Beta 6 Stat Summary(Leaderboards have been reset.)Beta 6 was a big release since it added the
256-achievement system, and it also took us quite a while to hit Beta 7 due to the huge new
robot hacking system, so that means 6 was out there for quite a while to give us... more data!
However, remember that due to the GDPR changes in May, score uploads were switched to opt-in only so we no longer get any anonymous data, bringing us back to the way it was before last year prior to Steam. That's fine with me, although it means what we're seeing here now only represents a subset of the player base. As for the portion of players we do have here, based on old data I'd say it's at least half.
Against that background, let's dive in...
[For a while now I've kinda had a formula going for these stat analysis posts, but I won't be following that so closely this time.]In the four months (!) of Beta 6,
5,619 score sheets were uploaded, of which
4,811 (
85.6%) had a score high enough (>= 500) to be included in the stats.
529 unique named players submitted at least one run, averaging
9.1 qualified runs per player.
Altogether Beta 6 saw a stunning
462 wins (an
8.2% win rate!) by Valguris (81), Mhorre (38), Malthusis (30), lsend (27), Raine (26), Terminus (22), wilk (22), Pimski (19), zxc (19), GJ (16), PlasticHeart (15), Main.Cuck (12), GridBugBear (11), MojoPoop (11), Decinym (9), PhenomPhear (9), GOR (8), Zyalin (8), Joshua (7), Palikka (7), Ape (4), Ben'n'Dan (4), FluffyCat (4), Airus (3), Amphouse (3), bugsniper (3), Kyzrati (3), Rumbl3 (3), Alexbot (2), DDarkray (2), fpsbossfight (2), James Vagabond (2), Maugrift (2), Owlsley (2), Quelan (2), Sabazin (2), SNACKS (2), and all of the following players with one win each: b_sen, Benjamin, Donnie, Finestep, Leebears, LuckyLuckLuc, MajesticThrust, Misery, Mitaro, nameofteam, nuzcraft, Phantom, RBrandon, RNGesus, Tapuck, TheMulletron, VapourLock, Xifax, and Zinc. (Note that most of these players hang out on our
Discord, so stop by if you're looking for advice :D)
Even factoring in the community's increasing collective skill, those are some pretty high numbers, especially those topping the list. One clear factor is the popularity of turn-based speedrunning as an alternative way to play Cogmind, and a lot of the speedrunners are quite good so it's not really a matter of whether they'll win, just how long it'll take. Assuming wins below 3,000 turns are probably speedruns, they account for half (
49.4%!) of all wins. This makes sense because speedrun wins are pretty quick to knock out compared to regular runs.
I got in a speedrun win myself, unfortunately just outside of 2,000 turns (though only my second try :D). I remember when I used to be able to reliably hang out in or near the top 10 on the leaderboards, but now my usual runs aren't even in the top 30 anymore! There are more players, and more players are getting better. Beta 6 leaderboards can be found
in the archives, including all Beta 6 score sheets linked at the bottom.
Achievements being the big thing in
Beta 6, we should definitely take a look at those.
Except for the few which were bugged and only just recently fixed for Beta 7, at this point every achievement has been earned.
although no single player has earned all achievements yet. The highest achievement rates so far:
Player Achievement Rate
GJ 89%
Valguris 79%
Raine 73%
PhenomPhear 72%
Terminus 71%Note that we can't take a close look at specific achievement numbers because unfortunately Steam does not display accurate rates. The data you see on their site is rounded, and Cogmind has so many challenging achievements compared to the number of frequent players that a bunch of achievement numbers simply round to zero. They've all been earned by at least someone though.
Among the rarest achievements are some of the win types, since there are so many different ways to win and not many of the associated achievements can be earned simultaneously. Really a good number of achievements in general are mutually exclusive, so truly covering the full range is a matter of doing enough runs while aiming for these different achievements--using different play styles, taking different routes through the world, engaging with different challenges and plot points...
That's not to say you can't earn a lot of achievements in a single run. The top achievement-earning runs:
Player Most Achievements in a Single Run
Valguris 124
zxc 95
Pimski 93
lsend 76
Airus 74124 is nearly
half of Cogmind's achievements in a single run! Of course, that was as 15-hour combat run that hit a crazy amount of content...
In total players earned
135,575 achievements during Beta 6, averaging
28.2 per run.
We also had a bunch of score sheet entries added specifically as part of the achievements update to help record information required to award them, so we could check out some of those as well...
- 195 Cogminds were scanned by Researchers, which can be a dangerous thing to have happen, but some players either don't mind or even (!) do it intentionally. 60 winning runs were scanned.
- 0.8% of matter was collected remotely, the same ratio among both wins and non-winning runs.
- 28,856 unidentified prototypes were attached, about 6 per run. Terminus attached the most in a single run (120).
- 917,801 spaces were dug, 69,045 (7.5%) via melee. Certainly the majority of terrain was destroyed by AOE weapons, but melee digging must be explicit so that high a percentage is telling of the value of melee digging as an effective strategy.
- 14,174 Recyclers were shooed. McSi wins the award for being the most annoyed, having shooed 47 Recyclers in a single run.
- 29 machines were destroyed in a single turn by PhenomPhear. Boom.
- 22,027 unidentified exits were taken, an average of 4.58 per run. GJ took the most in a single run: 24
Meta stats:
- 91.5% of players use fullscreen (25.8% of those use borderless windowed mode)
- 6.6% use hjkl for movement
- 11.7% prefer ASCII
- 23.3% don't touch the mouse
- 0.9% of players have rebinded at least one command
- Smallcaps (the default) is the most popular font choice (63.5%), followed by Terminus (18.7%), and X11 (8.7%) (9.1% use some other font)
- 1080p is the most common resolution (55.0%), with 30.1% of players using something lower, and 14.9% higher
There were almost no changes to the meta stats since Beta 5, aside from a noticeable increase in the number of keyboard players and the portion of those selecting the Terminus font somewhat rose against Smallcaps.
This time around we also got a new meta stat to look at: Tactical HUD use.
73.2% of players have activated that feature. Anecdotally some players prefer having somewhat fewer numbers and less clutter on the interface, although a majority of those players using the regular HUD probably either didn't play much yet or haven't noticed it in the options. If you aren't using the Tactical HUD yet, you'll most likely want to do that once you're familiar with most of the mechanics since it gives extra useful information (but can be confusing and distracting when you first start out, hence it's off by default).
In terms of purely aesthetic preferences, only 2.1% of players use a render filter, unchanged from Beta 5 (but I forgot to cover that last time, when that feature was first introduced). The few who use it are generally turning on low-contrast mode.
Next time we'll get to take a look at the robot hacking system introduced for
Beta 7, among other new stats added to the score sheet.