Do you think FH has become more inactive?

[GamerChic]

Feral Heart used to have at least 700 users playing daily, now it has dramatically decreased to 100-200. Could the restricted registration have contributed to some sort of 'rage quits' within the community? You tell me what you think.

*Edit* Wow. I didn't expect so much feedback. owo But, a lot of you have brought up some important aspects I completely overlooked, which is why I kinda love having these little discussions. Also, I didn't mean to be so exact with the numbers or directly blame closed registration. Sorry for my bad wording. ^^''

Thank you to all that have participated.~

[magicfairy]

Well I've watched the users drop dramatically every day and it has already given me nightmares, yes nightmares. FH has not been updated in a long while and people are beginning to mature from this stage and move on. We all have to lost interest some day, but it may be that FH has not been updated ever since 2012.

[Hylocereus]

It's only to be expected, honestly. This is a game that has been abandoned by its developer - when you know nothing new is ever going to come, and nothing is ever going to be improved, it's easy to lose interest.

As well as that, the only thing to really stay on for is the other players. If all your FH friends leave, then why stay yourself? It causes a bit of a domino effect when players get fed up and leave.

[Jango_Fett]

And another reason, I think, is the sometimes oppressive community and some rude players.
I know that I've left sometimes(Or cam close to) because of certain people that drove me over the edge.

And the fact that KovuLKD himself abandoned the game without a word, and came back only to confirm he wasn't coming back.
Sort of a big switchoff, yes?

And for what the game still has, like custom content, player made maps, good roleplays, and good staffers and people, there are always those who just do not want to give people proper respect and or hate on them for their opinions or character choices.

[Master_callos]

I think it's dependent on when you check. I've seen it multiple times recently go near 700 players.

[S. Italy/Romano]

I wouldn't say so. If you check the forum stats, you'll see that we're averaging at around 127 new members per day and around 2000 registrations per month. Had the registration being locked have an impact on this, you'd only see a handful of new members.

However, if you want to get the average users per day without including the previous registered users (those who registered when it was always open) you need to count 2000 divided by 30 for the number of users registering per day for that month. It averages to 66. And then, if you want to, you could try subtracting maybe 10 accounts max from 2000 for anyone making backup accounts.

The lowest number of new accounts per month was in October 2012, the first month after registration was closed and it averaged to about 717 and that's still 23 new people per day.

There's also a different side to this. People are in school. Most users here are teenagers who range from 12-16 years old. Most of them are in high school and as a result cannot stay up that long or have no access to FH from school. This probably means that from 8am-5pm /guessing here/ you won't see much activity. It also means that most of the year, unless it's on holidays, you won't see that many users because of their homework or other activities.

The timezones also make a difference. Some people from other countries may log on at 12am, while you're sleeping, other users may have a free day at 6pm, which is morning for them. I met a lot of new people this week /spring break/ because I stayed up past 12am. I can guarantee you that when summer hits, a LOT of people have summer off and then, you'll see your 700 users logging on daily. There's about 300 users online now. On the weekends and later in the day, I've seen it go up to 500.

As for the rage quits, maybe some people grow out of the game, maybe some don't like it anymore. That's their choice, but we also have a lot of new users pouring in everyday and not to be overly unconcerned, but in the demographic, quitting users are quite easily replaced by new ones. Yes, those users are dear to us and their friends, so I don't mean that having them leave is no big deal, but if you look at numbers, I don't think it would have that much of an impact.

[whitewolf223]

It happens every school year. Some people only have time to get on during the summer. Just wait till then. Then you'll see everyone complaining about the "Bad Token" you get when there's too many people online.

[Redlinelies]

I do like to see when people try to look into some actual numbers and back up their thoughts with some reasoning as of why, always very good, so many pats for that.

But some other good points has been mentioned above, and domino effect is probably something that can happen too.

In general, I do not think that the way the registration system works should be the first aspect/scapegoat to get looks it's way when it comes to the question or claim "Is FeralHeart becoming inactive/dying?". If I will be honest this is something that has been fairly common to see people mention, ask or talk about even within the very first year FeralHeart were here. I'd bump into people talking about in the game, and maybe an occasional forum post or journal somewhere not too far into the lifespan of this game, it has gotten a bit more common to see "today" however but I do wish to point out it has been fairly present over the years, so even though it's up for discussion whether or not the user count is going down and in which ways, I personally feel like I cannot take these kind of talks too seriously in most cases.

Even though I can understand the importance of updates and patches, and how it has played a big role in user activity/count we have throughout the time, something related to this is in general what the game is and has been at it's current state, it's a fairly basic chatting/roleplaying game at this point at heart, and many will grow tired or even bored of it quickly, even if things go well they just need something to do and hosting roleplays or making maps all day long might not cover up everything a certain user looks for in a game, and once the "honeymoon" sort of attitude for the game passes, many loose interest quickly and move over to something else, but of course it doesn't help that the last patch the game got was in late 2011(close to new years if I recall correctly).

From what I have observed peak times are not as active at they used to be certain days let's say 2 years ago, but I do feel like the game is holding up well considering on what it is and what we have to offer. The lowest amount I clearly remember seeing online on the server(not counting in times of server restart or other issues then it would be 0 or 1 user online), is actually around 21 users, and this was back in 2011 just a few months after the game launched, even today at the most dried out times I still catch user counts above that.

Another important thing I want to point out to mostly aimed at the OP of this thread. It's very important not to confuse the numbers when it comes to "users daily" and "currently online" being displayed in the top left corner of the site. What it shows on the page is only the current amount of users, and it changes drastically throughout the day depending on what sort of time it is "where" around the world. One point of the day we could have 100 users online, another we can have 800, so try not to mix these up. Your 5pm could be someone elses 4 am, and it has clearly shown that american afternoon hours are those who tend to be awake and at their computer at server peak hours, for us in Europe timezones that means we'd find most activity past midnight. I believe "users daily" probably span over 1000 users easily.

So in general, there's a lot of things to take in here and consider and from what I can see, a lot of people need to take in consideration of how the world works when not only they are online and what "their" eyes can see. Hope this enlightened someone regarding this.

[Misinterpreted]

Yes, many players have left the game to many reasons. Most of which were stated above, but the main two that I'd agree with would be the game not updated and rude players. I've met too many rude players in the game to be honest. :C

[wolflover18178]

Hmm, I guess there's a lot more younger people on FH, and younger people have school, and homework.
Ever notice how there's a LOT more people on weekends than on weekdays?
My guess is school.