what happend to the game

[zocker02]

hey when it came out i was hyped but now nothing happend. i know its a free game but the last update was in april. finding somone else to play is almost impossibile, resulting in 10-15 min waiting times. can somone tell me whats going on?

[Wet Valley Mayor]

That might be exactly why: no new updates to keep players in, and the micro-transactions, which resulted the impression that this game is pay-to-win. Yes, this isn't a competitive game, but not many players have free time to grind the legendary cards, which may be necessary in higher difficulties.

[Autopoiesis]

I also feel like the community is getting a little toxic. Players don't act as a team, stressing others out, insulting in team chat or not willing to stick to a role...

[Fluffy Madness]

i have to agree it is very hard to find any player on lower levels, most the time i been doing a lot of solo runs, trying to learn the game as I go but even solo play can be very stale

[Wet Valley Mayor]

Originally posted by Autopoiesis:

I also feel like the community is getting a little toxic. Players don't act as a team, stressing others out, insulting in team chat or not willing to stick to a role...

...and pinging everyone to death.

[Беркут]

Well, I recently switched to Mac and when I found out that the 5th game in this franchise is available on the platform I didn't thought twice and bought it. When this game was released I had just finished the 5th and this free version of the game seems to have a lot more things that I didn't like about the 5th at the same time it has less things that I liked about the 5th one. A downgrade in my opinion, and yes, it is free and has co-op elements, but why would I play it when I can play the 5th one?

[derKämpfer_HD]

Easy, it flopped. The part of the playerbase that was used to singleplayer did not continue on EM (2023) and the other half slowly faded out except for the diehard fans. Lot's of people saw this game as a downgrade due to numerous changes or straight up left out features or gameplay e.g. Boats, Helicopters (that aren't annoying verticopters!!!) or smaller things like decon etc.

The game also released in a rather unfinished state due to several QoL features related to the multiplayer missing, some of which have yet to be added like better voting. The move to f2p also did not help because this community was very much not used to that, unless they came from mobile EMHQ.

Other issues with the game include the tedious grind, the oftentimes bad balance (Look at how many people managed to get 15 shifts done on easy and how many unlocked the "10s" left achievement with chaos) and the reptetitive nature.
There is only so much you can change about the ground paramenters before the nature of a emergency repeats itself; put out fire > get crane > cut open car > treat injured or arrest > treat injured > transport.
Unlike in the old maps where you sometimes had map related hazards or events.

It was kinda sad to see it be released like this months ago, but I never expected this game to reach far without issues being tackled, I hope for the future they learn and provide a decent old EM concept again or even take inspiration from the numerous community mods for these.

[Wet Valley Mayor]

Originally posted by derKämpfer_HD:

There is only so much you can change about the ground paramenters before the nature of a emergency repeats itself; put out fire > get crane > cut open car > treat injured or arrest > treat injured > transport.
Unlike in the old maps where you sometimes had map related hazards or events.

Additionally, the more interesting events are in higher difficulty levels, which contributed to the grinding problem. A few more only spawns in multiplayer, primarily because the sheer amount of objectives does not make it feasible in singleplayer (and the 5-slot limit).

[JaNieWie]

I bet that the reason why they swapped to F2P model for their next entries was because they thought that F2P games get more players overall and while I also believe it's true, EM2023 is exclusive to Steam and that prevents it from having high player counts. Yes, Steam is the most popular launcher for PCs, but most of the players are not using it to play on it. Honestly, I believe that this game wouldn't have been suffering from lack of players if it was available on consoles. I believe that Sixteen Tons' biggest mistake was staying exclusive to Steam. Hell, Unreal Engine 5, which the game is running on, is Epic Games' property. Imagine if the game was available on Epic Games Store too.

Why I think the series took this turn towards F2P?

1. In my opinion at least, it's because no matter what each next entry could have been, veterans would have sticked with Emergency 4 anyway. The mods which this game has (which are more like overhauls than mods to be honest) are apparently enough for them. I myself am not a veteran. I discovered this series through Emergency 5 all the way back in 2015 and it wasn't through obtaining the game. I watched gameplay on Youtube. I didn't pay attention to the fact this game was buggy, ran like sh*t and crashed a lot. The gameplay loop actually impressed me.
2. Despite existing for so long (because 26 years at this point), this franchise never took off at all. NEVER. This IP never caught mass media attention. There were a few big youtubers that of course played these games, but that wasn't enough. The most popular video of any game in this series is from dann462 and as I speak it has just over 1,2 million views. It's about one of the missions in Emergency 2017. However if you check the comments you'll see people questioning 'why didn't the player just shoot the suspects'? Just shows that people didn't pay attention to the video, as the series was always based around German emergency services. Does it prove my point? Maybe not, but yeah.

[Wet Valley Mayor]

Originally posted by JaNieWie:

I bet that the reason why they swapped to F2P model for their next entries was because they thought that F2P games get more players overall and while I also believe it's true, EM2023 is exclusive to Steam and that prevents it from having high player counts. Yes, Steam is the most popular launcher for PCs, but most of the players are not using it to play on it. Honestly, I believe that this game wouldn't have been suffering from lack of players if it was available on consoles. I believe that Sixteen Tons' biggest mistake was staying exclusive to Steam. Hell, Unreal Engine 5, which the game is running on, is Epic Games' property. Imagine if the game was available on Epic Games Store too.

Why I think the series took this turn towards F2P?

1. In my opinion at least, it's because no matter what each next entry could have been, veterans would have sticked with Emergency 4 anyway. The mods which this game has (which are more like overhauls than mods to be honest) are apparently enough for them. I myself am not a veteran. I discovered this series through Emergency 5 all the way back in 2015 and it wasn't through obtaining the game. I watched gameplay on Youtube. I didn't pay attention to the fact this game was buggy, ran like sh*t and crashed a lot. The gameplay loop actually impressed me.
2. Despite existing for so long (because 26 years at this point), this franchise never took off at all. NEVER. This IP never caught mass media attention. There were a few big youtubers that of course played these games, but that wasn't enough. The most popular video of any game in this series is from dann462 and as I speak it has just over 1,2 million views. It's about one of the missions in Emergency 2017. However if you check the comments you'll see people questioning 'why didn't the player just shoot the suspects'? Just shows that people didn't pay attention to the video, as the series was always based around German emergency services. Does it prove my point? Maybe not, but yeah.

There's also Emergency HQ on mobile too, which probably takes away some players too.

[JaNieWie]

Originally posted by Wet Valley Mayor:

Originally posted by JaNieWie:

I bet that the reason why they swapped to F2P model for their next entries was because they thought that F2P games get more players overall and while I also believe it's true, EM2023 is exclusive to Steam and that prevents it from having high player counts. Yes, Steam is the most popular launcher for PCs, but most of the players are not using it to play on it. Honestly, I believe that this game wouldn't have been suffering from lack of players if it was available on consoles. I believe that Sixteen Tons' biggest mistake was staying exclusive to Steam. Hell, Unreal Engine 5, which the game is running on, is Epic Games' property. Imagine if the game was available on Epic Games Store too.

Why I think the series took this turn towards F2P?

1. In my opinion at least, it's because no matter what each next entry could have been, veterans would have sticked with Emergency 4 anyway. The mods which this game has (which are more like overhauls than mods to be honest) are apparently enough for them. I myself am not a veteran. I discovered this series through Emergency 5 all the way back in 2015 and it wasn't through obtaining the game. I watched gameplay on Youtube. I didn't pay attention to the fact this game was buggy, ran like sh*t and crashed a lot. The gameplay loop actually impressed me.
2. Despite existing for so long (because 26 years at this point), this franchise never took off at all. NEVER. This IP never caught mass media attention. There were a few big youtubers that of course played these games, but that wasn't enough. The most popular video of any game in this series is from dann462 and as I speak it has just over 1,2 million views. It's about one of the missions in Emergency 2017. However if you check the comments you'll see people questioning 'why didn't the player just shoot the suspects'? Just shows that people didn't pay attention to the video, as the series was always based around German emergency services. Does it prove my point? Maybe not, but yeah.

There's also Emergency HQ on mobile too, which probably takes away some players too.

The mobile game is a complete different story. Nowadays many people have a mobile phone at their disposal, so you can play the games on it pretty much anywhere. I bet that EMHQ is the most popular entry in the series simply because it is a mobile game. I actually happen to be one of the players (since 2020. I also took some breaks). I think all the people working previously on EM2023 have been shifted to that game, because it was simply more profitable - hell, it had another major content update adding a new district and unit not too long ago, not even half a year after the previous one came out.

I've seen many people saying that the EM2023 game on Steam is basically EMHQ for PC, but in my opinion - hot take I guess - it is not. Upgrades, mechanics, gameplay and monetization are different between both. There are only a few similarities which I could notice, but saying that EM2023 is a copy of EMHQ is exaggeration in my opinion. This comes from someone who played both games.

[Taijk]

Originally posted by Autopoiesis:

I also feel like the community is getting a little toxic. Players don't act as a team, stressing others out, insulting in team chat or not willing to stick to a role...

People like this is why the community is toxic .. stick to a role .. play your game, others play theirs. I stopped due to the constant incessant whining and crying of people telling others how to play their game. This was supposed to be multiplayer, but in essence this role crying results in parallel play, and that is just annoying.

Then you cannot select mission you queue and get put into a random mission (you cannot even filter difficulty) with random people (no block list), and at any time, any player can decide to ruin your game experience and you can do nothing about it, leaving the game, means you get punished.

The "top" players contain a substantial number of people that are little dictators and will boss others around or throw the game, and you cannot block them/exclude them from matchmaking.

Their community is on discord, and their devs are absent. Moderation is done by little dicators.

[GrafLukas]

Originally posted by Taijk:

People like this is why the community is toxic .. stick to a role .. play your game, others play theirs. I stopped due to the constant incessant whining and crying of people telling others how to play their game. This was supposed to be multiplayer, but in essence this role crying results in parallel play, and that is just annoying.

Agreed. I mostly play either SP or MP with a friend, but not the online MP. They ping you to death or complain. The other day there was someone needing 5 crane rescues for some daily challenge, and someone else wanted them to use police cards. On a level 61 shift with 4 players. I was like "chill, if there is a police emergency we can all send one police car and be done with it". Since it is never balanced between the 4 different units (Fire, rescue, police, tech) anyway, "sticking to the role" shoudn't be overstated. In SP you can't specialise that hard, anyway.

Originally posted by Taijk:

Then you cannot select mission you queue and get put into a random mission

This isn't true, though: You can select any mission you want and choose "co-op", and then the game will try to find you other players queing randomly. The rest you say is sadly true, though. Voting bullies out and blocking certain people should be possible.