It says 426 in game as of now...

[CAPTAIN KRAMERICA]

Does nobody play this anymore? I've been holding out for a sale, but already have the first game, and if nobody is playing, they should really do a sale to boost the player-base .

[DarkLeafNinja]

They are trying to get that number to 0 as fast as they can, don't worry.
I say this based on how they treat the balance of this dumpster fire, there is a good game here but it requires quite some rework on a few things and I personally don't think the devs have it in them to fix tbh.

[CAPTAIN KRAMERICA]

That's a bummer. Looks fun, but honestly after what they did to the first game (having all that DLC and then replacing it with a "new" game), I was a little hesitant to buy this one. I never really got invested too much in the first game and got it for like 2 bucks, but I feel for the people who put hundreds into it just to watch it get swept under the rug. Perhaps the devs business sense is a little skewed?

[DarkLeafNinja]

Originally posted by CAPTAIN KRAMERICA:

That's a bummer. Looks fun, but honestly after what they did to the first game (having all that DLC and then replacing it with a "new" game), I was a little hesitant to buy this one. I never really got invested too much in the first game and got it for like 2 bucks, but I feel for the people who put hundreds into it just to watch it get swept under the rug. Perhaps the devs business sense is a little skewed?

This game is based around esports and FOMO battle pass so it got stripped on all the RPG content in story mode, idunno if you have seen it but there is a f2p version for it if you wanna try it out. You get Gran as a permanent character and 3 or 4 others on rotation i think it was, you can play online and the first act of the story mode.

[CAPTAIN KRAMERICA]

Thanks man. I did download the free game when it came out. I was bummed that you couldn't purchase characters a la cart, and I maybe only played it for an a short while. I may give it another shot. The art is really amazing I will say.

[Fish]

ppl are playing, but they may not be queuing in the same rank or region as you. Some of them are playing in private rooms while some others are playing in lobbies.

For me it takes less than a minute to find matches on ranked mode but I have heard it's harder to find ppl in the lower ranks if you're just starting out. (also, supposedly it's harder to find games in Europe but I've been hearing mixed responses regarding that so I can't be sure.)

Try to simply head to the public lobby and find someone similar to your rank. You could also attempt to queue casual (not sure if the free version can do that though), although I wouldn't really recommend casual matches to someone just starting out since that mode will match you against literally anyone else who's in the queue so your chance of finding someone too far beyond your current skill range is high.

Also double check if you have cross platform play enabled.

[Fish]

Originally posted by CAPTAIN KRAMERICA:

That's a bummer. Looks fun, but honestly after what they did to the first game (having all that DLC and then replacing it with a "new" game), I was a little hesitant to buy this one. I never really got invested too much in the first game and got it for like 2 bucks, but I feel for the people who put hundreds into it just to watch it get swept under the rug. Perhaps the devs business sense is a little skewed?

Regarding the pricing and sequel, the two games do differ a lot in your approach due to a totally different neutral game mindset from having dash normals. The introduction of raging strike and raging chain, plus the new ultimate versions of specials all altered each character's gameplan quite a lot. it's not really something they could release as an update to the original GBVS due to how substantially these mechanisms alter the core fighting experience or they risk angering the fans who liked the original for what it was. Not to mention it wouldn't make sense to invest this much in the original when the player base was already tiny.

As for ppl who bought the original + dlc at full price, they would have had the game for ~3 years. All that accumulated game time would've been something that later comers couldn't have experienced.
Of course, how good of a value is subjective, but in the case of Rising, it really doesn't make sense for these changes to be released as an update to the original, or else, what's now known as vanilla GBVS would cease to exist entirely, and the ppl who preferred the original's systems wouldn't even have a way to play it offline or via pre-arranged matches with friends.

[永久に]

Originally posted by CAPTAIN KRAMERICA:

That's a bummer. Looks fun, but honestly after what they did to the first game (having all that DLC and then replacing it with a "new" game), I was a little hesitant to buy this one. I never really got invested too much in the first game and got it for like 2 bucks, but I feel for the people who put hundreds into it just to watch it get swept under the rug. Perhaps the devs business sense is a little skewed?

They overhaul the system with new addition (4 New Characters, New Stages, New story mode, Crossplay, Rollback etc.) with the starting price already like 30% cheaper than the original GBF price,

Plus it's Granblue, if you are expected a completely new made game, you will end up with the exact same and less playable characters and content for the base game anyway.

[ArcKnight]

The amount of DLC for vanilla was totally alienating to people who found the game late, like myself. Unfortunately the redesign of the gameplay totally ruined any desire for me to play Rising. I'm sure most people don't notice or care but neither the vanilla game nor the DLC go on sale post Rising launch. I'm not really sure what their marketing game plan is but it seems chaotic.

[Fish]

Originally posted by ArcKnight:

The amount of DLC for vanilla was totally alienating to people who found the game late, like myself. Unfortunately the redesign of the gameplay totally ruined any desire for me to play Rising. I'm sure most people don't notice or care but neither the vanilla game nor the DLC go on sale post Rising launch. I'm not really sure what their marketing game plan is but it seems chaotic.

to be fair, they did have 2 sales for Rising. One was limited duration bundle offer with Relink, and a while ago it was 20% off.
They didn't have a sale for summer probably because EVO is right around the corner and a major patch is coming shortly after. The next sale is most likely gonna happen around that.

[Legensy]

I still play on Asian server at Japan evenings, at prime time.
Amount of people in lobbies kinda dropped from 3-4 full lobbies to 60-80 players in only one.
Queue times in ranked were 10-40sec on Bea release, and about 40-80 now.Recently it started to match me with cross rank players.A1vs S1,B1 vs A2 etc.
Still meet a F2P gamers, and newbies with 300- matches.
It may be a speculation, but EldenRIng release, summer vacations and Bea nerf could be a reasons why population declined.
My prediction : no hopes in August 1.50 patch.Game aint gonna die,but a lot of people gonna drop it when big Autumn releases will come.Game will be "healthy" next 3-5 months,maximum.Use this time to enjoy it.
Still not recommend.

[BHZ]

Something that will never die are the "game is dead" posts. There may be 0 players, but there will always be 4 or 5 "game is dead" posts daily. The "game is dead" posts will never die.

[Action Surge]

This game is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Kusoge, lol. Top 3 + 2B ruined the game. Just play GG strive if you want a better Arc Sys game. Cygames should just stick to Gachas since its obvious the devs have zero clue on what they are doing.

[テレビダンサー]

Originally posted by CAPTAIN KRAMERICA:

Does nobody play this anymore? I've been holding out for a sale, but already have the first game, and if nobody is playing, they should really do a sale to boost the player-base .

Don't pay attention to the Steam player count. This game has Crossplay vs the Console players, and it's VERY VERY active in all ranks.

I have a few characters in the lower D5 & C Ranks and I always find matches at all times of the day.

You can always refund it if you don't like it. Try the demo first so you can test the online waters.

[CAPTAIN KRAMERICA]

Thanks everyone for your input. And yeah, true, there are people playing on console too I didn't think about. I keep checking the key sites for a deep discount but to no avail since it was released.

[[reaVerNL@Rumble]ᚱᛖᚨᚠᛖᚱ]

Originally posted by DarkLeafNinja:

They are trying to get that number to 0 as fast as they can, don't worry.
I say this based on how they treat the balance of this dumpster fire, there is a good game here but it requires quite some rework on a few things and I personally don't think the devs have it in them to fix tbh.

This is much less a balance issue and much more a community issue. People are sitting in streams rather than playing the game. There are issues with the game that prevent it from being open while the player does other things such as:

• The inability to browse menus when waiting for a match.
  
• The inability to unfocus the game (in windowed mode) at all.
  
• The inability to so much as anything except training mode while waiting for a match.
  
• Lobby mechanics where there's just noone waiting to play a game.
  
• No single player content to keep the player occupied while he's waiting for a match.
  
• When you finally do manage to get something else in focus other than the game you end up with no sound cues telling you found a match.

Having to avoid the occasional character isn't nearly as relevant. If you're relying on tournaments to be the draw for players the game will be just as dead after rebalancing as it is now. The daily tournaments, that drew players away from the lobbies and essentially stopped them from playing the game, did far more damage than anything in the game did.