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For Honor lost 95% of its peak con player # on Steam, has ~25% of owners as 1/2 MAU
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
Everyone else apparently already did. Dream's dead.
UserDoesNotExist
Member
This saddens me greatly, but it must be. For Honor was my childhood fantasy game come true, but Ubisoft completely cocked it up by adding every possible microtransaction strategy possible AND cheaping out on networking.
It is a game that deserves to crash and burn to send a message to publishers. I just wish it didn't have to be this particular game.
It is a game that deserves to crash and burn to send a message to publishers. I just wish it didn't have to be this particular game.
The article only mentions that the player base on PC, PS4 and X1 halved within 2 weeks. They did not include recent PS4 and X1 numbers.
dragonflys545
Member
I was hyped before the beta. After the beta, I never bothered to pick it up because it just wasn't what I was expecting.
Not the successful ones. Not the ones who's entire purpose for existing is moving a ton of copies and holding a decently large portion of those players on the platform to milk for the next 5-7 years or so.
and why are you assuming I want to make anything look better? I have no ties whatsoever to this game, dont even ownt it
Just pointing out how this should have beem named beforehand to better represent the article. Im sure it dropped big time on consoles too but this number is Steam
texhnolyze
Banned
LordBaztion
Member
IIRC, fighting games don't tend to do well on PC. I hope AAA publishers to start integrating crossplay with consoles.
NinjamicWZ
Banned
Massively multiplayer Bushido Souls x Deadliest Warrior is cool, but online centric games are so sad when they don't become one of the chosen few that the entire world plays and won't shut up about.
This is why we still need Square to find the right people to make real Bushido Blade. Same sim, 1 v 1 (fite me irl)... just maybe rethink the control scheme, stance/blade positioning method, and the ease of transitioning into other moves such as running away like a dishonorable coward. Same terrain advantage and set piece feels but in a semi-open area (the way Naughty Dog means it), so there's no loading screens anymore. Still able to slice down bamboo, but add wall/weapon collision. Something you can play local versus or easily invite one friend online for, and it won't be some expensive server farm ordeal that dies alone and infuriates investors.
This is why we still need Square to find the right people to make real Bushido Blade. Same sim, 1 v 1 (fite me irl)... just maybe rethink the control scheme, stance/blade positioning method, and the ease of transitioning into other moves such as running away like a dishonorable coward. Same terrain advantage and set piece feels but in a semi-open area (the way Naughty Dog means it), so there's no loading screens anymore. Still able to slice down bamboo, but add wall/weapon collision. Something you can play local versus or easily invite one friend online for, and it won't be some expensive server farm ordeal that dies alone and infuriates investors.
They pump millions in marketing
Compsiox
Banned
The combat isn't very fun, at least not enough for people to stick around for years.
Games as a service means post-launch dlc, events and updates. It gets all of that.
It's not a free-to-play title.
It's also one of the best fighting games ever, and best on PC thanks to 60fps.
Just loaded it up now and got into a dominion game of 8 players in 30 seconds. -And again just now. It's still easy to get into matches.
I swear before it used to tell you total player count (ie steam + uplay) but can't seem to find that stat anymore. It was available cheaper on uplay than steam. People who don't care about price likely just play games for a short while before moving on anyway.
It's not a free-to-play title.
It's also one of the best fighting games ever, and best on PC thanks to 60fps.
Just loaded it up now and got into a dominion game of 8 players in 30 seconds. -And again just now. It's still easy to get into matches.
I swear before it used to tell you total player count (ie steam + uplay) but can't seem to find that stat anymore. It was available cheaper on uplay than steam. People who don't care about price likely just play games for a short while before moving on anyway.
Chronospherics
Member
This game could have been great if Ubi had listened to the community. Every update seemed to take one step forward and two steps back. Honestly, the game has a tremendous amount of potential, but I think it's hot garbage as it is. I put perhaps 50 hours into it before quitting, and that was more than enough for me.
Also, while people are making a point about this being an issue on Steam, there was a thread on reddit highlighting that the proportion of players that returned for a second season is astoundingly low. There's a trophy which lets you view this as a percentage.
Also, while people are making a point about this being an issue on Steam, there was a thread on reddit highlighting that the proportion of players that returned for a second season is astoundingly low. There's a trophy which lets you view this as a percentage.
SinCityAssassin
Member
Any Uplay numbers?
I dunno, ask the console community that's playing it.
Saucycarpdog
Member
He's actually right. Console players also leave in droves after only a couple months. I mean, just look at Battlefield 1. No one would doubt that's a console focused game.
Leafhopper
Banned
Mostly because they come out so late but, that's changing.
hanspampel
Banned
at least post some graphs
But the article says it's going through the same predicament as steam albeit a bit slower currently?
When you play a great game for two weeks or a month and then drop it to move on to something else, that doesn't mean it's not a great game or not a success.
I have no idea what the quality of either The Division or For Honor is, but I find the idea that games must retain their playerbase for an extended period of time to be considered 'good' a strange one, especially when these games naturally attract a more casual consumer.
Shit, if I was Ubisoft, that's the last thing I'd want. I'd want people playing for two weeks, having fun, then buying another Ubisoft game.
Personally, I've never played any online game other than WoW for more than a month and with WoW I only played 4-5 months, and that felt like total overkill.
I have no idea what the quality of either The Division or For Honor is, but I find the idea that games must retain their playerbase for an extended period of time to be considered 'good' a strange one, especially when these games naturally attract a more casual consumer.
Shit, if I was Ubisoft, that's the last thing I'd want. I'd want people playing for two weeks, having fun, then buying another Ubisoft game.
Personally, I've never played any online game other than WoW for more than a month and with WoW I only played 4-5 months, and that felt like total overkill.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
They removed player counts back in Feb. So no idea how this site is getting numbers from anything BUT steam.
hanspampel
Banned
Phatosaurus
Member
Dedicated servers, better support, less gouging on the micro transactions.
Siege kinda flopped it's launch but had loads of good word of mouth following it, a good start to the pro league and good support.
For Honor was the opposite, great launch in terms of sales, but the support (balance changes, exploit fixes) just wasn't there for it.
Follow that up with the competitive scene being who can learn said exploits and use them most effectively to win and the poor p2p servers.
Are there any games that don't lose player base, to some degree, over time? R6 Siege is the only one I can really think of that's truly grown. I'm sure there are more too, but this isn't exactly uncommon.
That's just how games work. Your first couple weeks after launch will be the highest, for obvious reasons, and then the weeks after that will steadily drop until you eventually taper off with a regular community that you work to keep engaged. Things like sales, promotions, and what not will serve as temporary spikes in numbers as you try to bring new players in and reactivate lapsed players.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Yeah, that makes no sense. Both games were huge successes. People like to try to paint games they don't like as failures, even when they sell really well lol.
Obliterator
Member
The fact that article refers to The Division as a bomb is actually embarrassing
Shai-Tan
Banned
Ownership stats are fine for most AAA games on Steam? And not every multiplayer game is going to have 20K+ concurrent players. With only 3k average players and 7k peak that's enough to find games. Looks fine and healthy to me. Maybe the long term repeatability of the game is just not there. Very few multiplayer games have the long term appeal to be played by 20K+ people on average
edit: you also can't make inferences about console player base from steam player base. Some games have many more console players than Steam players, even some PC centric series like Battlefield have entries like Battlefield 1 that have many more console players
edit: you also can't make inferences about console player base from steam player base. Some games have many more console players than Steam players, even some PC centric series like Battlefield have entries like Battlefield 1 that have many more console players
Not only that, but For Honor represents a unique case where increasing your skill level actually makes the game play worse. Let me repeat that: the game becomes more and more boring to play the more you invest into it. The defensive meta at high-level play makes for extremely boring, incredibly stale gameplay that no one really wants to deal with. That is going to kill anything resembling a competitive scene before it can really get going.
The fact that the devs have utterly failed to address this to this day speaks volumes. It's a fundamental problem with the game's design, and needs equally fundamental fixes to address, but they have not done anything other than put bandaids over it (usually by giving some classes more offensive tools, which only sidesteps the problem by funneling people into certain classes rather than fixing the core issue). They have got to nerf parrying at some point, because this shit just can't continue.
I can only hope they get their heads screwed on right before the game really is truly dead. At this point I'm playing exclusively PvE just to avoid the defensive bullshit you run into with decent human players. Even the level 3 bots (the highest difficulty) aren't nearly as bad.
Game has potential. It's just unrealized thanks to the dev team's sheer incompetence.
True but even then the game just has too many flaws for even a fighting game player to enjoy. The defensive meta is not fun and instead of fixing it they are just doing small changes to individual characters.
Moves in the game need to be faster, guardbreaks need to be more threatening and parrying needs to be less rewarding. Right now the only mixup is feinting, everything else is just reactable and the game becomes "solved".
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Psychoward
Banned
I think The Division has more players than For Honor.
Edit: Apparently yes.
to be fair FH is much more niche than The Division
a unique 3d fighter vs an open world fpsrpg
Psychoward
Banned
No, no, no. I see this repeated a lot, I own both games, own the season passes for both games and R6 Siege is easily worse on microtransactions. For starters it takes ages to buy a single DLC operator. Additionally every single item in FH is under one currency, R6 siege has three (real dollars, renown and R6 credits).
Also balance changes happen often and have pretty much all been great, the biggest issue holding it back is the shitty servers and defensive meta. They're fixing the latter by making parrying less of a punish and giving existing and DLC characters a lot of mixups.
How I look at it as well.
arts&crafts
Member
The Division was awesome and I played for 3 months. Havent touched it since the launch era but I dont regret my day 1 purchase.
I enjoyed the beta but knew it would die quick hence the reason I didn't buy the game...it's fun for a few weeks but gets old really fast...I give credit to Ubisoft for thinking outside the box and coming up with new gameplay mechanics instead of the same old ones they've used for years with the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry etc games
Stone Ocean
Member
It sold fucktons but chances are they were expecting more from DLC sales to go even/profit
AAA gaming is stupid like that
That's not how it works for the best selling subscription/recurring fee based games.
The understanding of mobile games, mmos and what are now being called games as a service (GAAS) needs to improve.
Phatosaurus
Member
Believe what you want to believe, but steel takes far longer to earn in For Honor than gaining renown in Siege.
As for the balance, tell me more about the unlock exploits, the soft feints and so on?
I love the way people like to post some obscure stat to make something sound much more positive lol...wow the 2nd best selling game of Q1 lol??...that's like saying it's the best selling Wednesday game at 9:45 PM...means nothing...you can always inflate stats to make something appear to be something else
Q1 means a 3 month period...so to say it was the 2nd best selling game for a limited 3 month window is silly...especially if it didn't face a lot of competition during those 3 months
hanspampel
Banned
come on man
3 months is totally different from Wednesday at 9:45 PM
the game will likely stay in the Top 20 for the full year.
but some should add, that this data is for the US of A
To put things into perspective I looked at the other recent fighting games on Steam, using peak at release and peak 3 months later:
For Honor: Release: 45.836. 3 Months later: 3614. Drop: 92.1%
Street Fighter V: Release: 14.155. 3 Months later: 2134. Drop: 85%
Mortal Kombat X: Release: 5070. 3 Months Later: 1374. Drop: 72.9%
My point is that looking at one game without comparing it to others is kinda pointless.
For Honor: Release: 45.836. 3 Months later: 3614. Drop: 92.1%
Street Fighter V: Release: 14.155. 3 Months later: 2134. Drop: 85%
Mortal Kombat X: Release: 5070. 3 Months Later: 1374. Drop: 72.9%
My point is that looking at one game without comparing it to others is kinda pointless.
Oh come off it. Of course being the second best selling game in the first three months of the year means something. It's not an obscure stat at all, you're being ridiculous.