Aug 16, 2014

Family Size Statistics

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When it comes to the Family Module, size does matter. When it comes to player retention it shouldn’t and that is a fact Zynga continually fails to realize. When the Family Module was first introduced in June of 2011 there were over 10 million players [1],[2]. At the time, one of the biggest complaints was that the size was limited to 101 [1]. Little did anyone know that a maximum family size of 101 would someday be its downfall. Had Zynga listened and increased it things would be much worse than they are today. The data shown below was compiled on August 10, 2014 and came from the Family Ranks Spreadsheet by Team Spockholm and Metrics Monk. It is a fact that larger families do better in Family Progression, Family events/features and upgrade their properties faster. The problem with this is that the player base is too small to fill all families so the advantages are going to a disproportionate number of players. For many reasons, this is very extremely counterproductive to player retention. Zynga could fix this issue by taking family size out of the equation for progression, events and features but it would require a lot of work and creativity on their end. Family Progression could be tweaked so that the amount of Family Experience collected by each player was based on family size, competitive Family Events could be done bracket style (or removed entirely from the game) and properties belonging to smaller families could require less parts. Zynga did make the health of the Family Boss Fight on a gradient based on size so there is hope they are moving in this direction. It’s not the fault of the players that there aren’t enough of us to go around and smaller families continue to be punished because of it. Of the 28,025 registered families, only 1,726 have more than 90 members. This means that there are 376,221 players who struggle with the feature while 169,544 breeze by. The 2 families with 102 members is due to a bug that allows an additional member and we still don’t know what’s going on with the 3, 013 families that have 0 members [1],[2]. Many thanks to Martin from Team Spockholm for providing the total number of families based on each possible size. Rather than make a chart with 103 rows of data, I grouped them. The data for the total player based and the percentage of daily players was taken from the metrics images shown below.

Family Size # of Families # of Players
102 2 204
90-101 1,724 169,340
80-89 453 38,376
70-79 457 34,027
60-69 606 39,105
50-59 763 41,495
40-49 977 43,223
30-39 1,313 44,973
20-29 1,741 42,201
10-19 3,361 46,211
2-99,05042,045
14,5654,565
03,0130
Totals28,025545,765
Players Not in a Family132,832678,597
% Daily Players20.4%
Non-Daily Players in Families 434,429

familymembers dailyplayers percentdau

15 comments:

  1. What do you want to bet that the 20% of the players who play daily belong to the large families also, so it's compounding the gap?

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  2. I'd say it's probably closer to 50% of the daily players belong to the large families and are probably all paying customers too. Of course those of us who don't even have 30 people in our family are going to struggle with all of these events. The game mirrors lift. Not Fair to the underdog.

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  3. My family used to have approximately 68 players. However when the family business events were found to be based on family size, the family was pruned of any player not active in 3 months. Now we have 15 players. Of those 15 maybe 8 are daily players.

    Some days I really wish I was in a bigger (daily) mafia especially when it comes to finishing events, other days I'm glad because I don't always have time to do much more than the bare minimum to collect the family progression exp.

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  4. Interesting..And I assume you are talking in general...

    I am a member of a family with a little less than 70 people and we need to collect a few thousand more of those #$%* Knightfall (we are fighters, Arena messes us up) and we are done with the event, after getting rolled back even...

    "Mini" families are another exception....I have my own with 4 people in it and I have been done since yesterday, as I imagine many of the mini families have been...

    Also, Zynga smartened up and didn't give much notice so all those families that tossed those self leveling high stam/high energy mini in there red tag are now struggling..

    I just realized I am doing nothing more than babbling on your post, not really adding, but then again not really taking anything away form what you have shared...


    Might be I stop now :D

    ~BD

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    Replies
    1. It's not babbling at all! These are just numbers and you put a real person perspective to it. Thank you.

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    2. You forget that right before the family event started that all the mini helpers were already there to help out with the family icing event so zynga didn't have to give a long notice.

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  5. Very interesting thanks for the post. What these detail do not reflect (nor cannot for reason of a lack of data source) are players who have been deleted from their tag group and/or quit the game and left their group yet because of Zynga's lousy system maintenance procedures have not been removed. We have multiple cases of folks who removed themselves or were removed by an admin who continue to show up in the group. We have several folks who have tried to join our group but cannot because they continue to be listed in their old group despite having left. Companies truly concerned about their market would pay close attention to such things as quality system maintenance and quality control. There is a YouTube video showing that the founder of Zynga admits scamming players to grow his company. Unfortunately it appears that the culture of the company continues to foster scams (read that as why should they actually make their gaming system function properly 100% of the time).

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    Replies
    1. I thought there was something on Zynga support page to remedy the problem of not being able to leave/join a family

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    2. Well stated. Zynga doesn't care about it's players/customers and one the profit dips below a certain level they will drop the game like a bad habit. To each his own but there is no way in the world I would invest in this company. The players who have spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last few years are going to be in for a rude awakening soon.

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    3. Zynga claims they fixed the players leaving groups problem but they have not. We have 5 players in our 34 member group who quit the game and left our tag but are still listed. Zynga no longer responds to my efforts to get this fixed.

      As for the family events we no longer even try to do them as they are not "game play" but rather nothing more than a "scam" to try and force players to spend money. All of us used to spend a little money on MW now none of us do nor will we. I have played since 2009. Zynga had a decent grasp back then of how to make the game fun now it's mostly "work" and their developers just don't get that dynamic.

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  6. it is what it is , if you have a large family with non active players delete them, how are they helping if they dont play, as gf of my family we have 8 members ...actually 3 but multiple accts ..we have no problems finishing any family tasks do to were all active and play daily.you control your family and its activity.also the crying about the arena is ,too bad you wanna put every thing into energy then suck it up..my family is well balanced as far as our stats we are good fighters and have med..energy stam and health,its not rocket science but every one thinks the game should be made to fit there acct...were you need to fit your acct and family to the game.look at sadist mafia there always 1st in all events because there stamina hounds... but there week i can beat all of them...they get millions of ices via the arena...that's there choice,i see there to me ice is a bragging number and that's it.most of them haven't accomplished much in game play ...id like to see peeps who enter the arena and don't participate ejected from that arena they only hurt the other players and i don't see what they gain by not fighting.every one plays this game in there own way , unfortunately zynga cant p lease every one and never will. adjust, adapt, and over come, that's my advice to the peeps that cry about the game or end up non players cause they don't get it there way,this is not burger king you cant have every thing your way.just my thoughts on the game....and the thing that really ruins the game is the feed stealers , we used to go to the feed to collect and help others now if you dont know how these peeps max out as soon as they hit the feed..its hard for the others to collect items such as power cards and needed parts and bonuses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I limit who can see my power card posts...bonuses, I post to a group
      And it is crazy that my family of 24 has to ice 5700 in SA while a friends family of 60+ only has 4200 to ice
      Kathie
      Kathie

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    2. our family of 37 has to ice 6370 in SA :P

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    3. Zynga deserves the blame for ruining this game. The paying players, scripts, and feed stealers are only using what Zynga has allowed them to use to play the game. I don't think Zynga has pleased anybody in this game for years.

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  7. We had about 90 players; then some left to make their own family. others left to join another family; and then Zynga in its infinite wisdom last fall made it so no one really wanted to play much any more and half the remaining regular players quit by December. So now I have a group of 10-20 active and 50 inactives (who I'd toss out if others wanted to join). I've noticed that many families have the same problem.

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