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Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)

It went as low as 13k today.
Here's today's competition.

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You have to admit, Russian Fishing 4 is hell of a competition! 😉
 
Also so you know what kind of expectations are set for bungie. Anthem was pretty much dead in 2-3 months and servers shut down in a year. Bungie did 1/4 of that.

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Also so you know what kind of expectations are set for bungie. Anthem was pretty much dead in 2-3 months and servers shut down in a year. Bungie did 1/4 of that.

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We need companies to step up to steal Fortnite players. They've wasted a lot of money but never bet on quality. And say what you want about the old days, but E3 was massive and allowed games like Anthem to sell 5 fucking million of copies. We had it so much better…
 
Hey I was right! The peak today is 42k!

It bottomed at 13.7k late night yesterday. So given the trend it should hit about 13k flat tonight when it bottoms out about 6 am hour. This game almost always hits a bottom at 6 am, then trends back up. There is possibility it drops to the 12s.
It bottomed at 13.1k late last night. Not bad. Off by 100k!

It's early, but so far 9 am completed hour it looking oddly down. Skipped comparing against yesterday since it was server down day.

Today: 18.9k
Monday: 21.5k (-2.6k or -12%)

Morning trends can be weird and maybe it plays catch up. But Monday's peak 44.4k peak less -12% would be 39k peak today. It looks worse than it is since yesterday was already a drop of about -5%.

I dont think it'll be that bad. So I'll stick to my 40k estimate I said in another post. The nightly low will be 12.5k. So the usual -5% attrition rate vs yesterday's 42k peak. But if it does hit 39k tonight, that would mean about -7% vs yesterday.

Make note Bungie is adjusting Ranked/Cryo availability. So maybe that affects the CCU. Cryo is now Thur-Sun and Ranked Sun-Thur where it flip flops at 1pm EST.
 
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10 am completed hour just finished. 19,984 CCU. So basically 20k.

Excluding server down days, the lowest 10 am hourly CCU skimming the stats is from this past Monday where it was 23k, and daily peak was 44.4k.

It only gained 1,100 CCU today going from 9 am to 10 am hours. On Monday, the gain was 1,500.
 
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Seeing people say how they've come to realize the loot means absolutely nothing since it's all wiped soon anyways, that in itself just makes it that much worse.. Pain and frustration for nothing. I just can't think of a worse genre for me personally
 
Also so you know what kind of expectations are set for bungie. Anthem was pretty much dead in 2-3 months and servers shut down in a year. Bungie did 1/4 of that.

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Let's not pretend Anthem was not a broken unfinished mess of a game that EA/Bioware gave up on fixing.
 
Seeing people say how they've come to realize the loot means absolutely nothing since it's all wiped soon anyways, that in itself just makes it that much worse.. Pain and frustration for nothing. I just can't think of a worse genre for me personally

Arc doesnt have forced wipes. It's actually one of the best (if not the best) extraction game in the genre imo.

And I loved Tarkov a lot but it's shit game with spaghetti code, cheaters, retard ai etc. But it has a great point to invest your loot in, your homebase.
 
It did. Mike Darrah has a few hour long videos on YouTube talking about what happened to it. Game never really stood a chance after Casey Hudson left Bioware.

They were so stubborn I remember when the guns were dropping at a better rate getting some better shit and they turned that off faster than a leaky faucet and that was it, donezo. If they would've let that roll I think it would've maybe been able to survive
 
They were so stubborn I remember when the guns were dropping at a better rate getting some better shit and they turned that off faster than a leaky faucet and that was it, donezo. If they would've let that roll I think it would've maybe been able to survive
Bungie used to do that with Destiny as well. Nerf the fun out of the game. The Helldivers 2 CEO had a refreshing take on that. Make the rest of the game as fun instead.
 
Bungie used to do that with Destiny as well. Nerf the fun out of the game. The Helldivers 2 CEO had a refreshing take on that. Make the rest of the game as fun instead.

Destiny's was a bit different tho although I agree they fiddled way too much.

Anthem tho it was a matter of there was garbage dropping, it was fun to play but the loot was bad...then that bug or whatever opened it up and made it way more exciting and that was it clipped, killed the game instantly imo

Destiny had better ways to fill that time when it had issues with strikes and pvp and raids, so when they fucked with whatever there was always something good to chase to not notice as much, but yea bungie fucked around way too much it's what led me to eventually quit. A shame they had the golden goose of modern day live service.
 
Bungie? The wokest?

You mean after bioware, insomniac and and a couple more right?

Edit: well shit, maybe i was wrong...

I cant find the interview anymore I think its just scrubbed from the internet. But when Destiny 2 came out and they had no text chat in the towers etc for PC. The reason given by the designer (some Asian chick, thats all I can remember) was that she was afraid someone could type something misogynistic in chat and just one person seeing that and leaving the game would be the worst outcome she could imagine so an entire communication tool was removed as per her instruction for that reason.

Remember they only allowed proximity chat in this after they saw what a huge and positive effect it had for the community in ARC Raiders, in effect proving that up until VERY recently that exact type of thinking is still very much at the forefront at Bungie and has direct consequence on the game design.

In both cases Destiny 2 added text chat (defualted to off as standard) and the evidence was literally being shoved in their faces daily about how wrong that thinking was just prior to marathons launch. But think about what that means for a majority of the product (and it is a product) when they have purposefully developed it to be worse in certain areas "just in case" from the get go, and have to be proven wrong to utterly absurd levels to backtrack at the last minute.
 
Let's not pretend Anthem was not a broken unfinished mess of a game that EA/Bioware gave up on fixing.

My point is that this sold 5 mil and still was considered complete failure with much better numbers than Marathon. Marathon selling less than 2mil and having atrocious ccu is even worse as bungie is high paid developer.
 
My point is that this sold 5 mil and still was considered complete failure with much better numbers than Marathon. Marathon selling less than 2mil and having atrocious ccu is even worse as bungie is high paid developer.
We'll never know exactly what the CCU or DAU numbers for Anthem were, but my point was despite the strong initial sales, the game was in a lot worse shape than Marathon. The problems with Marathon are a lot easier to fix than the problems Anthem had.
 
Anthem sold 2M week one and 5M total. +MTX.

So the $100M revenue for Feb (game came out 22nd Feb) sounds like a rough calculation of 2M units $70 - ~30%, + $3.5M in MTX.

The very early impressions of numbers were fine. I think I remember some excited press releases talking them up (something Bungie has not done with Marathon).

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But what do I know. Clearly Marathon is doing fine, found a great audience who are paying handsomely to keep everything ticking along fine and rosy. Nothing to see here. It doesn't have to be ARC to be successful. Clearly Sony with their top tier premium studio are not expecting much, just enough to keep a few lights on.
 
But what do I know. Clearly Marathon is doing fine, found a great audience who are paying handsomely to keep everything ticking along fine and rosy. Nothing to see here. It doesn't have to be ARC to be successful. Clearly Sony with their top tier premium studio are not expecting much, just enough to keep a few lights on.
Anyone saying any of this is delusional. But it's not unsalvageable.
 
We'll never know exactly what the CCU or DAU numbers for Anthem were, but my point was despite the strong initial sales, the game was in a lot worse shape than Marathon. The problems with Marathon are a lot easier to fix than the problems Anthem had.

Marathon strangely has its own set of problems. Anthem's were clear but challenging. People liked the flight system, but it was a system designed to be cool, not to serve a core vision. Flying around maps meant players could skip content, which made it hard for designers to figure out how to keep things locked down in a traditional gameplay loop. Anyway, I digress. Anthem needed to find a core vision to build around, perhaps it should have been the flight (which was added very late in development). That never happened despite the 2.0 effort.

Anyone saying any of this is delusional. But it's not unsalvageable.

Agreed.

Marathon has this weird issue that people love it, it's getting lots of good feedback from people who love it, but it's not being reflected in the numbers. They need to find a path forward where those that love it, will still love it after changes are made, and those changes need to get more people in.

What they don't want to do is open up more inviting pathways in for new players, only to feed them to the rabid core who will use them for target practice. As the game gets to be even more of a sweatfest that core is going to become more challenging.

There's a path for Marathon to fix and turn the tide, I absolutely believe it. I did for Anthem too. It's clearly not part of the original plan though, so Bungie will need to take a step back and look at the big picture here. I don't see course correction coming from doing number tweaks and micro changes. They need to consider a Marathon 2.0 concept and then build towards that. Be willing to throw all ideas on to the board and have some very sober conversations.
 
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Anthem sold 2M week one and 5M total. +MTX.

So the $100M revenue for Feb (game came out 22nd Feb) sounds like a rough calculation of 2M units $70 - ~30%, + $3.5M in MTX.

The very early impressions of numbers were fine. I think I remember some excited press releases talking them up (something Bungie has not done with Marathon).

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But what do I know. Clearly Marathon is doing fine, found a great audience who are paying handsomely to keep everything ticking along fine and rosy. Nothing to see here. It doesn't have to be ARC to be successful. Clearly Sony with their top tier premium studio are not expecting much, just enough to keep a few lights on.

If I remember right, EA expect Anthem to sell 6M by the end of march.
 
1 pm completed hour.

24.4k vs 26.6k yesterday (-2,200 or -8%)

If it holds up, peak today will be about 39k. It was 42k yesterday.

Low point would be 12k. Last night it was 13.1k.
 
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At this point the most impressive thing is how solid is the day by day percentage of people dropping the game even if the CCU is getting smaller and smaller. At some point you should expect it to stop or at least slowing down, but by now seems is still losing solid chunks of players everyday, even faster than before since the first "big" update has been released.
 
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At this point the most impressive thing is how solid is the day by day percentage of people dropping the game even if the CCU is getting smaller and smaller. At some point you should expect it to stop or at least slowing down, but by now seems is still losing solid chunks of players everyday, even faster than before since the first "big" update has been released.
Unless something big happens to prop it up it'll keep dropping. Aside from the weekend bump which all games get, the attrition is so steep the Monday over Monday CCU are about -20% each time.

It won't find a stabilized number core gamers support until those drop rates decrease and level off to flat

It's not going to suddenly change from -20% weekly drops to 0% flat next week.

The most recent change Bungie did was adjusting regional matchmaking algorithms and just announced cryo nd rank modes will alternate every 3-4 days in a staggered way.
 
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At this point the most impressive thing is how solid is the day by day percentage of people dropping the game even if the CCU is getting smaller and smaller. At some point you should expect it to stop or at least slowing down, but by now seems is still losing solid chunks of players everyday, even faster than before since the first "big" update has been released.
And problems are starting to become more apparent (balancing issues) between normal players and the absolute degenerates, then there is the issue of the complete reset/wipe at the end of the season. Some people think this game will go f2P...In my mind, there is no chance of that ever happening. (especially when it has been a financial failure from the get-go)

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Dave Chappelle Snl GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
And problems are starting to become more apparent (balancing issues) between normal players and the absolute degenerates, then there is the issue of the complete reset/wipe at the end of the season. Some people think this game will go f2P...In my mind, there is no chance of that ever happening. (especially when it has been a financial failure from the get-go)
They got two big issues they are still trying to figure out:

1. Low CCUs and how to retain and build it

Right now they are deperate trying to mess around with matchmaking algorithm and adjusting the cryo/rank dates. They even said before cryo they made it weekends for sake of logistics to funnel gamers into a cryo pool so trios match up faster. Rank was same day.

Now it's adjusted to be spread out through the week. So after a week, already tweaking it instead of letting see how it goes. But the CCU drop is so fast they cant wait.

2. How to balance the game (as you said)

An extraction game is hardcore. An extraction game that has big loot and COD-ish gunplay will make it even more hardcore. Their issue is they got ranked and cryo spread out now. Casuals prefer ranked so good players and bad players stay together. But hardcore gamers dont want that because they dont want tougher lobbies getting killed and losing their gear. They want to retain good gear for cryo runs. So their latest attempt is ranked days so keep normies happy, and then cryo/unranked days so hardcore gamers split into two... cryo runners and ones who stick with unranked to dominate. Assumption is unranked will be chiller as many hardcore gamers do cryo as many times as possible those days.

So they are trapped no matter what they do. One way is to simply have ranked, unranked and cryo available 24/7. Gamers choose where they play. But they cant because issues #1 CCU trending down so they cant split the pool or else matchmaking gets worse.
 
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They got two big issues they are still trying to figure out:

1. Low CCUs and how to retain and build it

Right now they are deperate trying to mess around with matchmaking algorithm and adjusting the cryo/rank dates. They even said before cryo they made it weekends for sake of logistics to funnel gamers into a cryo pool so trios match up faster. Rank was same day.

Now it's adjusted to be spread out through the week. So after a week, already tweaking it instead of letting see how it goes. But the CCU drop is so fast they cant wait.

2. How to balance the game (as you said)

An extraction game is hardcore. An extraction game that has big loot and COD-ish gunplay will make it even more hardcore. Their issue is they got ranked and cryo spread out now. Casuals prefer ranked so good players and bad player stay together. But hardcore gamers dont want that because they dont want tougher lobbies getting killed and losing their gear. They want to retain good gear for cryo runs. So their latest attempt is ranked so keep normies happy, and then cryo/unranked days so hardcore gamers split into two... cryo runners and ones who do unranked to dominate. Assumption is unranked will be chiller as many hardcore gamers do cryo as many times as possible

So they are trapped no matter what they do. One way is to simply have ranked, unranked and cryo available 24/7. Gamers choose where they play. But they cant because issues #1 CCU trending down so they cant split the pool or else matchmaking gets worse.
Yeah they're kinda pigeonholed into making quick decisions and hoping for the best. They're gonna have to do another free weekend or price drop to gain players though, I think that's their only hope.
 
Yeah they're kinda pigeonholed into making quick decisions and hoping for the best. They're gonna have to do another free weekend or price drop to gain players though, I think that's their only hope.
I dont see any of their gameplay or cryo/rank scheduling adjustments moving the needle.

Biggest gainers without even needing to adjust anything are: Price adjustment, F2P for all, F2P for weekends, sub plan it.

You can instantly get a lot of people trying it doing F2P or sub plans. If Highguard can get almost 100k peak CCU alone, I'm sure they could get tons of people trying it on PC/consoles. Even gamers who dont really care might try it and like it. I tried out F2P Destiny 2. Zero interest buying it. But I tried it F2P and I found the visuals and gunplay fine. I bailed only because I want to play by myself, but the game has persistent online gamers popping in and out I didnt like. But, if the game didnt maybe I would had stuck with it. The rest of the game seemed pretty good.
 
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Yeah they're kinda pigeonholed into making quick decisions and hoping for the best. They're gonna have to do another free weekend or price drop to gain players though, I think that's their only hope.
Basically not enough, they need to go F2P asap that would bring in much bigger numbers but do they have enough monetisation in the game, probably not.
 
Basically not enough, they need to go F2P asap that would bring in much bigger numbers but do they have enough monetisation in the game, probably not.
Game just came out so they probably cant do F2P yet as it'd piss off everyone who bought it for $40.

But given how sales have slowed a lot (going by PSN rankings charts and on Steam, it's surely dropping as DAU are sinking as theyre ranked 50th right now as I type), at some point it's time to F2P it as $40 sales are dead.

Of course they can first try dumping it on sale for 50% off to get some gamers with a price tag attached to them. And then do F2P much later for the rest who will only play it free.

Comes down to how fast they need to gun for user base vs lingering around for purchases or bargain bin pricing vs. just gun for F2P in one swoop.
 
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Latest PSN tracking.

Even the countries who were biggest supporters last week around rank 20 or so like US, Can, UK, Aussie, Japan are now all 30+.

Its so low it dropped off Indonesia's ranking entirely. Now a dash mark.

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Latest PSN tracking.

Even the countries who were biggest supporters last week around rank 20 or so like US, Can, UK, Aussie, Japan are now all 30+.

Its so low it dropped off Indonesia's ranking entirely. Now a dash mark.

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I'm proud my country doesn't want anything to do with this shit(175 is brutal lol).
 
Basically not enough, they need to go F2P asap that would bring in much bigger numbers but do they have enough monetisation in the game, probably not.
I don't know how much F2P can help a super hardcore game. If it goes F2P, a bunch of people show up, get curbstomped by the hardcores, and leave that's not exactly going to help the game in the long run. They don't want to lose the $40 up front payment so quickly knowing that F2P will at best only create a temporary player count increase

My guess is if F2P happens, it would be at a minimum 6-12 months out. And then the question is if Sony will continue to let Bungie hemorrhage money for that amount of time or will they pull the plug first
 
I doubt f2p will help.

None of the number guess work matters until the end of season 1. The game isn't getting taking offline before the end of June.

If the number of people they have at the end of season 1 is similar or close to the number of people they have 2 weeks into season 2, then that's a good sign. Not great, but at least they have a foundation to build on.

If people don't come back after the wipe, then it's a big problem.
 
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