Re: Season 2 a huge success (or not) compared to S1

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@Adamonic wrote:
@CyberDymeYou can't use the 30-day average to compare Season 2 to anything since there hasn't been 30 days in Season 2 yet? Once we hit October, you can use that to compare to the previous months.

From what it looks like, less players are leaving, so the numbers shouldn't drop to the same levels.

Adding something like a Server Browser would be huge for them, too bad that is not in the cards anymore.

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All fair points you bring @Adamonic ,

Though the main point I was trying to make was that no matter if the daily average is now going up to be astronomical 7,000 players per day or maybe just 6,000 players per day.  Then it will unfortunately not matter much when looking at the bigger picture of things.  Because you will need tens of thousands of more players in average across the full days to be able to have the minimum viable number of players to populate servers across the world 24/7.

To put it into perspective, here are the historic data on previous Battlefield games at launch and 9 months post launch, and also across the 3 platforms:

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@CyberDyme wrote:

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@Adamonic wrote:
@CyberDymeYou can't use the 30-day average to compare Season 2 to anything since there hasn't been 30 days in Season 2 yet? Once we hit October, you can use that to compare to the previous months.

From what it looks like, less players are leaving, so the numbers shouldn't drop to the same levels.

Adding something like a Server Browser would be huge for them, too bad that is not in the cards anymore.

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All fair points you bring @Adamonic ,

Though the main point I was trying to make was that no matter if the daily average is now going up to be astronomical 7,000 players per day or maybe just 6,000 players per day.  Then it will unfortunately not matter much when looking at the bigger picture of things.  Because you will need tens of thousands of more players in average across the full days to be able to have the minimum viable number of players to populate servers across the world 24/7.

To put it into perspective, here are the historic data on previous Battlefield games at launch and 9 months post launch, and also across the 3 platforms:

 

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@CyberDyme all completely valid points. However, for BF2042, aligning the timelines won't match because they delayed the Season 1 launch. I would go with 8 months after the start of Season 1 which would roughly be near the end of Season 3. If Steam Charts is showing 7-8K a peak at that point, that is roughly 70-80K players across all platforms which would put it between BF1 and Hardline. I feel like 100K or higher should be the goal. 

With all the MM mess, needing to use game modes to isolate map rotations, they really need to just bite the bullet and add a Server Browser. I think they would hit the 100K mark if they implemented one. 

@Adamonic ,

Have you contemplated the "risks and exposures" that EA/DICE do not want to have, but would be inevitable if they gave us a server browser?

E.g.:

• Undisputed truth on factual player population in BF2042. (if it had been anywhere near anything positive or business acceptable, be in no doubt that the EA Executive Board would have been very vocal about flaunting it!)
• Number of active players and servers by region/country.  (yes, some regions have none, and its been like that for long already)
• Number of active servers by game mode (yes, Hazard Zone is dead, and it was near absolute stillborn from the get go, no matter the hype)
• You can add multiple more points here to this list.  (and then ask yourself, what are the incentives then for EA/DICE to implement this server browser, which the vast majority of players have been demanding/asking for since early design phase of this game...)

It tells as much about EA/DICE's autocratic ruling style as it does about the lackluster state of the BF2042 game, that we do not have a server browser. 

And no, I do not agree to the title of this thread, that Season2 is a HUGE success compared to Season1.

A few single digit % higher peak number of players but substantial lower average number of players across the days of the week are factually on now after S2 compared to S1. 

So no, sorry.

Didnt drink the Kool-aid...

look at what games are coming out during season 3.  i don't see this game trending up unless everything that is released is trash and dice hits it out of the park with season 3 (unlikely due to little content alone)

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@Adamonic wrote:
@CyberDymeI agree on all of your points. However, SteamCharts already gives anyone a good measuring stick, based on a big enough sample size of the population, to deduce what the player count is. So I don't know if a Server Browser would give out that much additional info.

I think the assumption was Season 1 would get a bump, but the player count would drop to pre-S1 levels before S2, and then the cycle would repeat every season.

If any additional players were added AND stayed, that would be a success. Since the player base is smaller, even something like 600-800 players (on SteamCharts) is 10% of the 6-8K daily average.

When we are assuming Steam is only roughly 10% of the active player count, that 6-8K is actually 60-80K. So if the trend continues over every season, there is a chance that 100K are playing the game starting in Season 4.

So maybe not a huge success, but probably more than expected with the expectations so low. Shoot for the ground and you may hit the target.

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look at what games are coming out during season 3.  i don't see this game trending up unless everything that is released is trash and dice hits it out of the park with season 3 (unlikely due to little content alone)

I haven't been playing this season that much. Just enough to do the weeklies. To me it is a lot worse than Season 1. Exposure for me was 10x than Stranded. Charlie is ok, but the random passive ability seems out of place for a guy with a mini-gun. It feels like they changed his passive to be Support. Square peg, round hole.

It also looks like the shine has worn off and others are like me, just not having fun playing Season 2.

For days 9, 10, and 11 for each season, Season 2 now has 3-4K less active peak players on SteamCharts. That is terrible, less than two weeks since launch and we have daily max active player counts below 9K? The last two days have been 9329 and 8829 compared to 13314 and 13740 from last season. 

Not only is Season 2 looking like a total failure, it looks to be turning new players away and old players are not coming back. OUCH!

I wonder if removing Exodus Conquest 64 hurt the launch of S2?

The general consensus I saw around the positive S1 vibe was a map rotation that showed how good 2042 could be when playing on tried and tested fan favourite maps.

Then S2 came along and it was Stranded or 2042 map playlists only I presume. Playing in Australia I have to assume because all we could play was stranded. When I selected the conquest mode that wasn't stranded no one was in the MM queue.

I hear it's back now but removing it in the first place was another misstep by Dice.

Hey everyone I don’t have BF2042 but I visit this boards  from time to time to check in if the game gets better and I might hop in. It seems the issue is still the “apex legend” like character selection and wouldn’t be changed. 

LMAO didn’t know you can’t mention the names of other    games here. 

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@Adamonic wrote:

I haven't been playing this season that much. Just enough to do the weeklies. To me it is a lot worse than Season 1. Exposure for me was 10x than Stranded. Charlie is ok, but the random passive ability seems out of place for a guy with a mini-gun. It feels like they changed his passive to be Support. Square peg, round hole.

It also looks like the shine has worn off and others are like me, just not having fun playing Season 2.

For days 9, 10, and 11 for each season, Season 2 now has 3-4K less active peak players on SteamCharts. That is terrible, less than two weeks since launch and we have daily max active player counts below 9K? The last two days have been 9329 and 8829 compared to 13314 and 13740 from last season. 

Not only is Season 2 looking like a total failure, it looks to be turning new players away and old players are not coming back. OUCH!

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Waow @Adamonic ,

Did you just do a 180-turn of opinion and view here, (changed the title of the thread and then posting this now, and no longer thinking Season2 is a huge success compared to S1?)

(assume we only have one Adamonic on the forum here?)

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@Cheese9Man wrote:

Hey everyone I don’t have BF2042 but I visit this boards  from time to time to check in if the game gets better and I might hop in. It seems the issue is still the “apex legend” like character selection and wouldn’t be changed. 

LMAO didn’t know you can’t mention the names of other    games here. 

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We are of course allowed to mention other games here on this forum, but we are not to use this forum to exclusively discuss or promote games that are not belonging EA.  And that I think is only reasonable, all considering that EA are the ones paying for and running this forum.

EA Execs have at times also themselves referred to other competitors and their products, like for BF2042 announcements and investor meetings I recall that both HALO Infinite and Call of Duty Warzone have been discussed as competitors for the same market segment and cause for concern for the player population that EA/DICE were targeting with BF2042.  (no need to discuss here the significant difference in the FPS shooter experience between these FPS games and that obviously many players are not attracted by the competitors' products despite they are all categorized as FPS games...)

We just hit a new low of 3200 players on SteamCharts yesterday, the first day of Week 3. That is unbelievably sad. Why is that?

For one, they keep removing popular game modes. This has to be deliberate. Everyone loves Exodus Conquest > removed. Everyone loves Stranded or Exposure 24/7 BT > removed. This can't be a coincidence. 

Secondly, being a smaller map, Stranded got old really quick. Charlie is way more boring than Lis was, so S2 is flopping hard after an optimistic start. 

Third, the Server Browser announcement was the last straw for a lot of players. A lot of players were holding out for a Server Browser, and by them announcing one is probably not coming turned them away for good.

Lastly, the PVE switcharoo also burnt a lot of players the wrong way. XP was supposed to be possible via that method but was turned off and has never been addressed to date. Now with the need for XP with the BattlePass, they have turned off even more players who can only play PVE. 

This also is not even accounting for the game bugs, netcode, TTK/TDD inconsistencies, and crossplay issues. To me, the game is going into a nosedive and they seem perfectly content with that.

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@Prof3ss0r_M1k3 wrote:

look at what games are coming out during season 3.  i don't see this game trending up unless everything that is released is trash and dice hits it out of the park with season 3 (unlikely due to little content alone)

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No other game offers the battlefield experience.

If there was I'd be sharing my online game time with that other game but it's never happened.

There was a game about 10 years ago that tried to compete with battlefield and I forget the name but it was too broken and eventually died. And no it wasn't MAG which also tried and failed to compete with battlefield.

So it doesn't matter about these other games, they won't affect the core battlefield playerbase.

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@Adamonic wrote:

I haven't been playing this season that much. Just enough to do the weeklies. To me it is a lot worse than Season 1. Exposure for me was 10x than Stranded. Charlie is ok, but the random passive ability seems out of place for a guy with a mini-gun. It feels like they changed his passive to be Support. Square peg, round hole.

It also looks like the shine has worn off and others are like me, just not having fun playing Season 2.

For days 9, 10, and 11 for each season, Season 2 now has 3-4K less active peak players on SteamCharts. That is terrible, less than two weeks since launch and we have daily max active player counts below 9K? The last two days have been 9329 and 8829 compared to 13314 and 13740 from last season. 

Not only is Season 2 looking like a total failure, it looks to be turning new players away and old players are not coming back. OUCH!

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Need to see what the peak is during the final month of season 2.

That's how I will read the impact of season 2 on the playerbase.

I don't pay attention to average, it's peak that counts.

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@Adamonic wrote:
@CyberDymewith the original data, things were looking promising, but holy cow did this game take nosedive a few days later. We are hitting the same player levels for Week 8 and 9 and we just started Week 3.

Those offputting videos really soured everyone's taste. The new Specialist is boring and Stranded is already old. We now have to wait for the next patch to see the new vehicle, but without any new maps, not much is going to move the needle.

We need more classic maps in AOW, Exodus should be permanent for both CQ and BT, then rotate the others.

If the other game is close to the hype, there may not be an available instance for 4 or 5 of the regions come next month.

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Yeah @Adamonic ,

The player volume and their attention span is fickle at best.  Some may come back after a new season launch just to check it out, but if they do not immediately see that what they wanted of improvements or expected to have been fixed, then they are gone again pretty quick.  And many of them never to return again.  That is why the very first season launch after initial game launch is the most crucial, as after each subsequent season, the player population will typically continue to dwindle even further.

It would have been something entirely different if EA/DICE would have digged deep and released a major overhaul to the entire game package and not just small little add-ons as the seasonal packages just are, what we get here these days from them.

Most essential is that we have no long-lasting 'stickiness' in this game and most is unlocked/tried out in just a matter of hours.

E.g.:

Too few weapons and accessories to unlock and play around with and not much distinct variety between them...

Too few air/ground/water vehicles and distinct weapon loadouts for them...

Too few maps and game modes available at choice...

Too bare-bones maps and not sufficient contents/substance on them to enable diverse strategic gameplays on them.

No proper sandbox experience in BF2042 which otherwise is what has made this franchise famous.

Too limited team/squad/clan features to enable a BF community and team work for having long lasting fun together.

Essentially, there is not proper cared for contents to ensure any longevity of this game.

It doesn't really matter what other FPS games are coming out on the market.  If EA/DICE had gotten the BF essentials right, the millions of BF players out there would still have been on the game today.

The last update seemed to bring some new players back.

Per SteamCharts, September will be the highest player count month since January, which is pretty shocking that more players are slowly trickling back in. 800 average more players than June (S1 launch) and now 700 players from passing January for the 3rd highest month since launch (NOV and DEC 2021 were the two highest - obviously). 

Maybe everyone is waiting on the Liquidators?

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@Adamonic wrote:

The last update seemed to bring some new players back.

Per SteamCharts, September will be the highest player count month since January, which is pretty shocking that more players are slowly trickling back in. 800 average more players than June (S1 launch) and now 700 players from passing January for the 3rd highest month since launch (NOV and DEC 2021 were the two highest - obviously). 

Maybe everyone is waiting on the Liquidators?

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800 whole players? Man that's so depressing. That should read "8000" or even "80,000" new players with a great update on a playable game....

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@Echo6Echo wrote:

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@Adamonic wrote:

The last update seemed to bring some new players back.

Per SteamCharts, September will be the highest player count month since January, which is pretty shocking that more players are slowly trickling back in. 800 average more players than June (S1 launch) and now 700 players from passing January for the 3rd highest month since launch (NOV and DEC 2021 were the two highest - obviously). 

Maybe everyone is waiting on the Liquidators?

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800 whole players? Man that's so depressing. That should read "8000" or even "80,000" new players with a great update on a playable game....

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It's steam which everyone was using to bash 2042 with.

Steam peak after each release settles down from the initial 1st week spike.

3k pre season 1

6k season 1

10k season 2 (so far, still 2 months to go so may drop)

That's a big percentage increase.

PC makes up about 15 to 30% of the playerbase if we look at past stats pre V.

2042 is an EA game so it's likely at least half of PC players connect through Origin.

So let's go with 20k peak on PC, though probably more.

That leaves console with 70 to 85% of the playerbase.

So we can guess that the playerbase is peaking between 70k and 130k depending on 2042's PC playerbase.

What that means in micro transactions I don't know but I'd say the playerbase right now isn't the disaster people claim it is.

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@Tank2042Man wrote:

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@Echo6Echo wrote:

800 whole players? Man that's so depressing. That should read "8000" or even "80,000" new players with a great update on a playable game....

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So we can guess that the playerbase is peaking between 70k and 130k depending on 2042's PC playerbase.

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Meanwhile, a mostly working game, with good updates and mostly functioning correctly (not going to say the name but if you look at the uppermost point you'll know what I mean) have 981,000+ online right now at 9am Eastern.  Like I said, 800 players is sad...it should 80K players.