a cache and fixed the errors I saw in it. I should probably go through the cache and manually edit the outliers, but in the mean-time it works again.

Also because of the cache you can see the full history again. It's at over 2 GB of data so querying it was timing out. The query is now touching the cache so it doesn't take anything really to render the full timeline for 2 months. In the future if this becomes prohibitive I'll probably edit it again to let you choose a range with a calender or something.

[Phantomdestiny]

seems like the population is increasing overall instead of decreasing but it is hard to tell because it isn't the number of active players but just logging amounts

[Shogun]

nice that soe implemented the possibility to spy on them and extract the data they never give out on their own ;)

it took 10 years until we got a playercount on ps1. it seemed classified all the time.

now with the api we can at least get a rough number. cool thing.

i wonder how the populations would change if chars were able to freely choose which server to play on.

[Roy Awesome]

seems like the population is increasing overall instead of decreasing but it is hard to tell because it isn't the number of active players but just logging amounts


I'm noticing this as well. I think populations are going up over the last 2-3 weeks.

[Phantomdestiny]

I'm noticing this as well. I think populations are going up over the last 2-3 weeks.

that's great then , i'm expecting a huge influx of players after e3 let's hope they have inter-continental warfare by then . Let's hope the tutorial and the lattice are in by then to make sure they stick around playing the game

[Vashyo]

Population icrease might have to do with the loyalty sub people got, I'm taking everything out of it this month, I'll propably go away again once it ends.

I doubt we will have intercontinental warfare before 2014, we don't have enough continents and making em takes so long. I'd think we need atleast 6 or more

[Phantomdestiny]

Population icrease might have to do with the loyalty sub people got, I'm taking everything out of it this month, I'll propably go away again once it ends.

I doubt we will have intercontinental warfare before 2014, we don't have enough continents and making em takes so long. I'd think we need atleast 6 or more

they said they were doing it with hossin because they are also making the battle islands at the same time for MLG so they will reuse the island between the continents in order to stop pop caps apparently

[DirtyBird]

Thanks Sirisian.
For Briggs at least it certainly looks like the pops have balanced out over all.
I've noticed a lot more TR on and a little less NC.
Was the GU08 that good or was it the warpgate rotation :p

[basti]

So, whats up with it? Havent updated since the weekend. :/

[ringring]

So, whats up with it? Havent updated since the weekend. :/
All character data feeds seem to be down. (except killboard and notifications)

[GeoGnome]

So, whats up with it? Havent updated since the weekend. :/

Yeah, guy above said it first, but check your character on the PS site...

My BR hasn't updated in a couple days (Think I've gone up 2 ranks from what it says I am).

[Crator]

This is freakin' cool info! Thanks!

[Rivenshield]

that's great then , i'm expecting a huge influx of players after e3 let's hope they have inter-continental warfare by then . Let's hope the tutorial and the lattice are in by then to make sure they stick around playing the game

/prays

/prays hard

[Sarloh]

Interesting!

[kereD]

Nice job. If you are willing to share, may I ask how you got this data? I'm interested in replicating it for the information of our outfit on Briggs.

[Sirisian]

Nice job. If you are willing to share, may I ask how you got this data? I'm interested in replicating it for the information of our outfit on Briggs.

I query for all the players that have a "last login" within the previous 12 hours. I retrieve a minimal amount of data from the API for all those players including their character name, last login, and if they're online currently. If they are currently in the game then I add 1 for that faction. If they aren't on but their last login is within the last hour then I add 1 for their faction.

Now the goal here is to count all the unique characters that have logged into the game within the last hour. My method counts anyone currently logged in and anyone that has logged into the game and is still currently playing.

The edge case it does not count is if the player logs into the game and plays for more than an hour and then logs off. It will not count them for their last hour of play if that makes sense.

All in all though the method seems to give a basic hourly estimate.

[kereD]

Hi thanks for that information, however I can't get the data to work for me in a usable way.
The problem I encountered is that the api will only return a maximum 20k records at a time reliably with their online status etc, if I get more than 20k records then some of the returned characters will not contain their online status. If I try recursing backwards through time the data doesn't match between each call.

Are you able to share what your api calls are for me as i'm drawing a blank now here. Thanks.

[Sirisian]

Hi thanks for that information, however I can't get the data to work for me in a usable way.
The problem I encountered is that the api will only return a maximum 20k records at a time reliably with their online status etc, if I get more than 20k records then some of the returned characters will not contain their online status. If I try recursing backwards through time the data doesn't match between each call.

Are you able to share what your api calls are for me as i'm drawing a blank now here. Thanks.
Oh yeah I've explained this in another thread before, but I grab them in batches. so like 200 at a time sorted by id and then I filter by results greater than the largest id in the last batch. This allows me to query in batches of 100 characters.
$requestUrl = "http://census.soe.com/<your id>/get/ps2/character/?id=>" . $currentMaxID . "&times.last_login=>" . $twelveHoursAgo . "&c:resolve=world,online_status&c:show=id,name.first,faction_id,times.creation,tim es.last_login,times.minutes_played,battle_rank.val ue,world_id,online_status&c:sort=id&c:limit=" . $batchAmount;

If you don't want to store and manage the data you can use my public API as long as you don't abuse it. I have other people using it.

For population for all servers summed together:
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/populationapi.php

For population of a single server:
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/populationapi.php?world=17

All server populations:
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/populationapi.php?world=compareall

You can append &hourfromstart=2554 to begn from any time. Just be aware that the hourfromstart is the hours after November 20th 2012.
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/populationapi.php&hourfromstart=2554

Simple json objects you can read into PHP then generate your page with. (Note JS can't do cross domain calls as you might know). Donations Accepted (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=KS4WSTSVTE93E&lc=US&item_name=Sirisian&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonH osted)

[Emperor Newt]

Anybody able and willing to extract peak values out of the data? Would be interested to quicky see the highest peak number of players. At least per month. Maybe even week or day but I don't think that tells much. Month might be more interesting in terms of a trend.

[Sirisian]

Anybody able and willing to extract peak values out of the data? Would be interested to quicky see the highest peak number of players. At least per month. Maybe even week or day but I don't think that tells much. Month might be more interesting in terms of a trend.
Do note that the API generates a lot of false data. You'll see spikes for instance in my graphs which are caused by their API accidently flipping a lot of players to "online" when they aren't online and other weird things. If you hover over the line segments in my graphs it'll say the peak number of players for "all".

[Calista]

My complements on your work but I have a request. Would it be possible to assign values to the y-axis on the most current sampling? Just like you have it on the left side would be great on the right side of the graph.

[Hirvox]

There's something wrong with the formatting of the graph. All of the X-axis labels are cut off right after the month name, so they're pretty much useless. And if I scroll left to earlier months, even labels in May get cut off.
Like this:
http://i.imgur.com/FGsQSaNl.png (http://imgur.com/FGsQSaN)