Players on Steam went from over 1 million on day 1-3, to under 200,000 days 4 up until now. Meaning that 800,000 players either got their fill of the game, or simply are not playing it. Looking at the achievements, it also shows a stark number of players even progress through the main story long enough to meet and interact with Johnny Silverhand and get the bulk of the game started.
While this can also be an indication of people who got refunds or whatever, overall it's a clear indication that more than HALF the people who bought the game on PC are not playing it for any significant period of time.
This is not sustainable for the next year while bug fixes are made
It'll be easier once we get tools to repack the archive files. As for now there are already things using INI files to adjust car handling, gravity and a 3rd person camera mod is in the works. Many that open available key binds for PC, and unhid things like FOV sliders. Issue is without a mod tool to repack the .archive files in the game, and tools to adjust or insert animations, textures, sound files etc. we'll just have to wait and see. The Witcher series has a plethora of mods available for it, just give them time to either code tools or hope CDPR releases official tools eventually.
Right now I am just hoping they shoe horn in world interactions via patches in the future.
Right now I am just hoping they shoe horn in world interactions via patches in the future.
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I first got to ask, what do you mean by unsustainable? This is a single player game. You buy the game, that's it. It doesn't need a constant number of players to be sustainable. Furthermore, the game has been the best sellers on Steam (and one can assume on GoG and potentially Epic) since it's release. Even with a Steam winter sale going on. Granted it dipped to second spot for a day or two but it's back on top. The game is still selling quite a lot of copies. I have no doubt they're beyond 15-16 million copies sold. We know they were already far into profit territory with 8 million pre-orders. Unless the refund ratio has substantially increased since their announcement on December 20th, it seems very sustainable to me.
This isn't an MMO that requires a steady influx of cash to maintain.
For all their complaining, valid or not, gamers have the shortest memories. If CDPR supports the game decently you can be certain people will buy the paid DLCs by the million and they've got a huge market for it.
I also think you're reading a little too much into those graphs. Huge dips in peak players after release are usual and to be expected. I can't seem to find exact numbers for releases of the magnitude of CP2077 but so far everything I'm finding indicates that no matter the release a 55%+ dip in a matter of days/weeks is completely normal. I'm not saying you're wrong, I can't find reliable numbers to back such a claim but it doesn't seem like such an abnormality.
Back onto the Mods discussion, we are actually discussing the same sort of thing at Beth right now and some interesting numbers came out. Based on amount of copies purchased of any Beth Game to mods actually uploaded Oblivion was the one that had more mods compared to actual sales. So it 'appears' Oblivion was in fact the sudden upswing?
It had just a few 1000 less mods than Skyrim on the Nexus (figures shown at Beth by a forum moderator I have not double checked) but almost 20 Million less copies sold than Skyrim but some of the 30 Mill for Skyrim were on platforms that maybe did not use Mods?
Morrowind was low but as said at Beth, there was multiple sites for Morrowind and the Nexus as we know it was not actually there, so the number they have is probably substantially lower than the actual amount of mads made back then. So TBH mods available compared to actual players (copies purchased) it's possible Morrowind was actually a lot closer than the numbers that can be found indicate.
Morrowind sold 4 Million (ongoing) the mods released could easily be up to double what the Nexus shows but say it's only 50% higher which is around one third of Oblivion sales and the mods it has. So Morrowind could have had an equivalent player to mod ration as Oblivion BUT there is no question based on the figures shown at Beth Oblivion had the biggest player to mod ratio just in the TES franchise.
FO4 was close to Skyrim mods (but higher) sales (ongoing) down nearer the Oblivion sales which are also still happening now. So it sort of looks like FO4 has the highest player to mod ratio above Oblivion and way above Skyrim so FO4 was the biggest swing of them all it seems? That would be the consoles coming on board I'd reckon as number of Nexus Mods also ended up as console mods at Beth.Net? Shame we can not actually trace all the Morrowind Mods on the old Planet site and all the others that faded away.
Interesting discussing mods this way, going back over 20 years of mods for Bethesda's Games, good fun. Cheers
It had just a few 1000 less mods than Skyrim on the Nexus (figures shown at Beth by a forum moderator I have not double checked) but almost 20 Million less copies sold than Skyrim but some of the 30 Mill for Skyrim were on platforms that maybe did not use Mods?
Morrowind was low but as said at Beth, there was multiple sites for Morrowind and the Nexus as we know it was not actually there, so the number they have is probably substantially lower than the actual amount of mads made back then. So TBH mods available compared to actual players (copies purchased) it's possible Morrowind was actually a lot closer than the numbers that can be found indicate.
Morrowind sold 4 Million (ongoing) the mods released could easily be up to double what the Nexus shows but say it's only 50% higher which is around one third of Oblivion sales and the mods it has. So Morrowind could have had an equivalent player to mod ration as Oblivion BUT there is no question based on the figures shown at Beth Oblivion had the biggest player to mod ratio just in the TES franchise.
FO4 was close to Skyrim mods (but higher) sales (ongoing) down nearer the Oblivion sales which are also still happening now. So it sort of looks like FO4 has the highest player to mod ratio above Oblivion and way above Skyrim so FO4 was the biggest swing of them all it seems? That would be the consoles coming on board I'd reckon as number of Nexus Mods also ended up as console mods at Beth.Net? Shame we can not actually trace all the Morrowind Mods on the old Planet site and all the others that faded away.
Interesting discussing mods this way, going back over 20 years of mods for Bethesda's Games, good fun. Cheers
Just look at Steam statistics. The numbers are right there, public and perfectly visible.
When Steam sells millions of copies, then only 70% of players get the achievement for getting the relic, that means 1 of every 3 people did not play the game long enough to progress the main story to that point. Let's assume Steam sold 4 million copies so far. That means over a million players have not progressed this far in the story, which takes less than 4 hours of time to do so.
Only 1 in 4 play long enough to get max street cred (of 50). Only 10% have taken the time to find all the tarot cards, so that means over 3 million players have not been running around looting and shooting for endless hours or searching for side-quests.
Only 7% of players have maxed out any single skill, also meaning most players have not played long enough to progress characters that far. Depending on the skill, it can take 100+ hours of play time to get this achievement.
And only 22% have completed the game.
So when you have close to 2 million people in-game on day 1, followed by over 1 million on days 2 and 3 (and not just downloading the game, but actually IN game), then it drops to where it is now to 150,000 or less, it's pretty clear with these statistics that the game is not holding people.
If players completed the game and moved on, then more than 22% of players would be listed as completing the game. If, instead of completing the game, the other 4 out of 5 players are involved in the open world, exploration, etc. like I am, then the other achievements would be higher percentages. Even just blowing crap up for 100 hours will max out your primary combat skill -yet only 7% of people have a skill at max level....
As for single player games, the KING of such games are the Fallout and Skyrim games. People still play vanilla Skyrim. After 10 years, there are at LEAST 20,000 people in game at any moment of any day playing Skyrim. With Literally over a million people putting over 1,000 hours in game.
Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and non-multiplayer GTA are all single player games. Each of them have MILLIONS of players who have dedicated well over 1,000 hours of their life to just playing that game.
That is also what CP77 was intended to be: A game people would play for years, not a hit it and quit it game
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A Quality World Map has been downloaded by over a million unique people for Skyrim SE. That alone shows you the magnitude of players who will download a mod to enhance their game and continue playing it. Even today, there are 20,000+ people playing Skyrim at any given moment via steam. Not sure if launching via SKSE shows you as in-game on steam though, so the actual number may be higher.
Plenty of people also buy all the re-releases of Skyrim. Someone on PS3 may get it for PS4, then the Switch, then another copy for PC. Modded or not, the content is so vast that people will spend hundreds of dollars to get multiple copes of Bethesda games (primarily Skyrim).
It also means that even 10 years after release, the game will sell. The $16 winter sale for sure had people grabbing copies on steam.
Mods also draw in players, there is no doubt. Many will spend the $15 just to get a copy for PC then mod the crap out of it, even if they are die hard vanilla skyrim fans who play on a Playstation. It's also not just sex or nudity mods either. Those are downloaded by less than 1% of players, while Immersive mods like Immersive Citizens are downloaded by the millions.
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Damn could not get the post of mine in that you quoted and replied to, but you know or can read what you were referring to.
TBH and I really mean TBH I am not sure of what your saying in respect to my post you quoted, I know all this stuff already and have been playing and mod making for Beth Games for 20 years. So I really do not understand the lecture type approach in your reply to my post? I'm one the longer term old school Beth Players and Mod Makers, been making them for upload for years, many for friends requests, every game of Beth's i play is a unique version as i add so many changes of my own.
As far as i'm concerned my post was discussing how and when the big up turn in MA (or mods available) happened with Beth Games. Skyrim is known to be a big modded game PC and Consoles but Oblivion had almost as many mods with far less players. That's it, a discussion that has been in this thread on and off over the last few days (or more) between myself and another member which maybe expanded over time.
I need no 'examples' of what Mods had how many downloads (generally) as with say Skyrim as an example, I would have downloaded any mod from the Nexus on Oldrim and ported them myself for SE that I felt contributed to my game and saved me from making it. I have two 2GB desktop backup drives, full of mods I've downloaded for Morrowind right upto FO4, plus the hundreds I've made for myself and friends. I was also a tester/advisor in a few big mod projects some of which included my art work.
So yea I've have a good understanding of the mod community for around two decades, like the Nexus was originally a Fan created mod hosting site way before it became the Nexus Dark Lord runs today. The Nexus did not exist originally with Morrowind hence it's low mod numbers.
A proper dev kit with a modding scene like skyrim or fallout 4 and I would probably never play anything else.
I'm fully aware of Steam statistics. It simply doesn't allow you to look at individual games past history. Or at least, I haven't found a way to. Other websites do this but there is a lot of evidence they're not reliable the further back you go. Take a quick look at some big release over at Steam charts or SteamDB. You'll see they all have major drops (50%+) within 2-3 weeks of their release.
As for achievements, that's just a flawed metric to measure anything and definitely not a game's retention capabilities.
I have 97 hours in the game. I have 11 achievements. 97 hours and 11 achievements, I have a quarter of all achievements. I JUST got 50 street cred today. My highest combat skill is 13. I am not alone in this either. The mistake with that line of thinking is assuming people play a certain way.
Let's look at Doom Eternal (first game that popped into my view). DE has an achievement for getting 33 glory kills, something you can achieve within an hour without really trying. Yet, 17% of players never got it. Only 36.3% have completed the game. And that's a game which has massively positive player reviews. After 9 months.
Since you brought up Skyrim, did you look at achievements for Skyrim?
Only 31.4% have got Dragonslayer. That means that only 31.4% of people have finished the main quest. Only 31.4% of people have finished one of the games you consider as kings of singleplayer (something I won't argue as I have 1093 hours in Skyrim and another 200 in SE) after 8 years and thousands of hours. Skyrim main quest can be finished within 15-30 hours if you focus on it too. Which is fairly similar to CP's
Yet, CP2077 has been out for 3 weeks and it's somehow indicative that it can't retain people?
Now you're making the mistake it can't be either. The potential is there. There is a lot to do for a 100+ hours in the game as it is. Now, I'm not saying it's all great content but it's there. Just like there was 100+ hours of content of vastly varying degrees of quality in Skyrim (let's be honest, Beth's writing generally doesn't come close to CDPR's level). Skyrim, Fallout 4/3/New Vegas, Oblivion or even Morrowind wouldn't have lasted as long as they have if it wasn't for the modding community
I still fire up Skyrim every now and again to see what kind of crazy mod I can find and plug into my game but if it wasn't for the tools Bethesda releases, most of these mods wouldn't exist. And most, including myself, would not have spent thousands of hours into those games.
There is still plenty of time for CDPR to release the necessary tools for modders to really get into modding CP2077. Plus, CDPR has a much, MUCH, better track record than Beth when it comes to supporting their games.
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Can not argue on that, I've got over 7000 hours with the two versions, I have a friend who is more a Beth nut than I am with over 10,000, neither of us have fully finished the Dragon quest line. Probably never will as that is not what Beth Games are about for a lot of players in our opinion. As to achievements, I have no interest if I have One or a Hundred they are irrelevant to the game IMO. I have no idea what or how many achievements I have accumulated in any game I've played that have them.
Unless there is something earned by completing that achievement within the game, I don't know what for sure. Say kill 500 with a handgun and you gain a benefit when using handguns from then on. Hell I even had to Google to see what Fallout 3 had in the way of achievements and that was a 5000+ hour game for me, that's how really unimportant they actually are.