Player Base Issue

[Syd]

I seriously want to purchase this game, I really, really do. What I cannot understand is how such an incredible masterpiece of a game suffers from only garnering ridiculously small attention. I keep reading about how all the servers are empty and finding people to play with is very difficult. I really want to support the devs and I do not want this game to die. Is there some form of organized groups which I can join to play the game online? What is the current status of online play? Is there any way to play this online without such difficulty?

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

The game is not dead (although it largely depends on how you classify "dead").

There are people who play this game.

There are organized groups, especially here on this discussion forum. However, if you are not active here on the discussion forum and friend other active players you will have a harder time finding people to play the game with.

Store page reviews make it pretty clear that this is a LOW POPULATION GAME. Either you buy it with that in mind or you don't buy it at all.

see more here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/246700/discussions/0/620696521971171290/


Also despite what everyone thinks, this game would not be better off with high population servers, in fact the game is at its worst when there are more than 6 players in a single server. This is a highly competitive dogfighting game, not a swarm game.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

uh, my bad wrong link, fixed now

[Syd]

I see, thanks for the reply. Do you have a rough idea of when people generally play? (the organized groups and such)

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

You really can't pin it down. Its usually just whenever we get on. There tends to be larger games on fridays and saturdays, however. But most players just get on whenever.

A very important thing to figure when trying to buy this game is if you are going to have good ping or not. Its very, very miserable trying to play this game with bad ping. I'd also make sure your rig specs check out, cuz framerate is very important.

Why is ping important? Because most of the time to get players, you'll be idling in a server waiting for people to join. When you pick a server, you are going to pick a server with good ping. See, the game suffers from players that WANT TO PLAY but don't actually join the game unless there are other players in a server. And make sure you live in the US or West Europe, cuz otherwise you won't find anyone that will join your server. Most of the players are, well, european or american. So timezones also favor these guys.

And yeah, its important you make friends with us so if we see you playing the game we hop on and join you.

I would expect there to be a decent newbie population since its a sale, however, so you have that going for you, but it usually dies down after a week or two.

[Syd]

ok. Thanks for the replies.

[Buntkreuz]

in other words its dead.

No seriously, dont deny that. Talking like that "there are organized groups, there are times to play it" dont help. Even more when no one can tell when this is happening. Right now there are 11 people playing and we have a perfect time to play videogames (evening-nighttime at 20 oclock-22 oclock).
Additionally the game is losing people everytime i look at the charts.
Its sad, i also ever think about buying it, i already have it in my favourites since they were at greenlight. But i dont see the point in buying a MP only game with no players at all.
Also they are not really promoting it. They tried several times with the humble bundle but seemed to be so overbearing that they kept the game at a quite high price and locked it down to the second tier. They missed opportunities and now the community is so tiny, that no other players are getting in.
Thats why i usually dont buy multiplayer only games, they die to easily. Even faster on Steam.
Hell, even games like Hawken being free to play died already.

Its sad. But i think i wont get this game aswell because it seems to be pointless.

[Yatem]

I have yet to hop on and not find a server with people on it. The game has a small player base but you will never not find a game.

[Kenshiro S13]

just got the game and was lucky to find 8 people online playing. This game is soo good if you are into this sorta thing. shame to see no attention to this game that it deserves as the OP says. i would say its not a bad buy if you dont mind only playing at certain hours. you can always friend all that people that play since there arent many and just jump on when you see them on.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

i still dont get why anybody would ever want to play this game with more than 6 players in one server

its just... not in the spirit of strike vector, not to mention about as unfun as it gets

although i guess if you are one of those people who likes doin nothin but derping around I guess you'd have fun, but if you want to get kills and win games HA yeah right no-way no-how does that work with anything greater than 6 players at a time

tho strike vector is super super competitive game, if you come in expecting anything less you will drop the game lickity split

i keep telling everyone, game is better off with low population, it would probably be ♥♥♥♥ with high population, or even medium population

but its just gonna fall on deaf ears, literally less than a tenth of a percent of the people who have bought this game kept playing it for more than two weeks, of those that actually did play the game, haha. Playerbase is fixed, no sales are gonna fix that. And I like it that way.

[Buntkreuz]

the problem is laying somewhere else and thats possibilities. Low population is simply a dumb escuse. Why would having more players ever be bad? It doesnt change the game experience just the possibilities.
Why? Simple. When there are only 10 people playing the game on 2 servers (6 and 4), then you only have two options to choose from. Thats too less. With 100 people playing spread on 10 servers you had 10 possible choices to play.
What you guys ar enot considering with your "low pop is good" arguments are two things: A:people playing doesnt mean they are playing at your location. I have 0 benefit from 10 people playing on a server in US East with a ping of 600 on the server because i sit in Europe. Its simply unplayable. So all servers with a ping of over 100 with people on it, is no viable option to play on, means im left with 0 options to choose.
B:what is even one benefit of having less players in a multiplayer game? You argue that it would be worse of a game with more people....why? That doesnt make any sense. The only argument coming then out is the "the community is better then" which is no real argument but a very subjective opinion based on own egocentric and limited on a specific view. The community can be as good as it wants, without someone to play i have nothing from that. When 90% of the community are playing on US Servers with a ping of 600 i have 0 benefit from that meaning the game gets pointless.
Having a large population offers chances and possibilities for everyone to play, not just you or not just me. I would talk this way aswell when i had many people playing on my favourite server on my region, but when you are let down because you are not belonging to those people then this suddenly turns.

[gsilver]

I had more fun in a 32 player CTF (only possible when they launched CTF...) than at any other point.

I really prefer well-populated servers for Strike Vector, TDM is also better with more players. There are tense quiet moments.

I'm still wishing that the game had bots. Bots that could easily be replaced by players, not ones that take up spots. Like, a server setting that would add bots whenever the population goes below 6, and remove them when people join. Even crappy AI would be more fun to shoot at than empty space.

[gsilver]

But yeah, the skill gulf also keeps players away. I tried playing recently, and there was only one other person, and he was very low level. To give him a chance, I decided to use only one weapon that I wasn't good at, hold my shots in a lot of places, and not evade agressively (where a big part of the fun is, by the way). After a little while, another low-level person appeared, and the first guy said he was leaving because the other person "used an aim bot" ... which did not seem to be true at all.

I went easy on him too, but he still left within about 2 minutes, and I was on a server by myself.

[Syd]

Don't get why a high skill floor should be the bane of this game. Pretty pathetic. I mean sure, if a game is really hard, its fair to see that it might discourage certain players, but to this extent?? There are plenty of other notoriously hard games out there that are insanely popular, dark souls, dmc series, ultima, super meat boy etc. What a shame...

[Szoreny Klepko]

Originally posted by Malth:

Don't get why a high skill floor should be the bane of this game. Pretty pathetic. I mean sure, if a game is really hard, its fair to see that it might discourage certain players, but to this extent?? There are plenty of other notoriously hard games out there that are insanely popular, dark souls, dmc series, ultima, super meat boy etc. What a shame...

The fact that its multiplayer-only makes a difference. If Dark Souls was all PvP all the time for instance, with no other means of gratification or reward, most would stop playing after getting rocked by veterans repeatedly in PvP.

[WhiskeyNinja]

I just got this as a gift, and gave it a whirl. It's a ton of fun, but I can see where the high skill ceiling drives players away.

Do you want to know why I think that is?

The training does very, very little to actually prepare you for playing multiplayer.

There are concepts that go between the two (switching between jet and harrier to make quick turns), but I felt totally lost when I joined my first server. I imagine this is not dissimilar to what all the other noobs experience.