Is the game dying already due to group/faction murder hobos?

[Kaios]

But it always goes down and would regardless of ganking. No matter what endgame is always gonna be a smaller population than start. Look at any MMO at the start of an Xpac vs end... the bigger thing is how many are staying versus coming in. It could be our player retention is ass due to ganking and just offset by new players coming in from steam, or it might be we have retentoon regardless... also we might have bad retention despite ganking.

Point is the drop isn't nearly as bad as other worlds.

I agree. I'm not saying with absolutely certainty that a drop in players is strictly due to criminals, I'm sure there are several reasons including game mechanics that are unrelated to pvp and combat. I think we'll still have to wait longer and see how things go, BUT in my opinion a consistent decrease over the course of one month rather than a constant average or increase after releasing on Steam doesn't look too good.

[The_Lich_King]

But it always goes down and would regardless of ganking. No matter what endgame is always gonna be a smaller population than start. Look at any MMO at the start of an Xpac vs end... the bigger thing is how many are staying versus coming in. It could be our player retention is ass due to ganking and just offset by new players coming in from steam, or it might be we have retentoon regardless... also we might have bad retention despite ganking.

Point is the drop isn't nearly as bad as other worlds.

I agree. I'm not saying with absolutely certainty that a drop in players is strictly due to criminals, I'm sure there are several reasons including game mechanics that are unrelated to pvp and combat. I think we'll still have to wait longer and see how things go, BUT in my opinion a consistent decrease over the course of one month rather than a constant average or increase after releasing on Steam doesn't look too good.

True... I wonder what the retention rate looks like for the rest of MMOs.

I know in WoW that usually around 50% of players will drop mid-patch in order and just wait next patch but Hafen doesn't really have a raid community and its grind is more consistent so it doesn't really get players back on new patches... hense why we don't have the same stabilitet.

Players leaving on a monthly basis is typical, havens real problem is they don't come back.

[fulma]

>in this topic(and many others): we need to protect the poor, poor factions of the punishment for killing noobs (that barrely know what is happening when they get aggroed and killed by a guy running 20 bots at the same and with 20x more stats than they will ever have.

[Mvpeh]

This game has always catered to the sweats, but if you play the game right as a hermit/small village you can stay out of the way and still have a lot of fun. I haven't played seriously since World 6 so I don't know how vulnerable players are when they get to the end game (hearth vault stage if that's still a thing) but if one of those groups gets you in their crosshairs there isn't much you can do.

[THE_RANGER]

the punishment for killing a player should be commensurate in trauma with the loss of a character! only then will it stop.

how on the ships that transported slaves they hanged the entire crew, indiscriminately.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YEA YEA YEA YES YES YEA YES YRS YES YES YES YES YES YEA YES KILL EVERY PKER

[The_Lich_King]

the punishment for killing a player should be commensurate in trauma with the loss of a character! only then will it stop.

how on the ships that transported slaves they hanged the entire crew, indiscriminately.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YEA YEA YEA YES YES YEA YES YRS YES YES YES YES YES YEA YES KILL EVERY PKER

This would empower griefers more not less

Unless your saying PKer's should be hunted down by players in game so that we can review their cases on a case by case basis and make sure people doing bot disposal and defending their base wouldn't be punished for something that is not their fault.

In which case i agree and encourage you to do that although most fail.

[BigCountry]

I think daily pop is pretty good right now. It's sitting at what, 1300+-?

Divide that by 2 (alts) and that's 700-800 players?

Steam is helping, but remember to help those players- not grieve them. All of the new Steam players I have run into need a lot of help- mostly to get them OFF the vanilla client and onto a custom, like Enders or something easy to click/run.

There are exactly two breeds on new players from steam launch: smart opportunistic fellas who are figuring out how game works and how to have most fun out of it. And the second group - cretins who are making thread after thread whining about hackers, griefers, pvp, retarded animal ai. They even found support in veteran cryers like Kaios (against everything) and that Rainbow guy (guys im trolling look). Latter is haven't seen for month btw, so ig he ate shit and died.

I want to think there are 500+- players average playing thru the Steam-HH launcher versus outside the steam launcher. So that's pretty good numbers still.

[matheuswm]

it boggles my mind that people think what this game lacked in its, what, 15 years of development? is exposure. This surge in popularity is a chicken flight by all thought experiments. Nothing about its core mechanics or demographic changed recently, the only thing that happened was a steam release.
All the newbie problems are even more pronounced given not everyone knows how to and would risk downloading some sketchy java launcher, troubleshoot for 2h in order to learn how to operate a custom client to begin playing. A steam game though...
Sure, the core playerbase might grow permanently, but it'll still be a niche game for people with too much time on their hand, but indeed the whaling system works for small playerbases since there are people who crave a community more than a good game and i guess that's where this game's pvpers fit in. The sheer amount of people that orbit this game waiting for it to become something better for non-pvpers speaks for itself, myself included.

PS: This reminds me a lot of an IPO. If a company does not capitalize on its IPO and cash influx, the downward followup will be much more pronounced, in this analogy steam reviews carry a great weight in this industry and will forever stain this game.

[gravesmerch]

I'm not even on main continent and the rivers are like a massacre
sucks to see the small palisades with dead bodies
probably a lot of Steam causalities

[Valgar]

It is true that PVP can't be erased because its a core mechanic, but here this is too much for the game evolution.
Newplayers haven't the time to understand what is happening before a guy jump on them to slaughter them.
Now PKer are just jumping on easy target, and hide as soon as possible behind a wall, waiting to go back again when the revenge is away.

Perhaps putting an even grievious scent to murderer. Doing a murder again before the end of the previous one's scents should impact his entire claim vulnerability or hability to enter all claimed area (yes you relentlessly killing, you are left alone for good fair fights and not only on sprucecaps). There is no way to kill a non retarded sprucecaps killer if you are not camping at their gate or spending your day to run around.

Can be griefed ? Put the game on Steam for 15 bucks per account creation, and hire moderator.
Delete the griefer's account (for some their account is more important than their mom).