Ray brings up a pretty good point. It does not matter too much, but it does depend on the genre of certain games where a low count can effect games like DOTA or Battle Royale. So what do you think?
How Much Does Multiplayer Population Matter?
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Ray brings up a pretty good point. It does not matter too much, but it does depend on the genre of certain games where a low count can effect games like DOTA or Battle Royale. So what do you think?
Didn't watch the video yet but population matters in games with bigger player counts. My best multiplayer experiences are with games with low player counts where much of the population were the dedicated players, you got to know everyone and you played against better players, which resulted in better matches.
Ray does mention it in the vid abot how some game do this. Match you and other players at your skill level or what play modes the player prefers. Watch whenever you get the chance.
I'll put the video in watch later! Large populations are reassuring to me! For example; Final Fantasy XI vs XIV. There's definitely a great deal of dedicated XI players, but I found it much more intimidating. Final Fantasy XIV had a friendlier crowd.
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It really depends on the game. An mmo can do with a smaller more dedicated population since it can be cool to have a community that knows each other. But a competitive game needs a larger pop usually since you don't want to be against the same people over and over unless its more of a party game feel. Like a party server in tf2 or a big 30 person server in COD4 (the small maps were so great for earning gun skins).
If your game is competitive, it's imperative to have a large population. That way when someone new picks up the game, they will actually have other new people to play against and not just the masters who have been playing the same game or genre for years (multiple decades, in some cases).
This is the biggest issue that stunts fighting game growth, and why it's really smart to get into a game on day 1 where you'll have more people around your skill level picking up the game. If you don't do that then you will have a much harder time getting to a skill level that can fight evenly with the average random online player. Even something as seemingly small as just an extra month can make a difference, which is why Japan is dominant in a lot of these games, since they get them earlier. In games with true worldwide releases like DBFZ or BBTAG you have a much more even playing field than in older stuff like Xrd or central fiction.
The whole "match with people your skill level" thing doesn't work when there's nobody your skill level playing the game, and the way to have that happen is having more people playing the game, increasing your chances of being matched with someone around your skill level.
Granblue Fantasy Versus recently tested a new netplay mode where they blocked of ranked and made this new mode called blitz that grouped people in rank brackets and you would play to gain points and earn rewards. The game would only match you vs people in your rank. The idea is fine but the issue is that not everyone plays rank (since it takes too much time to be matched with people in that mode, and you get like 3 times more matches in lobby or player rooms where you get instant rematches) so you have a mix of super good and super bad players populating the lower rank tier. I grinded the mode for the day it was up and I managed to break into the top 100 to get the best rewards and my experience was basically either new people or super strong people. And this is with the limiting of same rank matching, so the normal matching would be even more volatile than that.
This is the biggest issue that stunts fighting game growth, and why it's really smart to get into a game on day 1 where you'll have more people around your skill level picking up the game. If you don't do that then you will have a much harder time getting to a skill level that can fight evenly with the average random online player. Even something as seemingly small as just an extra month can make a difference, which is why Japan is dominant in a lot of these games, since they get them earlier. In games with true worldwide releases like DBFZ or BBTAG you have a much more even playing field than in older stuff like Xrd or central fiction.
The whole "match with people your skill level" thing doesn't work when there's nobody your skill level playing the game, and the way to have that happen is having more people playing the game, increasing your chances of being matched with someone around your skill level.
Granblue Fantasy Versus recently tested a new netplay mode where they blocked of ranked and made this new mode called blitz that grouped people in rank brackets and you would play to gain points and earn rewards. The game would only match you vs people in your rank. The idea is fine but the issue is that not everyone plays rank (since it takes too much time to be matched with people in that mode, and you get like 3 times more matches in lobby or player rooms where you get instant rematches) so you have a mix of super good and super bad players populating the lower rank tier. I grinded the mode for the day it was up and I managed to break into the top 100 to get the best rewards and my experience was basically either new people or super strong people. And this is with the limiting of same rank matching, so the normal matching would be even more volatile than that.
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For games like Payday 2 and L4D2, the population is fairly important, as that's where you will pull your teammates from. If fewer people are playing, you might run into issues of matchmaking.
For MMORPGs, eh, kind of depends really. I mean, you can easily play most of their content as a solo player, and only need to socialize to do things like raids and dungeons. If it has a significant player economy, that could stagnate as well if the population is low and not very active. So depending on your class, it could be more of a detriment. Like you built a healer/support class, and have noone to heal. But, the solo rogue/mage dpser, can manage just fine in the world by themselves.
For MMORPGs, eh, kind of depends really. I mean, you can easily play most of their content as a solo player, and only need to socialize to do things like raids and dungeons. If it has a significant player economy, that could stagnate as well if the population is low and not very active. So depending on your class, it could be more of a detriment. Like you built a healer/support class, and have noone to heal. But, the solo rogue/mage dpser, can manage just fine in the world by themselves.
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That brings up a good point. How the match maker works. A game with a server browser can make due with a smaller population since you can still probably find a server with people on it, but if you have a match maker then you need a bigger pop since that is more people for the algorithm to pick from to pair you up with.
Yeah, I think it's mainly down to how many are online at any given time. So like, a game with say, only 10k people playing any given time of the day, might be considered a very small game. But, I mean for PD 2 and L4D2, that's more than enough people to pair up 4 of you for a 30 minute map run. I remember TB talking about that when people would say "X game is dead, because only Y people are playing it at any time." And he would be like "Asshole that's PLENTY to do a match with! STFU!"
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When people say X game is dead, you can probably ignore them since people say it about any game with a drop off of players. They said it about PUBG when it went from like 1.2 mil at once to 975k. There are dead games but gamers are horrible at actually naming them since a dead game is usually one no one has thought of in a very long time.
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Yes yes I should have mentioned Battleborn as an exception since that was one of the rare high profile games that died when people still remembered it. And it was a pretty good game too, they just fucked up the release, the monetization and released it too close to a similar blizzard game. Not many remember lawbreakers though, it was rather forgettable.
Not to mention Lawbreakers did not do much to stand out from the crowded, crowdy, crowd, market. Everything about it screamed generic. At least Battleborn had its own look to it, and I had no interest in that either.
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Yeah, it had a realistic graphic style for a genera that really needs more style to be interesting, the gameplay was fine I suppose.
I watched the video at like 1 in the morning, so he may have actually mentioned this, but I think you need to consider the regions a game's MP population is spread across. A total player count means nothing to me if none of those players live in Asia like I do. Games that were supposed to have healthy MP populations like Titanfall 2 and SWBF2 by EA were very hit or miss experiences for me.