153 replies to this topic

[PurpleNinja]

I can only wonder about the point of this thread.

[Khosumi]

Oncoshi, on 26 February 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

The whole point of this post is not the shrinking player base but the discussion WHY there are so few new people out there who are interested in MWO / like MWO / know about MWO and WHY so many of the new steam players already left.

There must be reasons (maybe because the game is not good enough?).

Because battletech is a niche tabletop game. MW4, the latest MW game, was released in 2000. MWO is not a fast paced CoD shooter. There is a steep learning curve. The game doesn't hold your hand. You can't get easy access to everything, you have to work for it. One dude thinks "No one plays this game so I won't." So does another one. And another one. And another one. You are comparing Steam stats numbers of a game released in 2013, Steam release was in 2015, you don't even have the full scope of the numbers. It's always had a small but dedicated following.

Enough reasons for you? Do you need more?

[Luminis]

I've played and enjoyed games with smaller communities. No matter how small the player base is at the moment, I'm still finding games plenty fast. Even playing heavies.

So, meh, I guess?

[Thorqemada]

Imho the Steamnumbers are pretty solid for a game like MWO.

I dont believe in leveling "Gear" as motivation to play a game - gear offers no emotional hook.

I believe in "Avatars" as motivating/staying factor for a huge majority of Players that Play Grind-Games.
That means virtual alter ego you would like to be in the IP you play - in Mechwarrior obviously a Mechpilot.

MWO does not have that - you do some basic very bland and uninteresting leveling of your Mech and when you have no fascination for Mechwarrior from the past or from social contacts what staying power has this game where you play a few Maps over and over and over and over and over and over...?

You dont get an exciting endscreen that makes you feel like a Hero having done deeds of Valor, you dont level a Pilot/Technician Support Crew, you dont have exciting Military Quests/Tasks that keep you playing,

The game is pretty much an Insider Game that is played by Insiders that have an outside MWO motivation to play this MOBA game.
Even if you call it a niche game (every game is a niche game) it does little to nothing to reach out and make this niche grow catching Players that would play this game but do not find their emotional hook in the current iteration.

And indeed is this game to small to bring in many Players by peer pressure - that will not work for MWO.

PGI has to change things anyway bcs their current Business Model will not stay valid!

Edited by Thorqemada, 26 February 2016 - 05:52 PM.

[Novakaine]

Wonder who's Angry Alt or Banned Bobby this is.
Or worst what the hell are they teaching kids in school these days.

Edited by Novakaine, 26 February 2016 - 04:55 PM.

[Novakaine]

Jables McBarty, on 26 February 2016 - 01:27 PM, said:

OP, I was a combo Anthro-Sociology-Linguistics-History major, but I'm gonna learn you something about sources in research:

Sources cannot be meaningfully compared if they are not shown to be congruent.

Argument: WOT has 500,000 players, ergo it is a better/more popular game. (Paraphrased)

Source: A third-party WOT tracker site, with the datum "Players Tracked: 534448"

Comparison: MWO has falling playerbase (paraphrased)

Source: A third-party Steam tracker site. There are multiple data here, such as "Number of Owners", "Number of Players [presumably includes one-time players]", "Players in last 2 weeks", "Currently Playing."

So, we're going to blow right past the parts that others have covered--namely that not 100% of the players play off of Steam, number of active players not necessarily indicative of other trends*, new players might suddenly have real-life obligations now that the holidays are over, etc..

Ok, that's done. Data. We don't know what the WOT number represents. If it is is "Currently Playing," then that's a HUGE difference. Point made. But please direct us to that particular datum rather than making us search for it (because I couldn't find it). If it's "Last 2 Weeks," then still pretty solid point. The order of magnitude is only x10, but PGI should take note and maybe adjust business plans. If it's One-Time Players, or even Owners (have downloaded from the website), then you have no real argument. Like, at all.

Really, these types of arguments can't be had until MWO releases bulk user data (for both Steam client and Classic client) so that they can be aggregated by third party sites like Steamdb, this WOT site, or Dotabuff for Dota 2's user stats.

*EDIT: By "other trends" I'm referring generally to the "dedicated, $$-paying fanbase" being more important than raw F2P numbers.

Of course if PGI would stop minimizing us around and add these bad boys.
I just wonder have fast the player base would ballon.
Get with it PGI.

[Johnny Gorbachev]

SideWinderBLN, on 26 February 2016 - 03:34 PM, said:

Everybody else:
- some outright don't like Big-Stompy-Robot Games and hence didn't even try. (2 of the 7 potential players)
- some tried it but were put of by the learning curve for basic controls (3 of the 7)
- one was overwhelmed and put of by the very prospect of learning curve of the keyboard bindings for about a dozen regularly used functions

You forgot to add
-Some people aren't blind whales who fall into PGI's carrot on the stick nostalgia strat so they leave once they noticed the absurdity of their F2P model and grind.

[El Bandito]

chewie, on 26 February 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

just means people are maybe playing more via the normal method rather than having a cpu /memory sucking 3rd party software to go through first in order to play the game they wanna play???

Not to mention I can't use 32 bit client (which is known to contain less issues) through Steam.

[Jables McBarty]

SideWinderBLN, on 26 February 2016 - 03:34 PM, said:

Some people asked for why MWO is not retaining those people who join via steam....

So .. how would this look in the steam statistics:
5 new owners
5 started playing
4 played for more than a day
After two weeks there was only 1 left

And nothing of this has anything to do with the much touted shortcomings but rather with pretty essential basic game concepts that none of you would ever start to question.

And yet the game is now at +2 players for the forseeable future.

This was pretty much my experience. I finally bought CPU that could run it. Almost immediately after I got the Steam version (like four days after I got Classic--couldn't wait for Steam Release!) Four friends from Dota 2 saw me playing and said, "hey, what's that?" Took first three into private lobbies to give demonstrations. One has dropped more cash on it than me by now. One played on three separate occasions. One played once and that was it. The fourth had some weird download issues where windows said the game took up like 600GB, so he uninstalled and didn't try again.

Oncoshi, on 26 February 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

The whole point of this post is not the shrinking player base but the discussion WHY there are so few new people out there who are interested in MWO / like MWO / know about MWO and WHY so many of the new steam players already left.

Many of the people i showed MWO had enough of it after we dropped in a small group and got stomped by10 or 12 stacks of enemys. They had no fun at all. This is just one of many examples where u cant just ask somone to join for some fun rounds TOGETHER if you dont play with 8 or more people.

Okay, now that we've hit on an actual, tangible problem*, I can see where you're coming from. Playing video games is a social activity, and yes, the group queue sucks for nubs. My Steam friend who still plays still feels overwhelmed in group queue, and he's been playing as long as I have at this point. I taught all of my Steam friends in private lobbies (because, not sure if bug or what, but I was able to do "not full teams" when my noob friends didn't have Premium Time active), and that was a huge advantage in terms of giving them a soft start--not something everyone can get.

What do you think the solution to the group queue is?

*Please introduce these points in your initial post, not in Page 4.

Ethak, on 26 February 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:

MW4, the latest MW game, was released in 2000.

Something I forget about: MechAssault and MechAssault 2 came out in 2002 and 2004, respectively. I'd completely forgotten about this until one of my Steam friends said "Hey, I played this on Xbox."
"Uh....no you didn't."
"Yes, I did."
"No, because [in most condescending voice] MechWarrior is a PC game."
"No, it was like third-persion, with robots and you went invisible..."

Thorqemada, on 26 February 2016 - 04:45 PM, said:

Imho the Steamnumbers are pretty solid for a game like MWO.

I dont believe in leveling "Gear" as motivation to play a game - gear offers no emotional hook.

I believe in "Avatars" as motivating/staying factor for a huge majority of Players that Play Grind-Games.
That means virtual alter ego you would like to be in the IP you play - in Mechwarrior obviously a Mechpilot.

MWO does not have that - you do some basic very bland and uninteresting leveling of your Mech and when you have no fascination for Mechwarrior from the past or from social contacts what staying power has this game where you play a few Maps over and over and over and over and over and over...?

It might be the "fascination from the past" but for me it's also the challenge of mastering a complex game. That being said, I can get behind the advancing avatar.

They do have a very limited aspect of that in the CW loyalty section, but if you don't play CW, then it's moot. I was a little surprised at what I felt to be "compensatory" achievements. On the one hand, they felt like pale imitations of what CoD did (at least, as of 2009 when I played MW2)...but on the other hand, the big ones like The Littlest Helper/People's Hero are really worthwhile achievements and titles.

[Deathlike]

The game's popularity through Steam is declining.. that's kinda normal for virtually every game.

What you really need to see over time where that levels out, as it becomes "the norm".

You can account for various things that affect that - not just people being uninterested in this game.. .such as reverting to the normal client (although, Steam is super-convenient on patch day, I'm not gonna give that up) or just obviously hype loss (because, you can only hype up to a certain point/level).

Activity matters depending on what actually happens in the game... you will always see increases on a mech release (or a simple event), but I would like to think that beyond a mech release.. that some fully functioning addition to the game would actually be sustainable (like, a proper CW) so that the gains are permanent, and not temporary. That's what should be aimed for... (some suggestions for certain features that are in the works, I think are only going to fulfill a small niche of a game that's already a niche).

But hey... I'm just saying random things.

Edited by Deathlike, 26 February 2016 - 05:16 PM.

[Mad Strike]

Steam client , normal client.......not a big science.

[xXBagheeraXx]

Rhent, on 26 February 2016 - 10:07 AM, said:

Have you had at least one class in statistics so you have the modicrum of intelligence in presenting data. Lets go through the logic train that you missed:

1st) You show steam stats for Top 100 games. MWO is not present in the top 100.
2nd) You did NOT show any history to show MWO play behavior since its been released on Steam
3rd) MWO is split between two clients the native MWO and the modified one using Steam to send stats to Steam. Therefore, when using Steamstats, at best you can only talk about the Steam side of the house and not the MWO side of the house.
4th) You did not present in any way to show that Steam has had no positive impact on MWO at all.

Lastly, get a better data source showing the release stats on Steam and current play activity. And understand that if MWO released on Steam and got 1 player from Steam, it means releasing on Steam increased players for MWO. If by some miracle releasing MWO on Steam caused MWO non-steam players to leave more than the new Steam players coming in, then yes you'd have a correct statement, but lets be frank your entire post is one hell of a lie.

*betty voice*

Critical hit...critical hit...critical hit...

Novakaine, on 26 February 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

Of course if PGI would stop minimizing us around and add these bad boys.
I just wonder have fast the player base would ballon.
Get with it PGI.

I for one welcome our demolisher/morrigu overlords....

[Bill Lumbar]

chewie, on 26 February 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

just means people are maybe playing more via the normal method rather than having a cpu /memory sucking 3rd party software to go through first in order to play the game they wanna play???

LOL..... I have only been playing MWO from Steam launcher since the day it came out. I like to be able to keep track of numbers...hopefully all you die hard non steam users like to also and get over it and start playing off the steam launcher. Many wanted the counter back...here is the way to get it back. Ummmm yeah....

El Bandito, on 26 February 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

Not to mention I can't use 32 bit client (which is known to contain less issues) through Steam.

I have no issues running 64 bit at all.

[Magnumaniac]

Oncoshi, on 26 February 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

Steam release had no positive effect on the player base in MWO.

Simply not possibly true - the day before Steam release, MWO had zero players on Steam. The day of Steam release (and every day since then) MWO has had more than zero players on Steam - this is a net positive effect on player base!

[Bill Lumbar]

PFC Carsten, on 26 February 2016 - 02:01 PM, said:

IIRC in the last Townhall, Russ said something about it being 50:50 Steam and Standalone. Might wanna look it up.

edit:
Here it is, right at the beginning:
https://www.reddit.c..._summary_recap/

Russ and company can bring back the player counter in the standalone and then I will buy it.

[Tavious Grimm]

4 pages later.....Been playing this since Beta, am I entirely happy with the state of the game? No. Why do I play, I'm a life long fan of the franchise. Books tabletop and of course the video games. I also play because I made some really good friends here. In short, Oncoshi, if your unhappy, uninstall the game and leave the rest of us to enjoy the game. PGI will fix it....after they've run out of mech packs, if they don't..there is always the new Battletech game coming out styled like MechCommader.

[ILikePeaches]

Louis Brofist, on 26 February 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

It's a niche game with a small, but dedicated fanbase, it will never achieve mainstream status. Steam is simply not a good measure of MWO's playerbase. The core following use the standalone client. Plus the Steam stats are not bad.

It is completely expected that numbers drop after the game gets the spotlight for a while. I'm actually surprised it retained the number of people it did for as long as it did.

Overall the steam release brought a small percentage of new dedicated players to the game which was the whole idea in the first place. Like Blastman pointed out, who cares about the size of the playerbase, so long as the game is live we can play it and that's the whole point.

Totally agree with this. Mechwarrior has never been a game for the masses. It just requires too much thinking and keeping track of different metas. It's not a numbers game for autists nor is it a pure adrenaline shooter, so it loses appeal to both those huge crowds. Most of my peers who do know about mechwarrior are from the more casual iterations like MechAssault. The biggest markets will always be with casuals, but then developers have to seriously dumb down their products. Just look at CoD versus the older FPS shooters.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Not sure if this was pointed out already or not, but the argument that "even one person playing MW:O through Steam is an increase on playerbase" is something of a fallacy, to say the least. Mainly because there's a population of players like my self, of unknown percentage and indeterminate size, who when MW:O hit Steam, uninstalled the non-steam installer and reinstalled through Steam.

In short, just because people added MW:O through Steam does not mean the playerbase went up in each individual case..

[Sorbic]

bah, I actually intended to start using steam to launch MWO, just to help dissuade folks from making uniformed comments like the op, once I upgraded my PC. But life keeps putting that off.

Plenty of us play outside of steam including my friend I convinced to come back when we hit steam.

[TLBFestus]

Rhent, on 26 February 2016 - 10:07 AM, said:

And understand that if MWO released on Steam and got 1 player from Steam, it means releasing on Steam increased players for MWO.

Wow......gotta love that level of optimism. I'd say that "rose colored glasses" thing again, but you need rose colored eyeballs to make that part of a successful argument.