Prefer to have them take their time and do some decent bug fixing before release, rather than hastily after release, and making new bugs with every patch they release to quickly to fix bugs.
Also the player amount is like SirKruber mentioned, never above 70K, and I think that was even the peak, not the average, though I could be mistaken
Then again, it’s dropped hard and far from there… Gameplay is great, game code I guess not so much I am no coder though, so I don’t know too much about it, but comparing to other games, the fact they have so much trouble to fix dedicated servers, and the bug issues vs other games that do this with ease, it seems to be something is very wrong at the core.
Recently I became baffled by a game like Valheim that seems so amazingly made it has made me view every other game I ever played in a new light. Not just VT2, cause let’s take a good look at COD: MW & Warzone and the laughable filesizes in comparison to other games and you know it’s a bad job. Think they patched it up to be a lot more reasonable now but still…
Anyway, I doubt that is the real issue. I think the main issue for VT2, is that there just aren’t enough devs working on it, to actually speed things up and make it as great as it could be and should be, and form a decent player base. Though at this point, getting tons of new players that still gotta learn, and having to try and pull them through higher difficulties will be hell in and of itself anyway. So besides playing with friends I defo take a break with VT2 for now
Basic bugs don’t get fixed for ages and then updates introduce more bugs, sometimes alongside the attempts to fix bugs. From the sounds of it, Fatshark has a very rigid update system and has never heard of the phrase ‘agile development’, and there seems to be a lack of commnunication between both us and likely between their own teams on top. At the very least not being able to include all of the changes implemented in the patch notes is comical.
It seems like they have university undergraduate student level issues in the way they handle projects. It’s really weird and doesn’t make sense but that’s what it looks like.
These are all assumptions made off of what’s been said by Fatshark, mainly what comes from their community managers, so I could be completely incorrect (I hope I am).
Edit: Not that I’m really complaining. I’ve gotten more than my bang for buck out of this game and give Fatshark’s core gameplay 10/10. It just seems like they handle things in an archaic fashion.
Edit 2 (Made after all of the likes given to this comment): The above reflects the mood at the time, but my comment failed to consider the difficulties of game development.
70k players to… what, maybe 5-8k now? Less than L4D2? Although it’s not millions of players on launch, there’s very small player retention.Buggy AF launch, no changes concerning red/dupe/droprate and crafting that still leaves me with 20k scrap and so on.
WoM finished off some players who’d stuck around through gritted teeth in hope it would rescue some of it.
Yet I’m the same as @Velsix , I’ve absolutely got my moneys worth in playtime - no question.
The steam chart numbers are for CONCURRENT players, not total players. According to the Steam charts there were 4,850 concurrent players on average in the last 30 days. According to Steam Spy the average player played 11 hours in the last 2 weeks.
4,850 players X 24hrs per day X 14 days ÷ 11 hrs per player = 148, 135 active players.
If the 73K players played 11 hours per 2 weeks like players today then that means there were 2.2 million active players at release.
While player numbers have obviously declined, it would be stupid to think that fatshark would waste development time on an active player base of 5K players. It would mean that the maximum they could earn off the GK or OE DLC would be 50K dollars each, barely enough to pay a single developer.
While I am glad that at least some people understand how to estimate current player numbers (seriously, in the Steam forums people seem to think that only 5000 people are playing Vermintide at all), I would like to give some minor “opinion” on the next paragraph.
73 k was the peak, you should use the average number for the first month as you have for the prior calculation. That would be around 30 k people. The second point is more problematic as there is no way to my knowledge to check past average playtimes. But I would say that it was above 11 hours per two weeks simply because the game was new. Needless to say that there couldn’t be 2 million active players at release because
As in general for the decline. With very very veeeerrryy few exceptions the decline in the first two months of any game is about 80-90 %. So there is nothing out of the ordinary here. Yes, it obviously there are examples of games doing better in player retention. But Vermintide has kept itself above average.
I’m actually surprised FS is working on a big expansion during this stage of V2’s lifetime.
When you look at the size of the active playerbase, DLC attachment rate etc. it would be a surprise to make any money at this point even if the DLC reviews overwhelmingly positive.
But that’s FS’s cross to bear. I just need it to have enough people playing. These days I’m already often having issues finding Cataclysm games without changing characters, because only a few percent of V2 owners end up buying WoM and thus have access to Cata.
Since Chaos Wastes doesn’t sound like a simple mappack that works in quickplay, I’m gonna have to be playing with the overlap of “WoM owners who play Cata and also own and queue for CW”, a matchmaking combination I’m not very optimistic about after the release weeks…
haha poor choice of words, but I guess that is all due to what I presume is a skeleton crew working on this game cause of poor FS judgement. Can hardly fault the devs for that bit, probably a studio call.
Which is basically what the last part of my message was about haha
I am no coder though, so I don’t know too much about it, but comparing to other games, the fact they have so much trouble to fix dedicated servers, and the bug issues vs other games that do this with ease, it seems to be something is very wrong at the core.
. OE update fixes could hardly be called hasty.