Valve's Artifact drops to below 1,000 players two months after release
334 replies, posted
https://www.reddit.com/r/Artifact/
So the Artifact subreddit is going through a phase...
Oh, my god there seemly someone is that so desperate to make these fake accounts as to keep the r/Artifact open???
The subreddit has more people then actual Artifact players.
Jokes on them, its already abandoned.
The twitter hasnt been updated since last year, and there hasnt been an update to the game in 2 months.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/2232/17954eab-862f-495f-bf42-e3ed9c72a3c8/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/2232/65fcc073-e764-4f8f-a144-357cc56a0085/image.png
HL2 Death Match now beating Artifact
Time to see which niche lasts longer.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110815/37d2cfce-a242-45f1-a348-83e28fa73f6c/image.png
artifact must die
soon this game will just be a...
relic
That kind of hurts seeing Natural Selection 2 up there. Natural Selection was an amazing half-life mod and I followed NS2's development ever since it started and after it's release. It's a shame it's become such a niche competitive game. I wish NS1 was still alive...
I suspect NS2 had a rough time because it was full of veterans that moved in from ns1 and it was pretty much impossible to learn for new players without being treated like shit.
You're not wrong. That game had many, many elitists in it. Some would even go as far as out-right banning you from servers if you didn't have a certain number of hours played, or had your newbie status removed.
Actually a sizeable portion of the competitive ns1 vets didn't carry over or left a couple years following release because NS2 was made in it's own engine (spark engine) and that engine just simply didn't perform as well as goldsrc or source did. The remaining vets are still brutally strong though as the game doesn't do a good job at conveying what a player should be doing at a given time and the fact the skill ceiling allows for even a slight skill difference to look like a onesided stomp.
It has been optimized considerably since launch and they're still working on some big updates, but I don't really think it'll ever get mainstream appeal like their followup game subnautica did (can't really compare the two games).
FMPONE a mapper of cs:go fame actually worked on an ns2 map prior to his work in cs:go, Veil , which is still one of the most played maps in the game. It was a bit a bummer when he left without as much as saying anything but I can't blame him for wanting his work to be enjoyed by more people than ns2 would provide.
(source: I'm an inactive/retired official playtester)
Anyways, didn't mean to derail the schadenfreude.
There is no comparison to be made here. NS2 population has been stable for years. Artifact won't even last another month or two at this rate.
Yes, I'm fully aware ns2 has been at a really slow bleed since around 2015 with some peaks here and there. The dedicated players remain because it fills a niche they enjoy and don't quite get elsewhere.
I was mentioning in jest that since the playercounts at are reaching similar levels and that the players of a niche title such as ns2 would be facing off against any lingering artifact players in a battle of dedicated player retention.
There's still room for improvement
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/344/48823515-49c7-4f63-af85-5f71af2d7824/26-03-2019 @ 08h_13m_06s [Comparing_2_apps_·_Steam_Database_-_Mozilla_Firefo].png
My personal experience with NS2 was dying ~2 seconds after I spawned every game so it's not surprising. Shame though, it's a damn good concept.
At some point I expect Battleborn to beat Artifact.
Anyone else think it could happen?
Didn't the battleborn servers get shut down or something?
Wasn't there some sort of tactic where you could jump weirdly in NS2? I remember it being really hard to kill either marines as the starter alien or the other way around because they were doing some dumb jumps.
That was my and my friends experience, I bought 4 copies for me and friends and we couldnt get into a proper game without getting abused.
This is how Battleborn could still win
Don't think so. Jumping is just a good tactic against bad alien players.
It wasn't special or anything, but it was kinda fun
I played a lot of NS1 and don't remember a lot of shittalk to newbies. The biggest problem in NS2 right now is E-Peen Hive rating, which is considered as absolute standard by most players. If teams are even slightly imbalanced - everyone reshuffle teams. And that takes 5-10 minutes because there's always two or three reshuffles happening before match start.
I don't have a screencap, but I do have a link with data - Artifact reached 97 players at one point last night on the 26th.
https://steamcharts.com/app/583950#48h
Just for fun I did a few comparisons. Oh dear.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/2304/88b954f4-92e6-4de2-83ad-cbe3a756aa87/image.png
Everyone knows which is the newest, right?