Like every PvE game which does not have hundreds of people working to churn out content, its playerbase will dwindle until only those who do not get bored by its gameplay stick around. Whether it’s Left 4 Dead, Payday, Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide, those types of games follow this pattern…
And I for one, see no fucking issue with that. It’s a great game, people play it until they have had their fill and then move on. Helldivers 2 is only an outlier because of how hard it hit at launch. It absolutely does not have the content pipeline to keep a large playerbase engaged, so yeah it will not keep printing a lot of money, just a little bit every now and then.
Now excuse me as I go and spread some managed democracy.
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Basically this. Anyone who is surprised by this has been paying literally zero attention to how these things usually go. The majority of the time when a game explodes that much, this happens. Sometimes to a lesser extent, sometimes to a greater one. A good chunk of the people who buy the game in the first place buy it to play with their friends, and when their friends move on to another game, they will too.
While you will have games that are the exception, such as PUBG which has had massive a player count for forever. they are indeed the exception.
Yeah, most players will play a game for a bit and then move on. It’s rare to get attached to a game and play it forever, and if you do, you likely only have one game like that. There’ll be people who play Helldivers 2 for years, but it doesn’t seem set up like an MMO so is unlikely to get the same long term traction.
That’s a good point. An online game can be successful while having a limited shelf life. Make your money and shut it down (or just ramp it down for the smaller audience if it’s worth the effort)
Yeah but that’s the problem isn’t it? Why are more toxic games like the PvP centric ones some much more successful with sometimes even less content?
Because PvP is basically infinite free content for people who like the game loop. I’ve had friends who love that sort of thing and they can play forever because they’re putting their skills against real people who aren’t just basic AIs.
You can also just play PvE like helldivers over and over again. But people seem to like the idea of winning by putting someone else down.
Chess has been played for ages with no dlc. Competition against another person is engaging on its own. And chess is a good deep game on its own.
Combine competition with a good game and you get a successful infinite live service game in theory.
Only one or the other and you get a flash in the pan.
They’re not. This same curve happens with PvP games. The ones that don’t follow this trend are the exception, not the rule.
The player base was always going to decline significantly.
It doesn’t have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.
The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren’t on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren’t grouped up for major orders.
The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I’m happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.
This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don’t have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I’ve played.
It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.
Deep Rock Galactic would like a word about friendly player base!
Did I hear a “Rock and Stone”?
Rockity rock and stone!
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!
Guild Wars 2 as well. :)
I haven’t experienced it, but hear good things about the community.
As would FFXIV.
I really enjoy the game, but now me and my friends are maxed out. Max samples, max medals, max upgrades. With nothing to progress to there is far less incentive to play.
The way my friend group works, and I imagine many others work, when I see one of my friends online playing a game, I join their game. And hell divers was great for that, they made joining games effortless. So it was very social.
But without any of my friends actually progressing towards something in the game, it’s far rarer for us to just join on each other cuz we’re not playing it alone. So now Helldivers is a an option, when we’re already together online, trying to figure out something to do, we will hell dive and have fun no problem. But it’s far less likely now
If they want to maintain a larger user base, they need to have something for people to constantly progress towards. It could just be donating samples to a new research project, that could be infinite grind
And yet they need to also be fixing bugs en masse since they create tons of them every update.
They should create a third enemy that they ask the community to keep mostly hidden, only accessible to the best (progressed above a certain point) Helldiver. This is a bad, if fun, idea though.
So I guess what would everyone like to see?
Its weird, but the game felt like it was going to be adding maps and combat zones with relative frequency. But I agree, the game got stale fairly quickly. It was fun, but not meaningfully more fun than Counterstrike or DOTA
I think they ended up slowing their release pace, which was sort of absurdly fast. Which I think is great? I’d rather see more meaningful, occasional updates. The kind that would bring folks back to play it until they complete said content.
When the initial player base numbers are fucking unsustainable, this is a necessary and expected correction.
Panicked headline aside, there are still tens of thousands of players online at any given time and the game is doing extremely well at for not having had a proper expansion or new faction, and just the steady drip feed of new gear and equipment.
It’s clickbait more so than panicked headline but yeah I agree
So?
I hate how every game want to compete for current playtime.
I got way more than money’s worth out of this game, but I haven’t played in over a month. I hope that when I go back to it, there’s still a playerbase.
But like, the developers planned for at best to get 10% of what they did…
If they dropped that extra 90%, I don’t see why that should spell the end of the game. It’s the playerbase the game was designed for.
There’s just this weird “first or worst” mentality with a lot of studios. I hope this game is just given the room to stretch it legs over a decade or so. Something people might not always keep installed on their console, but still download once or twice a year to get some games in.
Games like that can be a success. Just because a lot of people burnt out doesn’t mean they’ll never play again.
It’s just games like that don’t maximize investor returns. They want to churn out hits that people play exclusively for 3 months then drop, only to buy the new one next year.
The game has lot of shitty online only mechanics, so while it would make a solid co-op game, it has the live service model and live service games need to keep a playerbase or they get shutdown. These types of games exist for one reason: microtransactions. They want to sell you bullshit.
That’s why they need to compete for playtime. Their next game might not go viral, so losing a massive chunk of your playerbase like this is a problem.
But honestly fuck live service games and people shouldn’t expect anything from them. They are made to milk your wallet.
Yeah, but their battle passes never expire, and you don’t have to spend real money to get one.
They never expected it to go viral, they budget to go at least a year of story driven campaign and they probably made enough to pay for that times 10 already.
They don’t need to nickel and dime the user base, if anything they can sell less premium shit.
Why would it sustain those numbers? It’s fine to play a cool game, be satisfied with it, and then move on.
I gotta say. Props to Lemmy users here. This thread is just post after post of generally reasonable take on how enjoyment and entertainment work in reality.
And really just a perfect argument for why infinite growth live service games are a fucking cancer dreamed up by humans who are fucking parasites.
Helldivers is great and the devs should be proud of their success. A+ .
Because in the minds of suits live service games are meant to be played forever.
Because it’s a live service game. The disconnect is that this doesn’t make players want to stay as much as the developer/publisher would like.
Yup I had fun with it, now it doesn’t sound as much fun anymore. I played it until it got boring due to repetitiveness.
They don’t have any kind of single player option which turns off a lot of players. It looked really cool, but as soon as I found out to really experience the game you have to play with others, became immediately uninterested.
Naturally there is always going to be a certain amount of player decline over time, but I have to wonder how much of this could have been saved had Sony not created a PR nightmare for the game with the required PSN account linking.
That said, I’m sure there’s going to be a sharp spike in players very soon, as Arrowhead should be releasing a new enemy faction into the game very shortly, which is going to bring a lot of players back again for a while. Hopefully they’ll find a way to keep those players interested again.
All games like this have massive daily player drop offs a few months after release.
To be honest despite the publicity, most players don’t actually give a shit. Most players don’t read gaming news. And many players don’t care, either because they already have a PSN account, or they just don’t care about making another account to play the game.
I wouldn’t be surprised if over half the players had never even heard of the PSN controversy at all. The SteamDB player chart actually indicates when those shenanigans were compared to player numbers, and the daily player numbers had already been declining at that same pace for a month up to that point and continued at about the same rate after.
All games like this have massive daily player drop offs a few months after release.
This makes me feel super old, because I must have played Quake 1 daily for 8 straight years. Same with Counter-Strike. I’m still not used to people changing games every few months.
PvP centric games tend to have way more consistent player bases than PVE games, sadly.
it is still unplayable in over 100 countries. i bet some of those people heard, you know, when they couldn’t log in.
Of course. I’m not an idiot, clearly there are people affected.
But even if EVERY Helldivers 2 sale were affected, of the 1.85 BILLION estimated PC gamers in the world, we would be looking at around 0.6% people affected. It’s a tiny sliver, despite Helldivers having over 12 million sales (and that’s both PC and console).
The fact of the matter is this doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme, and most people have likely never even heard of the game still even with the controversy. The industry is unfathomably massive and one game is tiny, even one with 12+ million sales.
Well they lost me with their ridiculous price hike for PSN. I won’t be buying any more multiplayer games for my PS5.
And the Sony account requirement will be reimplemented in 3… 2… 1…
More accurate to say that the initial success surge has calmed down to their core audience.
That 10% or fewer depending on if it’s still shrinking will be the rock and stoners that keep this game running well into the future.
You’ll probably see a similar spike then fall off then consolidation when The Forever Winter releases. That core community revenue is probably going to be what FunDog is planning on using for future projects and to cover the maintenance costs of TFW. I mean either that or they’ll power the servers by kidnapping the playerbase and harvesting their organs and bioelectricity but it was really their own fault for not being able to get out of sight before nightfall.
I’ll put my two cents in. I never bought the game because of the invasive anti cheat. I was still tempted until they required PlayStation account linking.
I didn’t get it initially because it looked very repetitive and cheesy (in a bad way). Some of my friends played it which made me look into it and by the time I may have gave in and tried it they introduced account linking and I full noped out of it.
Sony didn’t go through with account linking in the end. However you cannot purchase the game in the (numerous) countries where PSN isn’t allowed. If you had already bought it (and didn’t refund), you can keep it.
Your other points still stand, though
Sony didn’t go through with account linking in the end.
Yet
Never touched it again after the psn fiasco. I am not deluded enough to think the devs were on the players side. If you saw there early messages about it and still think they are with you, you are completely lost.
That’s like saying breaking bad has lost 99% of its viewers with no sign of recovery. L take
The point made in the article is that this isn’t supposed to some content that is released and over, like a TV episode. It’s a live service game that’s expected to be continuously played and generate income. This a huge drop is a mark against that model.
I do love helldivers, but I’m not exactly sad if live service games end up being not attractive to devs anymore.
How to be successful long term:
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Make a good game
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Don’t ship your game with a rootkit
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Don’t ban entire regions from your game
If they drop they root kit I’ll play it
Me too
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And other major expansions for elden ring and FFXIV released recently. There’s potential overlap in the player base. 90% is a big dip though.
That is just the natural lifecycle of every multiplayer game
