It's usually not so much the number of packages itself, as it is the degree of maturity or support. It is indirectly connected to count in a sense that, say, you might have a dozen packages doing the same thing for Java or Node, of which three have more than one maintainer, and one is mature and stable - and so you can use that latter one without worry. Whereas in smaller ecosystems, you often end up with just one package being your only option, and so you just live with the fact that it has a single maintainer (who can decide to quit for whatever personal reasons any day), and has been version 0.x for years.