32 replies to this topic

[mogs01gt]

WolvesX, on 13 February 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

Hey fellow Forumites!
Here you can take a look @the steamstats for MWO: http://steamcharts.com/app/342200#All
What do you think about it?
Do you think its save to invest further money into the game or do you think that the game will die out when for example "Battletech" the game gets released?
I really like MWO and I would hate to see it die.

If it keeps trying to compete with other FPS's out there, its going to fail before 2020

[Clanner Scum]

Deathlike, on 13 February 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

Yes they can.

If you played MW4, even the Mechpacks (when MS still liked doing MW games) were sold separately as physical CDs (ya, Lostech in the modern age).

Do you want that Madcat MKII? Buy another mechpack!

I still have the original boxes for IS and Clan.

[Hestan]

I would not trust the Steamstats at all. The steam client and updater are kind of buggy for MWO and most players switch to the normal launcher if they continue to play.

[Mawai]

A bit surprisingly, those numbers look pretty stable. The game has had an average of 1000 players with a peak around 1850 since last June. Keep in mind that Steam only represents a certain fraction of installed clients (PGI has quoted less than 50% I believe but only they know for sure).

As for the Battletech game from HBS, it may affect the number of players in the short term but it is a completely different game. I supported Battletech and I will play it and it will compete for what little gaming time available but I won't be playing it to get my mech driving fix since it is a turn based mech lance command table top simulator ... it is Battletech and not Mechwarrior. (The original Mechwarrior is the RPG that was grafted onto the Battletech rules ... and which was followed up by a series of video FPS games)

Hestan, on 13 February 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

I would not trust the Steamstats at all. The steam client and updater are kind of buggy for MWO and most players switch to the normal launcher if they continue to play.

Interesting. I switched from the stand alone launcher to Steam so that more of my games would be in one place and I haven't actually run into any bugs specifically related to Steam for MWO or any of the other games I have on there. Only PGI actually has the numbers for the fraction of steam vs standalone clients and the current game population.

[Novakaine]

Sombodies been in the salt mine again.

Edited by Novakaine, 13 February 2017 - 01:55 PM.

[Lily from animove]

well steam charts show the general trend of a game spopulation, so the game keeps stable in pop, which is quite fine.

[Carl Vickers]

Mcgral18, on 13 February 2017 - 08:26 AM, said:

You can expect stagnation, but its not likely to die this year.
Might even last until 2020, but it seems MW5 will be the longer term investment (and likely DLC campaigns, as they can't peddle Mechpacks in a singple player game...or can they?)

I think they will do the odd pack for mechs in MW5 but I think mechs will mostly come with DLC campaigns,

[WolvesX]

We are at under 1k players atm.

[r4zen]

WolvesX, on 02 March 2017 - 01:54 PM, said:

We are at under 1k players atm.

Not true. A better representation of the population can be found by looking at monthly leaderboard data. Steam charts are only useful for determining active steam users, not overall playerbase.

The population is pretty steady over the past 6+ months.

Edit: For season 9 (February), here's the last page of the QP leaderboard:
https://mwomercs.com...page=387&type=0

At least 7,000-odd players with at least 10 QP games in February.

There's another segment of the population who does not play very much QP (myself, for example). I play at least 3x/week, but it's almost exclusively FP, and did not make the 10 game cutoff for the QP leaderboard in Feb.

Edited by r4zen, 02 March 2017 - 04:05 PM.

[Anjian]

I don't think the game has a big a population like some of the wargames out there, and in respect it may be small compared to those.

But there is enough players to keep the QP queues full for short waiting times for matches and enough skill distribution for its share of tight matches.

I also feel that the game has an international presence that isn't accounted for by forumers. When I queue for QP, I check the boxes on all three servers, and find myself going to any of them any time.

[Clownwarlord]

Will MWO die?

Well first what is MWO?
- Free to play
- Multi-player
- Single Mech Pilot RPG/Shooter (more shooter than RPG but you can pretend you are a mech pilot for your unit of the IS or a warrior of the clan if your unit does that larp thing)

So what games that could pull players away from MWO that are coming out?
- Battletech
- MW5

What is Battltech?
- One time cost game
- Lance Commanding
- One V One (PC or Person)

What is MW5
- One time cost game
- Single Player vs PC
- Single Mech Pilot RPG/Shooter (while still a shooter you will have a greater RPG story line base than MWO which has none other than community/ unit / player made).

So MWO fills a gap that these others will not have. Will MWO lose players to these other games? Yes but also I see it as if you play those other games you might also come to MWO to fill what the others are missing. I do know some units that when Mechwarrior Tactics was out their unit was formed around player; MWO, MWT, and Mech commander. When these other games come out I see units picking up supporting all three games for their members.

In other words I feel that these new games will be better and that it can take from the MWO player base but at the same time actually add greater numbers to the Mechwarrior/Battletech community as a whole. So in other words our overall Mech Con community will grow even though our MWO community might drop (some what). Although some new people to the entire franchise might pick up MWO since it is free unlike the others so MWO might not even lose but instead grow itself as well as the Mech Con community.

In truth wait and see. Kinda like Nancy Pelosi said about Obama Care, "We have to pass it to know whats in it." What was in Obama Care good for some bad for others ... just like this could be good could be bad.

[Anjian]

Any game can potentially draw away MWO players particularly if they are in the same general field of Vehicular Warfare.

A single purchase game like MW5 will only momentarily take time away from a dedicated player, who will likely go back when they finished the game.

A game like HBS Battletech attracts a totally different breed of player. Strategy and tactics players, quite often, don't play FPS and shooter games, and many FPS or action shooter players, don't play strategy games, especially if they are turn based.

On the other hand, games like World of Tanks, World of Warships, War Thunder, Fractured Space, Dreadnought, pose bigger threat to MWO despite not being mech games, but because they are also vehicular warfare games.

[Anjian]

Instead of Steam charts, try using Google Trends, which statistically collects queries done on a search topic. I find the data to be rather surprising. There is a strong correlation between interest and search queries.

Mechwarrior Online on a five year.




Not surprising. The game has a strong start then player churn catches up and the curve declines. Over time the decline is stable and has stabilized.

On a 12 month. Once again, fairly stable. The spike is due to an event. Spikes are due to content patches as well as events.





You can also do comparisons with other games too. That's when things begin to look disheartening.




Be careful of what you use to compare it with, or the line gets crushed.

Edited by Anjian, 03 March 2017 - 04:53 PM.