http://steamcommunity.com/app/326160/discussions/0/350541595108763190/Statistics On Steam Ownership
One argument you'll often see amongst people who wish to boost Shroud is that you can't use Steam statistics of current log ins to judge how popular it is. I just want to draw your attention to the following webpage that gives us hard figures on how many Steam accounts there are;
http://steamspy.com/app/326160Owners: 32,370 ± 4,663
There's always a large margin of error due to the constant churn of people buying and refunding, and you can't predict how many of the accounts will later be removed again; but taking the middle estimate, 32,370 out of a listed Total Backers: 62,365 at the official page, that indicates Steam has a total of 51.9% of all the registered accounts.
Out of 32,370 Steam registered owners, Steam currently lists only 380 playing a day, or 1/100th the ownership rate. And the trend continues downwards.
http://steamcharts.com/app/326160#7dBear that in mind when people tell you there's a huge increase post Final Wipe, as well as a huge hidden playerbase; It's entirely possible those who never linked to Steam, or bought in only via Kickstart / Official pages have a higher player retention, because those players might be more emotionally invested than passersby who see the game on Steam and give it a try on a whim.
But more than half the player base owns it via Steam, so their perspectives are entirely valid, positive and negative.
Edited to add: Argyle kindly linked me to the Telethon Postmortem thread here;
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/release-33-post-mortem-q-a-those-that-got-missed.62019/For comparison, just in case you were wondering if I were deliberatly downplaying engagement, Shroud has made a total of 5 new pledges over the last 7 days. Yes, 5.
Spreadsheet here;
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iYGZbZu3hj8bqk4u4m4AjUfyhcBux4w0R5Lt2Rl0H2k/edit#gid=508788240Not sure what the "Daily Britannians" refers too, can anyone clarify?
This thread over at Steam show accurate number's on how low the in game population actually are.
All old UO veterans have left the game since PvP in almost non-existent and the quality of it is just awful.
Developer's made a fatal mistake only listening to the carebears and now the game is almost dead.
All old UO veterans left the game since PvP in almost non-existent and the quality of it is just horrible.
Comments
I've been a supporter of Sota for 3 years now, and spent lots to get a large rent free deed pledge, so I hate to say it...but there's a reason why the numbers are so low. It's just not a good game. Yes, I know it's not finished as people will say, but at over 3 years now and I can't think of one aspect of the game that's finished or good either for that matter. There's barely anything to do but grind for resources, craft, or kill the same types of creatures over and over for lackluster loot, you can deco a house if you can afford it or sit around and dance or play music with others. It's sad, but there's just no game here, it's bits and pieces of unfinished ideas and terrible gameplay ideas that don't flow well together. Nothing is finished, dozens of cloned scenese and on hold to get POT's finished first, introducing the newest add-on items, and there's rarely anything fun added. I've chalked it up as a bad gamble for now, will log on briefly to refresh house, and will take a look back once it's released to see if it gets better, but I'm not getting my hopes up really.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
On the other hand, there seems to be a good deal of content once you figure out how to get to it. I am still on the fence with purchasing the game but only because I am not currently buying any more alphas or early access games.
By the way, one of the reasons that this game does not appear to be doing well on Steam is because it looks like most people purchasing the game aren't doing it through Steam. One reason I have heard is that since the game does not allow more then one character per account, that Steam does not allow multiple accounts of the game. Therefore, many people are buying from other sources. At least that is what I have been told by non-Steam players.
Let's party like it is 1863!
I'm a low-cost backer. Trust me when I say, don't waste your money on this one. It's an empty husk of a game. Lord British lost his magic touch years ago, sadly.
You nailed it. As another supporter for 3+ years, I basically gave up on the game, due to the same reasons in this post. @Ice-Queen, you are more patient than me. :-)
~~ postlarval ~~
The game is still needs a lot of work. The quests to complete require a lot of reading and decision making on the player's part. Whole zones are under heavy construction. Overland travel (while it looks like it can be interesting) is 'odd' to put it nicely. I pushed myself to try and really get into the game, but there's just not a lot there from what I've seen. And there aren't that many people playing either. One night I saw a bunch of people at Soltown and that was about it. Overland travel has 'random encounters' you can run into which is pretty cool. It ports you into a fight with wolves (or skeleton mages with an altar in the other one I ran into.) The problem with that is you can just run away. Not much risk. They do have choke points in overland travel that force you to run through a zone of higher mobs to get to the other side before you can continue your overland travel, however.
There were nice surprises like mimics and secret door I found in the Soltown catacombs, but I only found that one, after putting in a few weeks of playing. So I was excited for the discovery true Elder Scrolls MMO feel that the game was giving off when I first started, but that went away pretty quick. The mobs from what I ran into weren't that varied. Various humans with different names, skeletons, wolves and spiders was what I basically saw.
I'm sure there's some really cool stuff in the game that I hadn't run into and it SEEMS like they're trying to do something different, but there's just so much pad to the game right now of doing repetitive stuff.
They say it's a sandbox pve game and maybe that's why it feels the way it does, but my money is on it's just really, really unfinished as far as content goes.
~~ postlarval ~~
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Majority of MMOs have a theme to them. They invite player to explore and be part of the world. Even your run-of-the-mill WoW clones do have some sort of an authentic theme going on.
I did not get this from SOTA at all. The zones are very small. Even the hub towns you visit seem very shallow in content. The villages I saw were a simple street with some generic houses. Nothing memorable that would give it a SOTA vibe.
I only played for a few hours and saw under 10 zones. Perhaps it gets better. But if these 10 starter zones are bland, you can't be surprised there is no retention.
Pre-alpha that charges to play and has had a final wipe. Ah, modern-day MMO development!
You can't polish a turd. This game could (and probably will) spend another five years in development and I still don't trust that they'd come up with anything worthwhile. As my old pappy says, what starts off bad usually ends up bad.
I account it to being still in development. What I hear people saying is that the game in still in alpha or pre-alpha. Not many games that are still unfinished get more then a passing play except when some new or major patch comes to them. That is one reason I have sworn off early access games for now.
This one looks interesting but I still wish to see more. I don't see it as being "dead" but still under development.
Let's party like it is 1863!
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Smed doesn't have anything to do with this game does he? Or are you referring to Crowfall which Smed IS one of the devs?
Let's party like it is 1863!
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
And instead of spending more effort on the core game(story/combat/mechanics) , they wasted dev time on inconsequential stuff like free to play piano and all the useless crap.
Overall the game feels like something from 15-20yrs ago. Doom to fail.