Is that the case with the 19% Steam upvoted game?
Wanna repeat that sentence when Cycle 4 starts and shows the numbers unless something happens in the meanwhile?
That’s a very clear part of the part towards the customer. Not only functional aspects but also communication and goodwill are a big part of it.
Sure I can repeate myself all day long. I did so about LE, nothing changed and still a crap ton of people played each season. LE having no retention is a hole other can of worms. To me the game has little that speaks for it and nothing it makes better then other games in the genre.
So yes I guess we see at least 100k+ players next season more then the last one because people are fed up but most of the players of a very positive rated game (81%) will most likely play it again.
Sure most recently the ~1.6k reviews were mostly negative but those are very little compared to all the reviews given at all time. Why do you try to ignore the overall rating? You want to pick numbers that suite your narritive or what are you on?
The most important aspect is the timing. If there is no other season from another game LE will look nice. If their next season start whith any other H&S season or new game it’ll be bad. Prople will most likely look into it out of boredom or because they have nothing esle on their plate or they want to see the bladedancer rewwork or whatever EHG is cooking right now.
The numbers will there but they’ll not be groundbreaking.
Given what 1.0 provided I would say ‘no’.
And goven what EHG seemingly must’ve expected in numbers it also seems to be underwhelming 
I know what you wanna say, and it is wildly successful in player numbers.
The issue still is that it’s been a downward trend before the information we got… when EHG still had decent amounts of goodwill.
I wonder how severe that trend turns out with the new status basically.
All time, which includes the reviews from all those which don’t even look at the game anymore.
It’s very dangerous to look at a game existing for a long time on Steam to only watch the all-time review-status, the older the more important the recent one.
I personally expect 60k for S4 at most unless it’s a huge one in terms of mechanics and/or quality improvements.
Darklands is a 95/100 game for me and I havent looked at the game for 30+ years. So what? isn’t making the game worse.
As I said timing is the biggest issue. As long as they don’t drown baby kittens publicly so even a person buried under the deepest rock will know they messed up they’ll keep a large share of their playerbase. Heck even D4 is still going strong while it was going downhill since the beta and S2 and S5 (iirc) were fun and everything else was a joke given the time and money invested.
It depends on the game. If I look into single Player games everything is fine. If I see this on a life service game I need to look into it because it could be review bombed for specific reasons. Heck look at the ups and downs of Destiny 2 that game is still there and was bombed how many times? 4?
Most of the time I get where you come from but right now I’m confused because you try to twist the narritive to suite your point of view while I think you are wrong here.
Now imagine looking at it the first time and you see ‘overwhelmingly negative’.
What does that tell you?
Or imagine coming back and you wanna check out how the game is currently received, you waited for good news and great updates. How does that seem?
All I’m saying.
Someone ignoring the Steam page obviously will not see reviews That’s a given.
But then we got the avenues of diverse gaming-news posts all over the place, influencers which state their position… and none of it seems positive… at best people are ‘mildly hopeful’.
That’s not really inspiring trust.
Yep, absolutely, which is why I’m really curious about it. They got 2 months to manage something.
And EHG is not Blizzard with a extremely powerful franchise which is primarily based on pulling on extreme casuals. Their position is just one which is extremely safe, actually not a bad marketing strategy they have there. Unfulfilling but decent.
Yeah, and they downsized substantially once and nearly shut down once because of it as well So it kinda had an effect.
I just wonder if EHG can be as ‘solid’ as Destiny 2.
On steam reviews tell me nothing. Arc Raiders has good reviews and is objectively a good game I guess. To my liking it’s complete and utter trash. it’s so bad I don’t touch it with a 10 ft pole.
I get curious and look what happened and if some keyboard activists had a mental breake down ormade stuff up to generate a narritive to suit their point of view or making a mountain out of a molehill.
And what I said was: The majority of players isn’t looking at anything outside of “What new games are there?” and if something is looking good they buy it. A friend of mine bought every dark souls and eldenring stuff that is there to give. He wasn’t aware the games are called “Soulslike” or deemed to be hard. He had just fun playing those, never bothered with the difficulty, what other people said, guides and whatnot. To him it was a complete suprise that Dark Souls generated fuzz and people thought the game was hard because for him it was just like a game from back in the day. That’s just one of many examples of people I know who don’t give a crap about the japping surrounding games and who just play them silently. The friend i nthe example said something arround the lines of “I have enough drama at work and I don’t need more.”.
So I guess people who ignore everything and unwind playing games are the happier people :p.
Sure Larian Studios was nearly shut down as well… two times iirc. All their BG games are praised highly and still the company almost went under.
Outside of steam reviews needing an user to take extra steps to find viable reviews… just looking at them like they mean enething is a problem between a chair and a screen.
Actually, it’s very related to the current situation. If they have an MTX based monetization but don’t provide a game that is engaging in the long term, then MTX sales plummet as well.
Retention rate is very important for your MTX sales. A player that knows they’re only going to be playing for a week is less likely to buy MTX than if they knew they would be entertained for a whole month or more.
Yeah but if people don’t want to play the game or are realy engaged with it noone is looking at MTX to start with.
Imagine EHG didn’t had all the goodwill in the past and people didn’t buy into the supporter stuff or threw money at them for 1k packs. I guess we would never have seen 1.0 because to me it looks like EHG has no idea what they do when it comes to monetizing their game.
The whole situation has many steps which went ‘wrong’ in total.
First off: The quantity of MTX.
If there’s too little then you won’t find anything which entices you. The chance is simply substantially lower.
Secondly: The visibility of MTX.
Quite a bit of the MTX available is barely visible at the best of moments, not to speak of when you’re in the middle of the fray.
Third: MTX is only seen by yourself.
While not inherently bad when it’s seen by others it allows the extra boasting effect. Social perception simply. It’s a very important aspect, especially in a live-service game.
Fourth: The game lacks longevity.
A single playthrough is extremely short for a live-service game. And top-end farming is one of the most unrewarding ones out of all live-service games in existence.
Fifth: The game is not massive in replay value still.
Yes, many will now scream out ‘but there’s so many builds!’. The crux of the issue is that the majority of builds are extremely close together in behavior. We got only a very limited amount of skills and in several cases it relates around adjusting a core skill in several different ways. Spellblade specifically has this issue with nigh every build being Mana Strike for example. They differ in building… and they all feel very very similar.
Those are the core issues I see in relation to the MTX value directly related to in-game.
Then we still got a few more outside the game.
Sixth: Reliable content drops are not existing.
This has to do with how often you’ll come back and hence get to use your MTX potentially again. This are the Cycles commonly for many people. Less Cycles means less MTX usage.
Seventh: Lack of security.
With that I mean that since a short while now players are unsure if their MTX will ‘stay’, given that people are not sure if the company will even pull through. This obviously causes more reluctance to spend money.
Eight: Lack of trust.
Also a major aspect now. Since EHG didn’t uphold or went back on things that were established it reduces the amount of people wanting to spend money because they don’t trust in the game going in a direction they can stomach as time passes.
Well… that’s my list of the issues.
Some could’ve been solved.
Some should’ve been solved since ages.
Some are baffling.
And some are sad situations which are the follow-ups from the others.
But all in all each of those points reduces the chance and the quantity if payments. It’s perceived as ‘not worth it’ more likely, or for the quantity even something existing to entice one in the first place to even think about spending.
What do you mean? They added offline MTX this season. Your MTX will now stay for sure.
In fact, offline MTX is even working better than online ones, since oflfine remembers the MTX you’re using.
The vast majority plays online still. Be it for group-play, because of MG, leaderboards or simply ‘because’.
So? As long as you play online you have your MTX. If the game goes under and servers shut down, you can keep playing offline and also have your MTX.
So there is no fear that you will lose your MTX in LE. You might have that fear for other games like PoE, but not in LE.
Mhmm… when your reason for playing is gone it means jack though if it exists. It then has no value.
And for many that upholds, no matter the logic or lack of it.
That’s not what you said, though. You literally said players are scared they will lose their MTX if EHG goes under. This is non-issue, since you keep them even if servers shut down.
As for “your reason for playing is gone”, that could apply to any live service game. Who knows what will happen to them in a few years time? Players buy MTX because they’re having fun now.
Any of these games can change so that you’re no longer having fun, but that’s not something on players’ minds when buying MTX. Just the present amount of fun for them.
So you wanna tell me you think that a company takeover because of pending bancrupty followed by changing the payment model followed by a massive reviewbombing is equivalent to what any other live-service commonly has at any second in terms of security?
In terms of keeping your MTX? For sure. No matter what happens, I know that I’ll keep the MTX I bought in LE forever.
The same can’t be said about any live service game that doesn’t have offline mode (which is barely any of them) and offline support for MTX (which is only LE, AFAIK).
Maybe if PoE2 does really well GGG will decide to drop PoE1 in a couple of years. If they do, you can’t be certain there will be any offline client for you to keep enjoying the game. The odds are that you won’t, actually.
So all those hundreds you spent on MTX will most likely simply be gone one day, unlike in LE.
And what value does it have if you’re not one playing offline at all?
Now get into that position rather then your own.
As I stated above which type of individuals are meant in that regard.
Only speaking about the online aspect for a reason. And no, it’s not to make my point, it’s instead of ‘all’ simply a smaller percentile then 100%, still substantial. Still existing, still going strong.
Half the playerbase plays CoF (probably way more than half at this point). Only a small minority actually plays in a group.
It’s only MG and players that like playing with others that will see any change.
That means that most players wouldn’t actually “notice” if EHG went under. They’d just play offline the same way they already play online. AND they’d get to keep their MTX.
You also have the option of just saving your files and never updating the game and keeping it in whatever version you enjoy the most. (there are also some less legal options of getting whichever version you like best since 1.0, but we won’t discuss those here).
So if you enjoy Season 4 and feel like buying an MTX, most people can do so knowing that their MTX will stay there forever. And that there’s even an option to have the game never change again for you.
This is something you don’t get in any other live service game. So I actually feel safer buying LE’s MTX than I did when buying PoE’s.
And PoE has evolved into a game I don’t enjoy as much anymore, so all that money I spent on it is now wasted, because I don’t have any way to actually play the game as it was back then.
And nonetheless a surprisingly substantial amount still only plays online and never offline, CoF or not.
My points were - obviously - solely focused on those which do, for whatever reason, also as stated… logical or not.
They do exist, they’re surprisingly many, they matter hence and are viable to be taken into a point for the list up there.
Are they not?
Sure, but my point still stands.
With PoE, you will never know for how long you can enjoy your MTX. The game will change and you have no way of “rolling back” to a time you enjoyed it more. Also, when they shut down the game, odds are that there will be no offline client (not even going into the fact that the game is balanced around trading online).
With LE you know that MTX will stay forever and that you can actually keep the game the way you like it without having to update to the latest version.
So buying an MTX not knowing if you’ll still enjoy the game next year or even if it will actually be around vs buying an MTX knowing that you will have an option to keep everything as is without changes, I’d say LE is still more safe than everything else.
For some people, both are as unsafe. For others, LE is the only safe one.
I mean, how sure are you that PoE1 will still be around 2 years from now?
PoE2 already has better numbers than PoE1. When they finally launch, it’s very likely that the numbers will spike up significantly.
If PoE2 ends up having 5x more players than PoE1 but PoE1 requires as much effort to keep going as PoE2 (while making less money), do you really believe GGG will keep it going indefinitely?