DB and SD - FPS Success

(nailzor) #1

As Splash Damage is trying to make Dirty Bomb to be the next best PC FPS game and be profitable, I thought these statistics were interesting to see the popularity over time as large player bases can in turn bring $$ and longevity.

I want Dirty Bomb to be a game that can be popular for years to come :slight_smile:

WOLF:ET

[ul]
[li]Released May 20, 2003[/li][li]Rating @ IGN: 8.5/10 (No Community rank due to age of game)[/li][li]Online player Count on March 1st, 2013: 4805[/li][/ul]

ET:Quake Wars

[ul]
[li]Released Oct. 2nd 2007[/li][li]Rating @ IGN: 8.5/10 & Community: 8.1/10[/li][li]Estimated PC sales: 250,000 (PC stats site had listed 200,000 total player stats at one time before it went offline)[/li][li]Something interesting to note is ET:QW was released close to TF2/Orange Box release date.[/li][li]Online player Count on March 1st, 2013: ~500 (Hard to estimate with all the bot servers)[/li][/ul]

BRINK

[ul]
[li]Released May 10, 2011[/li][li]Rating @ IGN: 6.5/10 & Community: 6.8/10[/li][li]Estimated PC sales: 256,000 units. (Overall 2.5mil when counting Xbox and PS3 both)[/li][li]Highest players peak: 16824 on May 14th, 2011[/li][li]46% of players played to Rank 2, 5.2% played to rank 5.[/li][li]Online player Count on March 1st, 2013: 11[/li][/ul]

  • The game ratings can be found on IGN’s PC pages, sales numbers from online gaming reports, Steam stats taken from Steam directly, and the current player stats were taken from in game server browser counts.
(maxxxxlol) #2

Here is another interesting one.

Counter strike 1.6. Peak players today. 40,526

Counter strike source. Peak players today. 35,288

Counter strike GO. Peak players today. 26,958

See what happens when you change a good thing for no reason. (movement, shooting etc)

See what happens when you start with a good base and upgrade from there.

Dota 2 Peak players today. 269,649

I’m not saying et2 or qw2 or rtcw2, But a good base point is a good thing imo

(Breo) #3

Don’t forget that W:ET is from another generation.
The generation has changed and there are also more competitors, most FPS gamers are on COD/BF today :frowning:

(warbie) #4

Fixed it for you :slight_smile:

We should bear in mind that ET’s free - there certainly wouldn’t be that many people playing it otherwise. Not knocking it btw - the fact that it’s still popular to this day is testament to it’s quality and I pretty much agree with what the OP’s saying. It’s a shame SD didn’t do a Counter Strike: Source/Go with ET. Had they kept the momentum going we could be on the 2nd paid for iteration by now. Legions of people would have paid and been happy with exactly the same game!

(Valdez) #5

[QUOTE=Breo;431948]Don’t forget that W:ET is from another generation.
The generation has changed and there are also more competitors, most FPS gamers are on COD/BF today :([/QUOTE]

CS is from another generation also, but ppl still play the heck out of that.

(Ashog) #6

Yeah, comparison is not fair - ET was a freebie. In this respect (as much as I don’t like ratings), the ratings are a more interesting sign.

What killed ETQW were the ranked servers and practically no custom content support. In fact, apart from good SDK, there was an anti-custom unsupport incorporated into ETQW, which introduced specific limits and hurdles into the game for usage of custom maps, etc. If not Scrupus with his Nirvana server, custom mapping for ETQW would be dead on the year 2. Hope SD doesn’t go the same road with DB.

(tokamak) #7

Only a small minority cared about non-ranked servers and a game definitely doesn’t need custom content in order to be successful. There were many factors that contributed to ETQW´s under-performing sales. Mostly competition and poor marketing but ranked servers wasn’t one of them.

The lack of ranked servers on W:ET however what truly did kill the entire community as it resulted in ever server throwing in all kind of crap that took ages to load and often was a detriment to the actual gameplay.

(Breo) #8

Hopefully nobody feels offended but let’s be honest here, at least 50% of the custom content doesn’t meet the quality (gameplay, balance, textures, environment etc.) of the vanilla maps. For a solid custom map you need a couple mappers with a lot of time + doing it for free.

Even without stats the vast majority prefer to play the vanilla maps, we see this with the current state of ETQW this means without the “ranked” servers the game was dead already.

(.Chris.) #9

[QUOTE=Breo;432042]Hopefully nobody feels offended but let’s be honest here, at least 50% of the custom content doesn’t meet the quality (gameplay, balance, textures, environment etc.) of the vanilla maps. For a solid custom map you need a couple mappers with a lot of time + doing it for free.

Even without stats the vast majority prefer to play the vanilla maps, we see this with the current state of ETQW this means without the “ranked” servers the game was dead already.[/QUOTE]

Yeah because all the stock maps were top notch? Half the maps in the base game were pants, valley, canyon, outskirts, quarry, slipgate and ark. At least on non-ranked servers you can make your own campaigns and play only the maps that are fun and also set the player limit from something other than 12v12.

Ranked servers created a barrier for people to try the maps in the first place, along with engine issues, how can you say players prefer playing stock maps if they haven’t even played custom ones?

For a solid custom map you forgot to mention you need feedback from players which was pretty much non existent, this is held back mappers from getting their maps to a better quality and put off some of the more experience mappers and modders from even trying in this game, there was a wealth of interest in modding this game pre-release but that amounted to nothing, why? because the vast majority players back then would rather stick to servers that earn them medals and xp grind for them, can’t do that on a non-ranked server. A delayed SDK release also contributed to people moving onto other engines, the mechwarrior mod being a big example, which went on to become and award winning mod and made people buy into crysis just for that mod alone but hey we didn’t need custom content to be successful we had ranked servers!

(Kl3ppy) #10

[QUOTE=Breo;432042]Hopefully nobody feels offended but let’s be honest here, at least 50% of the custom content doesn’t meet the quality (gameplay, balance, textures, environment etc.) of the vanilla maps. For a solid custom map you need a couple mappers with a lot of time + doing it for free.
[/QUOTE]

+1 but in this case you have to consider that a very small amount of players played these maps. When almost everybody is able to play custom maps, the maps will get better and better because more feedback is given and I think, some mappers would spend even more time on creating maps because they know, my map is going to be played when its good.

The ranked servers are somehow the nail in the coffin but also the lifeline of ETQW. The ranked system isnt bad at all, especially now when SD has all the rights. Somebody had the idea of transmitting custom maps to SD for review. When the map is good, it could be sold to the public and the creator could get some benefits from that too. And when there is a sign like “SD approved” , ppl would consider to buy the map if there is a sign that shows that SD approved the map or SD made the map. And when its approved by SD the map could be played on ranked servers and the normal gamer would buy it to play all maps. But it could be a community devider too. If someone doesnt want to buy a map, he cant join every server etc and if there are too less ppl playing the “old” maps, he might leave DB.

(Ashog) #11

LOLL? Your opinion is WRONG © murka :slight_smile:

The lack of ranked servers on W:ET however what truly did kill the entire community as it resulted in ever server throwing in all kind of crap that took ages to load and often was a detriment to the actual gameplay.

LOLLLLL? No ranked servers is WHAT SAVED W:ET and allowed it to be still played by a fraction of players still after all these years. Look at gazillions of custom maps for W:ET (still being produced!).

(.Chris.) #12

You changed man…

(tokamak) #13

If the stock content had been protected then W:ET would still be the second biggest online shooter under Counterstrike.

(Kl3ppy) #14

Dont forget I’m a badass banker (apples thinks that) and im greedy (apples thinks that again :wink:)

(.Chris.) #15

fixed server sizes, persistent statistics and ranks, forced campaign rotations and server settings would have killed it much sooner.

(Kl3ppy) #16

to make chris happy:
Selling maps/weapons in DB is a bad idea!

Just sell stuff that doesnt exclude someone who doesnt have it from joining every server. If someone cant join the server he wants, he wont stay long in DB.

(tokamak) #17

The majority wouldn’t have cared and kept on playing. Custom content was a novelty, a great novelty but ultimately the stock content had an infinite replay value and simply never tired.

(acQu) #18

Mainly the custom content was keeping me playing W:ET (voice packs, map packs and occassionally some theme packs like e.g. christmas packs were always nice, bad was all the menu-rape stuff etc …).

I guess i know that servers playing the no-custom-content-card are also successful, but only to the new players. Older players can’t just play the 6 stock maps without any packs over and over again. Noone is that crazy :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #19

I am. And the custom content mutilating that whole game is the only thing that stops me from getting back into it, same goes for anyone else I know that used to play it.

(acQu) #20

Hm, i never had such view. Maybe you visited a server with 500 MB downloads multiple times, but i can assure you that the right servers had very decent packs with about maximum 50 ~ 70 MB. Downloading that does not take long.

What raped the game entirely was the menu stuff imo, and when people started to fake info to get more players. Dunno, especially without the voice packs and the map packs i would have quit W:ET much earlier.

Do not get what is the problem with those packs tbh. Like were they really that bad to kill the whole experience ??? :frowning: Or was it the download time ?