Players can be both leaving and joining the game and community. It is important to look at what demographics are at play here. New players may be literally entire new peoples coming in to check out the game and DLC, which would be different from players that bought the game at launch and are now checking it out again. These are different groups to the consistent players that have been around all this time, and it may be too early to think of them as a permanent part of the community just yet.
For example, the AoE4 community has specifically lost many content creators just in the past 6 months. The last one to go, Age of Noob, being a large one. And it has been happening for a while. While we have had some new creators and streamers enter the scene (like for instance tips_aoe getting some traction in the last few months), it is important to recognize in what direction things are generally going.
The game clearly has a more active playerbase now. But, I would also say it is too soon to really know. I am hopeful that it remains to be the case, as the game has objectively gotten better in many ways since launch. The idea of Variants however, is something that may not necessarily last the test of time. It is new content, so everyone is excited about it, but we shouldnât immediately reject anyone that even as much as suggests that it is bad content for the game.
Not all new content is good content. Iâll leave you with AoMâs Tale of the Dragon DLC to dwell about on that.
I think itâs true that developers seem to be abandoning existing plans and retreating in a more conservative direction.
It seems likely that "Documentary-style Campaignsââ and "Civilizations that are completely differentiated from each otherâ', which were mentioned as the unique new features when the AoE4 was newly released, will no longer be used.
Of course, the latest Expansion came with brand new Civs. However, with the advent of Variant Civs, there is a possibility that the developers will focus on increasing the number of the Variants rather than creating completely new Civs, because it is more efficient and economical. But then, what makes 4 different from its predecessors?
I didnât know that Japan and Byzantium were so symmetricalâŠ
Since before launch I remember saying that all civs canât be that asymmetrical if the goal is to release several of them per year for balance issues.
Itâs not surprising that player counts would increase after a huge content drop. Same thing happened with the first DLC and it was a way smaller content drop. However, whose to say that those player counts wouldnât have been even higher if they released variants that werenât terribly implemented? I mean yea you may have attracted new players for a time because of âooh big updateâ, but who knows how long theyâll stick around? What is the retainment rate of those new players? Losing long time players like myself because they donât like whatâs added and how it has changed the game is not great⊠I mean this is entirely my own experience but I had a friend group of about 5 guys that played every week and we havenât touched the game in months because of the variants.
So whatâs the suggested course of action to bring back the people who left in protest without losing the greater number of people who joined because they enjoy the content? At the very least, people who stopped playing the game but continue to engage the community suggests the absence is temporary.
In the world of what ifs and maybes, anything goes. Nobody can say the playerbase couldnât be higher. But at the same time, nobody can say it couldnât be lower, either.
The point originally was somebody trying to paint the current player numbers in a bad light (while making stuff up).
Youâre approaching this from a different angle (dissatisfaction with variant design), but at the end of the day these at questions nobody is going to have the answer to. Maybe tons of players feel like you do. Maybe a fair few do. Maybe a tiny minority do. Getting data on this is hard and will always be skewed by the makeup of any given community.
Uh⊠Iâm strictly talking about the average player count as itâs listed on SteamDB, not about loosing players because they donât like the content. If you want to check the numbers: https://steamdb.info/app/1466860/charts/
And probably Age 4 has more Microsoft Store players than Age 2. Adding Steam and Microsoft I suppose that Age 4 already has a larger player base than Age 2.
PS: All my friends bought the game through the Microsoft Store.
Yeah, 4 most likely has more MS Store players thanks to Gamepass, but actually, Iâm not sure if 4âs player base is larger, considering DE is not the only way to play AoE 2, as you also have to take HD/2013 and the CD Version on Voobly into account and also have to consider the availbility of custom scenarios that are one of the reasons why Age 2 stuck around for so long. CBA, Ancient Tower Defense, TTF Racing, Dodgeball are just a couple of those scenarios that are quite popular. (Or Colloseum in AoE 3 to name another game ^^)
I think a good indicator are the ranked leaderboards of both games. Letâs just stick to 1v1 in that case. According to aoe2gg, there are currently 44k players on the ladder. The ladder removes inactive players after 28 days, so you get rewarded for activity.
In AoE 4. you currently have 50k on the ranked ladder according to the official page, however, if you browse through aoe4world you notice that players have last played 2 months or more as 4âs ladder doesnât remove inactive players.
I am fully aware that players donât play ranked all the time but I think these are actually the best numbers we have when comparing active players.
No idea, because we donât know how many joined specifically because they like the variants vs because they just got attracted to the attention the game was getting with a huge content drop. The only group with access to those number would be the developers themselves. I would be interested to see rates of long-time players dropping the game vs the retainment rate of new players though. Typically, when people hop onto a game because of a big update or more marketing they donât stay very long, especially with an RTS.
It hurts way more to lose loyal fans than it does to gain transient players that will only play for a few months. But again, have no idea what these numbers are, can only speak from my experience as a long-time player who dropped the game, as well as other long-time players that I have played with and spoken to. For me, my absence is as temporary as the state of the game. As long as it remains like this I have no real interest in returning. For a month or two I even suggested we give it another shot with my crew that used to play all the time and they werenât interested. Moved on to other things. I wouldnât even say that I engage with the community. I pop in like once every three weeks to see whatâs going on because I used to really love playing this game.
Well I guess while we wait for entropy to envelop all of existence weâll still have people posting on the forums for the things they wish to improve. I hope that the game introduces features or fixes issues that you have with it, I think AoE is going to be one of those game series that will exist in perpetuity so itâll be here if you ever want to come back.