Steam Player Numbers Dropping?

[N0useFORaNAME]

i just tried to play and there is 0 players online… is this just me?

[CRothlisberger]

I always get games quickly.

[MahoganyHalo80]

Also, it is almost Christmas and a new year, many people get busy during this period by working on 2 shifts etc to make more money for their holiday or to buy gifts, etc.

Lots of students and scholars have exams during this period too. And that affects the most player base. You will see an increase in the player count during January since most of the students finish their exams and coursework etc around the world.

[Keempf]

Normal playernumbers behaviour.

What concirns me more is the fact that we lost 2.5k players on average compared to last month after this last patch.

For me that’s absolutely no coincidence there, that exactly when the wrong balance changes were made and a replacement of old gamebreaking bugs by new ones, ppl start to drop cause of the poor treatment of the game.

[AyayayaBoom]

I am only surprised the numbers are not dropping faster! The way dev treats this game is we heard you, here is the known game breaking bugs, now go abuse it everyone.

[TsudaTumiko]

I am surprised as well… Game is to simplistic and people are realizing that I knew that when nostalgia effect end people will realized the game has many, many issues.

[FerengiQuark]

Did a quick check in on the status of the game in terms of player numbers:

• November, 2021: AoE4 was averaging approximately ~27k players.
• December, 2021: AoE4 lost 44.37% of its Steam player base, averaging ~15k players
• January, 2022: AoE4 lost 19.88% of its Steam players, averaging ~12k players

I think we’re unfortunately seeing a continued trend of the game sinking into further irrelevance, perhaps emblematic of the broader problems of rushed launches in this industry (i.e. the idea that your users will just stick around and be okay with beta testing for a few years).

On the bright side for the franchise more broadly, it looks like the popularity of AoE2 DE continues to stay consistent or even expand, almost doubling the daily peak of AoE4.

Perhaps its a bit premature, but if there ever is an AoE5, maybe they’ll throw out this “bright and inviting” / jolly version of AoE and go with a gritty and brutal version focused on more realism – tbd!

[BeetleRock203671]

@DiplexBoss6

There is a lot that is lacking in the player experience.

It’s a pretty game with a polished look and feel, but there’s too little content. TOOOO LITTLE.

The asymmetry in the civs isn’t enough to keep players hooked for too long unless you want to climb the ladder. The majority of players is probably not interested in climbing the ladder and plays Single Player content. What are they to do after the campaigns are done? Not much. They aren’t interested in an early knight meta. They just want new content.

In AoE2, the number of campaigns is enormous! In AoE3, each civ is very wildly different, AND there are so many cards and ways to diversify even more. So neither AoE2 nor AoE3 are very boring games from the Single Player perspective. In that regard, AOE4 is MASSIVE yawn. NO replayability at lower skill levels. Masteries? No thanks! Too much work for some weird thing called XP that is good for nothing.

The best thing about AOE4 is its music.

Yes - the game is just bad.

It’s a semi-finished product.
Terrible imbalance of nations.
Too many mistakes. They want to correct mistakes and make new mistakes out of it.
Now it’s just a siege war
Terrible arrow mechanics - this is definitely hated by many players (controlled arrows lol)
An atomic ship that explodes and destroys half a map lol
The water didn’t work out at all in the game.
Water myps don’t play at all right out of the game
And I don’t like the mechanics that only wooden and brick walls + towers are built on the whole map. The game can be renamed a maze.

[Islandsteve8]

old post . way to necro it

[breeminator]

@FerengiQuark

On the bright side for the franchise more broadly, it looks like the popularity of AoE2 DE continues to stay consistent or even expand, almost doubling the daily peak of AoE4.

AoE 4 has sadly kind of spoiled 2 DE for me a bit. The jerkier unit animations in 2 DE really bother me now, and also the disjointed walls at elevation changes. So while I think 4 needs a huge amount of work done to make it how I’d like it to be, it has reduced my enjoyment of 2 DE.

[HasanIchess]

@FerengiQuark

For those of you like me who track Steam player numbers and want this game to succeed, how concerned are you about the sharp drop in player numbers since release?

Right after release, the game was on track to perhaps break the top 10 Steam charts with it hitting almost 73k players at one point; however, the number has been steadily dropping since, usually hovering in the low 20k range now.

How concerning is this drop off to you? Do you think that this is just temporary and will pick up again over the holidays or do you think that people simply aren’t sticking with the game?

If it’s the latter, do you think that some of the as of yet unaddressed game breaking bugs or balance issues are to blame?

As I understand it, in South America an advertising campaign was only carried out in Brazil, the positive side is that we already have a fixed player base, from what I saw on the piche calf channel, the people aoe2 who played aoe4 are back, so we already have our own niche, now an expansion through South America would be great, in Mexico I don’t know how much publicity the company would do