TC is here but where are the players?
- Thread starter Gnidex
- Start date
The only damage done here is by yourself.
Up compared to when?
For the last week the game had 1,8k peak concurrent users over the weekend, 1,6k normally. That is up from what?
I also believed that many more players were waiting to come back for TC. Quite surprised that so few did. It is also summer so people aren't playing games as much. However, if in the next couple of month there isn't a sizeable surge of returning players then i’m not sure it ever will. If TC doesn't bring people back i really dont know what will. UE 5? I really doubt people will return for slightly better graphics.
Mortal Online suffers from two major setbacks.
1: A lack of a proper marketing campaign. They don't have anyone hyping the game on streams, on YouTube, on Rumble, Twitter/X, anywhere. The only people who know about TC are the people who follow this game, actively play it, or the lurkers like me who simply stir the pot on the forums.
Most gamers these days follow streamers, trends, and hype. You have to lean into that, spam social media and build a following.
2: While I cannot speak from firsthand experience as I've never played this game (outside of a couple hours on open stress test Beta), the new player experience was always lacking in the first game, and SV was so detached from the reality of their playerbase that they railroaded the new guys from the Steam Release into THE most hostile city occupied by THE most malicious, sadistic, and hostile guild of players that could be imagined- AND WE ACTIVELY WARNED THEM NOT TO DO SO!
Bonus Point 3: The playerbase itself as well as the mechanics of the game just tend to scare people away. It's a niche game with an even more niche community. It is a unique experience but incredibly stressful to people who place value in progression and see progression as wiped out every time they get gangbanged by a roaming group of red murderers who think "PeeVeePee" is having 10 guys jump on one or two dudes just running around adventuring. (That's not PeeVeePee, it's just being a bully and a dick)
Conclusion is, the deck is stacked against the game and SV and it'll take some culture shifts in the playerbase and at SV to turn more people on to this game, but the reality is that the playerbase will likely always be smaller due to the nature of the game.
They sold tens of thousands of copies for launch. And absolutely butchered it. The fault is SV, and always will be. They had their FREE marketing with big streamers on Twitch. But launch was the worst of any MMO I've played. And once the average player experiences that, no amount of "hype" or marketing can bring them back.
Sure, launch was bad. So you really gotta razzle dazzle them with some real polish and marketing once it's stable.
Yeah, they botched it. Have they made significant improvements since then? I sincerely do not know, I never played.
If they have, that might retain players.
There is something to be said for launching when the product is not ready and it's following a trend in gaming that has been plaguing the industry for too many years now.
Well you know we've both played MO1 for a very long time. MO2 can be summed up as a worse MO1 with better graphics imo. Combat is worse, balance is equally as bad (they've always been terrible with any kind of balance), world is larger and currently more empty, the time required to have the experience you did in MO1 is doubled (at least).
I created a guild and played beta and months into launch. After finding myself sitting around Fab road with my guild ganking whoever came by, since that was the only content you could get without running for hours, I asked myself WHY and I here doing this same shit I did years ago in a game that is just worse in almost every way imo.
Came back for a little while a few weeks ago. Took us an hour to get our characters in place and geared up. Went out for a small scale fight, got zerged. Logged out once I realized I no longer care to dedicate so much time for that 1-5 minute dopamine hit that comes by every now and then. Sometimes it just the hit, without the dopamine.
I don't see myself ever playing again. As much as I wanted to...the game is just following the same ole mistakes MO1 did (shocker), but this time everything is much more tedious.
Maybe I've just grown out of it....who knows.
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Might have grown out of it tbh. There's hardly a thrill in butchering people or getting butchered, the thrill is in overcoming adversity which you don't really do.
As for the subject of "balance" we've argued back and forth for years that the entire idea of balance is subjective, and that a core aspect of the game has been and always will be asymmetry- which by its nature is inherently imbalanced as there needs to be a mix of hard and soft counters to everything, and people of one playstyle might not like that they are countered by another playstyle. That's understandable but is also healthy for the dynamic of the gameplay. The only way anything could ever truly be "balanced" would be to make this game an arena with all weapons of all types having the same exact damage and attack speed values, and all armor mitigating the same damage. That is true balance, and MO has always been very far away from that.
You know me, I always had more of a thrill when combat had "meaning" through politics, conquest, objectives, etc. Just killing for the sake of killing was more tedious than it was fun, especially since there were only a handful of players I could actually rely on as peers in combat and others were more or less just meat-shields- which is cold of me to say but that's the cynical way of looking at the past when I led players as soldiers.
When the veteran players were getting hyped leading up to the release and exclaiming that the population will double or even tipple in their predictions I tried to explain to players like Tatsuya and other veterans that TC will have little impact on the over-all population. In fact it could even be detrimental after some time due to TC mechanics being oppressive to solo and small groups which make up a much larger subset.
1. Most people that were interested in TC and Mortal 2 were already playing the game.
2. It appeals to the smallest subset of the smallest subset of players: Hardcore full loot gamers who also enjoy large group content, who also enjoy hitting structures.
Things like the below would have a better impact on player retention rates and player adoption rates then TC:
1. Dynamic dungeon exits
2. Ease of access to priests
3. Ease of access to horses
4. More dungeons
5. Roaming bosses
6. Anti-zerg mechanics that are not build limited
7. Fast travel while ghost (no cape/no trinkets/No soulbounds).
You can't expect players to police themselves. It's an insane proposition. The game is bad not because of marketing or griefing players but because of the mechanics that allow them to grief. There are mechanics in place in Albion, EVE and OSRS to allow the Hardcore PVP, Casual PVP and Casual PVE players to exist together. There are checks and balances to make those games fair and enjoyable for all.
If you want Mortal 2 to have a large population you must first accept that it is a objectively bad game and understand why it's a bad game. It is a bad game because of the player census which correlates into player consensus. The consensus is in; 500k+ copies sold and a couple thousand regular players stuck around with a player retention rate far below 1%.
This is an appeal to everyone to remove their bias from the game and start thinking in terms of the greater good. The changes that are necessary to make Mortal appeal to a normal player would require revisiting and revising the most basic mechanics in the game.
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So, since SV believes the game is allright it's circling the drain since the issues are systemic?
Which, they had a golden opportunity to do this with Mortal 2. They had a 10 year long beta with MO1. They couldn't have asked for a better time to perfect their second game.
Instead, they chose copy paste mechanics. Same ole mistakes. Same ole gameplay loop. Bigger map. Better graphics.
Its actually insane to think how badly they fucked up. Its fine that 1000 players enjoy the game and can disagree with people who say the game is bad. But its like you said, it's objectively bad. They had a chance to take a decade of data and player feedback and build an amazing game that fixed the issues and shortcomings that MO1 had.
But nope. The population is identical to MO1 and the subs are going to lower it furthur.
I cannot say I disagree, however I'm coming from a place of ignorance. I spent many years in MO1 and never made the leap to MO2 - mostly because they reneged on their early promise of allowing *some* transfer of progress from MO-1 to MO-2.
I also get into having a proper career and life, one in which I can't be asked to make this game my life just to build a new character from the ground up and play catch-up. It's just not feasible.
I could tell you what my gripes were with MO-1 but I'm not sure if that's a 1:1 translation to MO-2. I hated changes like adding fall damage when jumping from heights into water as it made epic escapes from bad situations into impossible and unnecessary fights to the death.
I hated the changes that they made to "heavy armor" with stamina that effectively nerfed it beyond useage and the arbitrary standard by which "heavy armor" applied.
I hated the lack of some mechanics, and how they arbitrarily nerfed or altered other mechanics, and I specifically hated that being a "good guy" was actively punished and handicapped by the flagging system and was used and abused by the people who preyed on others.
The last time heavy armor wasn't meta aside from magic users was 2015. Ever since then, its literally "whats your max armor weight and I will make you a set"
I was gonna leave a bad review on steam, but I decided to post here. Haha.
Yo... all this stuff is old news, but I just wanna type it out so we can REMEMBER.
THE GAME WAS SUPPOSED TO LAUNCH WITH TC. THE GAME LAUNCH WAS THE DEATH OF THE GAME. BETA WAS BETTER.
THE GAME GOT WORSE WITH ALL OF THE ADDED CONTENT: TRINKETS, NEW MAGIC, PETSTUFF.
HAVEN + THE ADVICE "STAY IN HAVEN TIL YOU ARE LEVELED" IS SO DETRIMENTAL TO THE GROWTH OF THE GAME.
THE FORUMS SHOW THE TRUE STATE OF THIS GAME.
It still makes the most sense to take the L from everyone who has xxx pixels and TOTAL WIPE / REMOVE ALL CONTENT THAT ISN'T QoL. Start over with TC. Fix clade gain if you haven't. Fix book reading if you haven't. Never make magic or any skills gated by more than like 100g. Stop making derplord magic. Make pets fodder, but make them easier to obtain. REMOVE HAVEN. You spawn into REALITY with opportunity to grow your character. If you don't have that, your game is flawed from the beginning. A parallel universe does not fix that.
Man, if the game was BETA MO2 level w/ early-ish MO1 level conflict/content/combat, it would be playable!
One more thing I realized. Get ready for this one kids. This is worth all of the words you already read!
BOWS: Shortbows should do more damage to armor. Asym and Longbows should not do WAY more damage than short bows; their advantage should be RANGE. smartthinking.gif. WOW.
Oo and MELEE: Speed up swings and get rid of free charged hit on parry + counter reduce. Then, you can keep the super long parry window. Ya gotta swing sometime, then you can be tagged. It's like people still haven't realized in a 3D game that up down left right is NOT AS COMPLEX as SPACE. Speaking of SPACE, get rid of that combat jumping garbage.
You dudes played yourself out with the "but I can't 1v3 then!!!"
Ahh, ok. Gnite.
Yo... all this stuff is old news, but I just wanna type it out so we can REMEMBER.
THE GAME WAS SUPPOSED TO LAUNCH WITH TC. THE GAME LAUNCH WAS THE DEATH OF THE GAME. BETA WAS BETTER.
THE GAME GOT WORSE WITH ALL OF THE ADDED CONTENT: TRINKETS, NEW MAGIC, PETSTUFF.
HAVEN + THE ADVICE "STAY IN HAVEN TIL YOU ARE LEVELED" IS SO DETRIMENTAL TO THE GROWTH OF THE GAME.
THE FORUMS SHOW THE TRUE STATE OF THIS GAME.
It still makes the most sense to take the L from everyone who has xxx pixels and TOTAL WIPE / REMOVE ALL CONTENT THAT ISN'T QoL. Start over with TC. Fix clade gain if you haven't. Fix book reading if you haven't. Never make magic or any skills gated by more than like 100g. Stop making derplord magic. Make pets fodder, but make them easier to obtain. REMOVE HAVEN. You spawn into REALITY with opportunity to grow your character. If you don't have that, your game is flawed from the beginning. A parallel universe does not fix that.
Man, if the game was BETA MO2 level w/ early-ish MO1 level conflict/content/combat, it would be playable!
One more thing I realized. Get ready for this one kids. This is worth all of the words you already read!
BOWS: Shortbows should do more damage to armor. Asym and Longbows should not do WAY more damage than short bows; their advantage should be RANGE. smartthinking.gif. WOW.
Oo and MELEE: Speed up swings and get rid of free charged hit on parry + counter reduce. Then, you can keep the super long parry window. Ya gotta swing sometime, then you can be tagged. It's like people still haven't realized in a 3D game that up down left right is NOT AS COMPLEX as SPACE. Speaking of SPACE, get rid of that combat jumping garbage.
You dudes played yourself out with the "but I can't 1v3 then!!!"
Ahh, ok. Gnite.
people are just burnt out by disappointment. Still no archer play style (no arrow crafting, no blunt arrows, etc.), bugs still around since beta that SV can’t bother to fix, no thieving, no breeding, no basic qol features, list goes on.
Then they drop long-awaited TC and it sucked (let’s be real, it’s mediocre at best, nothing fun about the system, but it still somehow took 2 years to roll out). Hopium is gone. There is no confidence left that SV can deliver on their promises.
Then they drop long-awaited TC and it sucked (let’s be real, it’s mediocre at best, nothing fun about the system, but it still somehow took 2 years to roll out). Hopium is gone. There is no confidence left that SV can deliver on their promises.
The other disappointing thing is how there havent been very many sieges so far. Ive heard of only 1 so far and not sure if they managed to actually destroyed the keep. Most people seem more willing to just sell a keep they cant defend.
How ridiculous is it to implement a sige mechanic that makes it more expensive to siege assets than it does to build them? Its moronic, especially since the victors have to rebuild from scratch which basically doubles your costs. This way nobody wants to spend the time and gold to a actually siege. Its way cheaper to just pay for the keep transfer.
This patch was supposed to give everyone reasons to pvp. Instead they made it way too complicated, boring and expensive so now nobody even bothers with it.
Not even 2 weeks into TC and we are already back to MO1 with the 3 giant nutcups all content with just holding their keeps and avoiding expensive and tedious wars.
How ridiculous is it to implement a sige mechanic that makes it more expensive to siege assets than it does to build them? Its moronic, especially since the victors have to rebuild from scratch which basically doubles your costs. This way nobody wants to spend the time and gold to a actually siege. Its way cheaper to just pay for the keep transfer.
This patch was supposed to give everyone reasons to pvp. Instead they made it way too complicated, boring and expensive so now nobody even bothers with it.
Not even 2 weeks into TC and we are already back to MO1 with the 3 giant nutcups all content with just holding their keeps and avoiding expensive and tedious wars.
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