Supermanisdead
Member
That 16% is the Storm Spirits and Techies spammers who are boycotting 6.85
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Dota 2 is hemorrhaging players.
- Thread starter Archie
- Start date
Dark_Feanor
Banned
Conection issues are plaguing almost every match I'm hopping into in the last 3 weeks.
Performance wise for my mid range i5 notebook I'm fine with.
Performance wise for my mid range i5 notebook I'm fine with.
Glorious Ownage
Member
I'm really just getting into this game and loving it!
OmegaDragon
Member
I don't think they've dropped as much as it seems.
its just that the chart has started to get more detailed at that point where the drop starts.
as you can see, before it only measured once per day.
now it does every hour.
Something is weird with the charts. The custom one (top) and the all time one (bottom) differ. The drop in the all time charts around September disappears when you set the custom chart to all time. (The TF2 and CSGO charts have the exact same problem)
I think the bottom charts somehow bases the number of players in September on the minimum amount of players in the 24 h cycle.
If you take the last three months, it seems like September's numbers (right) are similar to the numbers of July (left). July has min 780K max 870K players per day, September min 680K max 890K
EDIT: The %gain is broken for September (at least right now). Look at the 3 months chart of GS:GO, Its clear that September has more players than August. But the %gain from August to September is negative.
http://steamcharts.com/app/730#3m
ScatheZombie
Member
Generally speaking, anything less than 20% change can be attributed to outside factors from school, holidays, real world economic changes, etc.
You don't really panic until you've either lost 20% in a single month or have 3 months of 10% of more. Those dips are usually a result of the game itself - either a poor patch release, widely disliked changes to mechanics, gameplay or UI, a lack of new content or a reduction in your marketing/online presence.
The unspoken truth about online game communities is that you will lose somewhere between 5-10% of your players every 3 months - no matter what. That's just a percentage of people who will move onto other games regardless of your releases, marketing, or anything you can do as a developer. The 'trick' to maintaining your numbers is that you must be constantly gaining more than that in new players.
You don't really panic until you've either lost 20% in a single month or have 3 months of 10% of more. Those dips are usually a result of the game itself - either a poor patch release, widely disliked changes to mechanics, gameplay or UI, a lack of new content or a reduction in your marketing/online presence.
The unspoken truth about online game communities is that you will lose somewhere between 5-10% of your players every 3 months - no matter what. That's just a percentage of people who will move onto other games regardless of your releases, marketing, or anything you can do as a developer. The 'trick' to maintaining your numbers is that you must be constantly gaining more than that in new players.
Sounds like a Valve game
in CS:GO I went from 300-400 fps to 150-250 fps with their last "omg we fixed the hitboxes after 3 years" patch. What a great company that clearly knows how to engineer software at a high level.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
A whole 4 pages of nothing happened.
It's the growing pains that were always going to happen. In a few months nobody will care anymore and we can complain about diretide again.
â Narayan
Member
Back to DOTA2 in a couple months, I imagine.
well i mean............the game became essentially unplayable. every day they didn't fix that would have destroyed their reputation.
fwiw there's still a bug with spectators crashing after loading at the beginning of virtually every game, which has been unfixed since 6.85.
meanspartan
Member
I really want Starcraft 2 to capitalize on this with LOTV.
I don't really "get" MOBAs, never have, and I don't think I ever will. But I loved the pro scene developing around SC2 in its first year, I was even actively watching matches on Youtube quite often. And then it just seems like the MOBAs ate its lunch, which is a bummer.
I don't really "get" MOBAs, never have, and I don't think I ever will. But I loved the pro scene developing around SC2 in its first year, I was even actively watching matches on Youtube quite often. And then it just seems like the MOBAs ate its lunch, which is a bummer.
You make it sound like 6.85 was a whole month ago.
It was literally 6 days ago, shit happens.
I know i'm starting to sound like an apologist, but c'mon...
Na it's too late to go back now, but yeah, they really should have waited a bit longer before launching reborn. There are a myriad of crash bugs, disconnect bugs, cosmetics bugs, UI bugs, hitbox bugs, selection bugs... you fuckn name it, there's a bug. And yeah, source 1 had bugs too, but nothing on the scale of Reborn. Reborn bugs are very annoying and in your face whereas most of the source 1 bugs were obscure or subdued individual hero bugs (don't worry I'm sure reborn has even more of those as well).
I probably crashed maybe once or twice playing vanilla dota for 4-5 years. In the past two weeks I've crashed maybe 8-10 times usually on accepting a queue or connecting to a game. Sometimes randomly in the middle of a game, it's very frustrating.
Not to mention every time they "fix" a bug it seems to get worse and then break 10 other things...
I probably crashed maybe once or twice playing vanilla dota for 4-5 years. In the past two weeks I've crashed maybe 8-10 times usually on accepting a queue or connecting to a game. Sometimes randomly in the middle of a game, it's very frustrating.
Not to mention every time they "fix" a bug it seems to get worse and then break 10 other things...
i mean........it's happening in pro tournaments too. it's a pretty serious problem for one of the most popular mobas in the world to have a crash-to-desktop bug caused by something as basic as watching a game.
i have no doubt that valve will fix it; bug fixes have been coming thick and fast since the change to reborn. but the issue is that this is a piece of software that is the foundation for a multi-million dollar industry, and having it in such a poor state is definitely going to do some damage and reflects poorly on valve.
Shining Sunshine
Banned
lol @ people saying HOTS is taking the player base. Its popularity is pretty much as bad as it was since its launch.
If anything, Hearthstone would be the culprit.
But I think it's obvious League of Legends has a big hand in it with the ultra hype leading to Worlds.
If anything, Hearthstone would be the culprit.
But I think it's obvious League of Legends has a big hand in it with the ultra hype leading to Worlds.
Prophet Steve
Member
I don't really blame them too much for going to the new client. They had to maintain two of them.
Hell, there was a big bug in the old client that would cause you to crash when you pressed Play in some combinations, took some time to get that fixed.
Now that they moved over to the new client fixes are pretty damn swift. I think there is a whole lot of overreaction and jumping to conclusions.
Hell, there was a big bug in the old client that would cause you to crash when you pressed Play in some combinations, took some time to get that fixed.
Now that they moved over to the new client fixes are pretty damn swift. I think there is a whole lot of overreaction and jumping to conclusions.
opticalmace
Member
They've already put in what, like 8 years of updates into tf2. I think I could cut them some slack.
If Valve does a good Halloween Event for Dota that they will likely hit 1 Million player Peak again.
It's in a transitioning faze, and it'll be going much faster now that everyone is on source2.
As you said bugs are getting discovered and fixed faster then ever.
I don't see how this reflects poorly on Valve who are clearly doing all they can and
saying that the game is in a poor state is hyperbole as said many times in this thread.
Volvo really felt that one.
Reflect poorly compared to anything else that has ever happened? Especially the multi-month absence of everything that led to the Dire-Tide fiasco?
it reflects poorly on valve that they chose to make a piece of pretty buggy beta software into the main client for a game that has millions of dollars hanging on it, yes.
and no, it's not hyperbole to say the game is in a poor state. it is in a poor state by any reasonable standard.
Ploid 3.0
Member
I finally got to the point where I can enjoy the gameplay style of HOTS, maybe I should give DOTA 2 a try, the whole gear, farming, and mule (whatever the donkie that shops for you) seem like it would just be too much for me to worry about. That type of stuff turned me off from learning it in the first place.
LOTV isn't addressing enough of the correct core gameplay issues that made it interesting to watch. #dedgaem
Fuck blizzard
Omega Kirby
Member
Isn't HOTS the 4th biggest MOBA on the market ?
HOTS is baby's first experience in a moba with some other fluff...i played it is fun but no fun unlike dota 2. Played a lot of hours in dota 2 still my favorite game because the depth and complexity is just huge.
DivineRage002
Member
Out of 4 major players, yes.
Everything after League, Dota 2, Smite and HOTS is basically unexistant, or waiting to die a slow death.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
I don't think we live in the same reality.
In my reality poor state is Unity at launch.
Arkham Knight PC at launch.
GTA4 PC most likely still.
Dota 2 is playable(very much so) it got its problems they'll get fixed. Even if they kept Source 1 around longer and spend more time on Source 2 before release we would a 100% still have this hyperbole thread, the reality is just that things break when you have millions of people get their hands on it.
From my perspective the only one it reflects poorly on are all the people making these uninformed statements displaying their ignorance.
ashecitism
Member
Smite is bigger than HotS? Do we have concrete numbers for those two? As in MAU and CCU and not just overall registered players.
well i don't really care that you disagree, i think it's insane to say that a piece of software as consistently buggy as reborn is in an okay state and ready for millions of dollars to depend on it.
HotS is doing fine, especially considering it's only been out for under four months. The last tournament proved the viewerbase is still growing (it passed 60k where the previous high was like 20-30k), and it's about to get another solid patch (it's in PTR right now and people love it, lots of improvements) with two very fun new heroes. Give it some more time to grow and I think it'll find a healthy community and be solidly in the #3 spot. They definitely found a niche in the busy MOBA market that some people prefer.
Dreams-Visions
Member
I think a lot of people have been impacted not by the client, but by the style of the meta and the shift towards early 4 and 5-manning. It's not for everyone. Also, they did some weird shit to the hat economy which used to be something of a carrot to keep people playing a little more than usual. Hat drops can't be traded anymore and trading itself was its own mini game that many people enjoyed. Now every item is essentially worthless and nothing new is really rare.
Shining Sunshine
Banned
What about H1Z1? I think that'll easily hit 1 million concurrent..
It's not even out of early access.
No one knows since Blizzard seems very afraid to release player count on it.
And the disparity between the top MOBAs makes it irrelevant because whatever is under DotA 2's million mark isn't worth talking about, which is obviously Smite then HOTS. They should be under 200-100k.
League of Legends has completely engulfed this market.
Visualante2
Member
I felt Reborn was rushed to market. But I have to say I quit before hand. I felt that the whole compendium thing was just a really unhealthy thing for me. I felt coerced to play routinely and I just had to break that cycle by going cold turkey. They're a victim of their own success but I had strong feelings about Reborn all along.
cripterion
Member
Some players are turned off but the awful community so it's no surprise people are bailing.
I agree with much of this, but there's a broader picture about what HotS will do to player demographics in the long run.
Game popularity is a combination of attracting new players, keeping old players playing for months or years, and getting existing players to play more. HotS may poach new players more than it attracts existing players, which in the long run would lead to a reduction in the active playerbase of the other MOBAs. It will definitely be a slow trend, however.
I'd love to see similar data for Smite or League. Are they available?
What's the point they already made the best game
MikeE21286
Member
Wait what, they removed hat trading? Like, everything or just some sorts of trading?