148K to 48K Steam Player Count After Just 1 Month. Biggest Drop Ever?

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crunkatog wrote:

I don't think he's as worried about retention as all that. The paradigm of "design game, launch game, big launch day, long tail" is over. They figured out most of the money rolls in in the first 72 hours. So just focus on that. Having an actual playable game past 72 hours is not required, and may draw important resources away from making the big launch as effective as possible.

It's a short-term paradigm at best but I guess the big boost at Scourge day 1 will help shore up the quarterly report and admittedly a lot of players were drawn back by the potential promises of Scourge.

The 72 hours being long over... could you elaborate on how the game is not playable now? And I perceived it quite differently. Usually in the first 72 hours there are teething problems (not enough servers, instance crashes, oversights that need a quick fix etc.).

Think one of the things that's noticeably different this time around is that the mechanic seems to be abandoned by GGG. They usually spend a lot more time tweeking the league mechanic. 1.16.1 was meager, where typically, the .1 patch has some major revisions. Don't think that has a positive effect on player interest.

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Mikrotherion wrote:

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crunkatog wrote:

I don't think he's as worried about retention as all that. The paradigm of "design game, launch game, big launch day, long tail" is over. They figured out most of the money rolls in in the first 72 hours. So just focus on that. Having an actual playable game past 72 hours is not required, and may draw important resources away from making the big launch as effective as possible.

It's a short-term paradigm at best but I guess the big boost at Scourge day 1 will help shore up the quarterly report and admittedly a lot of players were drawn back by the potential promises of Scourge.

The 72 hours being long over... could you elaborate on how the game is not playable now? And I perceived it quite differently. Usually in the first 72 hours there are teething problems (not enough servers, instance crashes, oversights that need a quick fix etc.).

Mechanically, it's as stable as it's going to get: for the most part, the game-crashing bugs with certain skills or mtx, or instance loss due to Zana, etc. are sorted. Those do make for a rocky launch weekend and the fewer the better.

So in that sense, it's playable.

Long term retention requires something more though, and hiding important league goals and basic progression utility behind more layers of RNG is not enough to retain the majority of league starters in a "modern" league.

Oddly enough the biggest late league profile in SSF parallels the late league performance for trade leagues. This suggests that mechanics that artificially delay player goal completion (harder content, RNG gating) aren't sufficient drivers of long term engagement. The mechanics that players choose to delay, or feel confident delaying until they have a use for the end result, tend to lift long term numbers.

The most important factor in choosing to stay in league is not frustration and sunk-cost fallacy, or even FOMO with a permissive mechanic that is threatened with voiding. It's player agency.

It takes more effort, more creativity, more testing, and more holistic awareness of the entire game to create mechanics that act as positive reinforcement across all stages of character development. Delve and Betrayal created a positive feedback loop of reward and agency. The layaway system of Ritual partly rewarded players for putting off decisions and taking their time, while being simple and straightforward, unlike the baffling, sterile complexity of OG Harvest or the throwaway gambling mentality of Ultimatum. Heck, you could even decide which order to do the ritual circles in, so you could essentially fight the map boss 4x and get juiced nitro canisters to take to your next map. Player agency.

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Sadaukar wrote:

yay BaneslayerAngel on it again.

btw. did Chris Wilson apologize to u in person already? IIRC u demanded something like that.

nah be blocked my calls

it doesn't matter is it steamcharts or standalone client, people played using standalone client during the leagues that are being compared to such as ritual and ultimatum

yes there are some people that play using standalone, but there is no evidence that they are behaving differently and more "loyal" or something. it doesn't matter that much, 148k to 48k or 260k to 65k, the trend is obvious

3.15 was a disaster and the game still can't recover from that because the key nerf - support gems nerf - wasn't discarded, the game feels like a boring struggle. ppl log in to have fun, we can struggle at work and we are getting payed for it

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Ratedetar wrote:

Every league this thread happens.

and every league you come to this thread to tell this, monkeys got some reflexes too after all
i am seeing you've accomplished a lot in this "alive" league, have you actually completed the storyline? another troll added to my forum ignore macro

Im still enjoying my time in this league, dont really care how many others do the same :)
Im on standalone client, if anyone wanted to know :)

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Jurge wrote:

Im still enjoying my time in this league, dont really care how many others do the same :)
Im on standalone client, if anyone wanted to know :)

Glad youre still enjoying your stay!

Its still worth discussing why there are huge drops in player numbers and why GGG wont do anything to keep leagues alive for a longer time.
Cant be healthy for the game in the long run.

I was lured back by the qol improvements but somehow the game feels less fun compared to like 3.14. Maybe it is due to my shitty self-cast build or maybe because krangling items does not feel nice. I will certainly lurk on the forum/reddit but quitting the league after 24 does not feel bad. Lets see what surprise they have for the next patch...
In general, I prefer the chase for min-max over some pseudo-souls-like-arpg but as known, tastes differ.

I usually like leagues that easily drop a lot of currency so it takes not that much effort to gear up builds.

Scourge is the most insane league in terms of currency drop rate ever beside the old sextant block elder ring stuff we did years ago.

Yeah I like scourge because it rains C and EX.

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Zerber wrote:

I usually like leagues that easily drop a lot of currency so it takes not that much effort to gear up builds.

Scourge is the most insane league in terms of currency drop rate ever beside the old sextant block elder ring stuff we did years ago.

Yeah I like scourge because it rains C and EX.

scourge rains so much C and Ex, that everyone just plays simulacrums, logbooks and heist XD

Honestly, scourge is just a bit of extra meat for deli maps and mf runners, that's all