I want to give it another couple weeks before making any definitive statements, but it appears that we now have a ‘floor’ of about 10k players. How long that lasts given the mastery chase is still unknowable, but the sale combined with the completely new system that isn’t punishing towards players appears to be enough to push the bottom of how many people on average play this game - it was previously hovering around 3k, the same as VT2.
I hope this persists and illustrates to Fatshark that delivering on what players want is a good thing.
It will go back down if they dont do smth about mission terminal. Obv not to how it was before, but i think we’ll go back to like 7k players which is still pretty good but yeah.
I know i am getting kinda bored of always seeing the same maelstrom missions…
You would think combined with the recently added party finder VIRTUALLY NO ONE ASKED FOR that should be a piece of cake. All they need is an UI change + ability to orchestrate the spin up process for AWS instance with specific maps + difficulty modifiers. Something certain mods can already do (with some limitations).
There was a big spike a year ago with the class overhaul too and then dropped back down again.
These big updates are great for bringing back in a spike of players.
Unfortunately Fatshark usually can’t capitalize on it because they don’t follow up with subsequent content/event updates quick enough to keep people engaged and chasing achievements / rewards / etc.
As awesome as these updates are, there will need to be a more regular cadence to actually grow the base of players. Granted, word of mouth of the game “finally being in a good spot” will help and hopefully diminish the rate of falloff, but you need a regular content infusion to keep people.
Look at Deep Rock Galactic’s steam chart. Regularly infusion of content, multiple seasons of stuff each year with a whole tree of rewards to grind for, multiple special events during the year with cosmetic rewards for participation. All of that coupled with being a game being are excited to talk about and recommend is how you grow the player base.
Fatshark would need to quadruple their rate of updates to build momentum. Probably double it at least to maintain.