I mostly agree, but I can guess one reason why it’s useful. With a game that’s not that old, but well received, I’d expect new players to keep coming in for a while. Not to the degree of when it first came out, but someone like me will wishlist a game and wait until there’s a sale or I have time to play it to buy and play. If the drop off is huge, and sales don’t help much, it does reflect on the game somewhat.
I dunno, I played Skyrim through once, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of replay value to me.
It’s very long, and you can do everything in one playthrough. The only difference is which army you want to win, and you make that choice right at the end.
You can even take control of the magic guild even though you know no magic. I honestly don’t know what other people see in it. Modding maybe? Not something that interests me. New Vegas was a lot more interesting.
Skyrim’s true power is that it’s excellent for single-player roleplay. The game is very immersive, the universe feels extremely vast, and the gameplay allows for extremely varied play styles.
The end result is that the game is very replayable if your thing is building a consistent and unique (head)cannon for your character. If you don’t focus the main quest, you can put in hundreds of hours across multiple characters before things get stale. Even the quests that you follow multiple times, you might approach from very different angles.
Yeah I never valued skyrim for replayability… I replayed oblivion a lot (maybe because I was younger), and replayed FO3/NV a bit. But even with mods, I could never get myself to replay skyrim more than a couple hours in.
Just felt so repetitive with boring dungeons and drauger. Stumbling into Blackreach was one of my favorite Bethesda experiences tho. But the gameplay felt stale halfway through my first playthrough. Felt like a chore to finish the story.
To some degree, yes. Very few people are playing Skyrim in it’s vanilla format, these days. The same is likely true of Fallout 4.
I enjoyed Starfield but it’s definitely missing something Skyrim had which made me continue playing after I completed the MSQ.
I’ve put close to 500 hours into vanilla Cyberpunk but only around 80 into Starfield. My classic Skyrim, which I did play mostly vanilla, was roughly 250 hours. Where special edition is around 1500 hours purely due to mods.
But I already know I’m not chomping at the bit to mod Starfield like I was other games.
The IP holder at this point is Microsoft, so who knows. Microsoft has bought up a lot of big gaming outfits recently, so this is kind of new territory.
I’m waiting on more world shit mods to play it again, recently saw a house building mod on any planet and have my hopes up more will come. Granted Bethesda might actually want this engagement so they can release a definitive edition with hella mods, to bridge their own technical gaps again lol.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve never understood why that matters for anything other than purely multiplayer games.
People finish games and move on. It’s not some GaaS bollocks.
I mostly agree, but I can guess one reason why it’s useful. With a game that’s not that old, but well received, I’d expect new players to keep coming in for a while. Not to the degree of when it first came out, but someone like me will wishlist a game and wait until there’s a sale or I have time to play it to buy and play. If the drop off is huge, and sales don’t help much, it does reflect on the game somewhat.
Yeah, this headline reads “disappointing single player game somehow stopped selling all that much after 6 months”
Like… Yeah???
I thought replayability was sort of Bethsoft’s MO?
I dunno, I played Skyrim through once, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of replay value to me.
It’s very long, and you can do everything in one playthrough. The only difference is which army you want to win, and you make that choice right at the end.
You can even take control of the magic guild even though you know no magic. I honestly don’t know what other people see in it. Modding maybe? Not something that interests me. New Vegas was a lot more interesting.
I liked living Skyrim 4 from wabbajack but yeah the base game isn’t really that special and I haven’t replayed it without mods
Skyrim’s true power is that it’s excellent for single-player roleplay. The game is very immersive, the universe feels extremely vast, and the gameplay allows for extremely varied play styles.
The end result is that the game is very replayable if your thing is building a consistent and unique (head)cannon for your character. If you don’t focus the main quest, you can put in hundreds of hours across multiple characters before things get stale. Even the quests that you follow multiple times, you might approach from very different angles.
Pretty much. Bethesda’s RPGs live and die by their mod support.
Yeah I never valued skyrim for replayability… I replayed oblivion a lot (maybe because I was younger), and replayed FO3/NV a bit. But even with mods, I could never get myself to replay skyrim more than a couple hours in.
Just felt so repetitive with boring dungeons and drauger. Stumbling into Blackreach was one of my favorite Bethesda experiences tho. But the gameplay felt stale halfway through my first playthrough. Felt like a chore to finish the story.
Skyrim is 13 years old and has many more players. It says “Starfield was not a return to form for Bethesda.”
Is it something to do with modding-community?
If that generates a load of free cool stuff people may play more for longer.
The main IP rights owner probably doesn’t really want this, they want to develop and sell a new game or expansion.
To some degree, yes. Very few people are playing Skyrim in it’s vanilla format, these days. The same is likely true of Fallout 4.
I enjoyed Starfield but it’s definitely missing something Skyrim had which made me continue playing after I completed the MSQ.
I’ve put close to 500 hours into vanilla Cyberpunk but only around 80 into Starfield. My classic Skyrim, which I did play mostly vanilla, was roughly 250 hours. Where special edition is around 1500 hours purely due to mods.
But I already know I’m not chomping at the bit to mod Starfield like I was other games.
The IP holder at this point is Microsoft, so who knows. Microsoft has bought up a lot of big gaming outfits recently, so this is kind of new territory.
Nah, it’s just Todd Howard. His priorities are weird as hell when it comes to games.
Like, dialog and story is not prioritized.
While map size is highly prioritized.
It’s a bit backwards when the games in question are supposed to be RPGs.
16 times the details
4 times the size
Fallout 70 dicks
I’m waiting on more world shit mods to play it again, recently saw a house building mod on any planet and have my hopes up more will come. Granted Bethesda might actually want this engagement so they can release a definitive edition with hella mods, to bridge their own technical gaps again lol.
The main IP rights holder is the same as that of Skyrim (aka: Bethesda)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Witcher 3 had a pretty big update not too long ago though
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.