Like every PvE game which does not have hundreds of people working to churn out content, its playerbase will dwindle until only those who do not get bored by its gameplay stick around. Whether it’s Left 4 Dead, Payday, Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide, those types of games follow this pattern…
And I for one, see no fucking issue with that. It’s a great game, people play it until they have had their fill and then move on. Helldivers 2 is only an outlier because of how hard it hit at launch. It absolutely does not have the content pipeline to keep a large playerbase engaged, so yeah it will not keep printing a lot of money, just a little bit every now and then.
Now excuse me as I go and spread some managed democracy.
Yeah but that’s the problem isn’t it? Why are more toxic games like the PvP centric ones some much more successful with sometimes even less content?
Because PvP is basically infinite free content for people who like the game loop. I’ve had friends who love that sort of thing and they can play forever because they’re putting their skills against real people who aren’t just basic AIs.
You can also just play PvE like helldivers over and over again. But people seem to like the idea of winning by putting someone else down.
The player base was always going to decline significantly.
It doesn’t have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.
The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren’t on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren’t grouped up for major orders.
The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I’m happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.
This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don’t have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I’ve played.
It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.
Never touched it again after the psn fiasco. I am not deluded enough to think the devs were on the players side. If you saw there early messages about it and still think they are with you, you are completely lost.
Naturally there is always going to be a certain amount of player decline over time, but I have to wonder how much of this could have been saved had Sony not created a PR nightmare for the game with the required PSN account linking.
That said, I’m sure there’s going to be a sharp spike in players very soon, as Arrowhead should be releasing a new enemy faction into the game very shortly, which is going to bring a lot of players back again for a while. Hopefully they’ll find a way to keep those players interested again.
So?
I hate how every game want to compete for current playtime.
I got way more than money’s worth out of this game, but I haven’t played in over a month. I hope that when I go back to it, there’s still a playerbase.
But like, the developers planned for at best to get 10% of what they did…
If they dropped that extra 90%, I don’t see why that should spell the end of the game. It’s the playerbase the game was designed for.
There’s just this weird “first or worst” mentality with a lot of studios. I hope this game is just given the room to stretch it legs over a decade or so. Something people might not always keep installed on their console, but still download once or twice a year to get some games in.
Games like that can be a success. Just because a lot of people burnt out doesn’t mean they’ll never play again.
It’s just games like that don’t maximize investor returns. They want to churn out hits that people play exclusively for 3 months then drop, only to buy the new one next year.
The game has lot of shitty online only mechanics, so while it would make a solid co-op game, it has the live service model and live service games need to keep a playerbase or they get shutdown. These types of games exist for one reason: microtransactions. They want to sell you bullshit.
That’s why they need to compete for playtime. Their next game might not go viral, so losing a massive chunk of your playerbase like this is a problem.
But honestly fuck live service games and people shouldn’t expect anything from them. They are made to milk your wallet.
Yeah, but their battle passes never expire, and you don’t have to spend real money to get one.
They never expected it to go viral, they budget to go at least a year of story driven campaign and they probably made enough to pay for that times 10 already.
They don’t need to nickel and dime the user base, if anything they can sell less premium shit.
How to be successful long term:
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Make a good game
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Don’t ship your game with a rootkit
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Don’t ban entire regions from your game
If they drop they root kit I’ll play it
Me too
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