My friends and i stopped playing PvP and basically the whole game because it has been made too easy. You don’t need to actually play and find recipes and such when you get everything as loot these days. You knock out thralls with just a few blows or a couple of gas orbs and it takes only an hour max to break them. It’s complete nonsense! The game offers absolutely zero challenge when everything is handed out to you. We moved to PvE after 5 years of PvP but it’s just boring. 4x rates and other things like snap-on explosives and flying bats have destroyed PvP completely. Your thralls are worthless since a naked player can just plow through them though they are equipped with the best gear. There are so many issues with the gameplay, attribute system, perks, loot and other things that i don’t even care to point them out anymore.
The bottom line is what i said in the beginning, the gameplay has been made so easy it gets boring in a couple of days. And one big thing is the bazaar… VERY expensive stuff that is faulty, like the Aesir build set for example. It has been out for ages now and it’s still broken so that just shows that Funcom isn’t interested in offering quality anymore, only grabbing our cash and that’s it.
This is something that may needs be addressed.
Does Tencent care at all about player base, if revenue is steady?
This one thinks that the monetization determines the continuation.
One or One hundred thousand, the number of players is irrelevant compared to the amount being Paid.
This one may personally advocate doing more transactions at a lower margin given the digital nature of the goods… But at the end of the day, is that efficient?
Fewer players means fewer servers to maintain…
The only thing this one thinks the overlords at Tencent care about is the bottom line.
The game is old, it’s to be expected there’s going to be player drop off. 2. Some players smash through everything in a few days or whatnot when a chapter drops, complain there’s nothing to do, then go play some other game until the next chapter. 3. I’ve seen plenty of people on other games use Steam to say the exact thing you’re trying to say only to find out with a little research that whilst the numbers on pc may be ringing alarm bells, the numbers on consoles may be entirely different - either only slightly down, stable or even up
Ironically, in contrast, my server population continues to rise. We’ve been going for 6 months, and we’re now #8 in BattleMetrics, making us the number one non-RP server, and that doesn’t include our linked Siptah server. The vast majority of “janky” behavior people experience in this game stems from playing on officials, which are hosted on terrible shared plans with G-Portal. These can’t handle more than 10 people online at a time, and even that’s only if the server’s database isn’t too bloated. The issue is also present on RP servers that employ hundreds of mods, pushing this mostly single-core game far beyond its limits. Many of the mods made for this game are horribly optimized, created by people who don’t fully understand what they’re doing, making matters worse. You’d be surprised how much better the experience is when a server is hosted on appropriate dedicated hardware with only a highly selective use of well-made mods. Additionally, as mentioned, the moderation policies on officials are pretty bad. Reporting other players is currently the most effective form of PvP on officials, a.k.a. report meta, so being the only free speech server helps. I’m 99% sure Funcom doesn’t read these forums, though, so I’m not sure what good this thread will do. Regardless, I don’t think they’re expecting any growth for this game at this point.
That’s great! It certainly makes the game more fun when there are people to talk to. Meanwhile, the game currently is averaging ~6500 concurrent players. A number not seen since before the pandemic…
Well, aside from shamelessly promoting my server, I was also curious to know whether all private servers are experiencing a population increase as the game’s overall player base diminishes. This trend might suggest that the decline is largely due to the poor performance and moderation policies of the official servers. Some players are either reluctant or struggle to access private servers, especially those with mods, which could explain why official servers are declining while private ones are rising. It’s also likely that the decline in players is partly due to the debacle during the last update, which led to many being mistakenly banned over Crom coins. Additionally, the popularity of the new Pokemon-with-guns survival game is undoubtedly a contributing factor. In my opinion, these three hypotheses explain the significant loss of players.
Improving player retention could involve adding more endgame horizontal progression, although it’s unlikely at this stage of the game’s lifecycle. Most people tend to get bored of this game and quit after a few months, only to return after a long hiatus. The battle pass system was devised to counter this, but it isn’t enough. Endgame vertical character progression mechanics would be more effective, in my opinion. They’ve put all their eggs in one basket by catering to the RP community, but there’s an untapped market in trying to retain the rest of their player base with more long-term engagement strategies. This is just my humble opinion, in response to the conversation regarding the player exodus and the contrasting rise in popularity of my server, which provides a better experience with dedicated hardware and a selective use of well-made mods. The “report meta” prevalent on official servers and their poor performance seem to be significant issues contributing to the decline in player numbers from my perspective, as well as the other issues I mentioned above.
Q1 is always a low point for every existing game. Look at Conan’s contemporaries such as Ark or Valheim, they’re seeing similar dips right now. For a game that’s seven years old now, seeing a YoY decline is to be expected; especially in the wake of three other high-profile survival game launches so far this year as well - Palworld, Enshrouded, and Nightingale. Sons of the Forest also just had it’s exit from early access, seeing renewed attention.
If you’re going to present data as evidence of there being a problem, at least do further research and take into account external factors. The decline of a game pushing closer to a decade in age is to be expected and the numbers gained and lost are not anywhere near as significant as you would think. Looking back at Palworld for example, it has shed 94.3% of it’s playerbase in a month and a half. In the same time frame, Conan has only dipped 30.5% in the exact same number of days. Valheim went down 38.1% and I won’t even dignify Ark with the statistics due to it shooting itself in the face with Ascended.
Not to mention, looking at the historical graph for player count for Conan it’s very sawtooth in shape since the release of Ages and Chapters, at this exact moment we are on the downward slope of that and the upswing is less than a month away.
Presenting your data this way is misrepresentative and dishonest, and trying to push a false narrative. Be better.
