Lack of People online. Why ?

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4T5

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I would like your thoughts on why there is so few people online gaming.
Comparing the numbers that own and play games offline to those that play online i mean.
BF2 for instance was proud to announce 56000 players online at one time as a record recently. 56k is that all, i mean how many have purchased BF2 surely over a Million.
Same as the RaceSim games i play. When you go on GTL its a rare day that say a hundred people are online at the same time, its more like an average of 50 players to be honest.
Original COD was the same if i remember correctly there was usually a couple of thousand peeps on at one time.
Now 56k or a thousand or whatever figure it is out of the whole world seems tiny to me so Why ?

I have a few opinions myself but want to know what you guys think.
 
StarCraft has a stupid number of people playing online and the number is still growing! Only the diverse and competitive games survive the test of time, and so few do.

Edit: There was a german site in 2002 that showed a graph of the number of players on various games online throughout the day and starcrafts minimum number of players was well above CS1.6 maximum number of players.
 
So you feel that online gamers are there but just not on the games i play. I accept this but go back to my earlier point of those that have purchased BF2 and those that play it online. Same with GTL. How many copies are sold compared to how many online seems small to me.
Do you think its because these games don't have the substance to keep players online for some time or do you feel that these genres of online games don't breed long term online players.
 
kreeeee said:
StarCraft has a stupid number of people playing online and the number is still growing! Only the diverse and competitive games survive the test of time, and so few do.

Edit: There was a german site in 2002 that showed a graph of the number of players on various games online throughout the day and starcrafts minimum number of players was well above CS1.6 maximum number of players.
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Gawd stop sticking up for Starcraft :P Great game I agree (might dig out my Broodwar discs ...) this is why I specifically said FPS, i've been out of the online RTS arena since just after generals came out, again great game, but I just can't bring myself to stick at them for more than 6 months or so, it gets a bit samey.

I still don't get why Counterstrike is so popular, its good fun for a few days, then its just boring again, I guess I burned myself out on it in the glory days, playing it 10 hours a day etc ...

malc30 said:
So you feel that online gamers are there but just not on the games i play. I accept this but go back to my earlier point of those that have purchased BF2 and those that play it online. Same with GTL. How many copies are sold compared to how many online seems small to me.
Do you think its because these games don't have the substance to keep players online for some time or do you feel that these genres of online games don't breed long term online players.
Click to expand...

I think to a degree its the age of the current (first real) generation of serious gamers, we are all getting to that "real life" thing, I know nowadays I think well I've gotta do housework and do something for dinner over, I'll grab a couple of peanut butter sarnies and grind my warrior to 60 ;)

I also think a lot of the games that come out now have TOO much detail, I was talking to someone yesterday about game design and how all the games you REALLY remember are intensely personal to yourself because to make it interesting you are stretching your imagination.
 
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I have always wondered the same thing :o

Millons of copies of each games are sold, but there are never that amount of players playing online. If enough people knew about online play i don't think they would go back to SP.

I mean there are billions of people in the world, and only 900 can be bothered to play Raven-shield! :eek:
 
I in most cases prefer Single player games over online, if the online systems were more unified and it was really really hard for people to get fresh accounts (to prevent experienced players getting into low level games) it might be a lot more appealing to newer players, there have been threads recently on here about how hard it is to 'get into ' Battlefield two, and quite honestly if I hadn't got a reasonable amount of experience in FPS and the battlefield games in general I'd have probably given up completely. Only reason I've not been playing on my time off is that there is so much to be done to the house :( even my world of warcraft is suffering, I've not seen the inside of an instance in weeks
 
kreeeee said:
StarCraft has a stupid number of people playing online and the number is still growing! Only the diverse and competitive games survive the test of time, and so few do.

Edit: There was a german site in 2002 that showed a graph of the number of players on various games online throughout the day and starcrafts minimum number of players was well above CS1.6 maximum number of players.
Click to expand...


Didn't realise 1.6 was that old...
 
havnt noticed it with DOD:S/CS:S, they always have adequate numbers playing to get a good game.

but i have found that GTL is a ghost town, especially since the 10t servers went down.

also find that Rfactor online community is almost non existant, i have tryed the past 3 nights to get a good race in Rfactor but its bloody empty in there, i could count on my hands the amount of servers with enough player to get a good race all of which run tracks/series that i have no intrest in, it sucks, looks like you have to be in a team to get anything near a good race in Rfactor, its a shame it has so much potential.
 
Very few games are better online than offline IMO.

The rare exceptions for me are Ravenshield, AOE 2/3 and GB: Battlegrounds.

I just don't get the same sense of freedom in multi-player games. Lack of freedom leads to boredom. As for MMORPG's it feels more like hard work to play and I get MUCH more enjoyment out a single player RPG.
 
There was a very interesting devils advocate in last months PCGamer. The general gist of it was that once AI has become more advanced anonymous online gaming will stop and we'll all go back to SP were the AI is life like but without all the smacktardery. Of course the competitive side of playing against humans will still exist but that would mainly stick to tournaments and stuff.
 
Bang on Steve45 RFactor is the perfect example.
I was fortunate enouth to be given my copy of Rfactor by Gjon Camaj (Developer) as members of my team have helped in Modding/skinning/tracks etc.
Big shout to the MrMen Mod crew headed by [TSR]Raven and MrIngall.
The game is awesome with fantastic cars tracks and numerous mods to saticfy all racers. The superkarts being my favourite but dont tell the MrMen crew that. ;)
As you say its like a ghost town most times you go online. You are lucky to find a race with a double figure entry.
I do feel the fragmented nature of the track/mod scene hasn't helped with RF but still i expected more people to be on such a good game.
This is not the case with GTL as its literally Plug and play gaming but still there are very few racers on at one time.
It perplexes me.
A neighbours kid and his mate were round my house a month or so ago and i showed them BF2 online and GTL, they were knocked out and although they knew about online gaming they didn't know how far on it had moved.
One of thems dads had a decent PC and broadband so there really is no exscuse, i really dont understand it.

Edit.
Posters 11 and 12.
Very interesting and these are the answers i am looking for.
 
When i first started playing CS I was in awe of the fact I could play against people from all over the world. I was learning the game and at the same time learning the complexities of online play. It seemed at the time that nearly everyday was a fresh experience. A new map was something to get excited about. A different server, an invitation to a clan, being banned for the first time etc all kept you coming back.

These days I still play the old version despite owning a lot of the new online games and I think its partly because nothing can rekindle the magic of discovering online gaming coupled with a new game at once. Its also because I just don't like change. I'm reluctant to "learn" a game again. The way the online community seems to work these days I can't bothered to take abuse because "llololol n00b doesn't know how to plant" when I'm learning a new game. I probably have a touch of rose tinted specs but I swear when I started playing CS that smacktards were in the minority whereas now people are just queing up to make spiteful comments. Infact a lot of them actually pretype their abuse to you so you see it as soon you spawn next round. (either that or they are inhumanely fast typers).

I'm rambling a bit now but I suppose the core reason I prefer offline to online is the smacktard:tidy player ratio.
 
Loads of people download games off the net but can't get online with dodgy copies.
Other people who have legit copies don't play cos of all the dicks that play games and have to abuse everyone on a server.
Most games can't keep people interested long enough to play online for months and months.
Then there's your real gaming addicks who are keeping Counterstrike, BF2 etc going strong.
 
actually even those stats posted by william are crap (as in poor amount of people not crap as in false ;) ) i remember seeing like atleast 250,000 people on when cs 1.5/1.6 were about. i mean you used to have like 100,000 servers when you were searching ingame for cs for servers.
 
vaultingSlinky said:
Its because 5.5mil are playing WoW, thats where all the gamers are :p
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Oi you :p
He speaks the truth my old COD clan was desimated by the arrival of WOW.
I miss my old clan including you my future Doctor friend. ;)

I,m with sja360 Down with WOW i want my mates back. :D


Reality check.
Never played it so cannot slate it. I just want my gaming community back. :(
 
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