this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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It's not really a great sign for the developers if their game doesn't have a ton of replay value I imagine. Consider Skyrim, it's the same general type of game, but people play that game over and over and make modifications to it to keep it fresh and enjoyable even now, and as a result Bethesda has been able to resell it for other platforms or with extra content or related merch for years, because people like it enough to keep coming back. If Starfield isn't managing the same despite being the same sort of game from the same company, then that both serves as a warning to those who haven't gotten it yet that the game probably isn't as enjoyable by comparison, and also doesn't give the devs as much incentive to keep making any improvements to it.
I mean, Harry Potter was the biggest selling game last year, and that has also lost 97% of it's players.
Not everything is meant to be played forever. I think Skyrim was a one-off tbh.
That’s another exceptionally boring game, though.
Just checking some random games:
Sekiro is currently sitting at 92% players lost from its peak after five years
Spiritfarer is at 80%
Hollow Knight has only lost 63% of players
Witcher 3 also lost 80%, and actually has a larger active player base (in number of players, not proportionally) right at this moment than HL, despite being years older and peaking significantly lower
Big tentpole releases are likely to have a higher peak though, just for the week one FOMO.
Not defending Starfield because by all accounts it is exceptionally average in all areas, just that losing a lot of players from peak is not particularly unexpected.
Kind of feel sorry for those that paid for it on Steam, because it's the very poster child for a trial month of GamePass.
Witcher 3 had a pretty big update not too long ago though
There hasn’t really been a single point since the game released almost nine years ago where its player count has dropped below current levels (20-40k active players). There was a huge boost with the update but it’s back to normal levels now. Can check steamdb for yourself to confirm
As I understand it, Starfield was supposed to be played for a long time. They literally made the game loop for this reason.
You finish the game by "going to a new universe" and starting over.
Starfield was very bland and had very limited dialogue/storyline in comparison to skyrim, but skyrim was so repetitive and boring with so much of the game being spent in similar looking dungeons fighting drauger...
Even with mods, I never made it through a second playthrough because the gameplay just fizzled with the boring dungeon-crawling required for so many questlines/words of power.
At least in oblivion, most of the caves/oblivion gates were totally optional. So much of skyrim is spent in boring ass dungeons...
This isn't an argument for Starfield replayability tho. Starfield doesn't have enough storyline for much replayability. Felt so bare bones in comparison to skyrim or any other Bethesda game.