6,000 players + Negative reviews?

[Grok]

Can someone please explain to me why this game has over 6,000 active players as I type this, yet "mostly negative" reviews?

Also, I couldn't help but notice that those harshest to review have logged 50 hours (with increases daily).

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure plenty of folk are disappointed, I just don't see the logic in writing a negative review then continue to play as if nothing's wrong.

The reason for my asking is that while I want to buy this game, the negative reviews has deterred me. Yet when I see how many people play, I begin to think the game is worth buying regardless of the views. In short, your negative reviews don't outweigh its popularity; and the dev/pubs probably take note of this.

[SunnyJim]

Because haters gotta hate.

[Dinos]

People who give a negative review after a few hours-> clearly noobs who should not be allowed to review unless they play for at least 50 hours.
People who give a negative review after 50 hours-> clearly whiners who should not be allowed to review since they clearly love the game.

You cannot win.

Btw, the game had a lot more than 6k active players and had a much bigger player drop off than any recent paradox game.

[Cheese]

Check out some let's plays on youtube if you're on the fence. I'm enjoying it since release, but there's a lot of guys here who say I'm not supposed to which is freakin' hilarious. Some of the angriest ppl hanging around here almost every day don't actually play the game and never have. They think we should be playing some other games...

If you decide to take the plunge, you can always refund in two hours if you think it's bad.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Rawr:

People who give a negative review after a few hours-> clearly noobs who should not be allowed to review unless they play for at least 50 hours.
People who give a negative review after 50 hours-> clearly whiners who should not be allowed to review since they clearly love the game.

You cannot win.

I think he means that people who gave a negative review are still clocking in more hours after their review, enjoying the game, lol. Which is quite funny to me, of course you have a right to review as you wish. I've seen someone clock 5000 hours into dota and give it a negative, while you can see they're still playing the game.

Originally posted by Rawr:

Btw, the game had a lot more than 6k active players and had a much bigger player drop off than any recent paradox game.

There's more players, yeah, some playing on GOG or paradox launcher. The drop isn't quite as dramatic if you compare the games, actually.

On steamcharts you can see that 2K players per day played CK2 when it came to steam and it's been increasing to 10K after a bunch of DLCs have been released.

[Captain_Narol]

Game peaked around 29 000 players in the days after launch.

I guess a good part of the 23 000 who are no more playing were desappointed by the game and gave a thumb down.

Personally I quite enjoy the game as it is despise a few frustrating design choices and tI really hink it has the potential to become a gem over time, but it has been released in a buggy and unpolished state that angered a lot of people.

PDX is working on improving the game with a big patch in June that should add very interesting new features and fix some of the problems, I would advise you wait until that patch is released and check the feedback from player then about how much it added to the game.


Seriously, the game should have been released with an Early Access tag, the map is beautiful
and the choice of playable nations is huge but most of the systems and the UI are half-baked and screaming for polish.

[Captain_Narol]

If you compare with the older similar games from that company that inspired it (ie EU4 and CK2), it's currently played twice less despise being a lot more fresh :

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/203770,236850,859580#3m

[Nyjene]

6,000 players is just a number in the void. As someone already said, this game had a great drop off.

Secondly, reviews are about if you recommend or not the game. Not if you willing to continue to play or not. Once the money is spent, whatever you recommend it or not, you may want to do good use of your purchase.

Anyway, Paradox brings regular updates to their games, and if you don't want to buy the DLCs, contrary to other historical strategy games, you'll have free contents. So you can buy it right now and test it. You don't enjoy ? Wait few years to have some free contents and try again. Anyway, Paradox don't lower the price of their games as long as it is upkeeped by DLCs.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Captain_Narol:

If you compare with the older similar games from that company that inspired it (ie EU4 and CK2), it's currently played twice less despise being a lot more fresh :

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/203770,236850,859580#3m

Yeah but if you look at CK2 it starts out at only 2K and slowly rises with each new DLC to where it's now at 10K. Also you can't play CK2 on pdx launcher or gog, but you can play I:R on both which doesn't show on the chart.

[MrFurious26]

Originally posted by Rawr:

People who give a negative review after a few hours-> clearly noobs who should not be allowed to review unless they play for at least 50 hours.
People who give a negative review after 50 hours-> clearly whiners who should not be allowed to review since they clearly love the game.

You cannot win.

Btw, the game had a lot more than 6k active players and had a much bigger player drop off than any recent paradox game.

Was gonna say the same thing.

I don't recommend it in its current state. I wish I'd waited until it was deeper, but I've already spent the money, and now I've sunk a lot of hours trying to explore the different mechanics and figure out what's fun for me and what's not. So I still play it, but I wouldn't recommend my friends buy it at this point in time.

Reviews aren't as dichotomous as the OP seems to think.

[Taiwan Number One]

I can relate to it as every now and then I'll load up Fallout 4 or Fable 3, which I think are awful games, just to see if I feel the same way about them. Also, hours played does not always translate to hours enjoyed as my dozens of hours in Assassins Creed: Unity can testify to.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Aliens Did It:

I can relate to it as every now and then I'll load up Fallout 4 or Fable 3, which I think are awful games, just to see if I feel the same way about them. Also, hours played does not always translate to hours enjoyed as my dozens of hours in Assassins Creed: Unity can testify to.

Some of us don't understand why people play games they don't like. I wouldn't want to be bored, lol. Even though I hate what they did to Diablo 3, I played as long as I enjoyed it not a moment more.

Life is short, spend your freetime doing things you enjoy...

[Marcos_DS]

9,138 reviews, of which only 39% are positive, are still about 3500 positive reviews (and steam only allows binary positive/negative). I assume there are more players than review writers, so i assume plenty of people enjoy the game (and sure, even more probably don't).

I think watching youtube or twitch let's play streams is the best way to get an impression of gameplay, and also helps more to manage expectations than any written description/review. E.g. the advertisement "mix of CK2 and EU4" is very misleading. Its best described as EU:Rome updated to current gen, but that game is so old/niche, most people don't know about it. So watching gameplay is the best way to realize whether it appeals to you personally.

[David McMurdo]

Despite the fact that we've had a fortnight now of the same things being talked about over and over again, there's one question that hasn't yet been brought up when talking about player numbers. Namely, ignoring how Imperator's numbers look in comparison to other titles, how many players would it take to justify its continued existence? That's probably the more important question for people like me who like the game and who want it to live long and prosper. I'm not sure how you'd begin to assess that though. I looked on the Steam charts at other well known games and they have a healthy life at about the same player count as Imperator. But then they weren't made by Paradox, and every business is different. The thing is that, ignoring the fact that Imperator is being played on platforms besides Steam, a playerbase of around six thousand during peak periods might be good enough, even if it does pale in comparison to the older, better known titles. I really don't know.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Doomcheese:

I think he means that people who gave a negative review are still clocking in more hours after their review, enjoying the game, lol. Which is quite funny to me, of course you have a right to review as you wish. I've seen someone clock 5000 hours into dota and give it a negative, while you can see they're still playing the game.

i gave stellaris negative review, but still (occasionally now) play it.

its still a good game, but worse then it was, and still better then the rest around, so i often still end up with it when i want to play 4x.

similarly for this game people might just play it cause they are bored of previous games and this is just different enough to be a new experience, even tho it might be worse or w/e. plenty of reasons you can still play a game you review badly.

[Crowkeeper]

Originally posted by David McMurdo:

Despite the fact that we've had a fortnight now of the same things being talked about over and over again, there's one question that hasn't yet been brought up when talking about player numbers. Namely, ignoring how Imperator's numbers look in comparison to other titles, how many players would it take to justify its continued existence? That's probably the more important question for people like me who like the game and who want it to live long and prosper. I'm not sure how you'd begin to assess that though. I looked on the Steam charts at other well known games and they have a healthy life at about the same player count as Imperator. But then they weren't made by Paradox, and every business is different. The thing is that, ignoring the fact that Imperator is being played on platforms besides Steam, a playerbase of around six thousand during peak periods might be good enough, even if it does pale in comparison to the older, better known titles. I really don't know.

Johan said that their CFO reported I:R beat sales targets.

Also, since people LOVE to use other PDX games as examples to compare and bash I:R:

Going to Steam Charts and looking at all time player count shows you that most PDX titles have a significant drop off after release. Some drop offs are more pronounced, but all of them lost at least 50% of their player base within a month or two.

Stellaris went from 68k at release down to 21k a month later, and then 9k two months after that.

EU4 and HoI4 have been the most consistent, and have seen the most consistent overall growth, but have still lost up to 75% of their player base at one point or another (HoI4).

Crusader Kings 2 has received a metric ♥♥♥♥-ton of DLC yet has only been over 10k concurrent players a handful of times, even seeing the single largest drop-off of players out of every other game they have released.

I:R is basically the straw that broke the camels back, even though the release state of I:R is no different than any other game they have released. This is objective fact.