Is the opinion which there is so many new players introduced to M&B series with Bannerlord a myth?

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I can only reiterate what several others have already said, in that your results are likely to be skewed/biased (to be precise selection bias). I say this because I do not think that the MB subreddit is a accurate representation of the BL total playerbase or even the total MB playerbase.You even acknowledge this in your initial disclaimer.

It is very likely that the MB subreddit has a higher proportion of "hardcore" (for lack of a better word) fans and less casual fans, when compared to the overall BL/MB playerbase. "Hardcore" fans are more likely to have already played Warband or even the original MB before playing Bannerlord. In other words, the percentage of veteran players (= BL was not their first MB game) is probably higher in the MB subreddit than it is in the total BL/MB playerbase. If this is indeed the case, then you can't draw conclusion on the overall BL or MB playerbase based on polls of the MB subreddit, because the sample (MB subreddit) is not representative of the population (MB/BL playerbase) that you want to analyse .The results/estimates from the polls suffer from (selection) bias - they overestimate the proportion of veteran players.

Increasing the sample size also does nothing against bias. To build on the example that Grindelvald gave, if you want to find out who the general population considers to have better sportshoes - Nike or Adidas - and you conduct an sample in the headquarters of Adidas, then your sample size can be 100, 1000 or even 10000 - the number doesn't matter regarding bias, because you are still asking only employees of Adidas. Adidas employees are not representative of the overall population - and the results are biased.
 
MB playerbase based on polls of the MB subreddit, because the sample (MB subreddit) is not representative of the population (MB/BL playerbase) that you want to analyse
This is true, I can not quantify of how much r/mounandblade subreddit resembles the population I want to examine. That is why I wrote the disclaimer. But I think it is unfair to say that 230k representative of a game which sold 5-10M is a small population of its origin.

And also:
From the wayback machine we could see r/mountandblade had 120k members at the date of EA release. Since that time, this subreddit doubled its member count and it is very unlikely that this new blood does not have the representatives of the new player base statistically.
 
But I think it is unfair to say that 230k representative of a game which sold 5-10M is a small population of its origin.
I think you misanderstand me. It is not the size of the subreddit that is the issue. The issue is that these 230k (likely) inlcude a higher percentage of veteran player when compared to the total playerbase. I.e., the subreddit has a higher share of veteran players and smaller share of newbies (=their first MB game was BL), while the total playerbase most likely has a smaller share of veteran player and a higher of casual players. So it is the distribution of the subreddit and not the size that is the issue. The problem with this is that if you conduct a poll on the subreddit, but want to draw conclusions about the overall playerbase, then then the poll will underestimate the amount/share of newcomers.

From the wayback machine we could see r/mountandblade had 120k members at the date of EA release. Since that time, this subreddit doubled its member count and it is very unlikely that this new blood does not have the representatives of the new player base statistically.
These numbers do kinda soften my concern, but I thnk that they still might underreport the amount of new players --> the issue of possible bias remains, but at least the the bias is probably not that big.

But these numbers also go against your point that BL didn't introduce many new players to MB. (Also a better visual might be the subscriber graph from here: https://subredditstats.com/r/mountandblade). Doubling the subscriber amount in 2 years would be a point for BL indeed being sucessful in reaching new players.
 
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What I was trying to say by the size is that because of the size it more likely the real player base can be represented best there among the social platforms.
Best among the social platforms, yes. But even the best among the social platforms is in my opinon not a good representation of the overall playerbase.

But, that is the place these polls took place.
Yes, but the polls and the subscriber graph seem to contradict each other regarding BL's sucess in attracting new players. Personally, I am much more inclined to believe in the subscriber graph, which shows that after the EA release of Bannerlord the subreddit saw massive growth.

Ofc, one may still argue that BL's supposed sucess at gaining new players wasn't really a success, because a lot of players probably stopped playing shortly after relase (which may partly explain the previous contradiction), but that is to be expected for games with a hyped release. Looking at steamcharts Warband avg player count over several years was 13k (pre BL), while BL seems to average 20k. In my book that would still be a decent sucess at attracting new players. Maybe BL's player count will increase even further once it leaves EA or major mods get released/finished.
 
but the polls and the subscriber graph seem to contradict each other regarding BL's sucess in attracting new players.
It could also simply mean the players of M&B series decided to use reddit. I do not get it. I mean I directly asked the questions to this subreddit, draw some data on which they chose the choices from the poll. This is far more concrete than your opinion about contradiction of subs graph.

Looking at steamcharts Warband avg player count over several years was 13k (pre BL), while BL seems to average 20k.
Just read the first page of this thread. We should talk about this player count relative to time.
 
I have never played Warband. It looks like Battlefield1942 with horses. Sorry, I can't do that. I have also never touched that redit poll.

Therefore, I think my experience hasn't been captured by this poll. I'm probably not the only one.
 
Therefore, I think my experience hasn't been captured by this poll. I'm probably not the only one.
Thanks for stating that, "one individual soul" who is not part of a poll which has 2k participant. Oh wait, some guys who are expert in these kind of things made sample size calculator and says 385 people is enough for decently accurate poll results which reflects real population opinion.

At least, come up with the argument r/mountandblade does not reflect the real player base which has more merit than you individual statement.
 
Thanks for stating that, "one individual soul" who is not part of a poll which has 2k participant. Oh wait, some guys who are expert in these kind of things made sample size calculator and says 385 people is enough for decently accurate poll results which reflects real population opinion.

At least, come up with the argument r/mountandblade does not reflect the real player base which has more merit than you individual statement.

I'm not coming up with any other argument than illustrating that there might be a blind spot in a niche reddit poll.

To justify 385 people being a representative sample, that sample has to be taken in a representative environment.

Is reddit a representative player base of Bannerlord players? has anything been presented to us that illustrates that Bannerlord players on reddit are an adequate demographic representation of the broader Bannerlord playing community?

E.g. if you poll a town in California who their preferred president is, they might suggest a Democrat. But that town doesn't clearly represent a nation wide voter base, culturally, demographically or socially. Therefore, that poll's results would be flawed, no matter how many people it samples. So most polls on preferred presidents are taken across the nation.

Polling is complicated, A sample size calculator only works is the sample is representative. It's really easy to make useless polls that mean nothing. it looks to me like this has already been covered in better detail in the post. but no harm in doubling down.
 
This is more like it.
From the wayback machine we could see r/mountandblade had 120k members at the date of EA release. Since that time, this subreddit doubled its member count and it is very unlikely that this new blood does not have the representatives of the new player base statistically.
Still, this does not quantify how the subreddit resembles the real player base but this is the best I come up with a data which could suggest it may, in a decent degree, represents the real player base while you are just stating your opinion.
 
Why does it matter? There were a lot of new players on release, including famous streamers that never played Mount & Blade. The hype on twitch was real for a few days. I think it was like 300k viewers.
It's safe to assume most zoomers didn't play Warband or only briefly because at that point it was 10 years old with outdated graphics and animations (that turned many people off). People don't become Warband veterans just because they owned the game and played for an hour and then never again. So yes, Bannerlord was the first real M&B game for most people. The hype was just fueled by fans waiting for the game for 8 years (and then getting disappointed :p)
 
It does matter when your beloved game dumped down. It is funny when people call here niche place when they do not like what they see and also calling reddit which is one fo the popular social platforms nowadays niche place where 120k of people joined with the release of Bannerlord. Maybe, it does not reflect the real player base in decent level but it sure must represent the people who got stuck playing and following the development of the game after the initial hype. It seems only 10% of them new players.

I wish I had access more places as a normal guy who can use internet. Like accessing Steam and see how much Bannerlord owners own Warband and played at least 50 hours or so before Bannerlord release.
 
It could also simply mean the players of M&B series decided to use reddit.
You mean many players, who were already playing Warband/MB before, only joined the subreddit during/after BL's release? Possible, but I think it is more llikely that most people who joined the subreddit during the release were really just newcomers to the series. (Probably even the majority of new subreddit users nowadays, but I am less confident in that statement).

Just read the first page of this thread. We should talk about this player count relative to time.
....well I did talk about player count relative to time.

I wish I had access more places as a normal guy who can use internet. Like accessing Steam and see how much Bannerlord owners own Warband and played at least 50 hours or so before Bannerlord release.
Totally agree - having to access to more and better data would help a lot in this discussion.
 
Polls are never meant to show what exactly reality is, they help us to see what is close to reality. I think statistically poll voter numbers are quite considerable amount to form an opinion from them. Bannerlord sold numbers are a success, I do not argue about that. It is about how many new players are introduced to M&B series with Bannerlord.

Btw, a reminder, Warband sold 10M copies according to Ali Erkin at Gamescom 2018. Which suggests that Bannerlord sold numbers hugely depended on Warband player base.

No, its not, its representative for those who go to reddit, which is as the other guy say "niche".

So your data is valid for that demographics, but cant be applied to the total amount of players who play Bannerlord.
I rarely go to reddit for Bannerlord, and if so its for memes.

Kind of like asking kindergarden kids if they want icecream 10/10 will have it, even the lactose intolerant kid.
 
No, its not, its representative for those who go to reddit, which is as the other guy say "niche".
10% new player reached that niche place even if game sold 5-10m. I wonder what this fact tell you about that 5-10 million people but whatever.

Edit: Whenever I go to r/mountandblade subreddit, I see 300-500 people online. Bannerlord averages 20k people on steam. So (400/20000)*100 makes 2% of the active players visiting that subreddit. This is a huge portion for a statistical evaluation. But what am I saying, it is a niche place after all, right?

As of today, we're displaying a new item in the subreddit infobar that shows the number of "users online". The metric is a count of unique users that have interacted with the subreddit within the past 15 minutes. Interactions include visiting the main subreddit page, voting from a subreddit page, or posting a comment/link to a subreddit. Note that this does not include interactions that occur on the front page. For example, voting on a front page item does not add to the active users count for that subreddit.

The number is currently obscured for low values(<100) out of privacy concerns. We may adjust it in the future depending on community feedback.

See the code on GitHub

Note that this did incur some changes to the subreddit CSS. You can find info on how to account for this in your subreddit styles here.
 
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But what am I saying, it is a niche place after all, right?
I think the argument (some) people are making is "sampling" aka we could do a survey that queries 50% of the population about prostate cancer... but it would likely yield unreliable results if all the respondees happened to lack a prostate.

Which isn't to say that the same applies here. It just means that citing X% of the population is not addressing their argument.

Edith: To give one potential example "problem" of the current sample selection - it queries people that are still involved with the game. How many newcomers to a product actually stick around to engage with the surrounding online community long term?
 
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The problem is not the 10% mark. That is fine. Smaller can even be very good. The issue with any sample validity is that the sample *must be random*. Otherwise you are working on a subset of the data with no idea how that subset related to the whole data set.

When you have these polls there is also a "self selection" bias of subset respondents. It isn't that they "lack a prostate". It is that you, the sampler, know nothing about the data in your subset that was not sampled. You don't even know how your data is off unless you know the relation between a truly random sample, and the sample subset(s) in question.

The subsamples discussed here are skewed in two ways:
1 - they were relevant to only the subset that went to a certain location (reddit)
2 - they were relevant only to the subset of that subset that chose to answer the poll (the self selection bias)

So you have a non-random sample of people who go to the subredit, and who answer polls. You know nothing of the data on people that don't go there, or who do go there but don't answer polls. In science, where you measure directly, we usually only have to deal with skew type #1. But in in social data you also have skew type #2, if you collect data via poll.

TaleWorlds could send out something random to all purchasers of Bannerlord, and ask them if they are new. But they would only get the results back from those that chose to answer (as Warband was so long ago there may not be a way to determine that without asking the purchaser directly). So that data would still have a self-selection subset skew. If TaleWorlds put a pop up in the game it would stil be more random, but also a subset of those that played the game during the time frame the data collection was active. And if the dialog was skippable, then even that would have the same two subset type limits (subset and self-selected respondent).

Without some, at least more randomly, collected data you really have no way to know how the sampled subset relates to the full dataset.

BTW, I'm new and don't answer reddit polls, nor did I learn from streamers. But, I have no idea how representative of the full data set my single point is ...
 
When you have these polls there is also a "self selection" bias of subset respondents. It isn't that they "lack a prostate". It is that you, the sampler, know nothing about the data in your subset that was not sampled.
When we are talking about humans as sample, there will be always self selection bias. People participate in your research as long as they choose to unless you will force them to give answers. Like firms who predict election results within minimal percentage error. They do not go out and force people to answer which candidate they will vote, right, people choose to part take in their poll and the firms know nothing about the people who do not participate in their poll but they still predict the results within minimal error. Of course, no way, I am claiming what I did was up to the standards of those firms.
they were relevant to only the subset that went to a certain location (reddit)
This is true. But when this certain location hit a certain member number, these members will start to resemble the original group they are in. My biggest problem here, my inability to quantify how much resemblance this is. But this is the best I can come up with:

A good maximum sample size is usually 10% as long as it does not exceed 1000​

A good maximum sample size is usually around 10% of the population, as long as this does not exceed 1000. For example, in a population of 5000, 10% would be 500. In a population of 200,000, 10% would be 20,000. This exceeds 1000, so in this case the maximum would be 1000.

Even in a population of 200,000, sampling 1000 people will normally give a fairly accurate result. Sampling more than 1000 people won’t add much to the accuracy given the extra time and money it would cost.
If we approach the subreddit member number like a poll, the people who reached this niches of the Subreddit which has 230k members should be decent reflection of the real player base and 2k people participated in this poll.

To give one potential example "problem" of the current sample selection - it queries people that are still involved with the game. How many newcomers to a product actually stick around to engage with the surrounding online community long term?
This is something I am very confident that poll results are very close to reality and this shows mostly your original fan base stick around.

Edit: Btw, can TW see this "Like accessing Steam and see how much Bannerlord owners own Warband and played at least 50 hours or so before Bannerlord release." information? If TW can and the poll results missing the actual reality by a huge margin, please share it and relieve my soul so I can have peace ?.
 
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I'm someone who got introduced to the series with Bannerlord actually. Started playing Bannerlord but it was really bugged at release and so I started to play Warband and recently started Bannerlord again. I think the biggest reasons why new players stop playing are that the game is pretty difficult and that it takes a while to get used to it, many are waiting for final release (don't want to learn such a complex game just to have to re-learn it after release) and a lot of people are mostly interested in the upcoming mods.

I'm not sure about that poll tbh. For a proper sample you need to select people randomly and selecting people that actively post on the M&B subreddit or the forums isn't random at all.

I wouldn't be worried, the franchise overall has a lot of players (steamcharts) and there are a lot reasons to play something else currently: Early Access, this patch is getting pretty old and other games releases like Elden Ring.
 
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