116 Active Players.

[uglyduckling81]

At least they won't have any more bugs being discovered if no one plays it.

[Alexoff]

These players should be very happy, because fifty developers are working for them

[TickleMyMary]

Even if you say that 10x more people are playing outside of steam in some way, they'd still be embarrassing numbers... Especially for a 3 month old game .

Played for 40 mins last patch and realised I wasn't gonna see what I wanted out of the game for quite some time, if ever... So much so, this forum is the only interaction I have with the game of late as I have no reason to play something that doesn't look, feel, smell or taste like the iteration that came before.

Still waiting for that killer build the devs just cannot put down.

[The Aziz]

Oh yes that's certainly an interesting statistic, about a number of people who are still playing.

You just don't learn, do you?

[Alexoff]

15 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

You just don't learn, do you?

Are you saying that someone will come here not to discuss the topic, but only to swear with other users?

[Yakuzi]

2 hours ago, uglyduckling81 said:

At least they won't have any more bugs being discovered if no one plays it.

Everything goes according to plan.

 

[stephensmat]

I'm still playing. Playtime does not reflect my devotion or interest; thanks to RL.

I will admit that I'm waiting for Science mode. It's the mode I learned on in KSP1, and I appreciate the structure.

This number is soft. The current players don't reflect the final product anymore than the current game.

[Alexoff]

The quarterly report T2 will be released tomorrow. I wonder what they will write about KSP2? Will Nate write about the successful release of early access (25.000 peak players!) and how confident the development team is looking into a brighter future?

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

The player count can’t increase if nothing was added to the game.

Of course player count continues to decrease, the game has just as many features as it launched with, and that wasn’t a lot to write home about anyway. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, TickleMyMary said:

10x more people are playing outside of steam in some way

I don't think that number is generally correct.  It may be with the very small number of people still playing that the majority remaining have found mods they like and are going in through the exe or bypassing Steam / never bought through Steam. 

(Observation - those still playing seem like the Krazy Kraft / Sandbox only people, anyway) 

But when the numbers were higher, my incredibly scientific poll suggested that the actual number of non-Steam players was about 75% of the Steam players.  Meaning if Steamdb showed 10k playing, you could expect the actual number to be 17,500 ish. 

I'm guessing there are a whole bunch of us who are station keeping at this point awaiting each update. 

When they drop the next bug fix, we will see a few thousand jump on, check it out for a day or two and then dwindle again b/c Sandbox is boring and the game still has bugs - and then a considerable number more will jump on for Science. 

That said - I don't foresee any meaningful jump until Colonies b/c Science is going to disappoint.  Colonies, however, is not only new to us - but it's also the thing the team is building towards.  That is when I think /hope we can feel the game making progress towards the finish line. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[TickleMyMary]

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I don't think that number is generally correct.  It may be with the very small number of people still playing that the majority remaining have found mods they like and are going in through the exe or bypassing Steam / never bought through Steam. 

(Observation - those still playing seem like the Krazy Kraft / Sandbox only people, anyway) 

But when the numbers were higher, my incredibly scientific poll suggested that the actual number of non-Steam players was about 75% of the Steam players.  Meaning if Steamdb showed 10k playing, you could expect the actual number to be 10,750 ish. 

I'm guessing there are a whole bunch of us who are station keeping at this point awaiting each update. 

When they drop the next bug fix, we will see a few thousand jump on, check it out for a day or two and then dwindle again b/c Sandbox is boring and the game still has bugs - and then a considerable number more will jump on for Science. 

That said - I don't foresee any meaningful jump until Colonies b/c Science is going to disappoint.  Colonies, however, is not only new to us - but it's also the thing the team is building towards.  That is when I think /hope we can feel the game making progress towards the finish line. 

Not going to really disagree with you at all...Except to say that to reach the numbers you quoted, there would have to be nearly 100x the players that use the .exe bypass and/or are using mods based on the stat provided by OP. Seeing as there have only been just over 4k downloads for the most recent version of BepInEx, for people using mods on the current game version, there can only be that many users possibly using the bypass while using mods (feasible to think that people could use mods and use the launcher too).

We're never going to know what they actual figures are though so speculation, while fun, is pretty pointless.

Hopefully things will pan out but I really don't like what I hear from the team, I don't feel it's ever going to be the game we saw 3 years ago... And, that's ok. I'm sure there are plenty of places to point the blame but I'm sure they already feel the weight of their own 'failures' more than somebody here could point out. C'est la vie.

I do have hope for the game but I don't expect to see anything over the next 12 months that could change my current feelings on the game... Best to treat it like a creepy uncle and just message in occasionally.

[Yakuzi]

34 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

...the actual number of non-Steam players was about 75% of the Steam players.  Meaning if Steamdb showed 10k playing, you could expect the actual number to be 10,750 ish.

I take it you meant 17,500-ish?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, TickleMyMary said:

Not going to really disagree with you at all...Except to say that to reach the numbers you quoted, there would have to be nearly 100x the players that use the .exe bypass and/or are using mods based on the stat provided by OP. Seeing as there have only been just over 4k downloads for the most recent version of BepInEx, for people using mods on the current game version, there can only be that many users possibly using the bypass while using mods (feasible to think that people could use mods and use the launcher too).

After reading this - I had to go back and look at my numbers... poor coffee addled brain failed to write the answer to 10k * 1.75 correctly.  I've fixed that.

7,500 mod users for 10k Steam players is what I meant to write.  That would account for your 4k downloads better than the 750 I originally typed in!  (SMH / Self-Own)

 

...

 

That said - I agree with the emotional content of your post above.  I'm in the after stages of being massively disappointed (heck, perplexed and offended) by the state of the game on Release to EA, given what we were led to believe it would be like.

Still - I'm moderately hopeful they can pull it off, if only because I want to play the game we were promised.

Just now, Yakuzi said:

I take it you meant 17,500-ish?

Yeah - see above.  Not enough Coffee.

[Dew169]

Not to mention you have no way to count those like me who aren’t going to buy KSP2 until it actually has some of the hype that’s been promised. I want to see how science and colonies are truly gonna work before plucking down $50, because I’m not sure my vision of KSP2 is quite what the devs intend deliver. Only time will tell. 

[PDCWolf]

22 minutes ago, Dew169 said:

Not to mention you have no way to count those like me who aren’t going to buy KSP2 until it actually has some of the hype that’s been promised. I want to see how science and colonies are truly gonna work before plucking down $50, because I’m not sure my vision of KSP2 is quite what the devs intend deliver. Only time will tell. 

If you're not playing, you're not a player. If you don't own the game, you're not an owner. Further on, you've conditioned your future ownership to the game being what you want. You are just not part of the statistic at hand then.

6 hours ago, TickleMyMary said:

this forum is the only interaction I have with the game of late as I have no reason to play something that doesn't look, feel, smell or taste like the iteration that came before.

There's almost 7 times more people looking at the forum right now than playing the game, all I need to say... Mic drop, etc.

 

[pandaman]

I fail to see the real relevance of that metric, other than deliberately trying to paint a gloomy picture.

Sure, that number is small, but I (and I assume) many others won't show at all.

True, I'm not playing it as much as I would if it were in a better state, but that doesn't mean I have lost interest.  And I would guess that many others are the same.

[PDCWolf]

8 minutes ago, pandaman said:

I fail to see the real relevance of that metric, other than deliberately trying to paint a gloomy picture.

Sure, that number is small, but I (and I assume) many others won't show at all.

True, I'm not playing it as much as I would if it were in a better state, but that doesn't mean I have lost interest.  And I would guess that many others are the same.

Because you can't "credit" interested or prospective players. If the game ends up an abandoned failure you're not gonna buy it so not like I could count you right now.

Also, the way these statistics work to paint a really gloomy picture is to put them in context with the current market and how it's grown since KSP1:

KSP1 launched on Steam in 2013, 10 years ago. Steam's userbase has grown 10 times in that time.

1. KSP2 managed a 20% higher peak, which definitely sounds great, until you remind yourself that the market is 10 times bigger. When you normalize for market growth, KSP2's peak is about 7 times smaller than KSP1.
2. When accounting for retention, KSP2 lost 24 thousand players in a month, ~97% of its launch peak. KSP1 grew its playerbase more than 400% in its first month.
3. Lastly, sales number alone, in a market 10 times bigger, KSP1 outsold KSP2 by ~1375%. Even though KSP2 had a much bigger media campaign, a bigger media presence, and years of hype building paid by one of the biggest publishers on the planet.

Financially, the picture is gloomy.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

16 minutes ago, pandaman said:

I fail to see the real relevance of that metric, other than deliberately trying to paint a gloomy picture.

Sure, that number is small, but I (and I assume) many others won't show at all.

True, I'm not playing it as much as I would if it were in a better state, but that doesn't mean I have lost interest.  And I would guess that many others are the same.

I think the 'Waiting for Godot' nature of the updates is a pretty good explanation.

I played 80 some-odd hours between the Release & Patch 1, hoping that I was doing something good by providing bug reports, videos and feedback.  By the time Patch 2 dropped I was so frustrated and bored by what KSP2 offered I just walked away.  Maybe an hour into Patch 2.  Just could not muster the interest in fighting bugs to keep playing.  Part of my initial burst of interest was directly driven by the years of waiting and desire to see what was new - but the fundamental bugginess along with my negative reaction to the then Comm Strategy of 'everything is fine, let's do a challenge!' just drove me away.

So... To the extent there are a lot of people like me, we're waiting for the next drop.  Will check it out without much hope for anything other than some bug fixes & QOL tweaks.  Likely to see a bump and another drop.  The promise of Science will bring back more of us.  The new content, along with some further anticipation of bug fixes & QOL work might keep us around longer... and then numbers will drop again as they keep patching stuff that should have been working before the EA release.

Colonies?  That is gonna bring people out of the woodwork - and likely see a slew of new purchases.

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

KSP1 launched on Steam in 2013, 10 years ago

I don't disagree with what you wrote below this quote - but 10 years ago, KSP offered something unique, quirky and fun.  No one had seen a game like this - and knowing it was from a small indie studio, along with a relatively negligible price compared to actual release games incentivized people to be charitable.

KSP2 is a totally different story, not only given what you wrote - but also the fact that we had every reason to expect a whole lot more than we got.

Seeing as that horse has been beaten long enough - I'll jump to the good; if they can manage to pull this out, there will be a solid percentage of the (what? 5 million?) people who bought and played KSP coming back for a crack at KSP2 when the buzz says 'it's finally working, it's finally playable.'  Add 'new' people to the title and if they get it working, Console Kids: they have a chance to be a success story.

 

 

 

(Still, despite my optimism, I think the reputational harm will linger and they'll be more notorious for following an industry practice of dumping incomplete games as BS "EA" for early monetization, giving players poor quality for the money in the way that NMS and others have 'succeeded' through failure.  People talk about those 'success' stories, but not without a strong whiff of resentment.)

[asmi]

49 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

When accounting for retention, KSP2 lost 24 thousand players in a month, ~97% of its launch peak. KSP1 grew its playerbase more than 400% in its first month.

That's a lousy argument because KSP has been released via their website long before it appeared in Steam.

[Vanamonde]

Let's please not do this again. We've already had two threads on this same subject, both of which turned into repeats of the same argument.