Popularity VS Longevity

[acrediblesource]

So I see alot of people complain about the longevity of this game decreasing day by day and unheartly folks complaining that they see it as a very very bad thing for the franchise if this game dies.
Who here believes this is true?
Is the fate of this game going to stop those who have played it from returning?
I say no.
Why?
Because fans of the franchise are over 20 years old. Mostly. For the most part, people who are fans of the franchise and are playing this game are 20-50 years of age. No doubt about it. They may not be avid gamers though.
The niche market are those who are primarily gamers, and their retort to this sudden decrease have them shitting their pants because they have no attachment to the many many years of films and franchise based content.
I believe Illfonic has done this gameright. But by no means are they responsible for making content as a service.

People believe that or want to believe that it has life or as much life as a AAA title with more 'written lore' as there is in lord of the rings. This is absolutely the thing that they thought was going to keep them playing it.

Surely if they hired writers to write 3 books worth of content and shove it inside this game it would keep people coming back.
Let's face it, no company has the budget to write 3 books of content and shove it into any game unless they do a AAA title like Horizon Zero Dawn.

So I see alot of grief. Take it like the whining of a new born child with not enough milk.
This game isn't dead or over, but what can they do?

I think the state of developing these online multiplayer games has alot of research and development to do. There are plenty of games to mimick but the problem here is the popularity of this franchise. There are those fans who admittedly want more but are ok with not getting it. And there are those who acknowledge this but demand more for those fans in order to make it substantially more impressive. This is impossible unless the business model exists already for a franchise like this.

There is no point in equating zombie apocalypse type games to this franchise because you can't. Nor can you equate Final Fantasy to ...i don't know Romance of the Three kingdoms or Lord of the Rings to WWZ.


You can't get people addicted to the rebalancing act of changing loadouts. People are addicted to LORE. The same reason why people continue to grind Horizon Zero Dawn to get every single Datapad in the game.
They don't need measure the player base of that game by daily statistics.
They measure it by how many people return to grind to find that last Data pad.

[RidgeTop]

I believe Illfonic has done this gameright. But by no means are they responsible for making content as a service.

Think you mean Cold Iron.

I do feel some are being quick to say the game is in a dying state because of a player drop off, and I suspect many will come back with new content.

Also, there was a time when a game's success was judged by how well it sold, and how people liked it, rather than concurrent users and Twitch viewership. From what we can tell, they're happy with initial sales. And regardless of the amount of concurrent users, if people keep buying the game and content, they'll probably keep making it for a good bit. This isn't even a game that's dependent on needing a lot of players at the same time. It's a three player game, you need two other players to have the optimal experience.

A number of games have gone dormant before and sprung back, they're not always doomed when a chunk of their players take a break.

Cold Iron also addressed this on yesterday's Q&A:

How is Cold Iron responding to the precipitous player drop-off since AFE's initial release, and how does it plan on better sustaining user retention?

Cold Iron: As for the "numbers" - of course we'd love to have everyone in the world playing the game constantly. However, we love the fact that we have a solid and passionate core community, and all of Cold Iron is still working on future Aliens: Fireteam Elite development - issues, QoL, new features and content... a bunch of which we hope improves not just retention, but the game in general.

We're excited with where Aliens: Fireteam Elite is... and still are working to make it even better.

They also said they're already thinking about Year 2 content ideas.

[acrediblesource]

Illfonic? I must had one too many! LOL!

[Voodoo Magic]

Illfonic? I must had one too many! LOL!

Exactly what I was thinking when I read your post! 'tis a drunken rant!