No Man's Sky - Hello Games

General
473

You are right indeed.

If we take into consideration some big AAA games, they all have a decline in the month following their release.
But it’s far from being as quick as NMS.

Let’s stick to the same comparison, which is the date of highest starting peak to the date of the lowest minima having 90% or less of the first peak.
Also, considering the huge amount of sales for NMS, we’ll stick to AAA games that sold well, both on PC and consoles.

First example: The Witcher 3 (Wild Hunt).
Let’s take 24 May (90k+) to roughly end of July, 31 (~9k). That’s more than 2 months to get 90% of decay.

Another example: GTA 5.
From 19 April (364k) to 13 August (39k, let’s be fairplay :slight_smile: ). Still more than 2 months to achieve 90% decay.

Ok, let’s take a single player game like the first example: Metal Gear Solid 5.
From 6 September (~90k) to 29 October (~10k). More than a month, not far from 2.

Seeing the chart for No Man’s Sky, one can only wonder why the decay went so fast (2 weeks !!), when all other games “only” got 50% of decay, more or less, for the same amount of time.

I don’t think it’s necessary to go into details like decils, variance and other statistic values, although it could be interesting to have them. I just don’t have the patience to get that done or calculate them :slight_smile:

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474

Awesome, those are exactly the kinds of baselines I was hoping were available.

For the sake of apples-to-apples comparisons, we should look at other games released in the same period, of which there are… Basically none? Huh, it really is the summer doldrums.

Ok, let’s see what fits in that window on Steam:

Little King’s Story – some sort of indy game with next to no following.

Peaked at 94 CCU at launch (5 Aug), and dropped to 10% of that on 24 Aug, 19 days later. It dropped to ~22% of peak CCU on Aug 15, 10 days after launch. So, that’s comparable, though LKS is also a $20 title.

Telltale’s Batman ep 1 launched on 2 August, with 4000 CCU, and had dropped to 10% of that on 6 Aug, 4 days later. These are short, episodic games, though, so let’s compare THIS to Telltale’s previous launch, Walking Dead, on 23 Feb. WD saw its CCU drop to 10% of its launch peak on 29 Feb, 6 days later. WD ep 2 saw it hit 10% peak CCU in 12 days, while ep 3 also hit 10% in 12 days.

Tales from the Borderlands ep 4 was launched in August 2015, and saw its CCU drop to 10% of its launch peak in 9 days. Ep 5 was launched in October 2015, and saw it drop to 10% its peak in 14 days.

That doesn’t look quite as bad for NMS, given that people seem, in general, to be quicker to drop a game in August (or July, for that matter, looking at some other titles) than in other months. I mean, it certainly isn’t going to make up for a factor of 3 or 4 in the churn rate compared to Witcher or GTA, but if we assume the summer eats about 1/3 of a game’s natural lifespan, then NMS’s 2 weeks becomes 3, and while that still doesn’t put it in the same realm as GTA 5 or Witcher 3, it really extends that retention curve.

Those games also have several other advantages that haven’t been accounted for: They’re sequels in popular franchises, they had launches in peak release seasons, they weren’t the first PC titles launched by their studios.

That said, there is no fair comparison to make. Hello Games is an indy studio, and they built the game on an indy budet, but it was marketed by Sony as if it were a AAA title. Compared to other indy games, its retention seems to be right on par. Maybe even a little better. Compared to non-blockbuster releases from major publishers, I’m guessing it falls a little short. Compared to other games with its sales numbers?

Yeah, that’s definitely where it falls down.

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475

To be fair, little kings story used to be a vita game (which in and of itself, was already a rerelease iirc). It didn’t run well on any platform it was released on, so this might explain the high retention rate. High hopes for smooth gameplay when it was released, huge disappointment when people first booted it up.

Another game that comes to mind is Dead or alive 5 Last Round. On Steam it was released on the thirtieth of march, rose up to a peak of ~2826 concurrent players online on the 31st.just to then plummet down to less than half (1293 peak) in a matter of 4 days (just above half in 3 days). On the 21st of april (so roughly 3 weeks after release), doa5 LR had lost 90% of their playerbase.
(at least according to this link https://steamdb.info/app/311730/graphs/ )
However, on consoles, the game keeps trucking along (at least from what I can tell. I play the game on my vita every now n then, and I still keep finding players from various skill levels). My assumption is, that the high retention rate has something to do with the poor performance (as in: bugs, framerate drops etc)…
Not to say that having a “buggy piece of shit” is a surefire way to kill most of your playerbase in one fell swoop… Fallout 4, for example, took roughly two and a half months to dip below 10% of the all time peak for the first time, and roughly 2 more months before the weekend spikes wouldn’t reach the 10% mark. Shortly after which a dlc was released which bumped the playercount for a bit more…
(also link to the fallout 4 site: https://steamdb.info/app/377160/graphs/ )

I guess what I tried to say (with the DoA5 LR game), was that high retention rate on pc doesnt imply high retention rate on console. We’re a crazy bunch that has no problem playing games at ~30fps to get graphics that are less good looking than on pc.

Also just to be fair: I have no idea what CCU means, soooo I am sorry if I somehow said something completely unrelated.

1 Like
476

Concurrent Users.

Two letter abbreviations are simply passe, ergo CCU; ConCurrent Users

http://smartfoxserver.com/blog/decoding-dau-mau-and-ccu/

Edit: add link

477

facepalms okay, thanks for clarifying. Apparently, my brain is not working today…

478

Ah, CCU is concurrent users. I think you’re also using “retention” (the % of users still playing) to mean “churn” (the % of users who have stopped playing). High retention -> longer player decay curve; high chun -> steeper decay curve.

Fallout 4’s retention probably isn’t a fair comparison, either, since Bethesda’s audience has already immunized itself to their games, uh, chronic bugginess.

Maybe the culture of PC gaming has changed since I was last truly really active, but at the very least it used to be very common for PC gamers to buy a game, discover that it’s unplayable due ot bugs, and then come back in a month once it has been patched. In the current era of content patches and DLC, and Steam, and instantly accessible and endless stream of indy games, I have no idea how things work anymore. NMS could gain some of its audience back in a manner of weeks, or it could be a dead game on PC.

And, as you say, it could have an exceptionally long and active life on the PS4, while remaining a corpse on PC.

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479

I guess, at this point it is safe to say, that my english just isn’t up to snuff today.

I think that especially irregular cases like Fallout are worth mentioning. Mainly because if we dont mention it, someone else will. Might as well get it over with. (also I find it quite interesting to see people putting up with such a game, while there are tons of other, probably better, games are available, just because it is a game with Bethesda on it… Where were those guys when Brink was released … <- another game that probably lost 90% of its user base in less than a month)

Seeing how there was a low flying mod released for NMS, it is at least possible, that people will give it another try. Not being able to crash your ship into the planet at your own leisure is (afaik) one of the least appreciated ‘features’ of NMS. (personally, I don’t find it as bad as the LoD pop in, which tends to turn oceans into mountain areas)

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480

That was fun until my ship refused to land near a mountainridge and became a smear on it’s slopes.
I now have a better understanding of why true freeflight is not in the game…

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481

No Man’s Sky - Learning Through Repetition… Is Dull

482

Kind of fun to see Scott Manley talk down NMS pointing out the same things I hate/love about Elite
: Dangerous…
What he fails to point out is the fact that there is story to follow. That alone makes NMS head and shoulders above E:D.

483

It’s actually dropped over 95% now. From 212k to 10k. It’s not close to a month since release, yet.

I’ve never seen player numbers drop that fast. Usually it’s like a 70% drop over 4 weeks for bad games like Arkham Knight, not 95% over 2. As far as I’m aware, this is unprecedented by a wide margin, but so is its 212k playing it at the peak to begin with.

Fallout4, for example, lost 75% over a month.

But E:D does have quite a bit of content.
It’s Space Trucker Simulator content, but it’s still content for people that like that. NMS for the most part doesn’t even satisfy the people that wanted single player exploration and nothing else.

484

I quit E:D when I got the Anaconda and a few 100 mils to spare.
After that there is nothing to do.
No content.
Nothing.

485

Nope, it’s actually right in line either the Telltale games I discussed above. Games with a couple of hours of content and zero replay value. From what I’ve heard, that’s basically what NMS is for the majority of gamers. By the look of things, the PC population should reach its equilibrium level within a day or two. However low that will be, given the current word of mouth.

486

Oh yeah, you’re right about Telltale games dropping fast.

487

I wish the big YT channels out there had all released videos letting everyone know they had not been given review code. You can’t breach a review embargo if you haven’t been given review code in the first place.

A simple video to explain that they haven’t been given anything to review and you can read into that what you will. Let the public decide.

2 Likes
488

And the public has decided. A 90% drop in players that fast kind of tells it all.
I’m still playing it though, but then I’m diffrent. At least that’s what mom always tells me :wink:

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489

Got the opportunity to spend a few hours with it today. It’s amusing, and I’d probably spend 15$ on it, but it is definitely something that would only get played when I wanted to zone out and not do much.

It’s just…meh.

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490

Agreed. Now that the game is working for me I find it mostly great for wandering around while listening to twitch streams or podcasts. It’s just a shame that HG got the usual Sony treatment and overblew the expectations of people. I hope they can maintain some content additions over time.

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491

Just read an article, Steam and Amazon are both refunding buyers even after their window has expired (2 hours of play for Steam).

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492

We’ll see. I’ve just requested a refund. Thanks for the hint.
Edit: Rejected by the Steam support due to >2 hours. Seems your article was wrong…