Player Count so low?

[D-Jak]

Why is the player count so low?

I mean, I also have not been playing it too much since release, but tried it again this week after the few DLC dropped. And I gotta say, the game is great fun!

Simply put a Civ game in a fantasy setting with freedom to create any fantasy faction you wish for. Some things it does better than Civ, some it doesn't. But all in all it's a solid, great looking fantasy strategy game.

Therefore, I would have assumed it would be more successful. Or are the numbers "expected"? I haven't really played the other AoW, only tried Planetfall for a very short period and refunded because I had other games to play.

[rane]

Constant technical issues (esp. making multiplayer near unplayable), controversial design direction, controversial balance choices have burned off quite a few people right off the start and the game never recovered, although I'm sure two or three of the usual suspects will come right after to tell you that everything fine, nothing is wrong, problems are imagined etc.

[Terrkas]

It was 4 k on the weekend. Seems quite high to me.

I dont think aow could ever get close to civ playernumbers. At least not without civ messing up really hard.

[rane]

See?

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by rane:

See?

Oh no, you are a hater. Who cares.

[rane]

No, I want the game to be good and people repeating that there are no problems due to blind tribalism are getting in the way.

For the record, 4k is not OK right after major expansion drop. AoW3 had that much with 1/4 of the install base.

[Azunai]

It's a niche genre and the game is realistically only relevant for a niche audience within that genre.

[Terrkas]

For op, from what the devs told us, they never expected to have so many sales on release with 40 k players at the same time. It was expected to be way lower.

They probably were expecting numbers similar to aow3. I think that had 10k on release. Not sure how exactly the numbers were after some time.

But i guess the devs expected something between 1 k and 3 k in the long run.

Not sure though, how it was for aow3. With 4 being available on consoles, there might be quite a bunch there too. But i dont think there are numbers anywhere.

[aclyte]

It will never be high, unfortunately - the guy above told the right thing - it's niche genre for niche audience.
It's hard to play AoW "1 hour a day with beer and friends" - you will chose fortnite or other more suited for this game.
It's not suited for MP well - combats are too long - ppl better will play CIV which is much more polished, have many times bigger budget and better suited for MP.

Still, player-count-wise, this game is more than 3 times better than AoW3 and more than 4 times better than planetfall:
https://steamcharts.com/app/226840
https://steamcharts.com/app/718850
https://steamcharts.com/app/1669000
Also, 4k players daily peak is very good for AoW game after so long time.
So, the game moves in right direction.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by rane:

No, I want the game to be good and people repeating that there are no problems due to blind tribalism are getting in the way.

For the record, 4k is not OK right after major expansion drop. AoW3 had that much with 1/4 of the install base.

If steamdb is correct eternal lords had a spike around 5.3 k.

Ea has one around 6.7 k.

I am pretty sure the devs are fine with that. It doesnt have to be twice as big to be good. I am actially surprised it got 4 times as many players at release than 3. Though, thats probably thanks to paradoxs advertising.

So the outlier here is more likely the initial Playerspike of 4. Which most likely attracted a bunch of people who arent into 4x kinda games with focus on tactical battles.

I dont know what you see as good. But i never would expect aow to become as big as a hit as stuff like elden Ring.

[Thats How We do action in Uganda]

Originally posted by D-Jak:

Why is the player count so low?

Because its a bad game, AOW3 or Homm3 is few tiers better than this abomination, so why bother?

[Ponypony]

Its advertising, id never even heard of it. Its a great game though.

[Estellese]

There are a lot of new games coming out. While I love the game I have not played it much recently as I have been distracted by Sandrock, BG3, and FTK2. But all three of those will eventually burn out, and I will be back here when they do.

Others are likely in the same boat.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by Estellese:

There are a lot of new games coming out. While I love the game I have not played it much recently as I have been distracted by Sandrock, BG3, and FTK2. But all three of those will eventually burn out, and I will be back here when they do.

Others are likely in the same boat.

I actually wanted to finish my bg3 playthrough by now, but instead i play aow for some reason. Though, once i did what i want and my mp gsme is done, i have the time to play bg3.

[TriumphJordi]

The player count is not extraordinarily low. Currently the Steam concurrent users are stabilizing at numbers higher than AoW3 & PF and our peak numbers are also consistently higher. Overall I'd say things are looking pretty good.

There are some things to consider though that have also been mentioned already. Our Launch Peak was incredible and not something we anticipated or were prepared for, it's an amazing year for gaming with great titles such as Spellforce of EO, Baldur's Gate 3 and new DLC/Updates for titles such as Cyberpunk that really suck people in.

Then there's also the elements that apply to the game. Age of Wonders 4 has moved to capture a wider audience then the niche it always found itself in. Some of the design choices that are made with that in mind might clash with the pre-exisiting userbase who might have expected something different.

In the end though it's important to realize that Steam Concurrent is only 1 number, on 1 Platform that doesn't reflect performance on other platforms nor the metrics we use internally.

[Estellese]

Originally posted by Terrkas:

I actually wanted to finish my bg3 playthrough by now, but instead i play aow for some reason. Though, once i did what i want and my mp gsme is done, i have the time to play bg3.

Oh I am on my fourth run of BG3 by now. Which is abnormal for me. BG3 just really did something right. Story-based RPGs with character creation are by far my favorite type of game but I can almost never play more than one playthrough.

RPGs > Otome > Strategy > competitive > unique, are my general preference for games. You probably have a higher preference for strategy games, and thus AOW has a stronger pull on you than RPGs do. I am just feeling utterly swamped with games I want to play this year.


And yep, devs are on point as usual. That pretty much covered everything.