It's an early access title and not a complete game.
My guess is that a lot of people didn't realize what they were getting into because they weren't bright.
Still, others just wanted to experience the game as it was at the moment and will revisit it over the course of the development.
I know I do this with the few early access titles I've bought into. However, I'm still actively playing this game as I think it's very good for what it is at the moment.
The logic is sound, but as someone else mentioned.. ARK's still technically in Early Access and has since released a paid DLC. You don't release paid expansion content to a game that isn't even "released" itself, unless you really consider the game released internally but retain the Early Access title for PR slack only. We, as gamers, should be raising holy hell about asking us to pay for expansion content when the base game is still listed as unreleased and unfinished. Instead, we squabble amongst each other and trade insults, all the while publishers and developers push this envelope a little further every time they see the last move fail to elicit a negative backlash of any significant magnitude. We should be shutting this shit down quick, fast, and in a hurry. I find the idea that they even attempt to offer paid DLC while still in Early Access to be, quite frankly, insulting to my intelligence. "Oh, so you've used the money I paid for Early Access (which was supposed to help finish development of the base game) to create another avenue to fleece me for cash, instead of moving the base game to a fully released status? And you were hoping I wouldn't notice that you used my money not to finish the game I paid you for, but to create a new way to ask me for money? Kindly go fuck yourselves!"
That's the very real slippery slope that some folks take issue with when people try to use the "EA" defense. The only people looking at Early Access as true "early access" or beta testing are the gamers. The publishers and developers are making money just the same as gold. They look at it the same, as is made obvious by the Ark example above.
That's great but that's Ark. It's very clear to anyone who has played Conan Exiles that it is an early access title.
Should they release a paid expansion to Conan Exiles then people should react accordingly. I however will pay it as I think the game is great and I didn't pay to get the game so I have no problem supporting it.
Oh yea, my post was a general response to the discussion going in the thread. I only quoted you as a jumping off point; I wasn't attempting to pass any judgement on Conan specifically.
Well, I for one bought it. Knowing how poor the communities are of most online games I have yet to log into an official or unofficial server. I have been playing a couple of hours every night solo and have been having an extraordinarily good time building up my little sandstone compound. I am on the verge of iron tools and already know where a good spot is for iron and coal.
Once I have my iron tools I will probably start disassembling my sandstone compound and build a new one with better materials in a more central location so I can start enslaving some folks.
No dongs flopping around on my personal solo server, no politics, no griefing or anything. Just a wide open world with pissed off cannibals and moronic hyenas that ignore the antelope and bunnies right next to them so they can run at me from 100 yards away and give me a little hide and a ton of meat that I end up tossing aside.
It's a fun game. But right now, aside from Conan, there's not a lot to set it apart from the rest of the games like it. I believe they'll make good on their goals, as the future of their company probably relies on it.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
There would be thousands more playing if they could just get the official servers sorted out. They took down the official EU server I was playing on over a week ago I've not played again since. We were promised our progress had been
backed up and that we could carry on when the new servers launched but despite all their promises to get them up and running again, it's failed to materialise. It's the weekend now and nothing much is likely to get fixed until Monday.
I'm not the slightest bit interested in switching to a private server. I doubt many of them will still exist in a month's time. Most of them are empty vanity projects. When a game features a persistant world with large scale construction systems and character levelling, I want to know my choice of server is going to be a around for a while. I'm willing to wait a bit longer for a fix but some people are already starting to talk about claiming refunds. I don't know what the US consumer law is like but in the EU, early access or not, if a title is sold on the understanding the publisher will be providing official servers for them to play on and they go missing for a week, it's not as described. Just as the "No Man's Sky" people found, if the game is promoted misleadingly, people are going to demand their money back.
It quite literally just released. Every single game has problems on release. If it's still having this many problems six months down the road, that's when you can say it's failing. People are starting to learn NOT to try out a game on immediate release, so it's entirely possible that the number of players will increase for a bit down the road, then decrease again.
Problem is thats the problem. Its been out a week and it has half the players that it did the first week.
Your excuse doesnt pass logic test either, it sold 100K more copies yet playing population is half? People BUY everything they just dont continue to play games that arent that good. Many continue to chalk up wasted money as 'oh well'.
Same token as the people who love to break down their hours played and how much they played. As if them claiming theyre paying 10 cents an hour to be entertained is relevant.. It MIGHT be to them but its still all relative. I have not played a second of Lotro in almost a year yet I have been 'paid' about 10000 lotro point (on two accounts). So I could easily spin "I am completely entertained having them pay ME for simply owning their product" Or I have about 10000 hours in that game and those two lifetime subs cost me 299 bucks. Whats that work out to per hour? ALONG with them also paying me the past few years.
Its the boiling frog analogy at its core. They push the envelope a little but at a time. Get more lazy and less creative and release products that are really bad. The server issue is a prime example. People are surely cutting Funcom a lot of slack there. Because they want to spin that it isnt their fault, but it is.
Like I said people can afford ot defend it for the foreseeable future because it at least made what it cost to make it back already. But that certainly doesnt guarantee it will be developed beyond what they had canned or what mod makers can do with it.
It has a chance, again, like I said, to be an option to ARK or Rust. Definitely not a replacement let alone an advancement. Which should be expected. A game being put out a year and a half after another one SHOULD be 'better' even if it does the same things. Isnt that the logic everyone uses when they wish old games would get taken over and redone?
I am just basing these opinions on observations in terms of player populations and in some instance correlating then to units sold.
Gee hey maybe people are playing other games while they wait for more patches. Week two means nothing. You are also looking at rather shitty metrics to support your claim. Go look at the amount of people on servers etc.
I think too many people expect a polished product when buying into early access. You're basically paying to play a beta version of a game, and given Funcom's track record, a pretty buggy beta version. It's not at all surprising that people have lost interest.
Once they finished playing with the boob/penis sliders I suspect a lot of the fun factor wore off and they realised this is an very unfinished game with little to distinguish it from Ark or Rust.
I think too many people expect a polished product when buying into early access. You're basically paying to play a beta version of a game, and given Funcom's track record, a pretty buggy beta version. It's not at all surprising that people have lost interest.
Once they finished playing with the boob/penis sliders I suspect a lot of the fun factor wore off and they realised this is an very unfinished game with little to distinguish it from Ark or Rust.
Agreed! The fact this thread even exists and people do things like write day 1 early access reviews proves things like alpha,beta or early access mean nothing these days. when i buy a early access game i expect lots of problems and issues.
i buy in because i have heard or seen enough of the mechanics and systems in the game and i wanna be part of the development process and see the game get made. early access is no different then crowdfunding in the sense dont spend what you are not willing to lose. personally I uninstalled ark pretty fast after playing Conan Exiles the foundation of exiles puts ark to shame. i get more annoyed when i see triple A studios using early access to get money sooner then later and leave early access in 3 months or less it's clear they are really not there for feedback or to build a game with the community.
Ark runs like garbage and is seriously lacking in quality of life,crafting in ark just feels way more tedious to me then it needs to be and i love crafting which is why i play these games to begin with.
Well what exactly is Funcom's goals that are not already there because reading their website i don't see anything else. I know i did some reading a week ago ,an interview with a Funcom rep and didn't seem like much there either.They talked about why the schlong slider and stuff and why but really not much there of interest.
it is as i said it is,a fast cash grab,a FEELER game to see if any interest.The amount of interest will determine the effort going forward "maybe".I do not see them hiring anymore people so it will be same old moving forward.What this game did by recovering their costs and likely a small profit ,is buy them time,sort of like giving them work to earn a living hoping that some miracle happens over that time period.
The interesting thing is i gave mention to this being exactly like Landmark was and then out came H1Z1 right before SOE sold off and we know Funcom is trying to sell as well.So i feel his is an attempt to show investors they can pull a profit off of a game and perhaps get a buyer.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Honestly I wouldn't mind in FunCom Closed down after all every game of theirs I have played I have hated...
Age OF Conan is a good Intellectual Property, Conan Exiles, Could be great, but Not in the hands of FunCom, it needs a better development team, and needs to be made into a MMO like Age OF Conan, back in the day if they had of done this in the first place it could have been great...
Conan Exiles I haven't really bothered playing because of private servers I didn't know it was going to be like this when I paid $30 but whatever. That is what is killing the game hard...
On the bright side Conan Exiles runs better than Arc for me because im not running dual 1080's.
Age of conan, fun. Loved the first expansion. Secret world, loved it!
Sad to hear you dont mind if ppl lose their job or that ppl like myself will look for other types of enterteniment. But thats the internet yolo-fun I guess.
Eve online and +1500 steam games in the back cataloge makes me a stressed out gamer.
Age of conan, fun. Loved the first expansion. Secret world, loved it!
Sad to hear you dont mind if ppl lose their job or that ppl like myself will look for other types of enterteniment. But thats the internet yolo-fun I guess.
Don't try to guilt people for not buying a bad product... seriously stupid.
After a week of early access, the game have way better performance than ARK. The Dev time have been patching the game everysingle day. Give them time, Conan Exiles have really a lot of potential, plus, the Conan IP setting is just full of win for a suvirval game.
Age of conan, fun. Loved the first expansion. Secret world, loved it!
Sad to hear you dont mind if ppl lose their job or that ppl like myself will look for other types of enterteniment. But thats the internet yolo-fun I guess.
Don't try to guilt people for not buying a bad product... seriously stupid.
He/she was probably referring to the post that said they want Funcom to shutdown right above his/hers. How did you get guilt people for not buying from that?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Man so much negativity and overall pessimism from this community on mmorpg or is it me? I swear every time I stop by the forums it's just another thread about another game that is headed to it's doom in some way or another. People do realize it's barely even started and has shown much more potential than most mmorpgs that have come out recently. If you want a game to succeed and I emphasize "IF" a lot, it would help to support the developer, give constructive feedback, and really help an industry that has given us so much entertainment in the past and possible future. But that won't happen if our mindset is all about how crappy something seems early on and the mentality of giving the game 1 hour of play and then just quitting and refunding.
How about actually putting in some effort and sincerity in a game that could be more than an "Early Access Failure".
I'm not sure how many of you out there work in the industry and those that do, you know how small the industry really is. I'm not talking about physical size, I am talking about the people you meet, the communities that exist in each country, each province, each state etc. It is a tight knit industry of developers, friends who support each other. Treat each other with respect and pride themselves on their work. Whenever a studio falls, it affects us all, no matter where we work or live, we feel the emotions, the pain, love, the hours invested into a dream career.
Whenever I hear one of my friends laugh or ridicule a company that has failed. I just want to punch him in the face and remind him that it's more than a company, it's people. And that his happiness or joy was derived from people that may lose their jobs, lose their house, etc. They may find another job but more often than not they end up having to take a job across the country at another game company and lose the years of friendship, connections they had.
It seems to me that consumer demand is outpacing us, and to keep up, those of us in the industry have to sacrifice a lot more and risk more than ever to meet those demands.
Anyways I truly believe if you keep expecting games to be shitty, then you'll keep getting shitty games. How about a change of attitude and mentality?
I never said it was a bad game. My sole contention is that people arent playing it, at least online. As I said in other posts I dont believe Steam numbers. If two or three sites show 12-15K people online playing it and Steam consistently shows 40-50 that means 30-40K people are playing an online game by themselves. Thats 60-70% of the overall population playing an online game solo. Even Ark is less than 50% playing it alone.
Its also a comparison of those sites showing the clear diminishing of population over time. I gave the link to one of them, a fairly accurate one IMO. And if you click the charts you will see the pattern.
I never said if it was good or bad.
I simply try(ied) to figure out WHY the populations have left already after 8 or 9 days. Even with more units being sold.
If you look at one site and accept their numbers and they have shown a consistent pattern of fewer and fewer people logging in then its clear, at least to me. Even Steam numbers (I dont believe because I think they manipulate them to sell more units) show the numbers decreasing since their peak a week ago. Their numbers are just (slightly) twice the numbers the site I linked show. They peaked at around 36K last week at their all time high, yesterday they peaked at 18000 for the same time period. Steam shows around 53K and yesterday they show 40K at that peak. So 36K compared to 53K (Site A compared to Steam); then 18K to 40K. So either one site is under reporting (unlikely); one is over reporting (plausible); or fewer people over all are playing (verified by both sites) and the ones that are still playing are playing on their own machines rather than playing online(plausible).
Mods will make or break it, just like it did with ARK. Ark showed similar patterns. Fewer numbers actually. But once again they were the 'innovator' (at least their mod makers were), so they were able to break out of a pattern.
The BIG difference with Ark though was it was a complete ghost before it actually released(to Steam). NO ONE, knew about it. This site didnt say a thing about ARK, even as it was blowing up they didnt say anything. It didnt even get its own forum for almost a year. CE a month before it was release was getting covered here on a daily (sometimes twice a day) at this site, and it has had its own forum for longer than that. Just saying.
I blame YouTube and Keralis for me going ahead and buying it. Wasn't sure how good the game would be since it is a FunCom release. Then I started watching a few videos of people playing it - mainly Keralis on YouTube. It's his fault I went ahead and bought it. Now I am happily playing it on our own dedicated server. Kinda reminds me of Skyrim - except now I can play with my friends! Stupid Bethesda should have made Skyrim co-op!
I am going to say it is "because" of early access. I pick up some games. . play for a bit and then wait for major updates and continue this until release were I play it through fully. I have resisted buying it though. It seems every time I break down and get something it is on Humble Bundle shortly after
Well for the guys left playing it, there arent that many thats for sure. Hopefully that puff piece they made about making their money back guilts them into making the game better. But the peaks now (for online) are under 14K per day now. Yesterday it was about 12250 today it didnt break 12000. Even Steams manipulated numbers are dropping, around 38K yesterday. I doubt they break 35K today.
Yeah I watch Moon or Timmac fumble around with it and try and play it but its still a broken mess and even these guys cant make it good. And if Moon is playing it you know he is getting paid because he played and streamed some of the worst piece of crap games ever made on a regular bases. Games that had 50 times more people watching him play than even OWNED them let alone played them.
Well for the guys left playing it, there arent that many thats for sure. Hopefully that puff piece they made about making their money back guilts them into making the game better. But the peaks now (for online) are under 14K per day now. Yesterday it was about 12250 today it didnt break 12000. Even Steams manipulated numbers are dropping, around 38K yesterday. I doubt they break 35K today.
Yeah I watch Moon or Timmac fumble around with it and try and play it but its still a broken mess and even these guys cant make it good. And if Moon is playing it you know he is getting paid because he played and streamed some of the worst piece of crap games ever made on a regular bases. Games that had 50 times more people watching him play than even OWNED them let alone played them.
LMAO, I laugh at posts like this. Unfortunately you are compartmentalizing the game. What you're actually seeing is a natural fall-off that's seen with most games. It literally happens with every game that's out there. I remember when people said the same thing of H1Z1 when it was posting stupid numbers when it first launched. SHOCKER!!! It's still in the top 25 on steamcharts. Let's say it's numbers are 12000. Do you feel that's bad? In comparison to what?
Now, if we use REAL numbers like through Steamcharts, we see that number is actually quite a bit higher. I can respect that you don't feel Steam's numbers are real, but how you feel that some third party site who can't even seem to use proper English on their site is a more reliable source eludes me.
Either way, the numbers are falling, we can agree on that. However, the question is about context. The numbers are falling..... so what? Here's a fucking CRAZY thought, do you think it might be possible that more people would play a game within the first week of it's release than would do so on an ongoing basis? I'm not sure why you're surprised. I'm actually surprised they've maintained the user base they have, only because we know it's EA and it's going to be buggy. Here's something to blow your mind, nearly every single player who bought the game played it in the first week. So just try to comprehend how 400,000 players all playing the game on a daily basis would inflate concurrent player numbers. Do you really believe that it's reasonable for them to maintain those types of concurrent numbers? We're talking about nearly 10% of their user base being online at all times, lol.
So the 'natural' fall of of a buy to play game, not one with a subscription over a 2 week period is over 50%?
GOOD games or ones that are released (even in 'early access') retain peoples attention fairly well. Problem is the sample size of games that are actually good is so small they almost dont register. So its difficult to get a baseline.
BAD (and broken) games get released on an almost daily basis. Obviously many are unknown but a few, this one included, get a complete media campaign. This site really didnt cover this game all that much until the last month right before it dropped. Maybe because they knew it was a turd. Who knows, but the 3 or 4 weeks right up before it came out there was a full scale blitz here for it. Why?
Its a carbon copy of Ark. So everything after that matters. Because it will always be compared to Ark, just like Ark was going to be compared to Rust. Thats how it goes. The next game (lucky for them) will be compared to Conan Exiles.
They sell 400k units , and even if you look at the most complimentary numbers that Steam can invent theyre getting less than 30K (~28K yesterday) concurrent players(and thats down from around 38K the day before, so they had 10K less people counted yesterday than Monday). That includes private games and anyone logged in (apparently) since the average play time for players is 22hrs 45 mins; the more relevant numbers are the ONLINE population and that is probably not going to hit 10K today, it is in a total freefall since release. And youre wrong about 10% of their owners being online all the time, but thats why Steam numbers are crap just like I outlined with them claiming people are playing nearly 23hrs a day...
To me this is the more relevant one
So by ANY tracking system (whom all have their issues and arent accurate) the game is bleeding players who are logging in. But as a comparison of those same sources compared within themselves then the numbers do have meaning. If Steamcharts or steamspy or whatever has them down to 15K at this time next week then what? If they do their 'updates' and patches and people still dont come back, even if there is a recognizable improvement then what?
Another over hyped piece of crap that made 8 figures in sales but did absolutely nothing to improve the landscape of online gaming, and probably helps degenerate the hope that it will ever change. AT least with anecdotal evidence would suggest that.
Its a paradox. To improve they need to make money, or that would be the logical presumption. If they dont make money they more than likely 'fail' if they do make money then that leads to the trust that they will use that money to fix the problems. That isnt always the case nor is it another logical presumption that the more money they make the better the game will be or faster it will get better. Star Citizen perfect example there.
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Should've made that clearer!
Once I have my iron tools I will probably start disassembling my sandstone compound and build a new one with better materials in a more central location so I can start enslaving some folks.
No dongs flopping around on my personal solo server, no politics, no griefing or anything. Just a wide open world with pissed off cannibals and moronic hyenas that ignore the antelope and bunnies right next to them so they can run at me from 100 yards away and give me a little hide and a ton of meat that I end up tossing aside.
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I'm not the slightest bit interested in switching to a private server. I doubt many of them will still exist in a month's time. Most of them are empty vanity projects. When a game features a persistant world with large scale construction systems and character levelling, I want to know my choice of server is going to be a around for a while. I'm willing to wait a bit longer for a fix but some people are already starting to talk about claiming refunds. I don't know what the US consumer law is like but in the EU, early access or not, if a title is sold on the understanding the publisher will be providing official servers for them to play on and they go missing for a week, it's not as described. Just as the "No Man's Sky" people found, if the game is promoted misleadingly, people are going to demand their money back.
What 10300 servers with 15K people on them at 9 PM east time and 6 PM west coast time on a weekend?
Thats off a peak of less than 18000 today.
http://steamcharts.com/app/440900
Feb. 4-5 was the first week-end after the game launched, so it seems normal to me that the CCU was higher.
Once they finished playing with the boob/penis sliders I suspect a lot of the fun factor wore off and they realised this is an very unfinished game with little to distinguish it from Ark or Rust.
i buy in because i have heard or seen enough of the mechanics and systems in the game and i wanna be part of the development process and see the game get made. early access is no different then crowdfunding in the sense dont spend what you are not willing to lose. personally I uninstalled ark pretty fast after playing Conan Exiles the foundation of exiles puts ark to shame. i get more annoyed when i see triple A studios using early access to get money sooner then later and leave early access in 3 months or less it's clear they are really not there for feedback or to build a game with the community.
Ark runs like garbage and is seriously lacking in quality of life,crafting in ark just feels way more tedious to me then it needs to be and i love crafting which is why i play these games to begin with.
I know i did some reading a week ago ,an interview with a Funcom rep and didn't seem like much there either.They talked about why the schlong slider and stuff and why but really not much there of interest.
it is as i said it is,a fast cash grab,a FEELER game to see if any interest.The amount of interest will determine the effort going forward "maybe".I do not see them hiring anymore people so it will be same old moving forward.What this game did by recovering their costs and likely a small profit ,is buy them time,sort of like giving them work to earn a living hoping that some miracle happens over that time period.
The interesting thing is i gave mention to this being exactly like Landmark was and then out came H1Z1 right before SOE sold off and we know Funcom is trying to sell as well.So i feel his is an attempt to show investors they can pull a profit off of a game and perhaps get a buyer.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Age OF Conan is a good Intellectual Property, Conan Exiles, Could be great, but Not in the hands of FunCom, it needs a better development team, and needs to be made into a MMO like Age OF Conan, back in the day if they had of done this in the first place it could have been great...
Conan Exiles I haven't really bothered playing because of private servers I didn't know it was going to be like this when I paid $30 but whatever. That is what is killing the game hard...
On the bright side Conan Exiles runs better than Arc for me because im not running dual 1080's.
Secret world, loved it!
Sad to hear you dont mind if ppl lose their job or that ppl like myself will look for other types of enterteniment.
But thats the internet yolo-fun I guess.
FUncom.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
How about actually putting in some effort and sincerity in a game that could be more than an "Early Access Failure".
I'm not sure how many of you out there work in the industry and those that do, you know how small the industry really is. I'm not talking about physical size, I am talking about the people you meet, the communities that exist in each country, each province, each state etc. It is a tight knit industry of developers, friends who support each other. Treat each other with respect and pride themselves on their work. Whenever a studio falls, it affects us all, no matter where we work or live, we feel the emotions, the pain, love, the hours invested into a dream career.
Whenever I hear one of my friends laugh or ridicule a company that has failed. I just want to punch him in the face and remind him that it's more than a company, it's people. And that his happiness or joy was derived from people that may lose their jobs, lose their house, etc. They may find another job but more often than not they end up having to take a job across the country at another game company and lose the years of friendship, connections they had.
It seems to me that consumer demand is outpacing us, and to keep up, those of us in the industry have to sacrifice a lot more and risk more than ever to meet those demands.
Anyways I truly believe if you keep expecting games to be shitty, then you'll keep getting shitty games. How about a change of attitude and mentality?
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Its also a comparison of those sites showing the clear diminishing of population over time. I gave the link to one of them, a fairly accurate one IMO. And if you click the charts you will see the pattern.
I never said if it was good or bad.
I simply try(ied) to figure out WHY the populations have left already after 8 or 9 days. Even with more units being sold.
If you look at one site and accept their numbers and they have shown a consistent pattern of fewer and fewer people logging in then its clear, at least to me. Even Steam numbers (I dont believe because I think they manipulate them to sell more units) show the numbers decreasing since their peak a week ago. Their numbers are just (slightly) twice the numbers the site I linked show. They peaked at around 36K last week at their all time high, yesterday they peaked at 18000 for the same time period. Steam shows around 53K and yesterday they show 40K at that peak. So 36K compared to 53K (Site A compared to Steam); then 18K to 40K. So either one site is under reporting (unlikely); one is over reporting (plausible); or fewer people over all are playing (verified by both sites) and the ones that are still playing are playing on their own machines rather than playing online(plausible).
Mods will make or break it, just like it did with ARK. Ark showed similar patterns. Fewer numbers actually. But once again they were the 'innovator' (at least their mod makers were), so they were able to break out of a pattern.
The BIG difference with Ark though was it was a complete ghost before it actually released(to Steam). NO ONE, knew about it. This site didnt say a thing about ARK, even as it was blowing up they didnt say anything. It didnt even get its own forum for almost a year. CE a month before it was release was getting covered here on a daily (sometimes twice a day) at this site, and it has had its own forum for longer than that. Just saying.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Yeah I watch Moon or Timmac fumble around with it and try and play it but its still a broken mess and even these guys cant make it good. And if Moon is playing it you know he is getting paid because he played and streamed some of the worst piece of crap games ever made on a regular bases. Games that had 50 times more people watching him play than even OWNED them let alone played them.
LMAO, I laugh at posts like this. Unfortunately you are compartmentalizing the game. What you're actually seeing is a natural fall-off that's seen with most games. It literally happens with every game that's out there. I remember when people said the same thing of H1Z1 when it was posting stupid numbers when it first launched. SHOCKER!!! It's still in the top 25 on steamcharts. Let's say it's numbers are 12000. Do you feel that's bad? In comparison to what?
Now, if we use REAL numbers like through Steamcharts, we see that number is actually quite a bit higher. I can respect that you don't feel Steam's numbers are real, but how you feel that some third party site who can't even seem to use proper English on their site is a more reliable source eludes me.
Either way, the numbers are falling, we can agree on that. However, the question is about context. The numbers are falling..... so what? Here's a fucking CRAZY thought, do you think it might be possible that more people would play a game within the first week of it's release than would do so on an ongoing basis? I'm not sure why you're surprised. I'm actually surprised they've maintained the user base they have, only because we know it's EA and it's going to be buggy. Here's something to blow your mind, nearly every single player who bought the game played it in the first week. So just try to comprehend how 400,000 players all playing the game on a daily basis would inflate concurrent player numbers. Do you really believe that it's reasonable for them to maintain those types of concurrent numbers? We're talking about nearly 10% of their user base being online at all times, lol.
Crazkanuk
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GOOD games or ones that are released (even in 'early access') retain peoples attention fairly well. Problem is the sample size of games that are actually good is so small they almost dont register. So its difficult to get a baseline.
BAD (and broken) games get released on an almost daily basis. Obviously many are unknown but a few, this one included, get a complete media campaign. This site really didnt cover this game all that much until the last month right before it dropped. Maybe because they knew it was a turd. Who knows, but the 3 or 4 weeks right up before it came out there was a full scale blitz here for it. Why?
Its a carbon copy of Ark. So everything after that matters. Because it will always be compared to Ark, just like Ark was going to be compared to Rust. Thats how it goes. The next game (lucky for them) will be compared to Conan Exiles.
They sell 400k units , and even if you look at the most complimentary numbers that Steam can invent theyre getting less than 30K (~28K yesterday) concurrent players(and thats down from around 38K the day before, so they had 10K less people counted yesterday than Monday). That includes private games and anyone logged in (apparently) since the average play time for players is 22hrs 45 mins; the more relevant numbers are the ONLINE population and that is probably not going to hit 10K today, it is in a total freefall since release. And youre wrong about 10% of their owners being online all the time, but thats why Steam numbers are crap just like I outlined with them claiming people are playing nearly 23hrs a day...
To me this is the more relevant one
So by ANY tracking system (whom all have their issues and arent accurate) the game is bleeding players who are logging in. But as a comparison of those same sources compared within themselves then the numbers do have meaning. If Steamcharts or steamspy or whatever has them down to 15K at this time next week then what? If they do their 'updates' and patches and people still dont come back, even if there is a recognizable improvement then what?
Another over hyped piece of crap that made 8 figures in sales but did absolutely nothing to improve the landscape of online gaming, and probably helps degenerate the hope that it will ever change. AT least with anecdotal evidence would suggest that.
Its a paradox. To improve they need to make money, or that would be the logical presumption. If they dont make money they more than likely 'fail' if they do make money then that leads to the trust that they will use that money to fix the problems. That isnt always the case nor is it another logical presumption that the more money they make the better the game will be or faster it will get better. Star Citizen perfect example there.