And that’s one of the reason’s I favour big, pricey expansions over smaller DLCs - with both Enemy Within and War of the Chosen, Firaxis overhauled the game in a very fundamental way, in a way that would be impossible if they were only adding content on top. Still, a genuine modding support came with XCOM2.
And by no means do I want to contest that PP could really use and would benefit of modding support. It is especially disappointing, as from as far as I rememebr modding support was promised, so while Snapshot understandabily wasn’t able to provide it on launch, one hoped it was taken into account when building the game. For whatever reasons, apparently they didn’t.
Speaking of which, it was just announced that Empire of Sin will be getting modding support in 2021 as was originally promised.
The reason I stopped playing was that I didn’t care at all for my soldiers since I never saw their faces and the flat progression. Also the lack of feeling I’m getting better stuff instead of just sidegrading just doesn’t do it.
The constant boring defending of havens missions that for a loong time didn’t have AI helping out.
Its all relative. If you compare absolute numbers something like Among Us will make XCOM 2’s numbers look absolutely morbid. Some games simply didn’t have the publicity and popularity as other regardless of work or quality.
If you actually want to measure whether or not a game is in decline, you know player retention. A much more useful metric is the ratio between current players and peak players.
Peak Players: Current Players ratio (lower the better) In rough worst to best order
I will need to say the above ratio is also quite flawed, newer games had less time to drop off the ratio favours newer games. Games with larger initial fan bases tend to see bigger drops as well. Still it is a better way to compare things than just looking at the raw numbers.
Some comments:
Battletech is doing the best, retaining a strong solid playerbase despite being out for 2+ years.
Phoenix Point ratio looks good but it is important to note that the is only out for about 5 months on steam and may have a bit more drop to go. Also given it was released on epic first its true peak playerbase might be higher than the ~4000 it got on steam. This is hard to say. Outside of that just looking at the slope since release it has been retaining a playerbase slightly better than more than a few releases.
XCOM1s poor numbers likely has to do with XCOM 2 draining the playerbase.
The f does it matter anyway? If you like the game play it. If not, don’t. Do you only play games that have high player numbers? Jesus thats retarded asf.
The topic is “Phoenix Point declining player-base”. So we’re talking about it, not some mushroom picking.
Yes. It’s hard to compare PP because of Epic start. But the relative numbers are enough to make some conclusions. You don’t need to look only at steam numbers but also at youtube / reddit and overall player engagment to check if the game is growing, stagnating or declining.
Look at Darkest Dungeon:
You don’t see any decline here. And Darkest Dungeon got significantly less money on kickstarter than Phoenix Point. It looks like RedHook actually created some long-term game. They’re working on sequel. Looks very promising. The future of Phoenix Point doesn’t look so bright right now in comparison despite multiple DLCs in the work (or patches, whatever they’re in reality). And SnapShot spent more money on the game than RH. Why are those results so different? Accident or some happenstance? Nope. It’s all what they’ve sown. And stop talking about visibilty. Phoenix Point had all visibility. Milions of potential buyers saw and heard of the game. You need only look at streamer reviews to know what is wrong with the game and what stops it from getting at least to Darkest Dungeon level.
Nobody sat and thought about what made XCOM so good and how to make it even better. They’ve just done “some” game. So now they have “some” results that reflect that. It’s time to go back to drawingboard or capitulate. Because that’s what happens at those steam levels: either devs capitulate and stop the project because of low future revenue base or someone actually will learn right lessons here and put this mess together to make game that is better than XCOM. And Phoenix Point has all what’s needed to become better game, in terms of both gameplay, sales and playerbase.
I don’t think it is a worthwhile news or a surprise that Phoenix Point wasn’t and isn’t a massive hit. As to why people still play Darkest Dungeon - I got no clue.
Really? You realise that this game isn’t about “team getting through the game”?
This is a lot better argument.
I’m not sure if it properly addressed, because Phoenix Point never meant to be about research and clear progression. It was meant to be about aliens evolving to counter out methods and us developing other methods to dispatch them. How it ended - we know.
They are very different games with very different development challenges. Can’t speak to overlap in audience between the 2, except that personally I play PP, but I don’t play DD.
As to PP future, it’s pretty good. It might not have been a smash hit, but by all accounts it sold reasonably well, and I bet that the experience SG has acquired will serve them very well in future projects.
Oh, isn’t it? Then why have the customization at all if all my characters are faceless soldiers.
XCOM (-94) wasn’t about caring for your soldiers either, but we still did.
Oh, was it? Well the “us deveolping other methods” part is the thing I’m complaining about then.
We never develop other methods, we just stole them from the other fraction.
Instead of making our own version of the rail-gun we just stole the railgun logo and all.
Also, who says these are arguments that need to be good? it’s just why I quit the game.
As always the game shifted alot from it’s conception to where it released and it still hasn’t bounced back.
I felt the game became a lot better with the newer evolution-system but not enough to make me care about what Phoenix point is or saving any of the other fractions in the game.
DD has character, the voice acting alone makes it worth while to start that game up.
The Chutulu-mythos that was all but expunged from Phoenix Point also makes it interesting.
Phoenix Point has now has aliens in stead of Chutulu.
Actually I disagree.
One of the charms of Firaxis XCOM for me - and a big reason I and my mates kept me coming back for more - was the way that those random bunches of 1’s and 0’s arranged on your screen developed a personality as you played, so that when they died you cared!
It’s the nearest any game I’ve played gets to the feeling real commanders have on the field (by all accounts - I’ve never been a soldier, but read the memoirs of General Lee or Wellington or a WWII tank commander and you’ll see what I mean). You don’t fight to the last man, or mount suicidal attacks unless it’s absolutely necessary, because you don’t want to lose that Squaddie you’ve got attached to.
And I realised with XCOM2 that one of the big reasons why that happened was that in the Squad Screen you could see your Peeps’ faces. Not only that, but in XCOM2 you could customise them.
Humans are genetically programmed to form attachments to faces. So by presenting them as faceless insectoid automatons in the Squad Screen, PP removes the prime way that we subconsciously get attached to our soldiers. And then they wonder how they can make us care about our Peeps more - duh!
So it might not be for you, but for me and many other players of this kind of game, it is absolutely about Sophie ‘Sixgun’ Robinson, Kip ‘Bulgarian Girl’ Pryatel, ‘Moby’ (sole survivor of the Nantucket Whale Incident), ‘Bulldog’ and their surrounding cast ‘getting through the game’ to form a team that will ultimately save the world - if they can survive that long.
DD has top notch presentation on minimal budget. So… looks matter? Phoenix Point would sell and retained audience better if it was less ambitious, more focused, and had better audio/visual presentation?
I have a theory regarding Darkest Dungeon - while the game is dull to play, it is a good streaming experience. It seems these days, whenever people want to watch a game is more important, then if they want to play it. It’s not really what I want from my games though, but worthy consideration from business perspective.
Mythos Elder Gods/Old Ones/creatures are aliens, so that part actually still remains valid.
I envy players that actually are able to play in such way. Maybe I am sociopath, but I have tried to care about the team in every single game in a genre… and I couldn’t. Actually, for me the game is more enjoyable the very first moment I realise soldiers are expendable and they will die eventually. I still have some… fondness to some of them (because of epic moments once a while) but it doesn’t affect my decisions, so they can die, and most will, for the Greater Good (T’au would be proud).
Its sad but very likely true. A shallow but graphically pretty experience performs much better than a deep but ugly one. People care about little stories, and dice rolls more than freedom and depth. If 90s X-Com was release today only a small tiny niche would play it.
If it about getting in touch with your mercs/soldiers I still wonder that nothing has ever come even close to Jagged Alliance 2.
I mean: they only had a few different sentences each + some (“hidden”) likes and dislikes of others mercs. Yet it made them appear to have “real” personalities with friends and people they just could not stand…
Me too. Well in FiraXCOM I cared a little bit, but still it was more because of no need for more soldiers, so to be true I had to stick with these few who saved the whole world. But FiraXCOM is more like an RPG game instead of its predecessors who aimed to be strategies.
Because players asked for that and pointed out it was good feature of FiraXCOM. I think it was mistake to develop game in this branch, and not really making soldiers interesting individuals. I play Phoenix Point just like old games. I have some soldiers, who have some name, have some perks, they are useful, but still they can die and be replaced. I care about them because they are really powerful individuals who’s death really have impact during the mission.
For people who cant connect to their faceless soldiers: theres a setting to hide helmets. So if you prefer them to go without a helmet, you can do that. As far as I know its just visual as well, so you dont need to worry about going into combat without head armor.
Actually I did not “find” the stats (killcount) in PP until I stumbled over them in Endgame. You can only geht access to them on one screen where you can look which soldiers are in which base, right? Why could you not see them before starting a mission?
In OG I used to play 2-3 missions without careing about anyone THEN take a look which soldiers had the most kills and they would become squad leaders and get the killshots (increasing their marksmanship).
Actually, for me the game is more enjoyable the very first moment I realise soldiers are expendable and they will die eventually. I still have some… fondness to some of them (because of epic moments once a while) but it doesn’t affect my decisions, so they can die, and most will, for the Greater Good (T’au would be proud). 
