Well, that’s some big freaking news for all the people on the forums that are currently engaged in some really heated debates about what should be done to improve this non-existent PVP. I guess they’re all hallucinating.
Right, which is why people have been arguing about bows and horses in PVP, bleeding and poison in PVP, and shields in PVP, just during the last month alone. But sure, there’s no real PVP combat, it’s all just thrall on thrall…
I hate to break it to you, but PVP is not the only game mode in the game. PVE has plenty of different play styles.
If I had a dime for every time someone came to the forums to talk about statistics without providing any data, let alone talking about the source of their data and how they analyzed it…
Here, let’s take a look at some actual data and analyze the trends:
That’s what the player count for Conan Exiles has looked like since the beginning until today. Do you notice a long-term trend? The playerbase is steadily growing. As with any graph of this kind, there are peaks and valleys.
Most of the peaks coincide with important updates and free weekends. These events generate hype, which attracts all sorts of new players. After a while, the player count starts falling again and some of the new players remain, whereas others move on to something they like better.
As for the valleys, can you spot a pattern? Not the pattern, merely a pattern. It’s not 100% consistent, but there are a few months in each year where you’re pretty much guaranteed to see a local minimum, unless disrupted by an event that generates a peak. It’s July, August and September.
This period coincides with the summer vacations and the start of the school year in the Northern Hemisphere. Those are the months when a lot of people have other things to do. Somewhat more importantly, this period also coincides with the mandatory time off that people in Norway have to take, which is why we see a lull in activity from Funcom this time of year.
Right now, there’s another sharp decline in player count. I’m willing to bet that it’s for those same reasons, and that it will look like just another valley in the long term graph a few months from now. It’s a relatively safe bet, because I’ve spent roughly the same amount of hours as you playing this game, and I’ve been on these forums for a long time too, and people have been claiming that “the numbers show the game is dying” pretty much since I created my forum account.
“Straw man” doesn’t mean what you think it means. He literally pointed out your own words, but maybe he needed to provide correct emphasis: