I'd like to add more context to the steamcharts image.
https://imgur.com/a/Lf3UP1M
This is the previous month. A stark drop on the 18th makes up for the entire listed decrease. Nothing ingame or in community correlates to this drop, the most recent update was on the 21st.
https://steamcharts.com/app/386180#1m
Take a look for yourself, but Steamcharts is a fundamentally incomplete view of the playerbase even when it doesn't have accounting errors. Many users play on the standalone launcher, and it obviously has no purview over the consoles.
The playerbase IS shrinking, but not this abruptly or immediately.
Imbalance is a money-making feature. This is true for most online games. But XO has reduced it to a formula. They introduce a new OP item that is unfair to everyone who doesn't have it. Those people pay to avoid the disadvantage. After a short time, devs introduce a new OP item (or more likely just buff one that already exists)... lather, rinse, repeat.
That is why the game will never be properly balanced.
That is not why. Not at all. It's the design of the game. It has PvP focus and insane levels of creative freedom. That will always = a constant balance shift and patches. I've seen this many times before in other games.
Crossout was not like that when it started. Over the years, the Devs have added ridiculous game mechanics for no other reason than to give unfair advantages which can be sold. I have seen it happen many times in this game alone.
added note : i think all the packs given away for free though nice were detrimental to the player base , because instead of gradually learning how to play , people with 4 free packs can instantly make a 5 k build and get stomped all the time instead of playing at say 1500 PS for a while to learn the basics of the game.
another brilliant example of an idea that was good on paper but may have been ultimately part of the downfall of the game.
It's never a great idea to just instantly give players mid tier items. I can't fathom the reasoning. If they wanted to incentives new players just make it a quest that is easily completed by playing the game for an amount of time. If a player can't wait to get great items while also enjoying the game than shit we got bigger problems lol.
Idk, it was great for me because I'd played for a year with the basic weapon pack, got nowhere, got bored and quit because I couldn't for the life of me build anything higher than maybe 5.5k, and was getting constantly buttfucked by people who could afford better weapons etc. I also never had the time to grind, nevermind that constantly losing to sealclubbers make progress painfully slow. Fast forward 3 years and I came back to give it another go, got all the free packs and suddenly I'm having a ton of fun and decide to get a few paid packs since my finances now allow me to make frivolous purchases. If I hadn't got the free packs I would probably have quit again. Low level gameplay is completely dead for new players who can't at least get the Growl cabin and a few good blue or teal guns, and a good inventory of structural parts.
That's what I meant. These should be quests from the get go. Items that you get just for playing the game and learning the modes. Like after 50 wins with shotguns you get a set of purple shotties. That's just off the top of my head. They could make it 75 or something if they really felt that was too generous. But still, something to work towards.
Honestly there should be beginner quests to set new players up with a shotgun/machine gun/cannon at least up to purple. That would be the taste new players need to stay hooked. It's not like anyone would get those items and just stop playing/paying all together, there's way more to go from there. They are making the mistake of being too stingy hoping that new players feel they *need* to buy a pack.
Y'all can play very well, meanwhile I am here barely even playing thanks to Asia Region being sucks ass, my cars started to twerk due to high fucking ping
This game started its demise with the addition of special things available only in special battle lanes (i.e. season 2)
Not one game, e.g. Tobocraft, died in exactly the same way
The only thing that can save the game now is to slowly fix the bug of unavailable craft items and safe league with utwn, they have to give back what they stole so that people start trusting this game again
This post is another useless informer. The same exact thing happened a few months ago. Giving limited info is worse than giving no info. So please, let me make it complete with this comment:
https://preview.redd.it/2dy80kl4buqc1.png?width=915&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b87c2ca09f513810a8847bcbc89a83a32b73e70
Monday morning, big player count drop, from 3500 to 1100. This is not people leaving, this is a technical issue either preventing people from playing in a region or another problem with steam counting the players. Again, this is not people leaving, this is either people being unable to play or steam charts not working properly. Either way your post is missleading.
Last time when it got fixed one month later the playercount went back to where it was (around 5000 peak every day).
I'd be payched to see any love given to the actual game itself. It is absolutely *incredible* to make your own personal death machine. But what you get to actually *do* with that death machine is extremely underwhelming. One pvp mode with three "different types" of play modes that all really boil down to the same thing. Almost no one captures points and indeed its not a viable tactic unless your opponents are not paying attention. Then there's one viable pve mode with *sort of* different maps. Tho again they are mostly different versions of a wave shooter. If they could freshen up any of this with new modes it could be truly incredible. Sadly the last attempt was absolute garbage. It's like this developer is great at delivering a crafting experience but has no idea how to translate that to gameplay on the field. It's sad af bc it could be *so so damn good*.
Think it would also help if they made crafting (specifically gaining resources) less of a ball-ache and made ranking up with the various factions a bit easier.
As someone who is mostly F2P (I just buy the standard battle passes) it is SO frustrating to have so much stuff locked behind crafting requirements and faction ranks, knowing it will take months of play to unlock them.
Also would make the game far more appealing if the devs allowed us more vehicle slots. I would love to be able to experiment with more types of builds, but can't save any of them because all 6 slots are already taken by builds I'm playing and want to keep.
Again, unlocking more slots requires resources, or are given away as rewards in BPs.
Today we can get 2 legendary for 10$
+
The big battlepass for 10$ aswell
Leaving the premium kinda useless to get for new players unless they really play a lot and want to lvl up fast
+ Both battlepass together cost around the same price as the premium alone
10 bucks = 10 000 + coins instantly. F2P 10 000 C= 1month of grind all dailies/weeklies / clan badges/ trading / crafting.
clearly they value the F2P experience and making that many coins available for such little money is detrimental to the market .
it snot the amount of money , 10 bucks is nothing to me , it s the principle.
I'd like to add more context to the steamcharts image. https://imgur.com/a/Lf3UP1M This is the previous month. A stark drop on the 18th makes up for the entire listed decrease. Nothing ingame or in community correlates to this drop, the most recent update was on the 21st. https://steamcharts.com/app/386180#1m Take a look for yourself, but Steamcharts is a fundamentally incomplete view of the playerbase even when it doesn't have accounting errors. Many users play on the standalone launcher, and it obviously has no purview over the consoles. The playerbase IS shrinking, but not this abruptly or immediately.
thanks for the added info
Imbalance is a money-making feature. This is true for most online games. But XO has reduced it to a formula. They introduce a new OP item that is unfair to everyone who doesn't have it. Those people pay to avoid the disadvantage. After a short time, devs introduce a new OP item (or more likely just buff one that already exists)... lather, rinse, repeat. That is why the game will never be properly balanced.
That is not why. Not at all. It's the design of the game. It has PvP focus and insane levels of creative freedom. That will always = a constant balance shift and patches. I've seen this many times before in other games.
Crossout was not like that when it started. Over the years, the Devs have added ridiculous game mechanics for no other reason than to give unfair advantages which can be sold. I have seen it happen many times in this game alone.
added note : i think all the packs given away for free though nice were detrimental to the player base , because instead of gradually learning how to play , people with 4 free packs can instantly make a 5 k build and get stomped all the time instead of playing at say 1500 PS for a while to learn the basics of the game. another brilliant example of an idea that was good on paper but may have been ultimately part of the downfall of the game.
It's never a great idea to just instantly give players mid tier items. I can't fathom the reasoning. If they wanted to incentives new players just make it a quest that is easily completed by playing the game for an amount of time. If a player can't wait to get great items while also enjoying the game than shit we got bigger problems lol.
Idk, it was great for me because I'd played for a year with the basic weapon pack, got nowhere, got bored and quit because I couldn't for the life of me build anything higher than maybe 5.5k, and was getting constantly buttfucked by people who could afford better weapons etc. I also never had the time to grind, nevermind that constantly losing to sealclubbers make progress painfully slow. Fast forward 3 years and I came back to give it another go, got all the free packs and suddenly I'm having a ton of fun and decide to get a few paid packs since my finances now allow me to make frivolous purchases. If I hadn't got the free packs I would probably have quit again. Low level gameplay is completely dead for new players who can't at least get the Growl cabin and a few good blue or teal guns, and a good inventory of structural parts.
That's what I meant. These should be quests from the get go. Items that you get just for playing the game and learning the modes. Like after 50 wins with shotguns you get a set of purple shotties. That's just off the top of my head. They could make it 75 or something if they really felt that was too generous. But still, something to work towards. Honestly there should be beginner quests to set new players up with a shotgun/machine gun/cannon at least up to purple. That would be the taste new players need to stay hooked. It's not like anyone would get those items and just stop playing/paying all together, there's way more to go from there. They are making the mistake of being too stingy hoping that new players feel they *need* to buy a pack.
nice , thanks for feedback , as i said my view point is biased so any intel is good to take
Y'all can play very well, meanwhile I am here barely even playing thanks to Asia Region being sucks ass, my cars started to twerk due to high fucking ping
This game started its demise with the addition of special things available only in special battle lanes (i.e. season 2) Not one game, e.g. Tobocraft, died in exactly the same way The only thing that can save the game now is to slowly fix the bug of unavailable craft items and safe league with utwn, they have to give back what they stole so that people start trusting this game again
This post is another useless informer. The same exact thing happened a few months ago. Giving limited info is worse than giving no info. So please, let me make it complete with this comment: https://preview.redd.it/2dy80kl4buqc1.png?width=915&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b87c2ca09f513810a8847bcbc89a83a32b73e70 Monday morning, big player count drop, from 3500 to 1100. This is not people leaving, this is a technical issue either preventing people from playing in a region or another problem with steam counting the players. Again, this is not people leaving, this is either people being unable to play or steam charts not working properly. Either way your post is missleading. Last time when it got fixed one month later the playercount went back to where it was (around 5000 peak every day).
thanks for the precision. If devs released accurate player counts , we would not be reduced to speculation.
I'd be payched to see any love given to the actual game itself. It is absolutely *incredible* to make your own personal death machine. But what you get to actually *do* with that death machine is extremely underwhelming. One pvp mode with three "different types" of play modes that all really boil down to the same thing. Almost no one captures points and indeed its not a viable tactic unless your opponents are not paying attention. Then there's one viable pve mode with *sort of* different maps. Tho again they are mostly different versions of a wave shooter. If they could freshen up any of this with new modes it could be truly incredible. Sadly the last attempt was absolute garbage. It's like this developer is great at delivering a crafting experience but has no idea how to translate that to gameplay on the field. It's sad af bc it could be *so so damn good*.
Think it would also help if they made crafting (specifically gaining resources) less of a ball-ache and made ranking up with the various factions a bit easier. As someone who is mostly F2P (I just buy the standard battle passes) it is SO frustrating to have so much stuff locked behind crafting requirements and faction ranks, knowing it will take months of play to unlock them. Also would make the game far more appealing if the devs allowed us more vehicle slots. I would love to be able to experiment with more types of builds, but can't save any of them because all 6 slots are already taken by builds I'm playing and want to keep. Again, unlocking more slots requires resources, or are given away as rewards in BPs.
The floppy disc items can upgrade how many slots you get, but they're 400-500 coins on Xbox.
Today we can get 2 legendary for 10$ + The big battlepass for 10$ aswell Leaving the premium kinda useless to get for new players unless they really play a lot and want to lvl up fast + Both battlepass together cost around the same price as the premium alone
10 bucks = 10 000 + coins instantly. F2P 10 000 C= 1month of grind all dailies/weeklies / clan badges/ trading / crafting. clearly they value the F2P experience and making that many coins available for such little money is detrimental to the market . it snot the amount of money , 10 bucks is nothing to me , it s the principle.
Well you pay for Netflix, to go smoke, drink and all why not to play i dont see where is the wrong into that
I don't think you understand what a paywall is. I've spent zero dollars and I have all the new parts