Seasonal Drift

Meaningful posts are likely to be thin on the ground around here for a while (So what's new?) thanks to seasonal factors but I like to keep to the schedule all the same. In that vein, here's an extremely brief observation on Once Human, which I logged into for the first time in around a month today.

The Season thing really isn't working for me. I've given it a fair shot but it's just too jumpy for comfort. Partly, that's down to the scenarios as much as the process. 

I really enjoyed The Way of Winter for the first three phases. I played for something like forty hours across the first four weeks. Then Phase Four arrived and made my playstyle mostly untenable. I couldn't even log in and get the heating on in my house before the cold killed me.

That led to me dropping out of the game entirely. I could have moved my house to somewhere less directly affected by the Chaosweaver blizzards but it wasn't directly within one of the danger areas anyway, so how much difference that would have made seemed uncertain.

The upside, from my perspective, was that I immediately forgot all about the game. Even though it's probably my favorite MMORPG of the year and certainly the one that got most of my votes in the Steam poll and even though it had been my main game for several weeks, I found it remarkably easy to stop playing.

Partly, that's down to the repetitive nature of the Seasonal structure. The Way of Winter was very different but prior to that I had a long run in beta and then two Seasons, all of which were basically the same. Mostly, though, it's down to lack of continuity, which is very much a double-edged sword in terms of retention.

The negative effect is it makes me feel nothing really has any permanence so there's no point making much of an effort. Eternaland is nice for what it is but it feels completely separate from the "real" game. It's more like a place I store my stuff when I'm not playing than an actively playable alternative.

The impermanence obviously makes it a lot easier to drop the game and play something else instead. Everything I've done is going to be wiped at the end of the Season anyway. No point getting too attached.

On the other hand, the cyclical nature of the Seasons means it's easy to come back any time I feel like another run. Better yet, every time there's a new Season I can take a look at the scenario and if it sounds interesting I basically have a brand new game to play.

My server is now in the wind-down phase. The moment I logged in I got a prompt telling me to consider my options for next Season. The problem with that is, as far as I can tell there's no new scenario in prospect just yet. Another Season is going to be the same as one I've already played.

I don't think there's much chance of me signing up for another tour. I'll have a look but I imagine I'll sit it out in Eternaland until there's some actual, new content. Then I'll most likely come back and play the heck out of it for half the Season before drifting away again.

It's not a bad deal from my perspective. A lot better than, say, Valheim, where the devs' main goal with every update seems to be to make the game no fun to play at all . How well it will work for Starry, commercially in the long run, I'm not so sure. I can't help feeling a more traditional MMORPG format with a good deal more permanence would have locked in more people for longer but who knows?

Certainly, numbers have fallen a long way. As I write, there are just over 21,000 playing, which is pretty good as it goes but still a 90% drop from the peak last summer. 

That said, these days, a hold of ten per cent after six months is solid.  Steam charts show the game's population trending very consistently downwards as the Season comes to its conclusion but it will most likely trend back up as soon as there's something new to do. When that will be, though, is anyone's guess.