37 replies to this topic

[AphexTwin11]

..Until we have an average of 500 [extend the range from the steam release, Nov-2015]?

http://steamcharts.com/app/342200

(Granted, this is Steam players only)

[SQW]

Regardless if it's just steam or those using MWO's own launcher, the trend is DOWN and has been for the last 24 months.

Since there's nothing in the PGI's pipeline to suggest anything more significant than Energy Draw and Buckets for the next 6 months, things wouldn't change either.

MWO is just keeping me warm till Battletech arrive in May. I don't even care about the 3000 MCs I still have left.

[Wintersdark]

AphexTwin11, on 16 September 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

..Until we have an average of 500 [extend the range from the steam release, Nov-2015]?

http://steamcharts.com/app/342200

(Granted, this is Steam players only)

Numbers seem pretty stable to me. Steam release brought in a vast number of "tourist" players, who left fairly quickly, then there was another drop around April. What happened in April? Was there a specific event, or was that a group of Steamies who played for a few months then stopped? I suspect the later, to be honest, and that's a pretty normal thing. I know that this particular game aside (and World of Warcraft back in 2005 -> ~2008, I never play any given game for more than 6 months.

But the last few months? Looks very much like solid play over weekend events petering off midweek, which seems pretty reasonable and stable to me.

[AphexTwin11]

Yeah it's a bummer. I rather enjoy the game and it's mechanics, but it's incredibly one-dimensional (I only have been playing QP as of late because there is zero reason to play FW).

So now instead of adding creative, different, and deeper elements into the MMO component (FW), we have what appears to be a great deal of effort going into ED and weapon values because of incessant whining. Maybe I'm being too cynical or harsh, but I just don't understand the resources going into an arbitrary ED system and not into components of the actual gameplay modes.

From the Steam chart, the average Steam active player-base has dropped over 50% (!!!!) in less than a year. I don't know a whole lot about the gaming markets/business, but there is no possible way that those figures are typical of a FTP game like this (or maybe they are, and I'm just wrong, which is a strong possibility ).

[Snowbluff]

I don't know about you, but I think it's stabilized.

It was released in Ja, lots of players dropped off, and now it's losing a few there, gaining a few there...

[AphexTwin11]

Wintersdark, on 16 September 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

Numbers seem pretty stable to me. Steam release brought in a vast number of "tourist" players, who left fairly quickly, then there was another drop around April. What happened in April? Was there a specific event, or was that a group of Steamies who played for a few months then stopped? I suspect the later, to be honest, and that's a pretty normal thing. I know that this particular game aside (and World of Warcraft back in 2005 -> ~2008, I never play any given game for more than 6 months.

But the last few months? Looks very much like solid play over weekend events petering off midweek, which seems pretty reasonable and stable to me.

Is losing over 50% of the average active base in a 10-month period considered "tourist"-ing? I dunno, maybe.. but that just seemed really steep to me.

[C E Dwyer]

AphexTwin11, on 16 September 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

..Until we have an average of 500 [extend the range from the steam release, Nov-2015]?

http://steamcharts.com/app/342200

(Granted, this is Steam players only)

I see a stable level, a low stable level of players

[Snowbluff]

AphexTwin11, on 16 September 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

Is losing over 50% of the average active base in a 10-month period considered "tourist"-ing? I dunno, maybe.. but that just seemed really steep to me.

It's perfectly normal. The average players has remained stable for roughly the last five months. August and July even had gains.

[Bud Crue]

SQW, on 16 September 2016 - 10:07 AM, said:

Since there's nothing in the PGI's pipeline to suggest anything more significant than Energy Draw and Buckets for the next 6 months, things wouldn't change either.

You be quite!

I have it on good authority (2 very "vocal" people on this forum) that Energy draw is going to bring in dozens, scores, perhaps thousands...droves even...of new players to MWO! Wait times will be near instantaneous once Energy Draw is here. And Bucket Combining...are you even serious? Combining Buckets is the future of competitive game play! Moreover, like Energy Draw, Bucket Combining is what we call "new content" around here. And everyone knows that new content is what draws players into an existing game like bees to honey.

So you can just stop with your "nothing in the pipeline" talk. The future is in that pipeline. And it is a glorious future filled with a golden single bucket of players and an energy draw system that I don't quite understand...but I will love it and it will attract new players...because of some reason...because PGI knows best!

[nehebkau]

Bud Crue, on 16 September 2016 - 10:23 AM, said:

You be quite!

I have it on good authority (2 very "vocal" people on this forum) that Energy draw is going to bring in dozens, scores, perhaps thousands...droves even...of new players to MWO! Wait times will be near instantaneous once Energy Draw is here. And Bucket Combining...are you even serious? Combining Buckets is the future of competitive game play! Moreover, like Energy Draw, Bucket Combining is what we call "new content" around here. And everyone knows that new content is what draws players into an existing game like bees to honey.

So you can just stop with your "nothing in the pipeline" talk. The future is in that pipeline. And it is a glorious future filled with a golden single bucket of players and an energy draw system that I don't quite understand...but I will love it and it will attract new players...because of some reason...because PGI knows best!

I saw what you did there.

[Bud Crue]

Wintersdark, on 16 September 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

What happened in April? .

April townhall is what happened in April. Phase 3 also went live I believe in April (I may be wrong on that but there was much hand ringing about it that month). I think those two event (separately or together) caused perhaps more than a few bitter vets that had been hanging on, to finally call it a day.

[Wintersdark]

AphexTwin11, on 16 September 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

Is losing over 50% of the average active base in a 10-month period considered "tourist"-ing? I dunno, maybe.. but that just seemed really steep to me.

Try this: Open up another smallish game, and watch how much it loses immediately after steam launch.

What you're not seeing here is the massive, massive spike in players immediately before losing ~50% over the next couple months.

Yes, that's normal.

[Wintersdark]

For example, lets look at a major AAA title, Call of Duty Black Ops 3:

http://steamcharts.com/app/311210

Look familiar? The numbers are way bigger, but hey; this is CoD. Of course they are. But look at that curve.

[AphexTwin11]

Could be worse for MWO I suppose (http://steamcharts.com/app/17080), but it's still early.

Plus, being that the drop off distribution is 'normal', that doesn't fit my narrative and thus, cannot possibly be correct

[Wintersdark]

Or look at War Thunder, a comparable game, if a strictly more successful one. It launched on Steam a long time ago, and had growth and loss periods.

But if you look at it's curve over the Dec 2015 -> Sep 2016 period we're looking at for MWO? It's pretty much identical.

[Kaptain]

Looks stable to me but I doubt we will see it improve. While I understand that Mech Packs are bringing in money I don't understand what that money is being spent on.

It was once said that MWO will never be a game about 'Go here or there and cap something" yet in 2016 simplistic game modes like that are the bulk of MWOs content.

Where are the Attack and Defend game modes?
Where are the protect the convoy game modes?
Where are the raid the supplies game modes?
Where are the sensor towers?
Where are the turret generators?
Where are the NPCs vehicles of Mech Warrior past?
Hell, where is salvage? (For many of us the BEST part of Mech Warrior Games past)
Where is true role warfare? (rewarding light scouting/harrasing and medium brawling)
Why is damage the only measurement of a good pilot?

Collisions/knockdowns are gone(and we all knew they were lying when they said it was temporary).
Refit, repair and rearm are gone.
The visuals have been far reduced thanks to 12v12 (the real cause of low TTK and low strat games as it punishes mistakes and splitting)
Convergence has been removed
The skill tree (might finally get some work) is still boring and

The heat scale is pathetic. Run too hot = Shutdown. Go past shutdown = random damage.
Where is the reduced engine output? The hud problems? Blurred vision? and so on?

I guess I am one of those "Bitter Vets" but to me this is a pretty clear cut example of a minimally viable product. Do the bare minimum and pocket as much cash as you can in the process. This is especially true post FWs failure. Thus, as so many of us "Bitter Vets", my wallet has been closed since phoenix/founders and remains so for the foreseeable future. Special thanks to all those wales for keeping it going this long, I appreciate it.

Edited by Kaptain, 16 September 2016 - 10:51 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Bud Crue, on 16 September 2016 - 10:27 AM, said:

April townhall is what happened in April. Phase 3 also went live I believe in April (I may be wrong on that but there was much hand ringing about it that month). I think those two event (separately or together) caused perhaps more than a few bitter vets that had been hanging on, to finally call it a day.

Could be. I don't really remember the timing there, but that sounds plausible.

[Kael Posavatz]

Wintersdark, on 16 September 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

Steam release brought in a vast number of "tourist" players, who left fairly quickly, then there was another drop around April. What happened in April? Was there a specific event, or was that a group of Steamies who played for a few months then stopped?

Phase III.

A lot of players, not just those on Steam, were hanging around waiting for Phase III after the Great Rebalancing flopped (largely because Info-War tested so poorly). Invasion-mode had last been updated June 2015 (Vitric Forge patch), and Phase III was supposed to be this great and glorious thing.

Instead, it barely touched Invasion, and added the Issues of Long Tom to all the other issues Invasion had. Granted, it did add in a bunch of unit-management tools that we'd been waiting on for nearly two years, and scouting is occasionally fun, but the voting thing was...

Anyway, a lot of people took a few days looking at Phase III, then said "have fun, I'm out".

[AphexTwin11]

Kaptain, on 16 September 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

Where are the Attack and Defend game modes?
Where are the protect the convoy game modes?
Where are the raid the supplies game modes?
Where are the sensor towers?
Where are the turret generators?
Where are the NPCs vehicles of Mech Warrior past?
Hell, where is salvage? (For many of us the BEST part of Mech Warrior Games past)
Where is true role warfare? (rewarding light scouting/harrasing and medium brawling)
Why is damage the only measurement of a good pilot?

All of that sounds really fun, I almost forgot what it was like to play other MWO titles with those elements incorporated into the gameplay. I can't remember the last time I fired-up another BT/MW title...

[Wintersdark]

Kaptain, on 16 September 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

Looks stable to me but I doubt we will see it improve. While I understand that Mech Packs are bringing in money I don't understand what that money is being spent on.

Really? It's not hard: Salaries, server costs, logistic costs. Running a online game is not cheap. A large portion of their staff and operating expenses are going to be required to simply keep things running - HR, IT, server costs, maintenance, etc. Then you've got a handful of staff who's full time jobs are going to be building mechs (because they need to keep selling mechs to keep earning an income, obviously, or everything stops pretty much immediately).

Then you've got another handful who are going to be pretty much dedicated to bugfixing and standard online game maintenance; this being the regular random patch stuff.

So, you're going to end up with a relatively small pool of staff left (out of an initially tiny staff) who're actually developing new content.

It's pretty easy to make some reasonable, educated guesses as to Where the Money Goes.

It's not like you can just drop some cash and say you've bought a new game mode. It doesn't work that way. Most of the money that comes in is going to go right back out the door in just keeping the game running before you even consider new content.

Kael Posavatz, on 16 September 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

Phase III.

A lot of players, not just those on Steam, were hanging around waiting for Phase III after the Great Rebalancing flopped (largely because Info-War tested so poorly). Invasion-mode had last been updated June 2015 (Vitric Forge patch), and Phase III was supposed to be this great and glorious thing.

Instead, it barely touched Invasion, and added the Issues of Long Tom to all the other issues Invasion had. Granted, it did add in a bunch of unit-management tools that we'd been waiting on for nearly two years, and scouting is occasionally fun, but the voting thing was...

Anyway, a lot of people took a few days looking at Phase III, then said "have fun, I'm out".

Yeah, that's what Bud said.

I figure it's pretty likely, really. Phase 3 ended up being a pretty huge disappointment, and if FP was your bag, I can see just saying "F$&< it" and wandering off then. Seems as good a theory as any.


I'm very curious how pre-steam numbers compare with now.

Edited by Wintersdark, 16 September 2016 - 10:56 AM.