Is Duelyst dying? :(

[Aeruniel]

Depends on the motivation of the person asking it, as well as on his level of understanding.

A simple “where there’s smoke there’s fire” should never be the end of meaningful discussion.

[improbableblob]

I think I saw 217 last month on th final day

[galaxydueler]

someone @ me so I remember this later, I have some things to say about this

[Aeruniel]

@galaxydueler

reminder courtesy of Aeruniel

[nwardezir]

Don’t like bookmark feature ?

[longshot405]

No, not dead.
Yes, declining.
Totally devs’ fault.
Will hardly get fixed, but can be circumvented/delayed with proper effort.

Proof? Aside from the known issue of some players no longer being able to access their accounts due to the acquisition, I don’t believe there is any publicly available data to support the claim that duelyst is not growing.

BN made a decent effort of blocking users out of the game and I expect them to continue in similar fasion.
Still, I consider it CPG’s fault as they should’ve given a better read to the agreement.

There’s a difference between intent and consequence. I wouldn’t expect CPG, or any business for that matter, to intentionally reduce their customer count; you shouldn’t either.

[zerounderscoreou]

Proof?

Duelyst · AppID: 291410

I wouldn’t expect CPG, or any business for that matter, to intentionally reduce their customer count; you shouldn’t either.

Nevertheless, Bandai locked/removed Duelyst and 2 other games from Steam, even though they were there for months. And for some reason it coincided with “partnership” and was followed by “sunsetting TBA”. To me this seems at the very least like not providing full info to CPG.

[epicflygon]

that’s just steam, not the whole game most people play on browser or client and a lot off those steam players where veterans.

[zerounderscoreou]

that’s just steam, not the whole game

Yes, it’s just part of the playerbase, but it still shows what goes on with that part, and unless devs provide more data, it’s not clear, how non-Steam version compares to it.
I believe that Duelyst has better visibility in Steam, and me and my friend switched to the Steam version as soon as we could.

[longshot405]

As @epicflygon already said, this only reflects Steam usage. Either way, let’s assume the numbers are following a similar trend on the client version of the game as well. Even then, what decline we’re seeing isn’t sharp and has been constant since the game’s inception. In other words, We aren’t seeing large drops in activity due to BN.

While I can understand a healthy amount of caution considering the small fallout we’ve seen from BN. We should be careful about taking the vocal minority’s opinion as gospel. Even if a couple other games saw their demise after BN’s involvement, it doesn’t mean BN was to blame (causation vs correlation). And for those games that did fail, how many games does BN have on their pocket that are successful or did not have any noteworthy issues?

For the time being, I’m personally waiting for the dust to settle before we start seeing more work on the game. We’ve seen diamonds as a result of the acquisition, but little else so far. I’m sure once things fall into place we’ll see some growth encouraging changes. If nothing is seen for a long time, then I’ll start to fret.

[zerounderscoreou]

I can understand you not wanting to see any vocal negativity towards the game or BN in particular, but it’s only one of the issues Duelyst has IMO - maybe just the easiest to poke at. And this partnership, which was supposed to promote the game, has only brought problems during the 3 months it lasted.
Even though I have a lot of criticism towards Duelyst, it doesn’t mean that I want it to get closed ASAP. But even if I like playing it, it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t talk about pretty obvious issues.
Maybe rare forum poke at the devs will have some results.

[phoenixtoasches]

I whole-heartedly agree with @longshot405 and think we should let the dust settle before making any claims and accusations (even though I was previously one of the people doing this as well). Now let’s stop beating this dead horse and talk about something more relevant to the game itself.

[nwardezir]

we should let the dust settle before making any claims and accusations

Yeah, just wait a bit and jump in the next same thread, there is one every month

[paralykeet]

Duelyst has died a few times already- All card games do. When I began, Duelyst was about playing around Kara and overly generous neutral minions, Shadow Nova, and Flashed out Taygettes. That game is buried, and good riddens. Ancient Bonds era Duelyst is dead, cards got nerfed, others didn’t- and while I may largely disagree with a whole heap of design decisions going into the environment which prophecy was crafted to occupy; it is, itself standing on a corpse.

I know this might seem a little lolsy- but this is how card games do. Duelyst has to refine and update it’s foundation; and then seek to build upon the established viral marketing campaign once the new player experience, relative balance, and other myriad issues are addressed. User decline, is hardly the same thing as the game’s “death” (since the OP means “the game becomes so inactive that it isn’t worth running the servers”, obviously.)

[Sorostaran]

This isn’t the answer your looking for but it’s also not entirely a fair indicator of the overall game health.

I’ll be brutally honest, the S rank population was obliterated from December onwards, either via the terrible competitive meta’s that followed it or the perceived lack of interest by CPG in the health of it’s competitive scene. If any division has been hit the hardest, it’s the top of ladder, as can be seen by the slowdown, for lack of a better term, in competitive content.

That said, S rank does not necessarily depict the overall picture % wise as a lot of old regulars have left since then and it’s hard to make up that type of experience gap considering some of them have been at it since Beta.

Players aren’t climbing the ranks against a static AI snapshot of constant skill. You decrease the skill of the population, it just means lower skill gets you higher ranks than before. If BN were to ban the entirety of S-Rank, S-Rank wouldn’t cease to exist. It would just mean that the skill level would drop and the next best clique of gals who were previously kept down by the newly banned old S-Rank would become the new S-Rank.

It’s not an exact measure, but it’s a lot better than using Steam population. =S

I think I saw 217 last month on th final day

That ain’t so bad!

I mean, from the look o’ it, Duolist may not be in her prime anymore, but it’s more like the 32-year-old version of the girl vs. the 20-year-old version of the girl. Sure, she ain’t worth half what she used to, but it’s not like she’s staring menopause in the face or nuthin’. Certainly “dying” would be an exaggeration.

The clock be a-tickin’, but Duolist’s still got a few jiffies to find her man, squeeze out a couple o’ mini-Duolists, start dying, and die. Gotta stop wastin’ time on that crappy BN paid online dating site, though. =S

[phoenixtoasches]

Gotta love the way he phrases his argument. Very reminscent of Witcher and Dragon Quest.

[ZyX]

Yer a fan o’ the ol’ Yangus, eh old man?

[sylvermyst]

This is all part of the natural cycle of a collectible card game.

1. New platform release = influx of a LOT of new players.
2. New expansion release = influx of some new players.
3. Big marketing push = influx of some new players.
4. Downtime as they work on the next #1 and #2 = slow decline of existing players.

You see the same thing in every card game on the market - on a scale relative to those games’ player bases.

Currently we are in #4 and will remain there until the next #1 or #2 at which time we will see an influx of players again.

[snowshot]

You do know that duelyst lost 90% of her player base on steam despite the new expansion.

It’s not the expansion that is the problem, the problem is not delivering things that have been promised for a tear and a half now.

Look at the new update, this shit is a fucking joke.
I’m sick of it… i supported and funded duelyst from the start, and right now they throw a bad of dicks at our face.

[sylvermyst]

You do know that duelyst lost 90% of her player base on steam despite the new expansion.

That’s not accurate. The last expansion released in July and, according to steam charts, the game received a 79% gain in peak players relative to the #s before the expansion when it released.

Each month since then it’s been about a ~25% decline, which is the same rough monthly percentage decline you see in other CCGs like Faeria between expansion releases.

Also, these are just the steam numbers. Is this 1 to 1 with the Windows client? Who knows.

If I were involved in the business of Duelyst and it was my decision to focus on more frequent content updates vs. new platform releases at the expense of new content for a while, I would push to get on new platforms first and then try to get back to more frequent content updates.

That said, I would also be transparent about that choice to the community so they weren’t left in the dark.