A new take on "dwindling" player base...

[Bait]

Much has been said but not remotely as much has been thought, I'm afraid.

After watching Pilestedt's 46min talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L-31Fg_jfg and then understanding a bit better their original rationale, I've come across this other one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9FD_vLwqe0
which brings a whole new refreshing take on the matter and condenses some of what I had been thinking over the past few days.

As a former Squad player who disgruntedly foresaw 3 years ago what would happen to that game (and still sad to have been proven right as I've just seen) I've come to understand what AH means by "A game for everyone is a game for no one", and even though I (as usual) don't agree with all points made in both videos, they helped me make sense of what's currently going on and what AH is trying (though still failing) to achieve.

On another take, having a reduced player base could be a good thing in terms of reducing server costs and support requests, *if* (that's a big IF) it helps focusing on making the game better.

Hope these help you muster other ideas as well. Cheers!

[DaS]

Mega の投稿を引用：

It's funny how the same thing continues decade after decade.

A bunch of basement dwellers that have never done a single thing in the gaming industry and have zero clue how to write code telling us what's wrong with a gaming company.

And if the company would only listen to them the problems would be magically fixed over night.

ayup you just described how a market works, congratulations. Most people can't build a car from the frame out either, but feel free to comment on whats wrong(in their mind) with the one they buy. They do decide to buy/not buy. and give feedback often alot

I mean have you ever seen a ford guy in a mopar forum? looks kinda similar to this
EDIT the ability, or lack thereof, to parse that feedback is a decent way to gain/or loose market share.
Feedback in any industry that actually tells you something is usually negative. Very rarely does positive feedback give actionable data.

[Mike]

The game the devs want to make isn't the same game the majority of the community wants. I have no objections with artists/ devs etc making what they would want and enjoy, but as soon as it moves into a commercial sphere, the customer is king if you want to make money. Game is a live service model, doesn't make sense to not provide the service customers bought it for/ want.

[Kenopsia]

Someone Noone の投稿を引用：

What a good take. lol

not realy, you are wrong.

[Nick Walker II]

Forblaze の投稿を引用：

Helldivers™ 2 の投稿を引用：

Please tell me what you know "THE reason" for the vast vast majority leaving is. Because even claiming to know that makes you lose credibility.

I already said it. Nihil said it too. They left because they weren't the kind of people that play this sort of game to begin with. It was popular because it was popular and a lot of people really only play games that are popular. There was never any chance that they retained all of those players.

Arrowhead absolutely lost longtime fans because of their mismanagement of this game.

[Mepho]

Bait の投稿を引用：

I'd like to address your post specifically because in part it refers back to my response above, which concurs with your thoughts.

But I fell you're a bit off on a couple topics:
- first, you're falling into the same pitfall of trying to simplify the game's success down to one or two factors. No one sells 12 million copies in 12 weeks for one or two factors, it HAS to be a compounding effect of multiple factors, just like losing 98% of it. Pilestedt actually throws some more elaborate thoughts on the game's reasons for success at ~36 and I still think it's a MASSIVE over-simplification, but I'd rather leave those thoughts for later ;)

Well, yes and no.
I mean generally speaking I think it's beyond the point, I was underlining how off their deductions are not really trying to pinpoint the reasons for success, but thinking again I really do think those are the two signle things that made this game popular.
The atmosphere and theme were the hook, the shooting was the keeper.
And that's mostly because I can't see anything else delivered from this game.
There's no customizaton, there's no teamplay, no story, no fancy missions or enemies, all there is are a lot of weapons.
So even by exclusion I remain convinced the gunplay is what made this game popular and it follows naturally that by hurting it every patch they lost a lot of people every patch, so there's that.

And it still holds through however you look at it. What did people use to get hyped for? New weapons. Not new enemies or recolored planets. Not new armors or boosters.

Ultimately it's inconsequential tho. The important part is that they utterly failed to see the real reasons and they still don't get it hearing Pilestedt.

Bait の投稿を引用：

- bringing up ditched contents was in response for demands of "MOAR CONTENT" that popped up pretty wildly in the beginning, which remains to date, and is very common in gaming. It's a very common pitfall, and trying to cater for that demand usually casts disaster for those who try.

He specifically said they went "to the cellar" because of the extra unexpected players.
This makes zero sense at all, unless you're trying to trick someone or he has absolutely no idea about how what his producing works.
Content quantity has 0 relation to players quantity. It's not a restaurant where you need to feed each person a quantity of food. Your game's content will be the same for everyone regardless if they are 20 or 20 thousands.

They went to the cellar because they either had no plan for the first 3 months of their LIVE SERVICE GAME, or they did for other reasons. Anyway the amount of players is an excuse and a very poor one at that.

Even if it was like you say or if he was truthful instead of deceitful it would still be abysmal.
You made a live service game and you have no content planned? Not even for the very first period?

They just shouldn't have mentioned the cellar at all. We already knew they just vomited out unfinishied garbage for months (they didn't even bother updating stats FFS) but having it being told to the face is just disrespectful.
Blaming it on the players? Absolutely moronic.

Very shameful display, imho.

Bait の投稿を引用：

- the correct timestamps are 31:50 and 34:00 (not 21:50 and 35), but I don't think he's dissing anyone, it's rather the opposite: he's just saying that they "trained" the community to accomplish goals together towards an ideal and we followed that in full to show Sony our discontentment. The "the community you grow is the community you get" line is actually a compliment for staying true to their nature even IRL.

My bad, the comment was under OhDoug's video about the stream, not the original one. Didn't think to correct them, apologies.

I still disagree here too, it was another thing he should have been smart enough not to say.

They seem to have rather catastrophical issues with responsibility and understanding situations. Both the game and their social interactions show this in spades.

Bait の投稿を引用：

Apart from those nitpicks, very good points, thanks for dropping them in.

Cheers!

[TreyUwU]

Helldivers™ 2 の投稿を引用：

Nihil の投稿を引用：

Man those 2 videos with those overly dramatic bait titles are probably very legit and what we totally should watch.

My take: Totally normal. People simply move on and it is totally normal for a be multiplayer game to get a shrinking playerbase. And remember how many people played Helldivers1? Still a great player count.

6 months in people still refuse to accept that many players left because of the countless issues. Keep coping.

Why did you choose Helldivers 2 as a name just to ♥♥♥♥ on the game under every discussion ?
Don't you have better thing to do, does getting mad helps get over the fact that the game isn't fun for you and that others are enjoying it ?

Mike の投稿を引用：

The game the devs want to make isn't the same game the majority of the community wants. I have no objections with artists/ devs etc making what they would want and enjoy, but as soon as it moves into a commercial sphere, the customer is king if you want to make money. Game is a live service model, doesn't make sense to not provide the service customers bought it for/ want.

The problem with gaming in general is that Gamers don't know what they want.
Some are very vocal, some just enjoy the game and some have critical thinking not following what randomyoutubern°6 surfing on a hate train is saying.

The poll on their discord is exactly showing that. If this update was as catastrophic as the vocal part of the player base wanted to say, it would've stood on top of the poll, winning it.

In reality:
17 702 players that are in the discord find the update good.
24 402 are saying that it's bad.
26 618 are neutral about it, meaning it has good and bad sides.

This isn't helping at all.

The trap is to treat the customer like a king and doing whatever it wants, except this so called king is in fact a newborn that is crying every 10 minutes because something new is already bothering him. No matter the effort to calm them, they'll still cry.
That's the hardest part.
Never fully listen to the vocal part, especially when they're mad.

take what they're saying, look at your plans for the game and start from there.

Some devs spent already 1K hours developping some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, just to receive death threats from people that most likely never got a real job.

[Helldivers™ 2]

TreyUwU の投稿を引用：

Helldivers™ 2 の投稿を引用：

6 months in people still refuse to accept that many players left because of the countless issues. Keep coping.

Why did you choose Helldivers 2 as a name just to ♥♥♥♥ on the game under every discussion ?
Don't you have better thing to do, does getting mad helps get over the fact that the game isn't fun for you and that others are enjoying it ?

Ever thought that a game you like only improves by pointing out existing issues and not coping and lying about the current situation? Complaints lead to change. Bootlicking leads to bad releases and monetization models. Also i paid 40€

[TreyUwU]

Helldivers™ 2 の投稿を引用：

TreyUwU の投稿を引用：

Why did you choose Helldivers 2 as a name just to ♥♥♥♥ on the game under every discussion ?
Don't you have better thing to do, does getting mad helps get over the fact that the game isn't fun for you and that others are enjoying it ?

Ever thought that a game you like only improves by pointing out existing issues and not coping and lying about the current situation? Complaints lead to change. Bootlicking leads to bad releases and monetization models. Also i paid 40€

You also subscribe to discussions lmao, that's awesome.
You could've paid 150€ even, nobody really cares in the end.

Truth is, the current situation is ok, some people just don't like change.
Criticism is good, death threats and vitriol over a fire fix and 2 mags isn't.

[Bait]

TreyUwU の投稿を引用：

In reality:
17 702 players that are in the discord find the update good.
24 402 are saying that it's bad.
26 618 are neutral about it, meaning it has good and bad sides.

This isn't helping at all.

Just don't forget that they've kicked many (if not most) naysayers from their Discord and keep doing it from time to time, so the answers to the poll are likely skewed towards the positive. I wonder how it would've been here on Steam.

@Mepho I understand your points, but I'll propose we agree to disagree on the interpretations. :) And it's all fine, it's all food for thought anyway. Cheers!