increased steam player count

[SPACER NINE NINE]

im interested to know if the player base has increased mainly from new players or returning players ?

i am a returning player who has 1300 hours in the game and returned after a couple years at 1100 hours

i returned back in febuary

whats your situation

[Mr_MeGusta]

Its around 9ishk right now a little bit down from October 28th which peaked over 10k, the player base spent much of the summer sub 5k and only late July/early August started picking back up again. I got well over 400 hours and missed out on a lot of the titan combat from 2 years ago but have been playing a ton with all the changes to the game. Both powerplay 2.0 and the big titan push are a ton of fun. I've been assisting in clearing invasions and have gotten 300-400 million or so in combat bonds fighting thargoids so far. I'm not working to refit my ship to be an even more effective combat vessel.

[Erei]

Elite population dipped massively after Odyssey launch. On steam, that's quite visible on steamchart, and can be attributed to the poor reception of the DLC. But then you can add the loss of VR support for Odyssey, and the maintenance mod for console players. While you can't see that on steamchart, it's likely lots of people stopped playing, and those who didn't go PC are now playing on Legacy, and as such are not counted for PC player.

Meanwhile, between PP2, the first new ships in years, and the end of the Thargoid war certainly attracted some people back. To add to this, the game was free on Epic, for those who missed it the first time. Or the first 2 times, lol.


I'd guess it's motly returning, but I don't have the raw data.

[JohnRando]

Pretty much the same as OP, was 1k-ish hours ; stopped not long after Odyssey dropped. At the time i felt like it was meant to paywall updates while bringing nothing interesting on the table.

Since Ody went down to a handful credits recently i came back to experience the development of the thargoid arc firsthand, along with the newer stuff.

[Rhaaxerus]

I basically have just dwindled down to logging in to collect ARX during Christmas.
With the whole Thargoid War and Sol invasion it looks like there's more buzz of players jumping in, but this recent activity will die out by new years and the conclusion of the Thargoid War.
Then it will be business as usual, Commanders will go back to other games, and FDev will continue the slow spoon fed trickle of changes and additions that will ultimately be sort of disillusioning and underwhelming.

[Father President]

Returning player here and having a blast.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Rhaaxerus:

I basically have just dwindled down to logging in to collect ARX during Christmas.
With the whole Thargoid War and Sol invasion it looks like there's more buzz of players jumping in, but this recent activity will die out by new years and the conclusion of the Thargoid War.
Then it will be business as usual, Commanders will go back to other games, and FDev will continue the slow spoon fed trickle of changes and additions that will ultimately be sort of disillusioning and underwhelming.

I guess you haven't heard about the Colonisation update in Jan/Feb?

If you think the player base is buzzing now, wait until we can found + build out our own star systems.

And I can all but guarantee they will keep adding new ships if the current ones have proved to be popular and profitable.

[Scottie '93]

Returning player here. I originally bought the game on PS4 back in 2018, I really enjoyed it but after a while I got fed up with the engineering grind. Upgraded to PC a couple of years ago, I bought ED again and started a new career but only really dipped in occasionally. I decided to give it another go yesterday after hearing about the new updates, the new powerplay stuff has totally got me hooked again! I'm really enjoying it.

[SPACER NINE NINE]

Originally posted by djabstractuk:

Returning player here. I originally bought the game on PS4 back in 2018, I really enjoyed it but after a while I got fed up with the engineering grind. Upgraded to PC a couple of years ago, I bought ED again and started a new career but only really dipped in occasionally. I decided to give it another go yesterday after hearing about the new updates, the new powerplay stuff has totally got me hooked again! I'm really enjoying it.

GREAT news CMDR fly safe

[Scottie '93]

Originally posted by SPACER NINE NINE:

GREAT news CMDR fly safe

Thank you! o7

[FlappeKopp]

o7 CMDRs

[Hootman]

I anticipate Colonization will bring a lot of returning players, and new players. It probably will take some time tweaking the "grind" of building the system to find the right balance of what people are willing to tolerate. I think it's a great move.

I'm also VASTLY relieved that my initial fear of "base building" along the lines of Fallout 76 won't happen,and it appears that the new systems will be NORMAL type faclities.

Last thing I wanted to see was a bunch of junk like Neon signs and crudely built structures designed to resemble male organs visible from space.

[SPACER NINE NINE]

Originally posted by Hootman:

I anticipate Colonization will bring a lot of returning players, and new players. It probably will take some time tweaking the "grind" of building the system to find the right balance of what people are willing to tolerate. I think it's a great move.

I'm also VASTLY relieved that my initial fear of "base building" along the lines of Fallout 76 won't happen,and it appears that the new systems will be NORMAL type faclities.

Last thing I wanted to see was a bunch of junk like Neon signs and crudely built structures designed to resemble male organs visible from space.

lol organs from space

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Hootman:

Last thing I wanted to see was a bunch of junk like Neon signs and crudely built structures designed to resemble male organs visible from space.

Fdev beat you to that one, if you'll excuse the pun. One of the stock settlements is suspiciously organ shaped.

[Milquetoastie]

I bought the game back in 2016ish, played it for about 10hrs then bounced off. For some reason a few weeks ago I get the space itch and re-download it to try again, thinking it'll be super quiet. Turns out between powerplay 2.0, sol war, and upcoming colonization update, everything's happening all at once and there are still more avg players online now then there were back then. What a time to start back up!

I'm past 200hrs now and see no sign of stopping.

[SPACER NINE NINE]

Originally posted by Sighman:

Originally posted by Hootman:

Last thing I wanted to see was a bunch of junk like Neon signs and crudely built structures designed to resemble male organs visible from space.

Fdev beat you to that one, if you'll excuse the pun. One of the stock settlements is suspiciously organ shaped.

hah