What do you expect when the game is nothing really but a slightly glorified fps game? I don't even see what the hype is about, I never thought the first destiny was all that good, and the 2nd one is bascally the same crap as the first one. I never really bothered with the second one after how boring the first one was, and to me it looked like more of the exact same crap the first one had, so I figured I ain't missing anything. I may bother with the pc version when its in a bargin bin for 20 bucks in less than a year, but at release? hell no, its not worth the price.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
I don't go by reviews in general. Not for games, not for restaurants, not for stores, not for anything really. The issue I have with reviews is that the largest audience for most products are people who are like "Yeah I enjoy this" but they don't care enough to go write a review about it.
About 90%+ reviewers tend to fall into one of two categories it seems like:
A. "Oh you want me to rate your product? Fine. 5 stars on everything. It was nice. Have a good day and get out of my face please." B. "OMG! NOT EVERYTHING WENT 100% MY WAY!!! WORST PRODUCT/BUSINESS EVER!!! WHINE! WHINE! WHINE!"
That's why I hold very little stock in reviews. The sample is too biased. Usually for a Steam game what I'll put a lot more stock in than the reviews is that little area that says "X Friends already own this game" and then it provides a list of my friends that play it.
I'll then message those friends and ask them questions about the game.
Or like in Teamspeak when someone comes in and is like "OMG! There is this new game I'm so excited about!" I will grill them for information about the game based on the criteria I find most important in judging the quality of a game.
I hold a lot more stock in what I hear through friends then what I hear through reviews because:
A. The sampling is less bias. B. I can ask the questions that matter to me.
Shocking ... but it was going to revolutionize the MMORPG genre .... lmfao
Hell anything that isn't a single player game will revolutionize the MMORPG genre at this point.
It's more like MMO design and technology is revolutionizing other genres and industries. It has been since the mid nineties when Prodigy and Sierra Online were trying to building virtual online communities which is what MMOs are all about.
Multiplayer comes in a variety of types and technologies, in addition to MMOs, and they borrow from and influence each other. It's all a matter of perspective. If you haven't read Raph Koster's website and you're interested in this sort of thing I think it's worth investigating. He has a lot of interesting ideas and experiences and his convention slides I find thought provoking.
It includes an informative look at the dream that was UO. Once again, I was left feeling cheated out of what MMO worlds could have evolved into.
"So that imperfect, barely functional, insane thing: that’s all we got. It’s twenty years in the past – how implausible! And somehow, it still feels like something always twenty more years in the future."
I think it's pretty normal, this a game with a colossus of marketing to a point its biggest peak will be the release times then it will face severe decreases afterwards and normally it should normalize in some number.
In the other hand, games with weaker marketing campaigns tend to (if good) increase over time after release instead. Destiny 2 is to be seen how that develops as time flies by.
First, Destiny 2 isn't an MMO so retention doesn't really matter.
Second, dropping from 3.5m to 2m is actually quite a good retention rate. When No Mans Sky was released, that suffered a big drop in the player base and got slammed for it. I can't remember which site did it, but one gaming site did a review of like 100 big game releases looking at retention rates. They found that average retention rate was 15-20% after 1 month, regardless of genre, reviews or ratings. Even a behemoth like GTA5 had a pretty low retention rate, most people who bought the game just played through the single player story and quit. The game just has an impressive churn rate and a dedicated online playerbase.
Some games appeared to do better, because their player base stayed higher, but in actual fact their retention was just as bad, they just had a better churn rate (replacing players who quit with new players).
First, Destiny 2 isn't an MMO so retention doesn't really matter.
Retention matters to any multiplayer game. Not to the degree it matters in an MMO, but it does matter. If you were to go back and play most of the games you were playing 10-15 years ago, short of a remake of the game (For instance Age of Empires II : HD) you're probably not going to find all that many people playing, which will make it rather difficult for you if you are looking to play it online.
Same thing for cooperative FPSes. If the population tanks too hard then you'll have a hard time finding groups. This is a problem Destiny 1 players are sure to start running into over the next couple years given the release of Destiny 2.
But yeah, the population loss is far too small for that to be a concern for Destiny 2 right now. I doubt it will be a concern ever until there is a Destiny 3 or many years have passed.
Why is this news? Almost every single video game ever made loses players after launch. I get there is some weird desperation to bash Destiny 2. I am afraid to tell you haters that come tomorrow the numbers will be back up. Dont worry just hang on for a month or two and you can post another crying thread about how D2 lost players again and 99.999% gamers would care.
They found that average retention rate was 15-20% after 1 month, regardless of genre, reviews or ratings. Even a behemoth like GTA5 had a pretty low retention rate, most people who bought the game just played through the single player story and quit. The game just has an impressive churn rate and a dedicated online playerbase.
The division player drop by 95% after 3 month. I think it happens to every game. It is just more noticeable now since more platform are used to track player number. I'm pretty sure it happened to diablo 3, it's just that there is no tool to track it so it is hard to know.
First, Destiny 2 isn't an MMO so retention doesn't really matter.
Retention matters to any multiplayer game. Not to the degree it matters in an MMO, but it does matter. If you were to go back and play most of the games you were playing 10-15 years ago, short of a remake of the game (For instance Age of Empires II : HD) you're probably not going to find all that many people playing, which will make it rather difficult for you if you are looking to play it online.
Same thing for cooperative FPSes. If the population tanks too hard then you'll have a hard time finding groups. This is a problem Destiny 1 players are sure to start running into over the next couple years given the release of Destiny 2.
But yeah, the population loss is far too small for that to be a concern for Destiny 2 right now. I doubt it will be a concern ever until there is a Destiny 3 or many years have passed.
Whilst it still plays a part, it doesn't matter in terms of revenue generation for the company.
In terms of the playerbase, it only matters when it drops below a minimum threshold. I'm not sure what the caps are in D2, but if they are as low as D1 then you don't need that many active players. If there were just 1000 players in your region, the game would probably still feel busy and the average player wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1000 or 1,000,000 players online.
First, Destiny 2 isn't an MMO so retention doesn't really matter.
Retention matters to any multiplayer game. Not to the degree it matters in an MMO, but it does matter. If you were to go back and play most of the games you were playing 10-15 years ago, short of a remake of the game (For instance Age of Empires II : HD) you're probably not going to find all that many people playing, which will make it rather difficult for you if you are looking to play it online.
Same thing for cooperative FPSes. If the population tanks too hard then you'll have a hard time finding groups. This is a problem Destiny 1 players are sure to start running into over the next couple years given the release of Destiny 2.
But yeah, the population loss is far too small for that to be a concern for Destiny 2 right now. I doubt it will be a concern ever until there is a Destiny 3 or many years have passed.
Whilst it still plays a part, it doesn't matter in terms of revenue generation for the company.
In terms of the playerbase, it only matters when it drops below a minimum threshold. I'm not sure what the caps are in D2, but if they are as low as D1 then you don't need that many active players. If there were just 1000 players in your region, the game would probably still feel busy and the average player wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1000 or 1,000,000 players online.
I don't know if it really makes that much difference for Destiny 2, sure it is a multiplayer game, but that doesn't really affect many players who once the content has been completed, are likely to move on to the next game, i think this is where the DLC factor of the game will affect players, as its probably only when new DLC is released, as it was in the original Destiny, that players return to complete the new content, i have no doubt that the lack of content in Destiny 2 is because they intend to create/sell more for it in the future. The Multiplayer aspect is probably not really all that important, the Strikes etc aren't really all that good, they are just content that you have to repeat with little variation, i don't think there is any real change there from the original game, and its the same with the PVP as that aspect is entirely forgetable.
It's already the best selling game of 2017 and has only been out a month, and it's just about to release on PC today so the sales will be going up even more. With no sub fee, they may not be overly concerned about retention. People will leave, they'll release new DLC for the game, then people will come back and buy it then leave again after a while. In the meantime, they're making their money from every box sale and every DLC sale.
Retention can be a misleading term - and it probably is here. We are talking about it as though X people buy the game, 60% leave and 40% carry on playing - or whatever the numbers are.
For some games sure. Retention is what matters because pretty much all their sales happen at launch. WAR was a good example: 750k initial sales but only 50k follow on sales in the next 6 months.
For Destiny 2 "Follow on sales" will be key.
Game sells X, 95% stop playing, game sells another 35% copies, new playerbase is 40% of the original. (Or whatever the numbers are). Rinse, repeat for many months and what might look like a stable population is actually massive churn offset by new sales.
Blizzard announced 100M accounts for WoW. The implication: on average it lost 10M players a year! Numbers that SoE gave out for EQ1 after 5 years suggested a new playerbase every 3 months.
And its even harder when you start trying to factor in "returnees" - people who come back for a patch, an xpac or a DLC.
We saw it with Destiny 1. It has / is happening with ESO.
New sales (on new platforms, releases in new countries) and follow on sales will be the big driver for Destiny 2. Good "retention" will be a bonus of course but its probably not going to be the key. Especially for games that use mega-server technology so - as mentioned - your "local" server will "always" appear full until the game is at death's door.
I don't play single player games for more than a month anyway. The question is .. is the content fun.
Now Destiny 2 seems to be a bit of a longer game. But i pay $60 for Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Dishonored 2.
I doubt Destiny 2 is going to be shorter than those games. So what is the problem? In fact, i may just wait a bit before buying and see if can spend less money on it. As long as it is a fun shooter, i don't mind.
picked up Horizons even though I had never heard of it.
Hey even though that game was a total clusterfuck, I really enjoyed the hell out of it for what it was. I really wish they had made better decisions, had better funding and a lot of things. It was almost vaporware at one point so the fact it ever released was a huge thing.
Overall you probably did dodge a bullet there, but I really really enjoyed it. I had just gotten married shortly before it came out and my wife had a daughter previously with a guy who basically stepped out when she was 3 months prego and never had any interaction with the baby. Anyways, we're married kiddo is about 2.5 years old, they move in with me. I start up horizons and make a dragon character. Everytime I would shape change or whatever it was, she would run across the house because she heard it and would want to see the transformation process.
almost 13 years later, shes 15 and more like me than her mother and we share a lot of common interests, which I put in great part to the bonding we did playing video games when she was little. Remember white keyboards? I would take markers and color them different colors so she could play EQ2 with me. She was 3 and jamming along with me in 10 minute intervals (short attention span and all) by banging out whatever color combo I called out to her.
Ok so maybe Horizons really was garbo and it just holds more sentimental value for me than anything. Tangents are OP.
Comments
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I don't go by reviews in general. Not for games, not for restaurants, not for stores, not for anything really. The issue I have with reviews is that the largest audience for most products are people who are like "Yeah I enjoy this" but they don't care enough to go write a review about it.
About 90%+ reviewers tend to fall into one of two categories it seems like:
A. "Oh you want me to rate your product? Fine. 5 stars on everything. It was nice. Have a good day and get out of my face please."
B. "OMG! NOT EVERYTHING WENT 100% MY WAY!!! WORST PRODUCT/BUSINESS EVER!!! WHINE! WHINE! WHINE!"
That's why I hold very little stock in reviews. The sample is too biased. Usually for a Steam game what I'll put a lot more stock in than the reviews is that little area that says "X Friends already own this game" and then it provides a list of my friends that play it.
I'll then message those friends and ask them questions about the game.
Or like in Teamspeak when someone comes in and is like "OMG! There is this new game I'm so excited about!" I will grill them for information about the game based on the criteria I find most important in judging the quality of a game.
I hold a lot more stock in what I hear through friends then what I hear through reviews because:
A. The sampling is less bias.
B. I can ask the questions that matter to me.
https://www.raphkoster.com/2017/09/28/ultima-onlines-influence/
It includes an informative look at the dream that was UO.
Once again, I was left feeling cheated out of what MMO worlds could have evolved into.
"So that imperfect, barely functional, insane thing: that’s all we got. It’s twenty years in the past – how implausible! And somehow, it still feels like something always twenty more years in the future."
And yet, it doesn't have to be that way.
Once upon a time....
In the other hand, games with weaker marketing campaigns tend to (if good) increase over time after release instead. Destiny 2 is to be seen how that develops as time flies by.
Second, dropping from 3.5m to 2m is actually quite a good retention rate. When No Mans Sky was released, that suffered a big drop in the player base and got slammed for it. I can't remember which site did it, but one gaming site did a review of like 100 big game releases looking at retention rates. They found that average retention rate was 15-20% after 1 month, regardless of genre, reviews or ratings. Even a behemoth like GTA5 had a pretty low retention rate, most people who bought the game just played through the single player story and quit. The game just has an impressive churn rate and a dedicated online playerbase.
Some games appeared to do better, because their player base stayed higher, but in actual fact their retention was just as bad, they just had a better churn rate (replacing players who quit with new players).
Same thing for cooperative FPSes. If the population tanks too hard then you'll have a hard time finding groups. This is a problem Destiny 1 players are sure to start running into over the next couple years given the release of Destiny 2.
But yeah, the population loss is far too small for that to be a concern for Destiny 2 right now. I doubt it will be a concern ever until there is a Destiny 3 or many years have passed.
In terms of the playerbase, it only matters when it drops below a minimum threshold. I'm not sure what the caps are in D2, but if they are as low as D1 then you don't need that many active players. If there were just 1000 players in your region, the game would probably still feel busy and the average player wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1000 or 1,000,000 players online.
The Multiplayer aspect is probably not really all that important, the Strikes etc aren't really all that good, they are just content that you have to repeat with little variation, i don't think there is any real change there from the original game, and its the same with the PVP as that aspect is entirely forgetable.
For some games sure. Retention is what matters because pretty much all their sales happen at launch. WAR was a good example: 750k initial sales but only 50k follow on sales in the next 6 months.
For Destiny 2 "Follow on sales" will be key.
Game sells X, 95% stop playing, game sells another 35% copies, new playerbase is 40% of the original. (Or whatever the numbers are). Rinse, repeat for many months and what might look like a stable population is actually massive churn offset by new sales.
Blizzard announced 100M accounts for WoW. The implication: on average it lost 10M players a year! Numbers that SoE gave out for EQ1 after 5 years suggested a new playerbase every 3 months.
And its even harder when you start trying to factor in "returnees" - people who come back for a patch, an xpac or a DLC.
We saw it with Destiny 1. It has / is happening with ESO.
New sales (on new platforms, releases in new countries) and follow on sales will be the big driver for Destiny 2. Good "retention" will be a bonus of course but its probably not going to be the key. Especially for games that use mega-server technology so - as mentioned - your "local" server will "always" appear full until the game is at death's door.
The DLC's they will start hawking in a few months.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Now Destiny 2 seems to be a bit of a longer game. But i pay $60 for Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Dishonored 2.
I doubt Destiny 2 is going to be shorter than those games. So what is the problem? In fact, i may just wait a bit before buying and see if can spend less money on it. As long as it is a fun shooter, i don't mind.
Overall you probably did dodge a bullet there, but I really really enjoyed it. I had just gotten married shortly before it came out and my wife had a daughter previously with a guy who basically stepped out when she was 3 months prego and never had any interaction with the baby. Anyways, we're married kiddo is about 2.5 years old, they move in with me. I start up horizons and make a dragon character. Everytime I would shape change or whatever it was, she would run across the house because she heard it and would want to see the transformation process.
almost 13 years later, shes 15 and more like me than her mother and we share a lot of common interests, which I put in great part to the bonding we did playing video games when she was little. Remember white keyboards?
Ok so maybe Horizons really was garbo and it just holds more sentimental value for me than anything. Tangents are OP.