How Much Does Multiplayer Population Matter? (Potential Preview) (Patreon)

Normally I post dedicated articles for this Patreon page, however, I was struck with a bolt of lightning and suddenly wrote up a big chunk of what will most likely be a video in the near future. So I thought it'd be fun for those interested, to see a script after it's immediately been typed. As not to potential spoil the whole thing, I do cut it off early, and the conclusion here, wouldn't be the conclusion of the final video,.

It's better than writing a random piece about my Mother's laptop again, and I need to capture some more footage, so hopefully you enjoy this sneak peek, and any feedback is welcome.

Ah, Red Orchestra 2.

I may always prefer the original’s maps, but in-terms of intensely immersed multiplayer shooters, Killing Floor developer Tripwire Interactive has been providing an exquisite alternative to heavy hitters Battlefield & Call of Duty for over ten years.

The bad German accents on fuzzy mics! The obnoxious MG42 players! The STG-44 players who think they’re gods! And the Bridges of Druzhina! While I didn’t utterly consume this game like some of my friends did, it still holds a place in my heart.

But truth be told, it’s actually stuck with me for one reason in particular, that being, the comments, articles, and threads I see… EVERYWHERE.

Apex Legends. 

Dead. 

Overwatch. 

Dead. 

Rainbow Six Siege. 

A game that raised its all-time peak just this year… 

Dead. 

It seems that whenever a video-game’s population decreases the slightest amount, doesn’t generate Kotaku headlines per-hour, or has the slightest amount of competition, thousands immediately declare the game is dead.

But Sir Swag already made a great video discussing how utterly ridiculous that claim frequently is, so I’m not just here to call stupid people stupid.

Instead, I’m interested in exploring how much a Multiplayer’s popularity actually matters to you, the player, and Red Orchestra 2 is the reason I’ve thought about this for a while now, alongside Reflex, Halo 4, Wreckfest, Trackmania, Battlefield 1943 and many more.

See, Red Orchestra 2, back when I played it with a group of friends, was having a great day when more than 1000 people were playing; during free-weekends, it'd occasionally blip up to 3000-4000, but rare was it for those players to stick around. There’s lots of games out there, and of all the ones to play, Red Orchestra 2 isn’t exactly the most welcoming.

So the game would routinely have 700-800 people during the hours we played. And considering the amount of games which demolish this game’s population being called dead, you’d assume that finding a match would be like downloading Modern Warfare’s latest patch.

And yet, it never was.

Dozens of servers would be available, with a varying selection of maps to pick. 

The most frustrating scenario was having the top three servers be completely full with the next six having twenty players less, but not only are most of Red Orchestra 2’s maps chaotic enough to engage with 40 players, you and group of friends hopping in would typically bring with it enough new people to put that server next to the top three.

95% percent of the time, finding an ideal match in player count, map, squads, and game-mode was a breeze, and never did the sub 1000 player-count impact my enjoyment of the game.

And I’ve repeated this experience numerous times across a various games in budget, scale, and publicity.

I did play Halo 4 at launch, but only about to level 40 or so, it wasn’t until revisiting the game years later with a new friend after various patches, playlist updates, and new gametypes that I played regularly enough to nearly reach Max Rank.

And this was long after the game had supposedly died, after the initial slump at launch. It was a shame to no longer see Halo dominating the charts like it used to, but not only would I argue that’s more to do with the game’s lack of social features at launch than the gameplay itself (a habit 343 can’t shake), it again, didn’t impact me as a player that the total player count was five thousand rather than five hundred thousand.

Big Team Battle. Free for All. Ricochet. All completely playable, with the only exception being from my recollection Dominion, and frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t just slot that into the BTB playlist. We’ve also learned since then, slotting individual game modes into dedicated playlists is quite inefficient.

Games like Titanfall 2 were updated to have players select all the modes they enjoyed, and search them together. So while yes, just like before, if you selected one individual mode that’s a bit niche, you’re unlikely to find a match, if searching multiple playlists, you were more likely to get those unique modes.

And as a result, I played that game for dozens of hours and maxing out the profile despite the seemingly low average of two thousand people. So while it would’ve been nice for the game to receive more love globally, as an individual, the lower player count didn’t impact my enjoyment in the slightest.

So why then?

Why do people put so much emphasis on a game’s population if there’s endless examples of games with lower player counts not only being perfectly playable, but perfectly enjoyable?

Well, for one thing...

;)