Say what you will about Trendy policy, these player numbers don't lie

The total player-count has been dropping like a rock. Poorly designed loot ramp with no plans to retroactively fix items & ban those who exploited the system, combined with increasingly anti-Tower difficulty and gameplay mechanics. I enjoy the art style and the concept, but neither DD nor Trendy will last long at this rate.

Actually those numbers DO lie. The daily peak players has been at approximately 6k for a long time now.
Once again, this is not a pure tower defense game, so it shouldn't be only tower focused, and if you played nightmare difficulty, you'd see that towers are a very important part.

It shoed you that we should expect 4-6k users on at a time except over a sale weekend/week?

It only means players are not always playing... please compare to other games at the same time like elders or batman or even fallout and you will see this is quite normal. ;)

Say what you want, DD is still the 13th most played game on steam.

I was on my way to post a similair thread, but i was viewing the Global Achievements as a reference. To view this yourself go to your profile under game stats and change it to global. Maybe not the best of an arguement, but the numbers dont lie on how far the majority have actually kept going in game. Hardcore players seem to be the minority, why are they the ones being catered to. i think being a hardcore myself im entitled to say that.

I was on my way to post a similair thread, but i was viewing the Global Achievements as a reference. To view this yourself go to your profile under game stats and change it to global. Maybe not the best of an arguement, but the numbers dont lie on how far the majority have actually kept going in game. Hardcore players seem to be the minority, why are they the ones being catered to. i think being a hardcore myself im intitled to say that.

Because the ones who call themselves are just dedicated players mostly... that means they are the ones staying to play and are their target market.

The masses buy the game and enjoy it for a short while and find a new game. That is how all games work. Trying to please that crowd will force the others to leave so either way its flawed thinking IMO ;)

You can't take achievements as reference for anything.

Finally explained a point, please be less vague Astrartea.

Explained this several times but oh well...
1) Achievements are for the total amount of players. You don't know if 20% applies to 10k, 20k, 30k people.
2) Achievements only count for ranked. Not open nor local.
3) Achievements are bugged. I got the last accomplishment in the game and still haven't obtained the last achievement.

The total player-count has been dropping like a rock. Poorly designed loot ramp with no plans to retroactively fix items & ban those who exploited the system, combined with increasingly anti-Tower difficulty and gameplay mechanics. I enjoy the art style and the concept, but neither DD nor Trendy will last long at this rate.

I would challenge you to present a data model for any other game that doesn't follow a similar trend.

If I had a 4k player base, I'd start shopping for a new condo. Stop hatin'.

I had 3 friends who quit last patch and now 2 friends this patch. These are friends from my guild from WoW and also RL. Never had any other game lose my friends interest like this(as in this fast and abruptly). Only reason I continue to play is because im not casual. So, yea, this game ****s on the casuals moreso than vanilla wow ever did.

New content = vanilla 4horsemen + cthun + patchwork. Difficulty through broken mechanics, strict class makeup, and a gear check(ridiculous one at that)

I had 3 friends who quit last patch and now 2 friends this patch. These are friends from my guild from WoW and also RL. Never had any other game lose my friends interest like this(as in this fast and abruptly). Only reason I continue to play is because im not casual. So, yea, this game ****s on the casuals moreso than vanilla wow ever did.

New content = vanilla 4horsemen + cthun + patchwork. Difficulty through broken mechanics, strict class makeup, and a gear check(ridiculous one at that)

But vanilla wow was the best wow. As it kept getting farther from vanilla I just started circling major cities more and more until the boredom of easy content that was farmable on launch caused me to quit.

God I miss vanilla wow. I would pay 30$ a month to play vanilla wow on blizzard servers.

Anyways, if i have a point it would be that people enjoy different things? And this game allows everyone to partake in all the content, just not all the intensity.

I was on my way to post a similair thread, but i was viewing the Global Achievements as a reference. To view this yourself go to your profile under game stats and change it to global. Maybe not the best of an arguement, but the numbers dont lie on how far the majority have actually kept going in game. Hardcore players seem to be the minority, why are they the ones being catered to. i think being a hardcore myself im entitled to say that.

Achievements don't work outside of ranked from what I hear, so anyone who plays it strictly outside of that won't even get the level 10 achievement.

Not hating, more of a concern. You read into wrong. Sometimes you have to put yourself in other peoples shoes to see their point. The OP isnt 100% right , but isnt 100% wrong. I just didnt read the graph he showed us. I felt the brick wall that he hit when TE actions let some things slide that just didnt make sense. That is all..........And as I said probably not the best argument.

I just wanna say OP is wrong and Finally pwned this thread kthx.

Explained this several times but oh well...
1) Achievements are for the total amount of players. You don't know if 20% applies to 10k, 20k, 30k people.
2) Achievements only count for ranked. Not open nor local.
3) Achievements are bugged. I got the last accomplishment in the game and still haven't obtained the last achievement.

Global achievements tally statistics based on every copy either sold or connected via steam. There's no mystery as to the number, it's not an unknown statistic.

The global player base *does* account for ranked and unranked. That means Global achievements are, at a maximum, Global Player Count - Ranked Player Count. We can take the total players along with peak players and make assessments to closely approximate the lower threshold of played and definitively assess the upper threshold.

You may be missing a complicated achievement, like seeing all of the endings from each of the classes or play all of the levels on X difficulty, but the achievements that assess who has reached level 10, for example, will activate upon entering a game at the requisite level and are accurate for our purposes. Additionally, those are the types of achievements that matter the most in regards to Geminirye's point.

Where have the casuals gone? The data is absolutely clear that the majority of casuals have left the game for the time being. Whether that's a problem is a matter of opinion, but not whether they actually have gone at all.

Because the ones who call themselves are just dedicated players mostly... that means they are the ones staying to play and are their target market.

The masses buy the game and enjoy it for a short while and find a new game. That is how all games work. Trying to please that crowd will force the others to leave so either way its flawed thinking IMO ;)

Dumbest statement Ive read in a long time. If you cant attract new gamers and retain them eventually your game WILL die. There is absolutely no reason NOT to try to cater to as many gamers as possible.

As for the direction of the game and its narrow view of who to cater to, Ill leave that debate to other threads.

I will see your "hardcore player base are most loyals" statements , when they won't find any casual to sell their stuff and no one left to brag about their items and guides.

Dumbest statement Ive read in a long time. If you cant attract new gamers and retain them eventually your game WILL die. There is absolutely no reason NOT to try to cater to as many gamers as possible.

As for the direction of the game and its narrow view of who to cater to, Ill leave that debate to other threads.

I never said that ;)

Look at elder scrolls... the majority of players either beat the game and leave or play it a while and leave it unfinished...
That is how our generation of gamers are =\ When we see the expansions that come out, you'll see a huge jump in those that buy the expansion/dlc but never to the original number.

The way dundef is, they want to retain a crowd and to do that you have to serve the crowd. You see two major drop offs, one after the release which is to be expected and one after it went on super sale, again expected.

Players will drop off after release/sales. Happens to every game. To retain some of those players tho, the company has to cater to some of them.

Places like Blizzard can accommodate many different crowds due to their size and wealth. They don't have to pick a specific crowd but they actually do a lot of times, its just broader then what TE can do.

Same thing applies to TE but they have a smaller staff and working capital. So yes, they have to be more specific with their crowd.

Maybe I'm the only one that can see this, but wakeup call: there is not infinite playtime in DD, or any other game for that matter!

In DD, once you finish all the normal content Easy-Insane on all the classes that you want to play, YOU PROBABLY PUT THE GAME DOWN AND PLAY SOMETHING ELSE.

Why is this news to everyone?

Actually those numbers DO lie. The daily peak players has been at approximately 6k for a long time now.

Exactly true. I've been watching the numbers pretty frequently. At the beginning, there was a 10k+ peak and after the 75% off sale, there was a similar peak. Aside from that, Dungeon Defenders has pretty consistently been at the 5k-6k range, although the DLC seems to have pushed it above that. Of course, that's not taking into account that Dungeon Defenders has not left top 20 sold on Steam since it launched (with the DLC currently 3rd), nor that Dungeon Defenders is regularly in the top 15 played (I've personally never seen it drop below that, though due to the fluctuations during the day, it's possible).

I'm not going to sit here and defend everything Trendy has done, but the numbers hardly paint the bleak picture so many want it to. For an indie game with a small development team, the numbers are staggeringly good, especially after this game being out for nearly 2 months.

I never said that ;)

Look at elder scrolls... the majority of players either beat the game and leave or play it a while and leave it unfinished...
That is how our generation of gamers are =\ When we see the expansions that come out, you'll see a huge jump in those that buy the expansion/dlc but never to the original number.

The way dundef is, they want to retain a crowd and to do that you have to serve the crowd. You see two major drop offs, one after the release which is to be expected and one after it went on super sale, again expected.

Players will drop off after release/sales. Happens to every game. To retain some of those players tho, the company has to cater to some of them.

Places like Blizzard can accommodate many different crowds due to their size and wealth. They don't have to pick a specific crowd but they actually do a lot of times, its just broader then what TE can do.

Same thing applies to TE but they have a smaller staff and working capital. So yes, they have to be more specific with their crowd.

Actually in your original quote you do say they should cater to the dedicated few. Secondly regardless of company size they can cater to multiple groups of gamers. Vanilla was awesome to alot of players. Too easy for alot of players. Solution? New difficulty for those not happy. What Trendy did? Make the entire game harder for all. End result? MANY players quit due to lack of wanting to invest 80% of their life into a "Casual" game.

Say what you want, but I know initial steam stats on how many players actually completed insane (10% and lower due to carries and \even less on challenges) and a drastic drop in numbers AFTER patches says alot. Absolutely alot of players will be unhappy with the game but to drop on the % DD did early on and not recover says alot. Why would it have been so hard to add elements to the game to satisfy elitists rather than force everyone to either keep up and farm like hell or die? I think their patches speak for themselves on lack of direction. Ninja nerfs, tower nerfs, then gear buffs 1000%?

It's not news. What is news is that when those people come back for an expansion and bump the population, as you and Finally agree happens right?, can't continue with the new content at the same level they left it at.

Previously a ton of people apparently beat the game on easy/normal mode, if they beat it at all. But those people can't play UMF or the expansion on easy. Even if they did, they'd get weak rewards so they won't be able to progress.


Currently the game seems to have a severe gear check with the added problem of game mechanics not always working very well with easy/normal modes (like easy UMF where the timer goes too fast compared to how quickly the mobs come out of spawn). The gear progression path is unclear (does one complete the game, the DLC's or the modes (survival), which DLC's?).

Dumbest statement Ive read in a long time. If you cant attract new gamers and retain them eventually your game WILL die. There is absolutely no reason NOT to try to cater to as many gamers as possible.

As for the direction of the game and its narrow view of who to cater to, Ill leave that debate to other threads.

All games eventually die out. My absolute all-time favorite online mp fps's were Quake 2 and Hexen 2, but I haven't played them for as long as I can remember because new games came out and the core player base moved on. Take a look at the TV show Lost - one of my favorite TV shows of all time. It has an 8.4/10 rating on IMDB out of over 67k votes, which is an excellent rating generated from a reasonable sample size. Yet, each season, their viewers dropped, from almost 15.7 mil the first season to 10 mil in the last.

The data from the OP simply shows a common trend for most forms of entertainment. Movies, TV, games, Lindsay Lohan, etc. It's hard to draw any conclusions about why the data is the way it is... It's just following a normal pattern.