It has 200 concurrent players. I guess that game didn’t turn out as good as it planned to.
Its still in EA I believe
And also its a solo player only (iirc) so I dont really understand why player count matters
It is in EA, but it does have limited multiplayer.
Because I want not stalled game, with regular updates. This way, it feels like I can play the game for a long time. And because if game would be good, more people would play it. PoE 2 in EA too, but 1000+ times more players are playing it, so I can be sure that it will evolve, all bugs will be fixed, a lot of new content will be added every few months, it will always feel fresh (the only question is in which direction it will evolve…).
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Wolcen had twice the peak Grim Dawn ever had, according to Steamcharts.
Torchlight 2 has had more players than Torchlight 3 for almost the entire time TL3 was in active post-launch development.
Player count does not guarantee long term development or even a majority of bugfixes.
If anything, the effect is more the other way around.
But if you want to wait for the player numbers in patch 1.4 to be certain the game is good, I can’t make you play. You’re missing out on a lot of potential fun in the mean time, though.
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I didn’t talk about peaks, I talked about sustaining constant playerbase during long period, without declining over time.
PS. Oh, actually I talked about it in another topic 
But this is what I meant anyway
In the first year of TL3 (June 2020 → June 2021) the lowest “Average player” on steamcharts is 125.7. It’s gone to consistently be <50 in 2024 (~30-40% retention)
Torchlight 2: 401.3 during TL3’s first year → <300 in 2024 (75% retention)
Torchlight 2’s last patch was in 2017
Baldur’s Gate 3 still has >10% of its launch peak in players as monthly numbers.
Last Epoch is at currently at 2-3% of March 2024.
Yet BG3 is no longer being worked on (outside maybe bug fixes)
Grim Dawn has a consistent 2k average / 5-6k peak for nearly the entirety of 2024. It had 0 content patches since late 2023.
The argument that “If people keep playing it, developers will work on it” is false in at least three case examples. Players do not exist in a vacuum with a single game. Numbers are not a simple metric in how good a game is.
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Then why their site shows a lot of patches last year, new classes announced in 2025 and road map for the next 3 years?
Doesn’t look like you are trolling, somehow you are writing it seriously, so I will answer that by consistency of playerbase I didn’t mean to have constantly <50 players
Doesn’t mean it’s not receiving a new content quite often, with mods. Otherwise, population would probably decline, I think.
But it is not about WASD really, we went too far into off-topic.
I forgot they were still gonna add extra subclasses. I could’ve sworn they said it was done, or maybe it was just something about no DLC.
And the point in Torchlight was that TL2 had a smaller, but more consistent playerbase, yet TL3 was the one in development. I’m sure if I try and find D3 active playerbase numbers, it’ll be a consistent tens of thousands of players, but there are no new seasons being developed for it.
But you’re right, this topic is about WASD.
And to me, having the serious option of WASD is a good thing. But if it’s going to be janky or provide shitty visual feedback, then it’s not a serious option compared to how smooth mouse works atm and I wouldn’t feel as happy with it.
For personal/medical reasons, I’m unable to play casters for as long as I could melee. A good WASD implementation would help in that. I even tried out that script on reddit for it. But it a) lacked rebinding, and b) felt more of a burden to use than classic mouse movements. That’s why I think it’s good they take their time to build up a good system.
Oh, and ironically, that lack of WASD would mean I contribute more to the player base statistics, because if I’ld make a caster in a cycle, I would take more weeks/months to get to whatever point I’ld consider its maximum (at the cost of only playing 2h or so per day) so in my case, WASD would actually decrease player consistency. Because I’ld be given the option to binge all my game time in a month. And having that option makes the game better imho 
I managed to rebind all keys (on ESDF, mouse side keys, etc), but the script itself doesn’t work well indeed, it makes a mouth move inconsistently and it felt awful. EHG have normal implementation without that problem, but people argue that since with WASD you will turn around more often than with mouse, it will look so bad that it shouldn’t be released Idk, for me it sounds hilarious to be honest.
I’ve seen someone do it for D4 as well (rebound them to the controller input actually) and they were shooting Fireballs out of their elbow. The character looked disconnected from the rest of the game, which is one of those “yes it works, but it doesn’t feel good” reasons EHG isn’t just McGyvering a control solution.
In WH40k - Inquisitor, I managed to do ok because I basically swapped it around: There I use the mouse only to move, (with charge/evade on right click) and the skillbar to do all my damage. So on bigger groups it seemd to give my arm enough rest to last longer.
But in that game you have a lot of “move forward/backward while channeling” abilities, plus the level design is far more linear / hallway, so you’re often only using a 90-180° arc in front of your character to target.
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Not sure what you’ve seen in D4, but here we are talking about the same exact things you can do with mouse — when you are clicking mouse in one direction, then fire to another, your character instantly turning around. With WASD, nothing would be different. The only difference is that with WASD you probably would do it more often, and this is what people are arguing about, that it will look so bad that it’s better not to implement it. Like, the same thing you do with mouse will lood so bad if you will do it with wasd. Doesn it make sense for you?
Nah, in that D4 video he was basically shooting farts at the boss. Sorc would swing Wand towards right of screen and the projectile goes to the top. I think it was this one
For me for WASD (or actually AZES in my case) to look good, I would prefer some sort of smooth animation over my character flipflopping more than a 90s cartoon villain, yes.
You can already ‘test’ the way a “click-only” style would work with the ingame engine through melee abilities.
Just click both buttons and run past enemies. It looks like you’re stuck in world’s tiniest pinball machine.
Does it really matter? Mechanically not, but visually it does (atleast to me)
And whether it’s tank movement (rotating torso) or strafing while facing the mouse (“coptoring”), you’re also gonna have to add animation hooks & triggers and that means rewriting some movement code. So I understand it’s a lot of work for visual gain in limited situations, and it’s not their top priority. But if they’re gonna do it, they best do it well, because messing up the movement code could make mouse movement worse otherwise, and having a mediocre animation result is (again, to me) not an enjoyable experience when you know how much work needs to be done to achieve it.
I wasn’t talking about D4, I know Blizzards are very special. But ok, maybe it’s better to not release it indeed (unless some day they will rework animations etc, which I wouldn’t expect any soon). I personally don’t see how it would hurt anyone’s eyes if this would be optional though.
Having a janky option hurts the overall perception of the product quality. It would be like having an option to zoom out a lot but it all gets pixelated. Players would look at that and say that it looks like crap, even if they could turn it off.
Also, players that really want WASD would turn it on, see it’s janky and be put off by it (especially alfter PoE2 has shown that it can be really good).
As I said before, they said they already have a WASD model working internally. Which I expect will still require a lot of work to be made good. I wouldn’t really expect it in 1.2, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if we got it in 1.3.
So I guess that depends on what you consider “anytime soon” to be. Personally, I think 6 months to a year is a reasonable time.
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Where do you see a road map for the next three years? Swen keeps saying next patch will be the last big one as he wants to focus on their next game…
It is true that there were a lot of patches last year and a huge one upcoming in 2025, though.
Lol, I’m being stupid 
I’ve read “Discover what’s coming to Baldur’s Gate 3 next year!” as “Discover what’s coming to Baldur’s Gate in 3 next years!”. They maybe planning to stop develop it after this year updates indeed, I don’t know.
I found what I was looking for before: Vincke said they looked at a BG3 expansion, but scratched that, because it felt off. And they will be working on something non-DnD (or Divinity sequel) next.
As far as we know, Patch 8 will be the last update, and I think it is more in response to the success of the original release than something they planned for. Both homebrew-ish classes and camera mode seem to be things that would get cut during development budgeting, so I think this is more of a “thanks to your overwhelming support, we now have budget to pick up these things we cut out of our initial design intent!”
Vincke has said before that they use the profit to go towards the next project rather than having to pay out shareholders and then ask for that money back. So I assume they expected BG3 to have a certain sales income with margin, but that it exceeded their planned budget to a point they can re-invest some of that back into BG3.
Also means that their next project probably won’t have to cut content to fit into the budget, which is an exciting prospect for whatever it will be.
I love Larian.
At the size of the studio now, it is amazing that they still have the guts to decline some enormous contracts because they want to make stuff they love.
A very rare exemple of sticking to a passion, even when the company grows.
After the incredible quality of Divinity Original Sin 2 and of Baldur’s Gate 3, I can’t wait to see what they will cook up next! Especially with a larger team and budget, and all the experience these two games have brought them.
I was actually commenting about this an hour or so ago on a reddit gaming post:
The difference between old 90s games and the “modern gaming” industry, is that people used to make great, creative games and the money was a necessary evil for it.
Nowadays, it feels like a lot of bigger developers are about making money, and the game itself is the necessary evil to achieve that. (The gaming industry has beaten TV/streaming in size, after all)
Same goes for movies or series: All the investment goes into “safe bets”, so we end up with remakes, sequels, franchise spin-offs, … and they all feel bland because investors insist on “proven” formulas … and then cancel the show after 2 seasons because people aren’t interested in the same tropes shoved down their throats. (Or retcon’d into it, like Wheel of Time’s love triangle)
It’s why we don’t have a new Bond movie yet. Amazon bought the distribution rights through MGM, but they don’t have the creative rights, that still belongs to Barbara Broccoli (yes, that’s her name) who doesn’t want spin-offs or background series to water down the thing that is Bond movies; a great cohesive story told through a single medium. Compare that to Star Wars.
So yeah, I don’t think “WASD is needed to sell the game” is the right argument. It’s a tool to get the game into player’s hands. And I respect that EHG wants that tool to be up to the same standard as everything else in their passion project.
Besides, if one argues that a janky WASD mechanic is supposed to save the player numbers, that says a lot about how they value the rest of the game.
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