Numbers: we've reached the lowest playerbase since launch

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What are your toughts?

Personally, i find the game really fun but every little fix and substantial improvement takes a ridiculously long time. Bardin’s bugged leap and missing illusions are just the first things that pop on my head, but we all know so many of these things. Come on, Fatshark, get your act together.

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They know about it. But also, they already answered, that many people are on the vacation. And, honestly, for me, here is nothing new or special about numbers. Vermintide already has its playerbase, so sure people are taking the break, because tired of V2, or waiting for updates, doesn’t matter. When the update will come, and more sanct. mods, some people back. I think it’s gonna be between 4k and 6k of avg. players, which isn’t that bad. And even if game were totally polished, numbers would be almost the same.

Yes

Vermintide 1 launch:
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The problem isn´t balancing or bugfixes etc. That´s what the last 4k players cry about.
The game got a difficulty + content issue AND it got more hype, than it could handle.

Here some examples:

  1. My GF would play with me on Veteran, because she wants to play “chilled”. But she don´t even want to get carried in anyway and without me, she won´t play it. Also she talked about “no content and no loot”

  2. 1 Friend just don´t want to feel like “i´m getting carried”, so he stopped.

  3. 1 Friend remembered there are other games, due to the lack of content and just play at Events or if i asked him.

So a lot of ppl can´t play together just because of a skill-gap. It´s mostly no fun for the ppl to get carried or for the carrys to play on lower difficulties. The content and obviously no loot isn´t that good for ppl, which need some goal in the game. So 4k players with probably 300h+ left and complaining about bugs. ^^

I don´t even think, that a lot of players will return with any DLC. Maybe there will be 2-3k more for 1 week and that´s all. I think it will fall to about 3k and hold it down there for a couple of month.

FS can´t really do anything against it with their little studio. They need 500 manpower to get out content over content and tons of loot to farm.

  1. Sounds just like a woman. Whats her definition of “chilled”, then? Does it mean laid back? Well, you arent at your best when playing laid back, its natural. And the only way to not get carried is to get as good or better at the game as the “carry”. But you dont get better at a game by playing a lower difficulty to chill.

  2. Sounds like your friend doesnt want to put in the effort to improve. Thats not the game’s fault, but the person’s.

  3. Thats perfectly fine. Nobody expects players to play the game non-stop. I myself only play when my friend asks me to play, and only for a couple rounds.

Yet they set out for an extremely ambitious project. I was impressed beyond belief after finding out V1 was made by a rather small studio. But V2 is even more ambitious, and im sure they got the resources to expand their studio by now.

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This kind of fall in active player numbers is common, and happens very naturally as people get tired of playing the same game all the time and of the (perceived, subjective and otherwise) problems in the game. At some point, the playerbase will mostly stabilize, but even then people will likely keep trickling off. New content and events will bring back old players for a while, and sales and promotions will bring in new players (who will trickle off in similar fashion, with minority staying).

The numbers mean nothing if there’s nothing to compare them to. If you want to worry, you are free to do so, but if you want to show others how worrysome things really are, you need to give context, likely in the form of similar stats for other games. Most helpful would be ones for other small-group co-op games, but those are limited, so a few others would also be appreciated. My hypothesis is that if you were to research things, you’d find quite similar decline in most other games.

The relative amount of players is something to note, too. At the moment, we’re at over ten percent of the highest average right after launch, about the same relation in peak players.

Also some of the Steam achievements are something that can give interesting, relevant information, namely how large part of people have played the game beyond just starting up the game and trying it out. I did give some comparisons to Borderlands 2 about a month ago (a game that would be a good candidate for the player number comparisons as well): From 70k to 7k constant players. How

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  1. There lies the problem… “for what?” no loot, no goal, nothing. So “why should i play a higher difficulty?” ^^

  2. No his problem is, that he want to explore the game (i knew nearly all) by himself and he just hates to stay behind like “hmmm okay”… + he don´t like to play solo, so no reason to improve anything.

  3. Yes that´s ok, but if that game would be so much fun with something real to farm etc. (content), he would play it every day. I know him. ^^

I don´t think so. Maybe they got the recources through the hype, but i don´t think, that it would hold forever. V2 became more “casual” than V1, but it´s still a game for a small number of players. Just look at the big amount of ppl complaining about the difficulties + PVE isn´t that what it was once. PVP is trend.

So expanding the studio could be a reason to close it in a year…

Yeah, poor little FS and their lemonade stand they run out of their parents’ garage, all just a victim of circumstance and not at all the result of poor management, communication and calculation. I am perfectly willing to cut them some slack for being a small team and all, but there’s just too much stuff going on that simply has nothing to do with their size but with their overall approach. There’s smaller teams (sometimes even single people) doing most of these alot better, strangely enough.

The player count is still relatively robust and the decline isn’t too uncommon. What I do think is that the drop will be relatively permanent and that it’ll be very hard to retain new players or bring players back who have moved on even with DLC and whatnot.

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Very good points. The only real similar game which occurs to me is Killing Floor 2. Co-op FPS, class-based, melee and ranged combat, 4 players party PvE with cosmetic loot box drops.

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KF2 was launched November 2016 peaking around 7k players. The devs have worked hard to improve the game (i know cause i played for some time)and both numbers (average and peak players) increased.

Of course, their charts also show the game was heavily beta tested before the actual launch.

I don’t work neither with digital marketing or with game development, but i’d be tempted to say the player drop percentage on V2 is higher than normal.

But then again, we’d need more similar games to compare.

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It’s actually about as expected, considering the small initial volume of the game. Despite everything VM2 is still a SMALL game, with limited elements to extend playtime.
It’s not a game chockful of content for people to enjoy for years.

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The biggest game breaker for me was the major input lag which started happening all of a sudden after a certain patch. Up until then I’ve played the game while managing to ignore all of the bugs and problems… but with this one, it’s basically next to impossible to play the game any more when your mouse practically “locks” at certain moments. So I’ve decided to pause until September 8th. That will be the 6 months anniversary of VT2, and I really hope that the state of the game will be better at that point. That decision made my gf and 2 of my friends to stop playing as well and prevented another friend from buying the game.

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Does the mouse lag happen all the time for you? I haven’t seen that occur for me.

I did however have an issue where the HP Omen Command Center on my laptop would leak handles while playing Vermintide 2. Probably some failed interaction between its network prioritization for foregroud application feature and EAC. After it leaked its way up to 40000+ handles, rather than a more typical 600 or so, I would experience jittery mouse lag everywhere, and audio would pop and beep constantly. Like, moving the mouse would trigger an error beep.

Killing that task would instantly correct the issue for me.

The mouse “locking” sounds pretty much the same thing my friends and (to a lesser degree) myself were experiencing. It was at least partially fixed by going into Windows’ Mouse options, on the Pointer Options tab, and disabling the “Enhance pointer precision” option.

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after the initial stardust have washed away there is a lot of annoying issues that ruin the experience.

trolls kicking you after wasting 25-30 min only to get put back at the beginning of the level, Rare red drops - acceptable, frequent duplicates, not so much.

i enjoyed playing this game but the fun factor is getting lower and lower, i find it hard to boot this game up over the others i have waiting for me.

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Yeah these numbers are pretty bad. Even if people use survivor bias and evidence from VT1 or other games there isn’t much good to be said about this.
With the lack of dedicated servers it’s nearly impossible to play this co-op game. Playerbase is super low, finding games is quite annoying, solo play still sucks because they intentionally didn’t add the bot mod that’s pretty good, low amounts of content, quickplay penalty that fanbois defend as “acktually itsch how the devs swhant the game to be played!”

I’m gonna take a break from this game I imagine. Recently bought it for two friends to play with but unless they wanna play there’s pretty much no reason to hop on anymore.
I’m sure there someone here who’d argue that with the amount of time I’ve put into the game that I’ve gotten my ‘moneys worth.’ To that person I’d give a wholehearted F&#K YOU! I’ve got literal years spent on lootfest style games.
See you guys on PoE or Diablo 2 maybe.

Hopefully the playerbase will return with some critical updates, whenever those happen.

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You can also have fun for free, in which case the “money’s worth” is infinite or undefined depending on how you want to see it. No way VT2 can meet that standard if you spent a non-zero amount of money on it.

Case in point: I’m having fun here. Ergo VT2 is less value for my money than this post. TIME TO GET ANGRY ABOUT IT!

Thanx, I didn’t know about this, I’m definitely gonna try it.

Almost every time, 5-10 times throughout the level.

Cant say im surpriced. These kind of games dont live long and by that i mean games with no end game content and a bag full of promises that will never see the light of day. I cant speak for anyone else but i dont accept second class behavior and that is what FS is doing. Its no mans sky lite. Dedicated servers, cosmetics, keep individualization… looking forward to vt3. Not that im going to buy it - thays never gonna happen, i dont support companies like this - but to see if the community will remeber FS for what they are and did or run out guns blazing buying the game first chsnce they get only to end up on tve forums complaining yet again.
Game is as dead as the forum like it should be.

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I have +500h in a game I paid less than 25e for, which I still enjoy immensely. I hope you don’t condemn me for buying “more VT” from your vertically well endowed equine.

Not at all.