38 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

Just out of curiosity I just took a look at the player numbers on steam for both games, as I don't have or know any other way of looking those up and was quite surprised at what I saw.

30 days peak
SWS -> 385
MWO -> 1057

I have played Squadrons and by all means it is a very good game. Very compatitive, tight and well balanced gameplay. Modes that are fun and one of the best flight models of any of the Star Wars games so far.
Interesting unlocks for your ships, good graphice, good soundtrack and all.
It has everything a good multiplayer competitive game needs.

MWO has...well we all know MWO. Lets say it has its problems.
Still how can an age old game with so many flaws bet a more modern, overall better designed game that comes even with its own story campaing, if you prefer going solo, loose so much of its playerbase in such a short time while MWO...well its still there.

Is it just that the MWO playerbase is just so stubborn? Do we all have some kind of Stockholm syndrom?

Can it be that with all it flaws MWO still is fun for us?
I mean it can't be the niche aspect in case of Squadrons. MWO is also a niche and Squadrons even has the "StarWars" Label to carry it.

So what is going on here? What is your opinion on this?

PS: I know that those playernumbers aren't the whole number. Both games also run via other platforms. Still I wouldn't aspect such a large gap and espacialy not that MWO is in the lead.

[Meep Meep]

Steam only shows those that play the game through steam so there might actually be more playing squadrons overall.

[Sergeant Destroy]

Wow , really?
First off, Mwo is free to play.
Then Squadrons needs a flightstick or at least a gamepad, which is an absurd idea for some PC "purists",
and, believe it or not, Squadrons is way too demanding in versus mode for most peeps.
Also Squadrons doesnt even have remotely enough "unlocks" to keep the dopamin junkies busy.
Finally, I`m pretty sure it never had a big playerbase to begin with.

Edited by Sergeant Destroy, 04 December 2021 - 01:43 PM.

[ThreeStooges]

Haven't bothered with squadrons since 1. It's ea. 2. I don't want to buy a joystick even the cheap $40 ones plus shipping. 3. I grew up on the originals of lucasarts which ea has probably turned to doo doo with dlc and micro-transactions.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

I love my MWO, I love my Squadrons (though I haven't played it for months).

both are quite different games, not sure you can compare them.
But I have to admit: I thought Squadrons would be a 'bigger' thing, since it's SW;
and without a doubt there's more SW_fans out there than BT_fans.


anyway; gotta polish my Tie-Interceptor some more; don't wanna get on Lord Vaders bad side.

[RickySpanish]

Good question isn't it? Star Wars had a huge following historically, and the older Tie Fighter / X-Wing games were very well received. So why the low player count? Well, for one the entire franchise got dragged through the sh*tter not once, but twice. First with Jar Jar, and second with all the woke nonsense and killing off beloved characters (whose actors were none too pleased either), and finally Squadrons itself shoe horning in SJW rubbish. I guess it turned away long term fans and the potential younger audience have way, WAY cooler sci-fi franchises to look forward to.

[Nesutizale]

Sergeant Destroy, on 04 December 2021 - 01:42 PM, said:

Wow , really?
First off, Mwo is free to play.
Then Squadrons needs a flightstick or at least a gamepad, which is an absurd idea for some PC "purists",
and, believe it or not, Squadrons is way too demanding in versus mode for most peeps.
Also Squadrons doesnt even have remotely enough "unlocks" to keep the dopamin junkies busy.
Finally, I`m pretty sure it never had a big playerbase to begin with.

I have played Squadrons with a mouse and keyboard and it worked okay.

As for beeing to demanding, that is actualy a pretty interesting point to make. Do you realy think its that much more demanding then MWO? I mean most people now that aren't fresh to the game still don't get some of the ways the game is played, most likely me included.

Unlocks, that is indeed a point where Squadrons is indeed a bit behind MWO. On the other hand the upgrades are fewer but have more impact on gameplay and IIRC it took much longer to unlock them. Still a valid point.

Playerbase
Squadron has sold 1.1million copies.
MWO had, according to Jarls list, at top 350.000 players.
While this mght be nothing compared to titles like League of Legends or maybe Call of Duty its still a lot more potential Squadron players then MWO.

ThreeStooges, on 04 December 2021 - 02:35 PM, said:

Haven't bothered with squadrons since 1. It's ea. 2. I don't want to buy a joystick even the cheap $40 ones plus shipping. 3. I grew up on the originals of lucasarts which ea has probably turned to doo doo with dlc and micro-transactions.

2. You can actualy play it with mouse and keyboard
3. Squadrons had to my knowledge no DLC or Micro transactions what was actualy a big critic point by EA headquarters but Motive Studios pushed for not to be included. Don't know if it later changed.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 04 December 2021 - 03:22 PM, said:

I love my MWO, I love my Squadrons (though I haven't played it for months).

both are quite different games, not sure you can compare them.
But I have to admit: I thought Squadrons would be a 'bigger' thing, since it's SW;
and without a doubt there's more SW_fans out there than BT_fans.


anyway; gotta polish my Tie-Interceptor some more; don't wanna get on Lord Vaders bad side.

To me they are comparable in the regard that both are competitive multiplayer games. Yah that is a very, very basic comparsion. Still made me wonder as yourself because of the StarWars license that mostly makes everything sell like fresh cut bread. Still it dosn't seam to be enough to retain a playerbase.

I find that part espacialy interesting, cause it could mean there is some importend lesson to be learned for the future of MWO, if PGI ever decided to stop watching their belly button and realise that MWO is a greate thing that needs some love, attention and a freaking dedicated team. Dearon, Matt and the others are doing what they can with the limited resources but its not enough.

[Nesutizale]

I wanted to ask if he could point out what part of Squadron he feelt where in any way SJW influanced but decided not to.
About the last three movies. Yah you could say that they pressed stuff in there but overall I found it was mostly just badly written. I think a character like Ray could have been interesting and all but no, writers decided to make her uninteresting....

PS: Am I the only one that was pro Kylo in the idea that the era of Sith and Jedi should come to an end and be replaced with something new?

Edited by Nesutizale, 04 December 2021 - 04:08 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Sergeant Destroy, on 04 December 2021 - 04:01 PM, said:

[redacted]

The destruction of the franchise by Lucas ruining it with the remakes, and then Disney murdering the old characters to appeal to a new audience is pretty well documented at this point. It's hardly a fetish to point out 'go woke, go broke'. And for younger audiences why would they put up with the crap character design in SW when they could watch something FAR superior, and politically interesting, like The Expanse.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 06 December 2021 - 06:29 AM.
quote clean-up

[RickySpanish]

Nesutizale, on 04 December 2021 - 04:06 PM, said:

I wanted to ask if he could point out what part of Squadron he feelt where in any way SJW influanced but decided not to.
About the last three movies. Yah you could say that they pressed stuff in there but overall I found it was mostly just badly written. I think a character like Ray could have been interesting and all but no, writers decided to make her uninteresting....

PS: Am I the only one that was pro Kylo in the idea that the era of Sith and Jedi should come to an end and be replaced with something new?

The bad character design is it, the writing was done horribly because Disney thought *that* was what their audience wanted. There is of course room in scifi for politics and social discussion - The Expanse does this fantastically IMO. SW is the exact opposite of that - bad attempts to shove in popular political ideals with no regard for actual writing

[Sergeant Destroy]

Well its a 5v5 tug o war basicly, and if anyone new joined the MP right now he would be utterly destroyed.
As for upgrades, i like it that way, but in the last decade "gamers" have been conditioned to get stuff fed every 5 minutes, once everything is farmed, the game dies, people want instant gratification instead of getting gud.
All in all, game is to good for it`s own good.

[RickySpanish]

As for Squadrons, I couldn't help but notice the trailers and their portrayal of the colour of the storm trooper's skin. Hmmm.

[Nesutizale]

Have you played Squadrons? I have a feeling you didn't because none of the stuff you mentioned is present in it. So it seams more like a compulsion reflex on your side rather then objective.

As I said, yes the last three movies where terrible, dosn't mean that everything else Star Wars is bad too.
Squadrons was good. Jedi Fallen Order is also a quite solid game. Both where released later.

[Sergeant Destroy]

RickySpanish, on 04 December 2021 - 04:12 PM, said:

The bad character design is it, the writing was done horribly because Disney thought *that* was what their audience wanted. There is of course room in scifi for politics and social discussion - The Expanse does this fantastically IMO. SW is the exact opposite of that - bad attempts to shove in popular political ideals with no regard for actual writing

I have yet to see the wokeness in Squadrons. Good black guy versus evil badass chick doesn`t cut it for me.
Also, by the way, Star Wars was good back in the days because of its looked fantastic for its time, not because it was the space fairy tale it was.****`s always been a big merchandise project.
Just a little reminder:

Edited by Sergeant Destroy, 04 December 2021 - 04:22 PM.

[Nesutizale]

RickySpanish, on 04 December 2021 - 04:15 PM, said:

As for Squadrons, I couldn't help but notice the trailers and their portrayal of the colour of the storm trooper's skin. Hmmm.

Seriously? How are people still so hung up on skin color these days?
The imperial side was pretty mixed with a bit of everything and you could choose your own chars skin color. On the rebels side it got even weirder with lots of aliens beside the humans.

So in the end the skin colors where totaly irrelevant for the story. So you point is completly out of place and leads me even more to the belive that you didn't play it at all and just bash it on your prejudice of past experiances.

Sergeant Destroy, on 04 December 2021 - 04:16 PM, said:

I have yet to see the wokeness in Squadrons. Good black guy versus evil badass chick doesn`t cut it for me.
Also, by the way, Star Wars was good back in the days because of its looked fantastic for its time, not because it was the space fairy tale it was.

Indeed Star Wars originals where, storywise, just the most basic fairtale in space. Damn we even had it in film school as the posterchild for the checklist of how to write a story. Not that it would be a good story just that these are the basic checkboxes you should look at.

And yes I still like it anyway. Star Wars is cool.

[RickySpanish]

No I didn't play it, why would I? Like I said, the franchise got trashed by people trying to shove their own ideals into it instead of writing a good story. Why would I have spent 80 dollars to see if that was true or not? There comes a point where one has simply had enough, and that is certainly the case with Star Wars. Two reboot attempts, both absolutely awful, and then a bunch of trailers for Squadrons itself that make one think "hmm, there seems to be even more bollockry from the reboot in this". Why on Earth would I shell out money to find out if I was wrong or not? Then there's the fact that it is an EA game... Which again, just does it no favours in my books, being a game developer, and knowing lots of people who suffered similarly to #EASpouse. The impression I got was that this was part of EA trying to "redeem" themselves amongst players for all the crap they have shovelled at them and their employees, apparently by pandering to social activists. No thanks. Judging by player numbers, I suppose it's not that great a game afterall.

Also while things are grinding my gears, what the **** is it with people slamming MWO and Piranha as somehow amateur? Yeah they did not always do what players wanted, but somehow they kept the lights on for a niche mech sim for close to a decade, when maaaany other such games have crashed and burned. I would say MWO is quite a good game, and very much without rival.

I'm going to go take my chill pill now.

[Sergeant Destroy]

Try the rainbow pill.

[LordNothing]

Sergeant Destroy, on 04 December 2021 - 01:42 PM, said:

Wow , really?
First off, Mwo is free to play.
Then Squadrons needs a flightstick or at least a gamepad, which is an absurd idea for some PC "purists",
and, believe it or not, Squadrons is way too demanding in versus mode for most peeps.
Also Squadrons doesnt even have remotely enough "unlocks" to keep the dopamin junkies busy.
Finally, I`m pretty sure it never had a big playerbase to begin with.

thats just the trappings of a space sim. space sims are pretty niche, even the big ones like star citizen and elite dangerous. i for one had my fill of space sims back in the freespace era. freelancer was the most mouse friendly space sim that ever existed. and i cant help but think that mwo took inspiration from the combined control of ship and turret from that particular game in making mechs independant arm and torso control system work (perhaps a little mw3 as well). i though it was ahead of its time even though i hated it for its lack of joystick support. it was the beginning of the end of the golden age of the joystick, that grand phallic controller that was once the sign of a true gamer, that has since been replaced by an overpriced mouse and gaudy rgb on all the things.

i never cared for the grueling grind of ed, i cant upgrade my ship if i have to constantly pay docking fines, and sc was just too damn scammy to even try. i also really dont much care for star wars these days, and so haven't played anything since xwing vs tie fighter. ive been happy with kerbal space program, its not a space shooter, but it meets my needs for realism. combat is available with mods (and battlemechs).

i wouldnt have thought a battletech game would be any less niche than a space shooter. even one in a well established (and frequently ruined) universe. but at the end of the day its just different people into different kinds of games, with some overlap. i never really felt the need to more broadly explore mech games in other universes.

the best way to keep a game community alive, is to mass players who like the game, and then give them a lot of free stuff, either mods or accumulated investment in the game. i think its more a matter of sunk cost fallacy than stockholm syndrom. im in the game i got lots of mechs and there are lots more to get. its harder to play a game in every possible way than it used to be. even if its kind of a forced illusion. what do i lose by not playing the other 400-500 mechs, did i some how not get my monies worth. while its a shaky foundation to build a game on, it test of time shows that it works. seems like ive been here longer than with the freespace community at this point, and am more active than say the ksp community that has more or less aged in parallel.

wow that got off topic fast.

Edited by LordNothing, 04 December 2021 - 05:53 PM.

[RickySpanish]

I actually just finished clearing my desk to play ED again. I won't be buying the expansion for now, as I don't fancy sub 60fps gameplay without proper VR, but yeah. Had to install a new shelf to hold my desk stuff that used to have a home before my wife's crafts literally the entire study >.>

[pattonesque]

noted failure of a franchise *checks notes* star wars