Like every PvE game which does not have hundreds of people working to churn out content, its playerbase will dwindle until only those who do not get bored by its gameplay stick around. Whether it’s Left 4 Dead, Payday, Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide, those types of games follow this pattern…
And I for one, see no fucking issue with that. It’s a great game, people play it until they have had their fill and then move on. Helldivers 2 is only an outlier because of how hard it hit at launch. It absolutely does not have the content pipeline to keep a large playerbase engaged, so yeah it will not keep printing a lot of money, just a little bit every now and then.
Now excuse me as I go and spread some managed democracy.
Yeah but that’s the problem isn’t it? Why are more toxic games like the PvP centric ones some much more successful with sometimes even less content?
Already seeing that with DRG, even though the player base seems to be mostly stable at 20k, that doesn’t mean the games making money for the devs. Hence why season 6 seems to be delayed while they work on their newer games that will make them money.
That’s a good point. An online game can be successful while having a limited shelf life. Make your money and shut it down (or just ramp it down for the smaller audience if it’s worth the effort)
The player base was always going to decline significantly.
It doesn’t have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.
The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren’t on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren’t grouped up for major orders.
The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I’m happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.
This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don’t have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I’ve played.
It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.
Deep Rock Galactic would like a word about friendly player base!
I haven’t experienced it, but hear good things about the community.
