Why has this game gone so quiet?

[Miles]

I used to play months ago, you would get into a battle in no time, it would be very large teams.
Now I'm playing and it takes 1-2 minutes to join a game and it turns out to be a 2V2 game.
I checked the stats page and it's gone from 1500 average players, down to 30!

What's happened?

[bunnydakillr]

Not sure when you last played, but the population has declined for a lot of reasons: Temperamental community, dedicated group of toxic players who shooed away all newcomers, the lack of a major event or content patch in the last month or so, and many other reasons. But perhaps the largest reason is that the persistent lack of fleet wars or any other inter-fleet mode meant that everyone who finished their grind and got up to tier XI (which, given how many times exp income has been buffed and how many essentially free ships have been given away, was most people) basically had nothing left to do. Add to all that the fact that numerous big-title games have come out in the last few months, and you get the current population.

I still play a few times a week, and I know there are several other older players who still log on from time to time. I rarely wait longer than a minute or a minute and a half to get a game, but you won't find many games these days that aren't reserve battles.

[baddoggs]

I still play every day, most days that is. I have not noticed a decline infact quite the opposite.
there are hundreds of new players out there, many of the more exp players are on sabattical until
a "NEW" game mode is introduced.. I have seen this before, they are usually back within a few weeks.. In short the game is very much alive and still attracting new players..

[Miles]

I still struggle to find games, it's always 2V2 which I really don't like, I miss the old big games.
According to here the game has decreased in popularity big time, if you look at the second graph
https://steamdb.info/app/338540/graphs/

[bunnydakillr]

No one (well, except baddoggs apparently) is denying that the game's population is pretty dead, and has been for a little while now. Still, judging from what you've said, I'd say I'm having fewer difficulties. Most games I join are at least 4v4 or 5v5. Anything smaller is still fairly rare in my experience, so I'm guessing we're playing at different times of day and/or from different timezones.

[baddoggs]

Im not saying there are not issues, but the game is far from "dead".
Granted there are times when it is a little slow, but most of the decent players
who were around a year ago I still see on a regular basis. Many new players are starting
up now. Graphs never tell the whole story and can be used way out of context
to support just about any claim. All i know really is, it is just about the same as it was
6 months ago.. no harder or longer to find a game.. In my opinion that is.
remember there are things like timezones to consider. For example, some times around
early evening it can slow down as players in one timezone slow. Usually within an hour or so it picks up again as players from outher zones come on-line...
I am NOT saying the situation is great, I would love to see more players of course
but it is not that hard to find a game.. It would of course be great to have the MANY problems
with the game resolved, realistically I think we should accept the fact that this it what we have and enjoy it instead of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all the time...

To Bunnydakillr
P.S. I am happy to say, In over a year of gameplay I have NEVER encounterd the "Toxic"
community you speak of. I actually find the more exp players often go out of there way to HELP newbies.... One of the main reasons i still play.. of course there are allway a few
mor*ns but they don't seem to last in this game..

[Miles]

I have to agree on the community part. The community of this game has always been perfect for me. when I was low level any mistakes I made, people were always happy to correct me, and before i stopped playing I helped others within the fleet. It must be the timezones, out of about 20 games, the most ive had is a 3v3 recently

[baddoggs]

The community is what makes it worthwile for me, good group of guy's and gal's.
Teamplay is generally good compared to some outher games. I too play WoT, WoW and the rest of those types of games but the community of NF2 keeps me comeing back...

[Bravo]

I actually like the small community better, it makes for better friendly rivals to form.

That said I strongly dislike the game's apparently overly trigger happy reserve matches - when there are 20-30 people playing, it should be in one or two medium-large matches not 5+ poorly balanced reserve matches... I for one (and I'm sure many others think similarly) would much rather a 5 minute wait for a 10vs10 match than a 2 minute wait for a 3vs3 with one side being virtually guaranteed to win.

[Rogerborg]

NF2 is dead for no reason.

There is no newer, better free alternative game with the same theme that's just come out of beta. This other game that doesn't exist hasn't got tens of thousands of active players. It doesn't thrash NF2 in every conceivable way.

Well, it can't, because of course... it doesn't exist. If it did, surely it would be being discussed here with a view to explaining what makes NF2 better than it. A policy of denial and deleting posts that even mention this imaginary, non-real game would be petty, farcical and a good sign that the developers have just given up.

So really, it's inexplicable.

[bunnydakillr]

Rogerborg původně napsal:

There is no newer, better free alternative game with the same theme

As true as this is, I don't agree that there's no reason NF2 is flatlining at the moment. The community was, quite frankly, impossible to please. The devs did a surprisingly good job of responding to community demands, especially compared to NF1, but no matter how many times they did, people still found reasons to complain. Among the community-requested changes, numerous buffs to exp gain and countless events put a large number of the more-active players in Tier XIs in very short order. Having finished their grind, there was simply nothing left to do because SDE had not yet implemented any kind of fleet war system, and so they moved on.

The lack of fleet content from the very beginning is, I think, SDE's greatest mistake with NF2 -- there's simply no endgame. I can only imagine that something catastrophic occurred at the development level, for there were multiple live server tests of the fleet vs fleet gamemode back in February, and not only is it still not in the game, it's been pushed back behind upcoming harbor assault.

Other reasons: lack of marketing (always a thorn in NF's side), a decent chunk of NF1 vets refusing to play due to some of the differences between the games, some new players simply not understanding the genre at all (eg, I saw several who didn't understand the concept of the research, the tech tree, or why they couldn't just instantly buy a T11 BB), a short but dedicated campaign on the part of some to shoo new players away just to spite the game, and many others.

It's unfortunate that there's really no better and more-populated game out there, but that doesn't mean there aren't reasons for the game's demise.

it doesn't exist. If it did, surely it would be being discussed here with a view to explaining what makes NF2 better than it. A policy of denial and deleting posts that even mention this imaginary, non-real game would be petty, farcical and a good sign that the developers have just given up.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here. If you're talking about games like WoT, WT, and WoWs, there has been gobs of discussion about those games on both the official forums and the steam forums. There's been a great amount of delusion in those threads, as some people seem to think that those games are somehow less grindy or non-p2w compared to NF2, but the discussions are there nonetheless. I've never seen any posts get deleted for mentioning another game, constructively criticizing NF2, or trying to bring new ideas to the table. In fact, the only things I've ever seen deleted off of either of the forums were threads and posts that tried to start a witch hunt against a specific player or players, or completely unconstructive comments like "lol SDE sucks they doomed their game."

And actually, NF2 is quite unusual in this regard. Normally it's industry standard to engage in the kind of "denial policy" you refer to.Those other games I mentioned certainly all engage or have engaged in it at some point, as do many others. Just another way NF2 has surprised me, to be honest.

[baddoggs]

You guys clearly did not play this weekend.. lol.
Not only are there new players many are now comeing back as tier 4-5 players,
this is a clear indication growth. Not massive i grant you, but it is there.
My account crashed recently causing me to loose over 700hrs of grinding and some choice ships. I started from scratch a week ago and have been hitting it pretty hard so i notice that the
servers are busy enough to see the return of some lag and dropouts.
Overall during the past few weeks i have played a rough av of 3.5 hrs a day, not allways in
one go. the battles have been a good size and with the emergance of quite a few low/mid tier
players the MM has not been too crazy. The weekends seem best but at certain times
you get good fast games mid week.

[Rogerborg]

baddoggs původně napsal:

You guys clearly did not play this weekend.. lol.

And pretty much nobody else did either, your protestations to the contrary.

It's not in the top 100, behind such titans as Train Simulator with a 2000 player peak. SteamStats suggests it's more like dozens.

I admire your persistence, but it's over. Losing 700 hours of grind, lag, dropouts? That's your sales pitch?

And "at certain times you get good fast games" is the most damnable of faint praise.

[baddoggs]

mmm not really worth a proper reply, If you dont like it....
nobody is forcing you to play the "free" game lol

[GIJeff]

bunny, Rogerborg's whole post was sarcastic. There most certainly is a competitor to navy field out there that is much better but I don't think you are allowed to advertise games on other games boards.

Baddoggs give it up. Barely anyone plays this game anymore. Not in the top 100? Hell its not in the top 10,000. Do none of you know about steam charts?

http://steamcharts.com/app/338540

I mean for goodness sake the PEAK number of players last month was 72.

I have played since NF1 and loved it. I liked NF2 at first too. NF2 died because of stupid dev decisions and lack of content.

[baddoggs]

giveing it up is my choice, there is still enough players to make it worthwile.
I still play nearly every day, granted it can be slow at times but i like it enough to put up with it.
I guess my attention span is more than 5 seconds...