Like winning one game is a fair comparison to completing the campaign
Like they kept trying to offer high quality campaign options and we just refused to play them
By the same logic WE could say “hey we tried so hard promoting the game and it still lacked players so it’s all on you”
AOE3 NEVER had good campaigns. That’s a far better and low hanging target for “potential audience” than “Chinese people who will by anything as long as it is 3K”
I mean… if your target public are people who don’t finish the campaigns, don’t play multiplayer and instead just play 2 scenarios or whatever and then uninstall the game…
Well…
Maybe you won’t have the best financial results.
Yes, steam has an automatic refund if you don’t play multiplayer or don’t finish the campaign
You target those who play GOOD, HISTORICAL campaigns, those who skipped AOE3 for the lack of them. I think I already made that quite clear: you cannot make a whacky campaign (like vanilla AOE3, V&V) and say people don’t like campaigns based on the reception.
21% of the owners of AOE3DE would amount to about 1 million people, maybe a little less. You only need to sell to a fraction of that playerbase to make a return of the investment. MP players also just tend to be more loyal, they are as a whole more likely to buy your DLC because getting to MP already means you invested a lot of time into the game.
A million DLC sales with european prices (10 euro) even after tax etc. would amount to some 5-6 million in revenue, or 50-60 man years, well in excess of what the presumed cost of the DLC would be.
Now realistically the sales would never be that much, but are you going to try to sell to the 50k active MP players? or try your luck to see if you can get people to come back just to play a few campaign missions? There is a lot more risk involved in going the campaign rout than making content for a proven MP base which will likely buy it. Obviously some SP players are also going to buy new factions for the content, while in reverse you probably aren’t going to entice a lot of MP players to buy a campaign DLC.
We have the numbers for a few of these now. By number of games played, it looks like USA is the most popular DE civ, and Ethiopia is the least. For all the hate they’ve gotten, USA and Mexico turned out to be the two most popular DE civs.
Games played across all levels:
USA: 65,000
Mexico: 53,000
Italy: 23,700
Ethiopia: 14,400
Not entirely. The problem with Ethiopia is that it has been weakened too much in the current version. It is tied with Inca as the weakest country in the 1v1 regular season, and is much weaker than Italy. In the previous version, the United States was known as a strong country on par with Turkey and China. Another reason is that most players started the game from European or Asian countries. They are more familiar with the United States, Italy, etc., and are not used to the process of African countries.
Here are the steam achievements for winning one game as the civ, and Mexico is still more popular
Mexico: 3.7%
Italy: 3.5%
Ethiopia: 2.7%
You have to know that Mexico has a dominant win rate in Treaty Mode. In Treaty Mode, Mexico is known as an extremely strong country that can be “selected to win”. Although Ethiopia is also a strong country in Treaty, it still requires a high level of operation and cannot achieve the brainless operation of Mexico. Mexico’s performance in 1v1 normal mode is also much better than Ethiopia’s current performance. When a country is too weak, it is difficult to convince players to play them.
Interesting numbers, honestly would think the numbers to be much higher in general, Data is for the last year from what i understand looking at the dataset.
There is also maybe a point about this only being 1vs1 ladder games and if you include other games modes, casual lobbies and SP it might not have the same results.
Second of all i am not sure the numbers of games played can really be used as a proxy for how much people wanted those civilisations. I think people, esp. in MP, will be much more drawn to easy to play and strong civs than they are nessecarily to factions they think are historically interesting. The US civilisation is a relatively easy civ to learn, its main mechanics are easy to understand for a new player and the faction overall doesn’t leave a lot to be desired.
I don’t think the same can be said for Ethiopia which is an incomprehensible faction to learn, the age up mechanic alone is something that will take time to learn, something i will admit i never bothered to. It is a faction that invites specialist, while the USA is much more approachable to a more generalist player.
You can see this in other factions, everyone owns Inca but no one plays them, same with the other natives. The most played factions in the game are Ottomans, British and French, because they are easy and strong, the US fits within that category as well.
I didn’t care for US or Mexico but i will admit i have played those 2 factions more than any of the other DLC factions both in SP and MP.
3.5 and 3.7 are essentially the same, esp. once you include the fact that Mexico launched first.
It probably is a good indicator of how many people brought a DLC, but you would all else equal expect more people to buy a games first DLC than its last DLC.
And for this reason, I strongly support Persia being added to the game as an Asian country, with a campaign attached. Asian countries are the second most popular faction after European countries. China, Japan and India all have a good play rate. Although there are some stereotypes, the Asian DLC is obviously quite attractive content.
I’m sure there’s some fluctuation, but the numbers aren’t that close and since the achievements are in the same order, I think at least the order of popularity is pretty conclusive. While it’s true that 3.5 and 3.7 are very close, those 3.7 for Mexico only bought that DLC to try Mexico. Those who bought KotM could have done so to try Malta or play the new maps, so if anything I would argue that Italy’s numbers are inflated.
As for the stat being a proxy, yeah it is but I like that it shows where people actually put their time and money, not just what a handful of forum users are commenting or voting on. When push came to shove, more people tried playing as Mexico and USA than Ethiopia and Italy, and more people still play them today.
Mexico has a high online rate, thanks to its simple difficulty to get started and strong win rate. You know, since joining the game, Mexico has always been regarded as the boss in the treaty mode confrontation, and no one can shake it. Just like Turkey’s online rate is much higher than that of the United Kingdom and France. Turkey’s gameplay is simple and strong, and its win rate always ranks first in the 1v1 rankings. Mexico has been at the top of the treaty mode confrontation almost since its appearance, and has never been weakened. In the AI confrontation, Mexico is also famous for its simplicity and strength, while Ethiopia is facing rapid official targeted weakening, a large number of strong gameplays have been weakened or deleted, and it has been constantly restricted in the treaty mode, and the natural selection rate is not good.
It should be obvious that the multiplayer pick rate of easy to play, overpowered civs compared to complex civs that are nerfed to the ground is not a good proxy for how much desire there was to add those civs to the game.
By that logic, this game must have a lot of Turkish history aficionados.
I think Ethiopia was an excellent choice to add to the game, and USA was a huge mistake. But the state Ethiopia is in is downright unplayable, while USA is actually kinda fun aside from some of the really gimmicky bullshit like inspiring flags and the state capitol. Which is really sad since Ethiopia is frustratingly close to being really fun to play if they could tweak the balance of a few things and get rid of APM sinks like the stupid fields.
Now explain why more people also tried the civ. You may not like it, but the market has spoken.
I insist on adding Persia and Thai. At least because both states remained de-jure independent during colonial period.
You have to know one thing. When you see that certain countries are always at the top of the rankings, and your gaming friends tell you that it is simple and powerful, and you can easily win by choosing it, while another country is complicated, and has been specifically weakened by the official for several versions, and its winning rate is at the bottom, which country will you choose to play?
As it currently stands everything points towards the USA and Mexico civs being the most popular. Besides, the African civs were completely busted on release so all this talk about how people only tried USA and Mexico because of how strong they are is completely ignoring the history of those other civs.
I don’t think so. When the strong version of African countries just came out, many players waited and watched due to the uncertainty of the new countries. This strong version was quickly weakened to the middle level in less than a month, which directly made the players who waited and watched lose interest in joining new countries. In addition, there were quite a few players who joined African countries during this period. Hausa + Turkey was a popular 2v2 combination during this period. When the United States first joined the game, the selection rate was not high, and as it was strengthened step by step, players gradually joined. When Mexico first appeared, it was famous for the “four major cannons in the nine-minute industrial age”. Even though it was weakened in conventional confrontations later, Mexico has always ranked first in the treaty mode until now. This makes Mexico very popular.
That’s only a brief snapshot of the history, and the Africans were nerfed rather quickly after release compared to how long Mexico has been busted. When people by DLC, they actually check what the community has to say about it, and when people say Mexico is super OP and Ethiopia is unplayable, that absolutely impacts their decision of which one to buy.
Well I went and explored a bit and what you’ve both been saying about the civs only being played because of how strong they are isn’t really backed up by the data. There’s probably some correlation between the winrate and how many people play the civ but it isn’t a strong one. In fact there are just as many games played with very weak civs (W/R < 0.48) as there are with very strong civs (W/R > 0.52) with them accounting for 20.8% and 20.7% of games respectively. Of the 4 most popular civs, Ottomans, Brits, France, and Dutch, only the Ottomans have a winrate above 50%.
Some smaller past data sets may show stronger fits, though the fits are never particularly strong.
All in all, the idea that a civ’s popularity is heavily influenced by how strong that civ is doesn’t seem to be backed up by the data on the ranked 1v1 ladder.
