Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kyzrati]

Beta 7 Stat Summary
(As usual, leaderboards were reset with the new release. The full archived Beta 7 leaderboards can be found here, with score sheets for all runs accessible at the bottom.)

Time to look at non-anonymous player data! Like Beta 6 this was an especially long cycle, spanning months of Beta 7, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.2LE as I also took time out to do some other dev things, so we now have 6,145 score sheets to go through... Well, technically we're only looking at 5,208 (87.3%) of those since the rest scored below the 500-point threshold, a similar ratio to what we've seen before.

606 unique named players are included this time, a 14.6% increase compared to Beta 6. That's 11.6 qualified runs per player, a 27.4% increase.

The Beta 7 win rate was actually significantly lower at 6.6% (down from 8.2%), primarily because speedrunning was a big thing in the last release, but not so much this time. For Beta 6 I graphed the wins by turn count and found that about half of all wins were speed runs, so technically excluding those our win rate has actually increased somewhat. There were 344 wins in all by

Valguris (126), MTF (17), Zyalin (15), lsend (14), GJ (12), PlasticHeart (11), kiedra (10), Raine (10), Pimski (9), Tone (8), wilk (8), Decinym (6), Terminus (6), whitenitro0 (5), badjay (4), Main.Cuck (4), Malth (4), cptwinky (3), GridBugBear (3), JackNine (3), Kyzrati (3), Mhorre (3), octapi (3), Omewes (3), Puzzlebark (3), tiniclx (3), UlyssesB (3), Ape (2), IceBox (2), JakeThyCamel (2), MojoPoop (2), Owlsley (2), PhenomPhear (2), Rumbl3 (2), Aeon2927, Alexbot, Amphouse, bugsniper, ConfusingDalek, Cowmind, FIRE_C4T, GOR, Heavyrisk, Howard, JC, Joel, joke_LA, McSi, moonshine, NoNeedToExplain, physalin, Quelan, RNGesus, Sherlockkat, slh, Some Random Guy, SpiritFryer, SSMR, TBExtent, tournTrione, zidji, Zinc, zxc.

Once again Valguris racks up an insane number of wins xD

And of special note, Pimski earned Cogmind's second highest ever score (241,581!) using so-called "Garrison looping," repeatedly traveling through garrisons and destroying their contents, returning to the main floor. There was only one place in the world where this was possible, and it also involved the most challenging garrisons, but through a combination of speed and guided weaponry, Pimski managed to take out 44 of them xD. As of Beta 8 some of the mechanics involved there have changed so that it's no longer possible, but we're already seeing more regular runs creep up towards 200k regardless... That said, it may never be possible to break the 123 Regions Visited record set by that run.

Last time I graphed wins by turn count, and now that everyone seems to have speedrunning out of their system I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at win distribution by real time:



Most of Valguris' runs tend to fall in the 0.5~1.0-hour range, hence the extra high surge there, otherwise it's a fairly even distribution overall. I split out his runs in the graph to give a better representation :P

PlasticHeart has also provided us with what he calls "mutation distribution," graphing what kinds of long-term benefits different winners are using:



As you can see the graph excludes speed runs since they tend to distort data. There's a fairly even distribution here as well, although it's interesting to see that nearly 40% of wins do so with no mutations at all. Of course, getting any of these requires deviating from the main path, sometimes fairly far away, so they aren't the kind of thing you'll just "happen across." The new FarCom introduced for Beta 8 will no doubt be popular. (The current "mutation" data for Beta 8 scores is also available here, by the way, although there's not yet a way to tell whether anyone's immediately lost FarCom and therefore didn't really take advantage of it.)

The big new thing for Beta 7 was RIF, or robot hacking, so that's definitely something to explore here.

Obtaining this ability requires entering a Garrison, which isn't too bad if you're prepared, but a lot of people were probably avoiding them before, so I imagine there was a distinct lack of experience... The data bears that out, with 3.6% of losses inside a Garrison, compared to 2.3% in Beta 6.

422 runs (8.1%) acquired RIF, two-thirds of them inside the -8 Garrison, although a fair but smaller number did it in -7, and relatively few later than that. RIF keeps getting improvements, some in the Beta 7 updates, more in Beta 8, and likely yet more in Beta 9, so the style is definitely coming into its own.

The average RIF run hacked only 9 bots, but the highest number hacked was 124 (by Joel). Players tended to hack combat robots a bit more than non-combat bots. The only hacks that went completely unused so far are tweak_propulsion, likely because it's pretty situational and there are generally better options, and report_prototypes, report_schematics, and report_analyses, probably because their results are both uncontrollable and can be achieved through other means anyway, thus Relay Couplers are too valuable to spend on them.

Among RIF runs, only an average 3.27 Relay Couplers were attached, although Joel attached 43 in a single run. And wow, apparently I took the second spot in this category with 41 attached (and the third spot with 24 xD). I did rather like RIF, and streamed a couple runs with it, and plan to do some more, having really barely scratched the surface so far when it comes to robot hacking... 131 (31%!) of RIF users never attached a single Relay Coupler, probably because they were still learning, or unprepared for that Garrison ;)

I've compiled a chart of hacks by the number of times they were used, excluding anything with fewer than 10 uses total:



Hacks that can target both combat and non-combat bots are not marked, but some of those are especially popular as well, such as overload_power, a great hack for making a mess. parse_system is popular of course, but it only provides meta information and plot stuff so isn't as meaningful here. That was something which could always be done even before RIF.

formatsys_high is by far the top hack, the good old assimilation hack which is expensive but if you've got the coupler power might as well use it! overwrite_iff is the cheaper temporary version, useful for weakening enemy groups when a newly formatted ally would end up just dying anyway.

I'd like to compare this data to what we get from Beta 8 to see if there are any shifts as players learn more about the different hacks, and perhaps take advantage of RIF more often as it's both been buffed and works well with FarCom.

I was curious about gunslinging stats since Beta 7 made that guaranteed, plus more players might want to take advantage of it as a result. Sure enough, the average amount of gunslinging doubled in Beta 7, increasing from an average 1.68 secondary targets to 3.03. (I did a gunslinging run myself.) kiedra led the pack with a whopping 104 secondary targets in a single run. By comparison my own gunslinger run only had 29, but that's still pretty high ;)

Melee secondary attacks were also buffed, and while they weren't recorded in Beta 6 so we can't compare, according to Beta 7 data there were an average of only 0.51 per run. That's fairly low, but then most people prefer taking on targets one-on-one with their melee builds. That said, PhenomPhear had a run with 32 (!) secondary melee attacks. To be clear, this is attacking more than one robot with a single melee volley.

Comparable data that we do have for Beta 6 includes follow-up attacks, i.e. hitting a single target with more than one melee weapon. There was a definite surge there, where the average run went from 0.90 follow-up attacks to 2.00. The averages in all these are rather low since many don't use this mechanic at all, but it's extremely effective. Back in Beta 6 the follow-up record in a single run was 284, but that was topped in Beta 7 by GJ with 527! That's quite a beat-down...

Meta stats:

• 89.9% of players use fullscreen (30.9% of those use borderless windowed mode)
• 7.3% use hjkl for movement
• 12.8% prefer ASCII
• 21.8% don't touch the mouse
• 1.5% of players have rebinded at least one command
• Smallcaps (the default) is the most popular font choice (65.9%), followed by Terminus (16.2%), and X11 (7.8%) (10.1% use some other font)
• 1080p is the most common resolution (53.8%), with 28.4% of players using something lower, and 17.8% higher
• 1.5% percent of players are using a render filter, fewer than in Beta 6. Most of those are activating low-contrast mode.
• 72.6% of players are using Tactical HUD mode

[Kyzrati]

Beta 8 Stat Summary

It's the end of an age! This is the final stat summary based on the system we've had in place for past several years, as we migrate to the new database-driven system from Beta 9 onwards. That system is not yet available, and I'm not sure how the future stat analysis will be handled, but the data is being uploaded (assuming you've opted in via the options menu) and in the meantime you can already explore the online data for your own runs via the URLs appended to your scoresheets.

The full archived Beta 8 leaderboards can be found here, with scoresheets for all runs accessible at the bottom.

For Beta 8 we have a total 7,225 runs that made the 500-point threshold (86.2% of a total 8,381 runs).

Sadly there was a server issue in June leading to about 10 days in June during which scoresheets could not be uploaded, and I estimate we likely lost approximately 300 non-anonymous submissions. And although the main problem was eventually fixed, in the subsequent months a number of scoresheets failed upload for some reason and we couldn't figure out why or even precisely what, only much later discovering that it seemed to be some of the +/++ extended run wins that were failing, and some others as well for unknown reasons. So although this leaderboard's share of run data is quite large because the 8/8.1/8.2 period lasted quite a while, let it be noted that we're unfortunately missing about 4% of the runs, including some wins. (As per my announcements regarding this issue, however, some players proactively provided me with their scoresheets for inclusion, so some of them were recovered and added retroactively.)

699 unique named players submitted at least one qualifying Beta 8 run, or 10.3 per player, an 11.2% decrease from Beta 8, although Beta 8 itself was a significant jump from 7.

Beta 8's win rate continued on a downward trend, from 8.2% in Beta 6 to 6.6% in Beta 7 to the latest 4.9%. This is due to the number of new players remaining steady whereas a lot of the old guard capable of reliably winning runs taking a break during the unusually long Beta 8 cycle (also back in Beta 7 they were speedrunning, which leads to far more deaths :P).

354 wins were submitted by alice_fexa (28), 3.14 (25), Pimski (15), Trione (12), Naughtyusername (12), Dullahan (12), lsend (11), Alexbot (10), Terminus (9) PlasticHeart (9), Mitaro (9), Horse (8), Valguris (8), cptwinky (8), Xii (7), Main.E (7), Solar Sloth (7), MTF (7), Leebears (6) muxecoid (5), whitenitro0 (5), Palikka (5), Fod (5), Zyalin (5), Gaidara (4), Owlsley (4), Howard (4), Joshua (4), TBExtent (4),Quelan (4), Raine (4), Torako (3), JSLIN (3), eldritch (3), Puzzlebark (3), Malth (3). There were (2) wins each by TheBestTreadsBuild, SNACKS, fpsbossfight, Cheeriohz, Styles, Kyzrati, inSANE, zzxc, Rumbl3, octapi,Sorctek, AlmondRoll, Sylvia, eb, tiniuclx, JC, aoemica, Amphouse, and (1) by Benjamin, MojoPoop, mat, Daniexpert, TheEpicPerson, Nikola Kolodziejczyk, IAMCRAIG, Nikolayag, Cracklepappy, cinereoux GridBugBear, Omewes, Tone, l.n.c.a., Vect, ConfusingDalek, Mutter, PerrySimm, SSMR, JackNine, Suslik, Cookie, Gobbopathe, Maiker Moran, QudTheCat, ctrl_alt_x, Cowmind, happylisk, BCN, Bert, RNGesus, Wayward Satellite, KirdTheApe, wilk, 277, d4void, Gitida,Finestep, Marcus Aseth.

alice_fexa took the lead this time in total win count, and Pimski once again broke Cogmind's high score record with a whopping 355,452.

PlasticHeart's "winners mutation distribution" graph is back, growing increasingly complicated as yet more combinations are possible due to new strategic options:



According to this, two-thirds (63.8%) of winners obtained access to FarCom, one of Beta 8's big new features, although 11.3% of those definitely stole prototypes from the Exiles and later had their access rescinded. An additional greater number no doubt also lost access, unknown because the old scoresheets didn't include any explicit indication of stolen prototypes (we'll have that data for Beta 9), so the true number of runs actually using FarCom throughout might be half or less.

I've been curious about the total number of runs by individual players, something we haven't looked at before, so I put together that data for Beta 8:



A little more than half played only one or maybe a few runs, those who generally just try out what's new in the latest Early Access release then go back to whatever else they were playing, with the second largest category being the core group of players, many who keep coming back for more and do quite a few runs aiming for not only the latest content but also extra achievements and lore. At the highest end are some pretty crazy figures!

The top three run counts by individuals:
  3.14              405
  alice_fexa        343
  Naughtyusername   225

Alongside the run counts I also tallied the average number of evolutions by all the runs in a given category, showing that the players who did more runs also performed better on average.

But the averages were only so telling so I thought it'd be even more interesting to look at the single best run from each player and average only those runs, finding a much clearer disparity between the groups, and a clearer connection between number of runs and how far players are capable of reaching. (Of course depending on the player and their style that could also be attributed to sheer luck in some cases, though I don't think that accounts for the majority of the difference, based on relative scores.)

Exiles

Beta 8 added the first new map in a while, so of course a lot of players are going to be interested in visting it, especially considering it's in the early game. Almost one-third (31.6%) of runs (2,285) visited the Exiles in their lab, which is quite a lot! It's near the beginning so not too hard to reach, although getting there does require passing through the Mines, which is where 9.7% of runs ended this time around. This is up from 5.2% in Beta 7, when the Mines only had their other regular benefits rather than being a route to the EX-prototypes and their FarCom system. (Note that leaving the Exiles lab forces players to pass through a second Mines area as well, which is yet another chance to die there.)

Funnily even 2.7% of runs ended in Exiles itself! This seems like it should be more rare because it's a friendly map and although dangerous things can happen there, you're protected from them, but this value comes mostly from players who are intentionally attacking them which doesn't always go so well considering how powerful they are relative to how weak Cogmind is at the start. Still, by now it's clear that if there's a potential benefit to be had by being evil, a portion of players are going to do whatever it takes to get it :P

Trackers/DC

In other branch activity, I was curious how the addition of a new deadly enemy, Trackers, affected the number of people using "DC" compared to before. Of the runs that routed through the necessary map, 17.6 used DC in Beta 7, compared to a much smaller 10.1% in Beta 8. Admittedly this doesn't capture the portion people who didn't visit the necessary map in the first place specifically because they didn't intend to do this, but that portion won't be too significant because there are great benefits to be had there even without "DC". The shift could also be attributed to a factor mentioned earlier, the old guard (more likely to use this strategy) playing less of Beta 8 while a greater number of newer players don't even know the feature exists, but we also have anecdotal evidence from the community that suggests this strategy is being relied on less often as a result of its new consequences.

RIF

Strategically speaking FarCom actually goes pretty well with RIF, which was just introduced in Beta 7, so it might be worth taking a look at if/how RIF usage changed.

687 runs (9.5%) entered at least one Garrison, and 194 (2.7%) died inside one, down from the 3.6% in Beta 7, meaning either fewer people entered Garrisons since RIF was no longer the New Thing, or those that did got better at tackling Garrison challenges. 436 (6.1%) of runs actually used a RIF Installer, down from the 8.1% of Beta 7, so indeed fewer were likely interested in getting this functionality. (I think this particular data would be somewhat more accurate if we only checked whether each player acquired RIF on any of their runs, but that's more complicated with the set I have so I'm not doing it that way.)

The average RIF run hacked only 9 bots, the same average found as in Beta 7 (split evenly between combat and non-combat targets). aoemica hacked the most in a single run, 146! Among RIF runs an average of 2.87 Relay Couplers were attached in a single run(fewer than the 3.27 in Beta 7), compared to aoemica's 66 couplers on one go! Somewhat surprisingly 171 RIF-capable runs didn't attach a single coupler, an even higher ratio than last release.

I mentioned in the Beta 7 stats that I'd like to see if/how relative bothack usage changed from one release to the next, but it really hasn't shifted much aside from a noticeable rise in find_chute uses as Waste-hunters discover how useful that one is :) (also good for slow bots to use in avoiding an undesirable visit to Crusher land).

HCP

With the Hcp. Storage Unit finally making its way back into Cogmind, I thought it'd be interesting to confirm that it's affecting the average and upper storage capacity. That does pan out in the data...
             Largest    Average     Most      Average
             Inventory  Capacity    Carried   Carried

Beta 7 avg   12.5       9.1         11.3      7.3
Beta 8 avg   15.9       11.3        14.3      9.5

Beta 7 max   60         35          48        34
Beta 8 max   62         41          62        40

Pay2Buy

Not included in the regular stats presented here, we've had a total of 105 Pay2Buy runs uploaded since that mode was introduced in April. The mode is still accessible and as of now a total of 50 unique players have both played the mode and uploaded their data. The leaderboard for the event period is here, including access to the original announcement and many more event-specific stats. There were 39 players who participated in time to be included for the leaderboard.

Meta

• 91.0% of players use fullscreen (30.4% of those use borderless windowed mode)
• 5.7% use hjkl for movement (41.2% prefer mouse, 11.3% use arrows, 41.8% use numpad)
• 11.0% prefer ASCII
• 21.3% don't touch the mouse
• 1.6% of players have rebinded at least one command
• Smallcaps (the default) is the most popular font choice (67.5%), followed by Terminus (17.0%), and X11 (7.3%) (8.2% use some other font)
• 1080p is the most common resolution (53.8%), with 28.9% of players using something lower, and 17.3% higher
• 1.3% percent of players are using a render filter. Most of those are activating low-contrast mode, followed by brightness tweaks as the second most popular adjustment.
• 72.9% of players are using Tactical HUD mode

[Kyzrati]

The Beta 9 stat summary is finally here! And it's big. Really big. So big that it's on the blog

[Kyzrati]

Beta 10 Stat Summary

Once again a major new Cogmind version has been released, and that means it's time to look back at some of the stats for the previous version! Beta 11 was the longest ever cycle in Cogmind development history (being the huge overhaul that it was), meaning Beta 10 was active for quite a while and therefore includes a lot of runs, though that release itself was not uniquely interesting from a data perspective considering that much of the work that went into it was of a cosmetic nature, including for example the ambient audioscape and QoL-related features. By comparison I'm sure the future Beta 11 stats will be very interesting when those come out, given how much was changed or added, but that's for next time on the blog. Here we'll be using the older forum-based format to explore some of the usual player stats, as well as of course poking around here and there looking anything that might be relevant to Beta 10 in particular.

As usual the leaderboards have been reset and the full archived Beta 10 leaderboards can be found here, with scoresheets for all runs accessible at the bottom.

For Beta 10 we have a total 14,338 runs that made the 500-point threshold (96.7% of a total 14,820 submitted runs) to be included in the leaderboards and results here. That count includes 12,545 regular runs, which we'll focus on for the purposes of the stats below, as well as 1,793 runs completed under special events or challenge modes, which I'll write a bit about separately.

1,320 unique named players submitted at least one qualifying Beta 10 run, or 10.5 per player, returning to earlier levels after having dipped a bit in Beta 9.

Difficulty

Beta 10 was the second release after adding the difficulty selection menu, so the change in player distribution wasn't as stark as that seen between Betas 8 and 9, though we can still see a bit of a downtick in the portion of players using non-Rogue modes.



However, the number of players in all categories increased for Beta 10, so the change in distribution here was at least partially a function of a more hardcore roguelike players joining the community (+60.7% vs. +20.3%/+12.2% for Adventurer/Explorer). There was also likely a smaller number of players gradually shifting out of other settings (especially Adventurer) to play Rogue, having gained more experience and wanting to seek extra challenge.

Wins

The win rate in Beta 10 was 4.1%, a new low down from 5.7% in the previous release (and only slightly below Beta 8), though there's generally too much noise to read into such a broad value. As a better comparison to other releases, for my own purposes I looked at the number of Rogue-level players who won at least one run, mainly to more easily filter out runs where the player was doing weird stuff or not aiming to win, and excluding the other difficulty settings since they can use quicksaves (and aren't what the content is balanced around anyway).



There we see a fairly consistent rate across all releases from the past few years, solidly in the 12~14% range. I imagine the win-one-run rate won't fall too much in Beta 11 (those who can already win will find the new version challenging, but eventually figure out how to deal with the new content), although next time we do these stats I'll be very curious to see if the general win rate falls further, which is likely given that the difficulty of Complex 0b10 itself was increased.

516 wins were submitted by GJ (56), Jezoensis (47), CrossedViper (28), MTF (17), cptwinky (13), Wyvric (11), 3.14 (11), aperiodic (10), Savant (10), Alexbot (9), blelm (9), ChromeKnight (9), derk (9), ktur (9), LU-1G1 (9), Perseus (9), zzxc (9), Phaethon (8), Farfid (7), lsend (7), Palikka (7), thingamajigger (7), alice_fexa (6), Michael (6), Sanctumkeeper (6), cavemonk (5), KTG-V2 (5), leiavoia (5), OR-2NL (5), sentrybuster (5), WayneKnight (5), Exp. Geonium Core (4), Floating Point Exception (4), Pimski (4), the cat (4), Torako (4), Andru7428 (3), Azken Zutik (3), Boris (3), Cookedpoo (3), Demise (3), Finestep (3), Kenzurith (3), kerapace (3), Leebears (3), Mares (3), Tone (3), whisper (3), xerxia (3), youngster (3), Buffy (2), Coronach (2), Cracklepappy (2), Dawn (2), Decinym (2), Hermelin (2), KTG-V3 (2), MoonDog (2), muxecoid (2), Nikolayag (2), NoNeedToExplain (2), Peace (2), pointone (2), rath (2), Saya (2), Terminus (2), Valguris (2), Vectis (2), Xeram (2), and (1) by AF_C2_5001, albenzo, aoemica, Avari3l, buthix9, cinereoux, Cinquain, Cog, Crorem, CV-BEE, DaddyWalrus, darlorth, DEZA, Dhoby_Ghaut, Fleshy Vegetable Bird, FR-35H, gammafunk, Geraldon, Gitida, Gobbopathe, HawkeyeFierce, Hilbert, Howard, Infomantis, JackNine, Joel, Joking_Phantom, Joshua, kasaphescent, Krahie, Kyzrati, malcneuro, Matie Bal, MinorBread, MrPotato28, Nalzok, Needle, PerrySimm, Peter, PlasticHeart, raddakar, ShuSh, SirMrDrProf, soymachine, spruce, StarSirius, Stryker, szymekc, The Phoenix Tome, TheEpicPerson, Tmvn, Trione, Veritas, viper, Yosh, Zailor.

The Return of GJ inevitably means GJ is a strong contender for win count leader, though we also see pretty high numbers from other players, too. Jezoensis began with quite a few Adventurer mode wins before moving on to challenging Rogue mode (and getting some wins there, too), and CrossedViper played a relatively huge number of runs (287!).

Of significant impact when it comes to our stats this time around is that core/OG players are somewhat underrepresented because many among that group are patrons and therefore played Beta 11 prerelease versions throughout the majority of the Beta 10 leaderboard period. For example I first realized this when I noticed aoemica has only a single Beta 10 win on record, but on closer inspection submitted 53 wins while helping test Beta 11 prereleases :D

Among the runs included above, MTF set a new record high Cogmind score of 423,663 (scoresheet) by sterilizing 10 different maps (mostly in the late game) and earning 140,168 of that purely from bonus points for high-alert combat kills, destroying 3,721 robots in all.

Another run of particular note set an even higher record, a whopping 1,012,980-point run by Azken Zutik, excluded from our stats only because it was played under the Gauntlet challenge mode. That run spanned a mind-boggling 91 hours, made possible by approaching the challenge as a bothacking/RIF build that led an army capable of protecting Cogmind from almost all attrition, repeatedly visiting Garrisons at the same depth to restock. 370,220 points came from allied kills alone. Even the 582 regions visited resulted in a bonus of 116,400 points, which is just... crazy xD

Very impressive stuff!

While we're on sterilization, that was the new mechanic added for Beta 10 as a sort of final cutoff for destruction, added especially for players otherwise endlessly crushing 0b10 on a single map using easier settings such as RPGLIKE mode or the Explorer difficulty. Only 17 players sterilized any maps at all, across 29 runs, so a pretty small number. The majority of those only sterilized one map, maybe two, aside from MTF's 10-map sterilization run and a 5-map sterilization by NikolayAg. (Since then I also attempted a "sterilization run," but quit after my 4th sterilization going into the late game because I was streaming it and my strategy was taking too long :P)

I'm sure we'll be seeing the frequency go up significantly in Beta 11, if only because this mechanic was further reused in DSFs, as well as being much easier to trigger there, and even offering a decently reliable strategy.

Cogmind had seven win types prior to Beta 10, with that release adding two new ones for a total of nine. Both of the new endings and their requirements involve the extended game and are therefore very spoiler-heavy, so I'll put this (small) section behind a spoiler tag:

Spoiler: Extended game alternative ending spoilers... (click to show/hide)

"w7" (win type 7) is the extended Warlord arc, which allows you to help him infiltrate Command to confront MAIN.C directly. Of course he's awesome so this was high on the list of desirable things to see happen, and I think Warlord in his upgraded form lives up to the hype :)

There were 14 submitted w7's, each by a different player (including the one I did on stream).

w8 requires you to surrender to MAIN.C half way through that fight, and then it doesn't end there since Command comes under attack by another force you need to help fend off, all while protecting MAIN.C.

Only 11 w8's were submitted, again each by a different player (I haven't had a chance to do this one yet, though certainly made it a goal a couple times). Pimski had the fastest win after surrendering, with 478 turns. And the fastest win from start to surrender to win was submitted by lsend, with a 6,179-turn w8, 15.7% (973 turns) of which was spent defending MAIN.C. Both of these were flight builds, but about half of the surrender runs were won with siege mode.

Of course we saw lots more of these achieved during the Beta 11 prereleases as well.

During Beta 10 I've heard yet more questions about the "length of a winning Cogmind run," something which is often compared across different roguelikes.

We know that it can vary greatly depending on goals and strategy, since Cogmind is designed as a "wide" game rather than being outright long, and you can have anything from 20-minute speed run wins to 10-hour marathons, or the more reasonable/likely/common 100~200-minute runs in between, but let's look at some real data on that for fun...

Again it depends on strategy and goals, so our statistical results are of course skewed by whichever types of players have greater representation. A more accurate approach would be to also look at the build types used here, and the number of optional areas visited, but that's probably not especially helpful beyond the general range we're looking to visualize.



This graph is composed of 181 w0/non-extended wins and 335 extended wins, and we can see that the shape of each is similar, with peaks at the lower end and trending downward into longer and longer runs, ending with another spike consisting of outliers doing special runs. Obviously extended runs are going to increase the average somewhat, though it's not an especially huge increase--extended wins averaged 5.4 hours, while others averaged 4.7 hours (the median for each category was 5 and 4 hours, respectively). As expected, a little over half of "standard" (non-extended) wins fall within the 2- to 4-hour range.

Mechanics

Because Beta 10 added six new RIF abilities, I thought it'd be interesting to see whether that had any impact on adoption of that strategy, but a comparison between the last two versions shows there was no meaningful effect (stats only include those runs which reached a depth of at least -6, which was about 44% in both versions):
                                        Beta 9      Beta 10
Used only 1 RIF Installer               6.0%        6.4%
Used 2 or more RIF Installers           9.1%        8.2%
RIF builds hacked at least 3 robots     65.9%       61.0%

However, the top 100 RIF runs by bot hacks applied increased pretty significantly, up from a median of 89 hacks in Beta 9, to 117 in Beta 10. So RIF builds are riffing harder. The median number of RIF Installers used in those runs was 7 in Beta 9, vs. 8 in Beta 10.

I also took a quick look at the most common primary classes used across a run, but didn't see any significant changes between the in-depth Beta 9 analysis and more recent Beta 10 runs. We'll almost certainly see more changes there headed into Beta 11, now that the "Hauler" concept has been refedined, so we'll look at those again then. This time around there were 76 unique build combinations (out of a theoretical maximum of 208), as opposed to the 67 from Beta 9.

Special Events

Beta 10 included some special events, as with previous versions (Beta 9 was especially prolific in this regard--see stats), though not quite on the same scale. The big one was the lore-centric ARG, and we also had a quick AFD mode called "Volatile" which wasn't even explicitly announced, so I imagine not as many people even actually played that one. Of course players are also still able to go back and play most prior events if they want to, and some do that, especially with RPGLIKE mode, for example. So let's take a look at what was played, and how much...

249 unique players (17.6%) played at least one special event run, with 74% of them playing more than one run. There were 1,746 special event runs in all (13.89% of all runs).



Sure enough, not many actually tried out Volatile mode, it being both unannounced and pretty short in duration. Another thing you'll notice is the much higher win rate under RPGLIKE, not exactly a surprise since it adds a healing mechanic which overall makes Cogmind an easier game. And of course the dominant event of the version was Forbidden Lore, being the major one held during Beta 10, and also requiring multiple runs to fully explore its content. That requirement was somewhat offset by the community working together in some cases, but it was still a run-heavy mode due to the drip of puzzles and metaknowledge it would offer with each run. Forbidden Lore also had a lower win rate since more players would be likely to simply self-destruct once they had what they were after, if it looked like their next clue was in a place they could no longer feasibly reach on their current run.

[Kyzrati]

As part of my articles on design of the Beta 11.2 "Polymind" event/special mode from late last year, I analyzed a bunch of relevant stats you can check out over there: Special Mode Design, Polymind Part 2: Players, Stats, and the Future.

[Kyzrati]

Big move from Beta 10 to Beta 11, calling for a big stat article filled with graphs, charts, and numbers

[Kyzrati]

Beta 12 Stat Summary

Beta 13 is out, leaderboards have been reset, time to examine some stats from the previous version! Our last huge stat review was done after Beta 11, in 2023 here on the blog, and that being an important milestone with regard to balance, that particular review was quite extensive. This time I'll be looking at somewhat fewer categories, but it's still nice to see where certain aspects stand, especially any newer features.

Beta 12 leaderboards have been archived here, with scoresheets for all runs available here.

During Beta 12 "Encrypted Comms" (March 2023 ~ Feb 2024), 790 unique players submitted 8,592 runs that met the minimum threshold for inclusion. 296 (3.4%) of those were played in a special or challenge mode (a lower percentage than last time (8%) since no new modes were released during Beta 12), leaving us with 8,296 runs for our data analysis. (There are also many prerelease runs by patrons, but those are excluded as well, since the version is still in flux at that point.)

Wins

The overall win rate was 4.7%, so fairly middling as far as historical stats go.

Among the 7,143 Rogue-level runs (86.1%), 97 (16.5%) unique players earned at least one Beta 12 win, seemingly confirming that the increase in that metric following the Beta 11 rebalance is here to stay. Maybe it will reverse down again next time in Beta 13 with the influx of new and returning players now that we have map zooming and the new upscaled UI layouts? We'll see, but for now it looks like Beta 11 did indeed have a sizeable impact on winnability, perhaps making it a bit easier for some (?)... or our sample size is still too small to draw conclusions like this, what with different folks coming and going over the long term :P



(This is an updated graph from our Beta 11 stats--the Beta 12 prereleases would show a similar comparison, but it's not being included here.)

This time around I compiled a new category of win data people have been curious about: win types. As of Beta 10 there are 9 different win types, and according to Beta 12 records, 11 Rogue difficulty players have at some point earned every single win type at least once (there might be more who did not play Beta 12 in particular). Adding in Adventurer/Explorer runs does not change the count, which makes sense since it's generally the more hardcore players going up against every single ending (and winning).

Some other Rogue-specific win type data (remember that despite this including historical runs from earlier versions, our data is only looking at those who at least played one qualifying Beta 12 run):



Thus 32.0% of Beta 12 players have one at least one run at some point before, and 15.6% have at least two different types.



w0 is the most common, of course, and although we we can't really know how many "w0 of shame" that includes, a respectable near-half of runs are alternative wins requiring at least one late-game branch visit. Some of the win types are clearly rare, either because they're difficult to discover, or are simply really challenging (leading in many cases to a w0 instead when the primary goal was not achieved).

Among the unique winning accomplishments that aren't explicitly represented by a win type, special shoutout to Runia for being the first and only player to have successfully managed to fire the Drained L-Cannon and even use it to get an extended ++ win. Some video and summary/notes by Runia here--EXTREME EXTENDED GAME SPOILERS.

Scrap Engine

One of the main new features of Beta 12, even though not yet fully integrated plot-wise, was the already mechanically-complete easily-acquired Scrap Engine. We have a few basic stats on that.

472 runs (5.7%) used the Scrap Engine (SE) at all, and a total of 127 unique players (21.6%) tried it at least once. 71 winning runs used the SE, or 15.0% of all SE runs, most of them using it heavily as opposed to for a short time. Naturally these same folks generally created and modified greater numbers of constructs.



(Construct creation does not include modifications to existing constructs, a much greater number by around a factor of 20.)

Garrisons and DSFs

One of the other major enhancements of Beta 12 was the new Garrisons, so that probably means more Garrison visits and use of related mechanics.

18.3% of runs entered at least one Garrison in Beta 12, compared to 12.0% in Beta 11. 4.0% entered three or more (2.6% did so in Beta 11).

But continuing to follow our general RIF stats in this version, we can can see how garrison visitors were somewhat less interested in bothacking this time around, thus were clearly eager to enter Garrisons specifically to see the sights and/or acquire the other new benefits.



Speaking of new benefits, at least 1.2% of runs acquired the Encrypted Comm Array. The true number is likely higher, but it wasn't until Beta 13 that I added a way to more easily analyze that in the scoresheets, so I'm basing it purely on the number of runs in which it was actually used to rendezvous with allies (technically not a requirement to ultimately benefit).



One of our other small maps-between-maps, DSFs are also relatively new, having only been added in Beta 11. Last time I reported that 10.5% of runs visited at least one, and interestingly that level continues to hold, with 10.9% of runs visiting a DSF in Beta 12. It appears we can say with confidence that DSFs have their uses and are doing just fine--I know I've ducked into them on occasion either for fun, or to avoid trouble or get a quick build together.

Strats and Miscellany

Traps, reborn as a strong supporting strategy as of Beta 11 and gaining significant popuarity from then on, continue to enjoy the same popularity with 445 extractions by the top 20 trap users in Beta 12, compared to 428 before. The average number of traps and overall Trap Extractor use remained similar. Traps good.

Among the many uses of traps is convoy interception. 21.7% of runs that made it to -7 (lowest convoy depth) reported at least one interception. Now technically the player may not be the one who triggers it, but for some folks we can see it's quite clearly deliberate, especially those who intercept numerous convoys, and just happen to be heavy trap users, one of the most reliable ways to accomplish that task...



Notice how many of the leading convoy interceptors are also on their way to winning runs. Pure coincidence, I'm sure ;)

From the data I think everyone's come to terms with the Beta 11 fabrication overhaul and is making healthy use of the system. 35.2% of runs built at least one part, only a little lower than Beta 11, and an average of 1.38 parts were built (1.6 in Beta 11, 2.5 in Beta 10). (Note: As usual fab stats are only looking at runs that made it to at least -6.) 12.4% of runs built a robot, 0.53 on average.

20.6% of runs carried at least one Authchip, significantly higher than the 11.8% of Beta 11, and 46% of those runs used at least one of them to build something, not as high as in Beta 11 when everyone was still getting familiar with the system and how they wanted to make use of it, but significant enough to see that a good portion of players know what they want out of Authchips and are packing them in advance with a possible goal in mind.

Also with respect to Fabricators... only 4.6% of runs that reached -6 used some amount of fabnet, down from 7.9% in Beta 11 when it was introduced. And only 3 runs hit the cap (15%), down a lot since last time as well. So it does look like the previous release was more folks who wanted to try out a new feature (after even discovering it anyway--I'm sure many don't know it exists), and now it's settled down to being just another tool that might get some use in the right kind of run. MTF autooverrided the most bots in a single run with 40, and at only a 6% peak throughout, so it also helps to spread out lower numbers over a greater stretch of depths (he didn't even start until -3, then had a fabnet up for the remainder of that run which went on to an extended win).

One of the activities that's been somewhat more common in the Cogmind community lately, either as a goal in itself, or something to survive after causing too much trouble for some other reason, is sterilization. Forcing Complex 0b10 into a complete floorwide meltdown can be quite a challenge, rewarding if pulled off, and let's face it, is pretty funny when you get to walk around an empty floor with hopefully enough cooling to loot the place before being forced out :D

Surprisingly 354 runs (4.4%) sterilized at least one floor in Beta 12. Less surprisingly, none of the top 10 sterilization runs went on to win...



Despite not quite reaching the end, leiavoia did top the overall leaderboards within their epic sterilization run for the sheer score achieved by doing this, even without a win. As you can see some sterilization-oriented runs also tend to be on the longer side--it takes a while to both set up for and destroy that many bots while avoiding a swift death!

17.2% of the runs that completed two sterilizations did go on to win, however. 10.1% of the runs that only completed a single sterilization ended up winning, more than twice the overall win rate. Sterilizers are serious, 0b10.

(My own last run ended up sterilizing -3/Research in order to escape after I was blocked into a corner for plastering one too many walls with robot guts. It was a win, too, although not included in these stats because that's Beta 13...)

And finally, following up on one of Beta 11's new strategic options that I covered in more detail last time: the Exo build. Only 11 runs used Exo in Beta 12, or 0.1% of the total, compared to 82 (0.8%) in Beta 11. It was a new thing back then, so not surprising there was more uptake in the previous release. 95.2% of those which entered and survived S7 did not integrate (compared to 73.1% in Beta 11). It's usually a last resort sort of thing for most people, or something to fool around with, since it either offers less challenge, or a very different kind of challenge (it's not like everyone easily survives using it :P). I mentioned before that it might get further tweaks, but so far it seems about where I'd like it to be insofar as it serves its purpose in terms of lore, balance, and strategic options.

[Kyzrati]

Beta 13 Stat Summary

Following the massive Beta 14 release, it's time to look back at Beta 13 for some relevant points of interest in the stats! (Again, the leaderboards were reset and the older leaderboard records and run data were archived, all accessible from the usual page.)

Beta 13 ran from about Feb 27 to Aug 7 this year, a 5.3-month period during which a whopping 24,161 qualifying runs were submitted by 1,989 unique players. This compared to Beta 12 which covered a 12-month period and saw 8.5k submissions by 790 players.

The 152% increase in players and 181% increase in runs can be attributed to several drivers:

• new UI layouts and the larger fonts enabled by them led to renewed interest among potential players who had stayed away before, or others who couldn't play much due to Cogmind's former lack of suitability on smaller displays
• the addition of map zooming as a similar supplementary feature enabling even larger tiles specifically for the map
• can't forget the famous Dosh video which garnered broad attention among folks more likely to enjoy a game like Cogmind
• Youngster also made a cool video which made the rounds in the roguelike community, showcasing the other new layout/text features

The combination of UI layouts and Dosh's video in particular were a perfect coincidence, as the impact of either would've been much reduced in isolation without the other to amplify the effects. Normalizing for version duration, technically b13 experienced a 536% increase in run count and 470% increase in unique players over b12! The run count got so high that earlier this year it forced me to update how the leaderboards and run data are handled in order to actually process it all, heh.

One thing I haven't checked before is just how many new players we have during a given Beta, and it seems pretty relevant this time around given all the factors above. To measure this I considered anyone with a total run count of less than 5 as of their first successful Beta 13 submission to be a "new player," since we have to take into account the fact that not all players will have uploaded their first few runs (especially those for new players who may just die real quickly at first, keeping them below the score threshold). On the other side, former players will probably have done at least 4 runs during one or more previous versions. Although not perfectly accurate, this methodology should still give us a fairly representative view. (There are other methods, but they all have various drawbacks, and this one's quick :P)

By this metric, we had 145 "new players" join (and submit scores!) during Beta 12 (18.1% of those playing that version)
compared to 1,104 in Beta 13! (a majority of the total at 53.5%)

Somewhat complicating this comparison is that Dosh video in which he explicitly suggested that folks upload their score data for the leaderboards, meaning there's a higher likelihood that a greater ratio of the new players did just that.

I would expect this development to cause the win rate to retrace back to earlier levels, which we'll examine further below.

But first a quick look at the difficulty spread, which shows a continuing skew towards Rogue mode (I skipped checking this in Beta 12):



71.9% of players were using Rogue difficulty in Beta 13, a new high since introducing the new menu to force manual difficulty selection. In general it would appear that our new players are more inclined to select Cogmind's intended (hardest) difficulty mode. However, this data is not entirely representative of non-Rogue use, since it excludes any runs using the checkpoint/load feature, which to be honest is probably a significant portion of non-Rogue players! So we do have some larger portion of players using other modes, though anecdotally, the majority of players who are playing often in the community are indeed using Rogue mode. I do wonder about the true numbers. (At the same time, if someone allows themselves to die before loading a checkpoint, we do get at least that first run and they are indeed represented here.)

Play counts of special event modes remained relatively low since no new ones were introduced in this period, and due to the higher portion of new players overall (as they're naturally still focused on the base game). Only 1.8% of all submissions were for special modes, 61.4% of those being RPGLIKE runs since a handful of folks mostly or exclusively play that way. All those runs will be filtered out of further stats below, leaving us with 23,727 runs for our data.

Wins

The number of Beta 13 players with at least 1 Rogue win took an obvious nose dive :P



Not at all unexpected, given the large portion of new players, but still, that's the lowest on record. Well, it might have been lower even further back, especially in times when the game was overall harder and community experience level lower, but for our purposes here I just updated the graph I've been using since Beta 8. Balance-wise Beta 13 didn't itself introduce a noticeable difficulty spike, either, essentially on par with Beta 12 before it. So it's pretty easy to see where the new value came from :) (another small contributing factor: the Beta 13 collection cycle was less than half as long as Beta 12, giving players who can't win consistently less time in which to do that)

Looking at the now-archived Beta 13 leaderboards, the highest-scoring run was a 347,363-point run by lyrabold that beat even leiavoia's 256,686-point sterilization run in Beta 12 (full scoresheets for these runs naturally contain spoilers!). Both had the same number of sterilizations, the main way to rack up ridiculous point totals assuming you can survive the onslaught, though lyrabold came out higher in the end with more bonus points earned primarily while full clearing extended areas as well. Lyrabold recorded their entire run, which you can watch here if interested! The run took nearly 35 hours.

While we're on the topic, although prerelease runs aren't included in normal stats, leiavoia also did a 23-hour sterilization run back when Beta 12 was in development (score: 225,650), and you can view that online here (playlist starts with a shorter highlights clip!).

UI/Options

The highlight of Beta 13, and the part of the stats I've most looked forward to examining this round: sweet sweet QoL! In particular we now get to find out just how popular each of the new primary features are, likely validating with hard numbers that big detour which delayed our ongoing Scraptown expansion.

Earlier this year just two weeks after the release of Beta 13, I couldn't wait and did a preliminary summary of related options using run submission data at the time to get an initial idea of UI layout preferences and map zoom usage.

At the time what I saw was not surprising, a significant uptake of the modal interfaces alongside a smaller minority using map zooming. Low zoom use was expected since the layouts themselves help resolve much of the issue map zooming would also address, with the latter mostly coming in handy intermittently for those continuing to use the original Non-modal layout.



To give more context: the Semi-modal layout is the default, so anyone wanting to use the original Non-modal layout after Beta 13 released would have to switch back to it manually in the options, as we can see it's likely a decent chunk of players did (as opposed to purely new players preferring it).

Moving on to final Beta 13 figures, the Semi-modal layout continued to eat away at the other two, no doubt because it's the default and we have so many new players, but it does also happen to be the most balanced and appropriate layout for the average player anyway (especially new ones).



Given that ratio of new players, another aspect I wanted to examine here was specifically how many previous players coming into Beta 13 had accepted new layouts. Does their distribution differ from the above data? Did more of them proactively switch back to the original Non-modal UI?

Interestingly, the ratios are almost identical!? This was a surprising find, to see that having experience with and being used to the Non-modal layout didn't stop players from embracing the new ones, although certainly there's still about that same 24% remaining on Non-modal (there's only a 0.6% difference :P), so it's not like it's been completely abandoned.

As for map zooming, now an even smaller portion of players use it, down from 19% to only 10%, but it does at least come in useful for some.



What I'm interested in knowing is just who is using map zooming, and are they the category of players I had expected to be getting the most out of it (Non-modal UI layout users, the situation it was primarily designed for in the first place). Looking at the cross-section of UI layouts vs map zoom usage, the data now supports that assumption:



That the fully Modal layout and its middling map view area sees the second highest amount of map zooming is a bit interesting, and we can presume it's due to that layout being a popular choice on physically smaller displays. For example the Steam Deck is now more semi-officially supported with the introduction of these layouts, additional font style choices, and of course map zooming if needed, and compiling that data does show that 12.2% of players falling under the high-use category of map zooming happen to be playing on the Steam Deck. This compared to Steam Deck users comprising only 1.6% of players among those using little to no map zooming.

Note that for the above and below player preference data I took the last run submitted by each player, likely more representative of the settings they'd become more comfortable with over time. I know many existing players spent time experimenting with the new alternative options on beginning Beta 13, and even new players may try out different options before making a final decision, so this gives us a more stable, representative data set.

Aside from Beta 13's headline features, it's actually been a long while since I've taken a look at the distribution of other player preferences, because after the initial years they tended to remain relatively static over time, but now that we have new layouts, many new players, and also no doubt a wider variety of new hardware folks may be using, it's about time to revisit these meta stats as well.

Specifically the last time I included the "meta" category in my stats summary was five years ago with Beta 8 (2019), so we can compare to what has changed since then, if anything.

• 96.1% of players use fullscreen (31.1% of those use borderless windowed mode). This is the highest ever portion for fullscreen use, almost certainly a result of the new UI layouts that allowed more folks access to Cogmind on even laptops.
• 5.8% use hjkl for movement, still relatively unchanged over the years as a niche option, while 50.3% prefer mouse, 18.6% use arrows, and 25.3% use numpad. This data is really interesting, finally breaking the long-time dominance of numpad as a keyboard movement option, with a significant boost to both mouse and arrow usage, further providing very strong support to the laptop theory.
• 5.1% prefer ASCII instead of tiles, a value that continues to decline as more and more new players outside the traditional roguelike audience discover Cogmind. That's by far the lowest this value has ever been, starting out with a sizeable chunk (15-25%!) of early adopters using ASCII during the initial Alpha years, falling closer to 10% upon arrival on Steam, and now we're here with a second wider influx of players. Another factor that can affect this value are those who were originally playing on smaller displays and needed ASCII to be able to at least better read what was going on, but who are now able to use tiles due to the cell size increase via new layouts. I don't imagine that is responsible for much of the change, though, just noting it.
• 20.5% of players use keyboard mode (not generally using the mouse at all), which is interesting in that this value continues to remain steady despite the influx of new players influencing other preference data, though at the same time possibly supported due to heavier laptop use, where mouse or trackpads are not as convenient. Also keyboard mode is pretty efficient and can do everything, after all, and hardcore roguelike enjoyers (or just the software types that tend to be attracted to a game like Cogmind :P) do like a good shortcut that makes you feel like a hacker once those commands start rolling off your fingertips ;)
• 2.0% of players have rebinded at least one command, still quite low but a slight uptick over previous years (this particular feature is not super accessible, so low utiliization is to be expected, although by default there are already so many ways to perform different actions, on top of full mouse support, that it's generally not needed anyway).
• Smallcaps (the default) is the most popular font choice (82.7%) by an even higher margin than in previous years, followed by Terminus (7.1%), and X11 (2.6%). The latter two dropped significantly as a percentage, having been overtaken by default-using new players as well as the introduction of a few other styles--most styles have at least a couple dozen or so users, though the only styles available at all or most resolutions happen to be the three listed above, so naturally they are more likekly to have more users for that reason alone.
• 1080p is still the most common resolution, not falling by much compared to before at about half of players. However, whereas in the past most others were using something lower than 1080p, now the reverse is true--a majority of non-1080p users are on something higher.
• 1.0% of players are using a render filter, most to enable low-contrast mode.
• 61.4% of players are using Tactical HUD mode, down a good bit from earlier versions, but easily explained by the new player majority this Beta. I'm sure it will gradually drift back up again as more folks get more experience and need the extra data.

Strategy

In terms of content Beta 12 did not add significant new long-term strategic options, having postponed the main thrust of the UFD update to Beta 14 in order to deliver new interface features. Thus with this particular version there aren't as many gameplay elements I want to analyze, although we could perhaps set the stage for a Beta 14 comparison by looking at player interaction with the new early-game Subcaves map.

The Subcaves provide a more dangerous alternative to traveling directly through Materials or its other branches, as well as in most cases an alternative unique item to build around in the form of temp slot parts (and some other long-term useful parts that can only be found there, albeit not uniques).

Subcaves' primary obvious routing competitor would be Exiles, being mutually exclusive branches that can each provide one or more unique parts. In Beta 13, 7,031 Rogue runs visited either Exiles or Subcaves, 32.9% of all Rogue runs which are what I'm interested in examining here (Cogmind being balanced around that mode to begin with). 4,526 of those runs (21.2% of the total) visited Exiles, and 244 died there :P. Those 5.4% of Exiles visits ending in death for the most part represent failed heists. By comparison, fewer runs visited Subcaves (2,505, 11.7% of the total), and unsurprisingly 1,279 died there. That's 51.1% of visits, 6.0% of the run total, which makes sense since Subcaves is very hostile by default and also always at -10 when players are at their weakest. Plus of course for now everyone has less overall experience tackling that new area.

I expect Subcaves performance to improve going forward as players learn how to more safely navigate them, or even outright avoid the map as too dangerous under some circumstances, although as of Beta 14 there are also new draws to that map in the form of added connections to Scraptown, so the visits and deaths will continue until experience improves!

Subcaves also has that one exit directly to Recycling, again preparing the stage for Beta 14 routes, if not yet so desirable in Beta 13 since Recycling doesn't offer much else other than depth skipping and the Scrap Engine, which at the time was still freely given.

Regarding the Scrap Engine, while 4.4% of players in Beta 12 used it at least a bit (when it was introduced), that number was down to 2.1% in Beta 13, although the relatively high new player count of course meant that far fewer would even find it at all, considering how out of the way it is. So the stats make sense, and there were of course still people fooling around with it, but clearly not a common run choice.