Zezo forum:

Post by DonJuan21 | 2019-05-15 | 06:12:37

Do you think the fall in participation in VR-Offshore is associated with the instability of VR? Crashes, a canceled race (Muscat), vanished way points, etc? e.g. I can't tell you how many times I've been forced to step through the tutorial, it's maddening.

We're doing well to get 20k boats, and just a few months ago we had 3-4 times as many sailors.

I've made a graph showing participation as of late. The decline is striking.

https://postimg.cc/cvs8P1yx

On our team folks are saying they aren't going to participate until the bugs are fixed.

dzo

28 Comments

Post by zezo | 2019-05-15 | 08:37:56

Bugs, price increase, all that stupid cards and random shits.

Post by Flying Phil | 2019-05-15 | 11:15:19

Because of the bugs and the lack of information, response and/or compensation.

@DonJuan : You can bypass the tutorial, use the right menu and you can go directly to the home page.

Post by DonJuan21 | 2019-05-15 | 17:35:34

Thanks Phil. I wish I had figured that out long ago. Duh!

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2019-05-15 | 12:39:23

I think you should go further back if you have the info. Starting from RDR skews the data a bit I would say... but yes seems to be a gradual decline after that ... Solitaire, Round Ireland, Monaco Globe all had less than 20K last year.

Post by Dogzilla | 2019-05-15 | 14:37:33

Mini en mai
2019: 19 085 - 2018: 18 823 - 2017: 7 883

Normandy Chanel race
2019: 21 954 - 2018: 20 865 - 2017: 8 844

Post by turb | 2019-05-16 | 08:28:51

Reputations of the races should be taken into account too.
More exiting (and worldwide followed) to race VOR than Solo Maitre Coq...

Post by Dogzilla | 2019-05-16 | 09:50:03

In 2017-2018, during VOR there were between 50k to 80k sailors and Jules verne 58k.
This year for route du rhum 150k in Ultime and 100k in Imoca and Jules verne 100k.

Post by Dogzilla | 2019-05-16 | 09:59:55

Each year it's the same, the number of boat increase with "big races" in october-november and decrease afer.
It will be similar this year with transat jacques vabre and in 2020 with vend�e globe.
Lots of french sailors come for this kind of race cause they are very popular here.
VOR isn't very popular here. So the sailors are different.

Post by zezo | 2019-05-16 | 10:54:42

That's true. Most races are about 90% French players. VOR adds about 50% international participants. Also the clipper to some extent (if they negotiate it this year)

Post by Adrien2008 | 2019-05-16 | 14:29:15

Hi Cvetan, do you mean : VOR attract 65% french players and 35% others... or 50-50% ?
Thanks again for your job

Post by zezo | 2019-05-16 | 18:00:13

Around 50-50, if the users of this site are a representative sample.

Edit: I haven't seen those stats for a while. Looks more like 40:60 during the last VOR.

Right now it's around 65:35

Minimum (or is it maximum) 85:15 in November (during the Jacques Vabre transat)

Post by Adrien2008 | 2019-05-16 | 20:17:00

Thank you. I think the users (I do not know how many you have) are well representative of the regular players on VR .... and it probably lacks many French players who do not feel comfortable enough in English to use Zezo.

Post by zezo | 2019-05-16 | 20:44:15

Numbers don't have language. And there have always been players maintaining a user guide in french. Several guides over the years.

About the number of users - I guess about 5% of the players use this router.

Years ago I was tracking boats and players, and more than half of the top 100 were regular visitors. Not because this is the only tool or the best one. The top players use every tool and resource that's available to them.

Post by Adrien2008 | 2019-05-16 | 21:11:53

Thanks again for giving us those details

Post by YourMomSA | 2019-05-17 | 02:40:40

FWIW... I've only ever used Zezo. And my head. ;-)

Post by Adrien2008 | 2019-05-17 | 04:04:39

This is confirmed : as I do exactly the same, I don'thave the same head :-(

Post by Dogzilla | 2019-05-16 | 14:40:59

I don't know the real % but in VOR there were lots of swedish, dutch, australien...

Post by DonJuan21 | 2019-05-23 | 01:05:48

Only 5%! Wow. I wonder why so low. Maybe only 5% of the sailors are actually serious. That makes me wonder, what percentage of players actually pay for the full pack, vs. playing with points. That may be as low as 5% too.

If that's case, VR isn't laughing all the way to the bank as I assumed.

And maybe that's why it is so buggy, lack of programmers. They only have 10 employees listed on their page and of that, only four are developers.

Post by zezo | 2019-05-23 | 07:21:14

With the previous binary option version you could clearly see two fronts of boats and count the exact number of players using the pro options.

Now there is no clear distinction, and some player may be using options partly funded with money (I do sometimes)

But it looks around 5% indeed. I can usually make it top 1000 in a 20000-boat race without options nowadays.

And yes, 5% of 20k players is not the same as 10% of 100k players, as it used to be.

Post by PML | 2019-05-23 | 13:25:48

Yes, but has not the frequency of the races significantly increased in the past few months (20 races currently planned btw now and November)?

Post by DonJuan21 | 2019-05-24 | 05:38:06

Cevetan, do tell. What's your boat name?

:)

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2019-05-26 | 09:40:00

He's Big Bird @zezo.org. He was up the top in the Normandy race until he got distracted and missed the turn to Fastnet. He was one boat I would have been happy if he beat me :-)

Post by zezo | 2019-05-27 | 18:48:59

And then went to the country house and could not care less about virtual sailing games ;-)

Post by yucatan | 2019-05-28 | 07:20:21

in 2017 on the normandy channel race we were 8844...

Post by yucatan | 2019-05-28 | 07:21:58

and the race was vsr3...

Post by braunle | 2019-06-11 | 11:46:07

Well, I agree that for the big french held races e.g. Vendee the amount of sailors increase due to the fact that these races are popular and VSR is french. What I not understand in general is the weak international customer orientation from VSR.
The not made it till today to provide a 100% english version of the game. The VSR Forum itself is not multilingual it is mostly in french. And at least the ranking system is complicated and not really transparent. I guess, VSR could gain much more out of their game if they want to.