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[GuitarAtomik]

Not that I don't believe there's been a drop in player base, but I feel like there's a lot of context missing from that article that people have already brought up. Also comparing beta numbers (free) to the actual release ($60) and acting like it's dire that the free version had more players doesn't make sense.

 

[UnluckyKate]

Ubisoft makes the best-selling games that everyone forgets about a week later.

their marketing works.

Day one sales and then bye

 

[Skyzard]

Not that I don't believe there's been a drop in player base, but I feel like there's a lot of context missing from that article that people have already brought up. Also comparing beta numbers (free) to the actual release ($60) and acting like it's dire that the free version had more players doesn't make sense.

Here's some context:

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.

And For Honor had half of its sales on uPlay where it was cheaper, which is ignored in the stats:

(from the same author as the article in the OP): http://www.githyp.com/for-honor-player-and-viewer-count-launch-numbers/

And it's probable that people who buy games at a higher cost just to have the game on Steam (where these stats are from) are going to be more likely to drop a game and buy another one after a while, say one of the other dozen fighters released since For Honor.

 

[Abilidebob]

I vaguely remember that in the beta you could see the number of everyone connected to the game, didn't matter if it was Steam or uPlay, inside the game. Can we still see those numbers and compare with the concurrent Steam users?

 

[Moose Biscuits]

Meanwhile does anyone still remember Steep

Spoiler

I like Steep

 

[killroy87]

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.

For Honor isn't one of those.

 

[gogosox82]

The Division was a bomb? Wtf even is this article?

I think he means in terms of player retention not sales. Player retention wise, it started at around 100,000 players and now its at like 4k players.

 

[Falchion]

Damn. That really sucks for players who may want to pick it up when it's on sale sometime.

 

[Strakt]

click bait article

 

[Farsi]

After playing it for a month I don't see how anyone hardcore or casual can not get upset at the connection issues this game has. It was ridiculous.

 

[Insane Metal]

For shame.

Lol.

The Division again.

 

[LordGorchnik]

Honestly this is probably the worst gaming purchase I made in a while. Bought the game and season pass but there is so much working against it:

-Ubisoft "quality" servers
-Spend 60% searching for a game > 30 seconds
-20% of time dropping/resynching game connections
-20% actually spent in a 2-3 duel match
-Back to searching again
-The game has a very, VERY, steep learning curve which, while not necessarily a bad thing means it's hard to attract a casual crowd
-In addition to that one positive is that each character is quite different and has their own gimmick which means quite a bit of time needs to be invested to learn to really "play"
-The cost of cosmetics, emotes, finishers, etc is way overpriced. Even with the steel increases.

I like this game a lot. And would love to see a FH2 or some sort of upgrade to this one as theres a lot that needs fixing.

 

[KodaRuss]

Just keep putting resources into Siege Ubi.

I just didnt find For Honor to be that fun.

 

[yurinka]

I think The Division has more players than For Honor.

The Division was released last year, had sales and was the biggest selling new IP ever. Not the case of For Honor.

The amount of units sold of The Division should be several times higher than For Honor, but this number is pretty high. In any case, being a Ubisoft game most people play in console. And in PC, most people should play on uPlay.

In addition to this, The Division is a way more mainstrean concept that would appeal a higher amount of people: open world, great visuals, shooter, traditional multiplayer, long campaign, they already have a huge fanbase that buys their game of this genre, proper and long single player campaign, modern setting... and For Horor is more niche and hardcore: fighting game (new for them and a genre that traditionally sells way less than open world), middle age setting, not that common game modes, poor and short single player campaign...

 

[Gai Murakumo]

For Honor was fun for the first couple of weeks but then other games just came out and I lost interest.

 

[swarley64]

The combat isn't very fun, at least not enough for people to stick around for years.

I thought the combat was fun, but it has the same problem that a lot of fighting games have: the people who stick with it become completely fucking savage and if you don't have a ton of time to practice you are going to have a bad experience.

My bigger problems were the long matchmaking times and the gear system unbalancing the game. Plus, its just been an incredibly busy year.

 

[Psychoward]

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?

No it really doesn't, it's not a matter of beliefs, you're factually wrong. Someone with the same amount of time in both titles has much less buying power in Siege than in For Honor. There are also tons of unlocks that can only be purchased through R6 credits or real world money. Furthermore, the most important aspect of the MTs - the DLC characters locked behind a currency - are much faster to obtain in FH than in Siege and you must be living on Mars if don't agree.

They fixed the unlock exploits, not sure what soft feints are so can't help you there.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

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.

Wow, that's a glaring problem (if true -- not saying you're lying, but I don't know if many other veteran players share your opinion). That's certain to make people drop the game more than usual.

 

[yurinka]

This post is pretty dumb considering ubisoft is chasing service based games as their future, and the game is basically a multi-player only game with a token sp mode.

Dumb my ass. Make sure they aren't crying:

3 or 4 months after launch, even if it was a risky, weird project For Honor may already be the best selling fighting game of this generation, it was the best selling new IP of Q1 and the top 2 selling game (being Ghost Recon top 1), in a genre where they debut. Ubisoft highlighted For Honor performance in their financial report, where they also shown record historical numbers for the company.

Their GaaS titles also had record numbers this year in terms of both revenue from DLC+IAP, retention and engagement showing an YoY improvement, and a substantial increase in digital sales (they are making a shit ton of money, even more considering their PC sales come from their own platform). They announced to focus on this GaaS side even more.

They announced to be working on more updates to fix and tweak stuff and to add more content to this and the other games. And looking at the overall success they have, if they need to improve something they will find it and improve it.

 

[Forerunner]

I enjoyed it, but I had way too many connection issues with it. So I just stopped playing and didn't go back.

 

[Lucumo]

They got their money, so it doesn't matter. Also, it's no surprise when you have tons of other/better games, especially on PC.

 

[antitrop]

Not surprised. Any discussion I heard about For Honor at launch was about how poorly it was balanced. Didn't hear shit about it at all after a few weeks.

 

[Winterblink]

What is MAU?

 

[Budi]

Meh, I got my money's worth. Haven't played the game for some time, but about 25 hours in the betas and 94 hours after launch. Happy with my purchase, even though the game launched in rough state with the p2p issues and item balancing. I could see myself going back at some point for a bit now that Raider is buffed. But I don't really agree with some posters here that they were fast with fixing the game via updates and patches. I had two friends who bought the game at launch too, other one played for 129 hours while the other is still playing actively with 227 hours clocked. But even while I'm happy with my investment, I can see Ubisoft being very disappointed. Except the sales ofcourse, in that sense the game did great.

I also put 157 hours into Division, happy with that game too. Only regret buying the season pass, since I haven't played the DLC content basically at all. Games like Counter-Strike, Dota and Overwatch aren't the norm imo, most mp games end up like this. With the disadvantage of not luring in as many people in the first place.

 

[ElephantShell]

Even if a lot of people stopped playing it, the game still sold a shitload of copies in the first place. I'm expecting a For Honor 2 someday which hopefully addresses a lot of the issues people have with the game.

 

[Insane Metal]

What is MAU?

God.

 

[Primethius]

I dropped it due to the awful balance and how slowly they rolled out the balance patches. No one wants to play a broken fighting game so I doubt I was alone in this regard.

 

[Brandon F]

Well Tekken 7 lost 95% of its MP playerbase on PS4 within the first 4 days!

 

[zelas]

I thought this game was well received until the player base revolted after a balance update or something

 

[DryvBy]

One of the worst purchases I've made this year. Instant regret after a night of it.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

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

Quarterly reports are useful. Full stop.

 

[schwabdizzle]

I feel like just looking at Fro Honor I could tell that it was lacking debt even before launch. Games without debt typically don't have the meat hooks like other games.

 

[SketchTheArtist]

What a shame.

Just wasted a great concept. Hope they can bring it back they did with Rainbow Six Siege but I won't get my hopes up.

 

[PedroLumpy]

Fighting games are notoriously harsh on newbies. It'll be tough to bring in new blood if the population drops too much.

I liked a few core things about the games, but it's surrounded by a lot of shit.

 

[Gxgear]

During the game's off season some queues would get way too long, so eventually I just stopped logging in for the dailies.

 

[HawksWinStanley]

For Honor had so much fucking potential that I felt was wasted by poor decisions. It seemed like they were slowly improving it with each update but in the end I got sick of waiting (like many others apparently).

 

[borges]

I have contributed to this. Bought it 2 months ago on the digital xbox sales, and still didnt play it. Once I finish with Witcher 2 (BC), Ill start playing it.

 

[IaN_GAF]

I wish Ubisoft put more focus on the first weeks when everyone is still interested, instead of trying to spread out potentially good content over as long a time as possible to desperately try and give these games legs.

 

[Ashtar]

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.

Interesting that all had massive fall offs but mkx had the smallest percentage but also the smallest launch