Games that won't die (DotA, Apex, Rust, Siege etc.)

[Lovely Kin]

Mario Kart Wii is still extremely popular and has a large online community from what I've noticed.

 

[Book Thief]

Left 4 Dead 2 is not only still actively played, it has a healthy modding community.

Meanwhile, the game that was meant to succeed it was pretty much dead on arrival, only managing to scrape by with 1/10th of the active playerbase as of today.

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

I know this thread is focused on multiplayer games, but Skyrim is in the same boat. It's a game that still never dies even on console.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Somehow the "Age Of" series is still kicking.
All 3 games and Mythology got Remasters (Definitive/Retold), from what I can tell made by the team responsible for AoE2: The Conquerors back in the day, and the things that have happened since then are kind of funny to observe:

- AoE3 got put on maintenance mode and has had at least 1 DLC's development delayed (twice?) In favor of more AoE2 DLCs.
- AoE1 has basically been left to flounder last I saw, because the old ruleset is not very fun, and thats made worse by more or less being ported into AoE2 Definitive through a big DLC that even brought over a couple Campaigns.
- Age of Mythology Retold I've not touched very much because it barely runs on my rig, but it launched Day 1 with a new Major God and is currently about to launch its new Chinese DLC. What I have seen showed extensive changes to the ruleset but it looks quite cool.
- You've probably inferred from the other points; AoE2 is still the Steam roller of the franchise, still absurdly popular, and is the thing the devs pay the most attention to. Don't even know how many new DLCs, civs, and reworks have been done, and despite all the convenience features added in Definitive, it's really intimidating to get back into in the modern day because it's twice if not thrice the size it used to be.

Edit:
Also I guess Age 4 exists, I've barely looked into it and don't see much talk about it so I have no idea where it's at in terms of playerbase and ongoing development

 

[Thiletonomics]

- AoE1 has basically been left to flounder last I saw, because the old ruleset is not very fun, and thats made worse by more or less being ported into AoE2 Definitive through a big DLC that even brought over a couple Campaigns.

The original AOE1 is still played a lot in Vietnam, and has a small but dedicated Chinese player base too. The DE version of AOE1 didn't catch on those regions.

Blizzard's games also have a reputation of refusing to die, because of the several sunken cost fallacy players have for them, so they keep on playing it. World of Warcraft is the biggest offender of this, and somehow Warcraft III got some recent attention, even though the Reforged version was so awful on launch that people called it WC3:Refunded.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Team Fortress 2 has been kicking for nearly 20 years now. The main issue is that there's been no prevalent successor to it; Paladins didn't get popular enough, and Overwatch had zero community server support and pushed a bunch of corporate, woke slop to the forefront of its identity. Even Valve couldn't get lightning to strike twice with Dead(game)lock, the characters are boring as shit and most FPS players will prefer TF2 and most MOBA players will prefer DOTA, so it's in this weird grey-area.

I think what made TF2 fun is the freedom aspect, you're not locked into exclusively 5v5 or 6v6 matches, you can just fuck around in a 16v16 server (some are even bigger nowadays), whereas FPS games are way too obsessed with establishing a competitive scene nowadays, and everything feels samey. TF2 has way more options in how to play the game despite from a gameplay perspective being limited to only 9 classes which are rather barebones.

To be fair, deadlock is like if you took the worst aspects of DotA and TF2 and fused it all together sloppily

 

[iceteayo]

This thread could have been smarter, a lot of these forever games thrive on different types of players. How much comments do you run into seeing they used to love Siege but hate it now? These comments/videos get so much views or upvotes but somehow Siege is still alive and well. We used to live in an era where games got sequels but now forever games could have one bad patch that (you) hate but the majority of the community still plays. It basically means you will never get a fresh sequel or potentially the games engine could be eating itself alive as it was not designed to be played for 10 fucking years.

The only game I have seen perform insane redesigns/optimizations to its code is Fortnite becasue fucking epic own the unreal engine so they can do whatever. Other games like Siege, or even Call of Dutys new engine can barely last after 5 years sometimes.

 

[Scarthew]

Team Fortress 2 has been kicking for nearly 20 years now. The main issue is that there's been no prevalent successor to it; Paladins didn't get popular enough, and Overwatch had zero community server support and pushed a bunch of corporate, woke slop to the forefront of its identity.

Well tf2 is a class based shooter while the other ones you listed are "hero shooters" which are mobas converted into fps games, where your character is restricted by their skill cooldowns. The reason tf2 and overwatch exist side by side is because that small change makes them fill entirely different niches. Cooldowns force you to be more team reliant since your burst potential is a deliberate measured amount. Where in tf2 you can avoid most non hitscan damage and have consistent output meaning the more skilled player always wins rather than the group that works together better.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

World of War Planes still gets updates. So do Gaijins failed games like CRSED and Star Conflict.
I guess the whales pay for the servers and a minimum wage in siberia.

But the real intrigue is World of Tanks. A game being milked harder than an Ethiopian cow.
The game has more tier 8 premiums than tech tree vehicles combined and doubled.
And they added a subscription service on top of the premium time. You heard that right subscription for a free to play game.
Also the game suffers a Western Eastern split because of the Ukraine war.

 

[Cucktry Roads]

I think about this once a month and it comes down to this:
Genres have already been figured out.

There's very little room to innovate left in mobas, so everyone sticks to dota and lol. RTS is all aoe2. FPS is battfield and cod.

There is room to dethrone any of the entrenches games/franchises, but someone has to come in and do it better, which is hard because like I said, they've been figured out. We saw this with Marvel Rivals, it came in and took a lot of OW2's community. Rivals feels much better to play than OW. A studio could easily come in and dethrone TF2 since the game is almost 20 years old and it's spliting apart at the seems, but they don't.

Deadlock is gonna fail. Someone said it best in the deadlock thread. Playing the game is fucking exhausting because of how much focus it requires compared to playing a normal hero shooter like OW2 or Rivals, and a moba like lol or dota.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Somehow the "Age Of" series is still kicking.

Not sure how much it overlapped but I recall the Redbull cup being sort of tied into a remaster. Most of the competitors were actual boomers who never played anything but AoE2, so clearly there already was a crowd for it. Then they announced they'd continue making dlc for AoE 2, while also remastering other games AND AoE 4, while the community is still severely split between AoE 2 and basically every other game.

Even if you look at the graphs, there's still a lot of people playing the retired non-remaster of AoE2, and apparently there's a DLC mode for AoE 2/3(?) that is basically AoE1 remastered put into the newer engine? The whole game series is a mess and has no claim to still being alive the way it is. I did however see that the new DLC introduces hero units which is apparently not good?

Meanwhile you see Stormgate and Tempest Rising falling on their ass trying to modernize the RTS genre. You could study this genre for a PhD, it makes little sense.

 

[WULULULULU]

World of War Planes still gets updates. So do Gaijins failed games like CRSED and Star Conflict.
I guess the whales pay for the servers and a minimum wage in siberia.

But the real intrigue is World of Tanks. A game being milked harder than an Ethiopian cow.
The game has more tier 8 premiums than tech tree vehicles combined and doubled.
And they added a subscription service on top of the premium time. You heard that right subscription for a free to play game.
Also the game suffers a Western Eastern split because of the Ukraine war.

You wanna know what's funnier? Just this month, Russia literally did a takeover at Wargaming's Russia branch, Lesta by looking at its' global counterpart for mentioning anything regarding Ukraine.

And it's still alive to this day.

 

[Balr0g]

You just have to look through Twitch to see which old games still linger around. Rocket League is 10 years old and still hangs on, Super Mario 64 and super Mario World are still played (horray for emulation I guess), Path of Exile is also still there. Ffs Eve Online is still being played and that game is from 2003. Or I sometimes see spikes for the older Need for Speed Games, especially Underground 1-2, Most wanted and Carbon. They are being kept trelevant by mods and resahdes (and the fact that you can get them for free on the Internet Archive)

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

and apparently there's a DLC mode for AoE 2/3(?) that is basically AoE1 remastered put into the newer engine?

Yeah I mentioned Return of Rome in passing, but to elaborate, it's a bit all over the place.
The AoE1 half of RoR does do a façade of AoE1 comfy feeling, but it's more like a TC mod that's missing most of the OG campaigns, has hyper-aggressive AI, and has random other quirks as a side effect of being this weird mod-like portjob instead of a full recreation in the AoE2 ruleset. It does add Romans to AoE2's roster, and from my handful of times using them they feel kinda like Goths with a twist: you spam Militia-line infantry, for which you get a couple unique replacements for the final upgrades, but you also pepper in your unique cavalry because they provide passive buffs for your Militia-line troops.

Also back on topic of the OP, shout-out to the Destroy All Humans remasters from a while ago being what I consider two of the very few "Platinum-Tier" remasters, and since Soul Reaver 1+2 got remastered, I'm waiting for LoK:Blood Omen to hopefully get the same treatment so I can finally smash out those games.

Meanwhile you see Stormgate and Tempest Rising falling on their ass trying to modernize the RTS genre.

I think I wrote a whole rant somewhere around here about how one of the nomad/no base/scripted missions in Tempest Rising really thoroughly turned me off the game as a whole. I could kinda forgive the boring dialogue tree moments, but the construction and scripting of that mission really made me concerned about how amateur their level designer(s) could be. I will give it credit though, it encouraged me to go find out about Mental Omega (RA2:YR), Twisted Insurrection (TibSun), and D.O.R.F. ("what if RA2 was to-scale?")


Holy shit, I went and looked as I was finishing this post, and that second trilogy of Tomb Raider games I missed out on has just recently got the remaster treatment from the same company.

I may have to go scope out some internet boating accidents

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Somehow the "Age Of" series is still kicking.
All 3 games and Mythology got Remasters (Definitive/Retold), from what I can tell made by the team responsible for AoE2: The Conquerors back in the day, and the things that have happened since then are kind of funny to observe:

- AoE3 got put on maintenance mode and has had at least 1 DLC's development delayed (twice?) In favor of more AoE2 DLCs.
- AoE1 has basically been left to flounder last I saw, because the old ruleset is not very fun, and thats made worse by more or less being ported into AoE2 Definitive through a big DLC that even brought over a couple Campaigns.
- Age of Mythology Retold I've not touched very much because it barely runs on my rig, but it launched Day 1 with a new Major God and is currently about to launch its new Chinese DLC. What I have seen showed extensive changes to the ruleset but it looks quite cool.
- You've probably inferred from the other points; AoE2 is still the Steam roller of the franchise, still absurdly popular, and is the thing the devs pay the most attention to. Don't even know how many new DLCs, civs, and reworks have been done, and despite all the convenience features added in Definitive, it's really intimidating to get back into in the modern day because it's twice if not thrice the size it used to be.

Edit:
Also I guess Age 4 exists, I've barely looked into it and don't see much talk about it so I have no idea where it's at in terms of playerbase and ongoing development

As someone who went straight from Age of Empires to Age of Empires III as a kid, and then never played Age of Empires II until adulthood (and had trouble getting into it besides completing the campaigns), my relationship to the franchise has been confused.

AoE's core fanbase never could stomach Age of Empires III. While it looked good at the time it fell into the trap that most franchises and consumers did of conflating fidelity with beauty and traded the crisp and elegant retro graphical style of AoE2 for a bad, low-poly and too close up (going hand in hand with smaller maps) . The focus of the game was shifted onto the New World (yet a New World with such major colonial powers as the Ottomans and Prussians), really a better choice for a spinoff entry, and this lead to weirdness where it clearly wanted to be an Old World game in content (like Cossacks) but still insisted on shoving it into a different setting. It added unfamiliar mechanics, dumbed down some aspects of the game and on the other hand turned civs into special snowflakes (much more mechanical and unit variety).

Meanwhile, while Age of Empires III floundered, Age of Empires II quietly continued to thrive in its multiplayer, and for most of the fanbase remained the "real" Age of Empires. Eventually Ensemble basically rebooted the franchise, not with sequels but with endless DLC. Like other companies transitioning to the Age of Steam, they were able to sell modular DLC for cheap, greatly expanding the potential for endless DLC whoring. And so you get a boom, long over a decade after the game actually came out, of civilization and campaign packs.

It never fucking stops. They do at least one or two a year, and the player base seems to mostly enjoy it.

Around this time they likewise rerelease a woke version of Age of Empires III (tons of faggotry everywhere: no "Colonial" Age, "Estates" instead of Plantations, special snowflake endonyms for Indian nations that, half the time, are actually more exclusionary than the name they replaced, like Lakota instead of Sioux, fucking kill me I hate that so much) and begin whoring for it, although those were more like traditional expansion packs; they add a few civs that really deserved to be there all along (Sioux and Inca), DLC whore Mexico and America, then start selling packs, the only good-looking one being Africa.

Meanwhile, Age of Empires IV, instead of redoing AoE3 in the old style and focused on Europe (what would have probably been best) or moving forward in time to past the Age of Exploration, brought it back to Age of Empires II's Medieval setting, except making the same mistake all over again of trying to do it AoE3 style (you know, the style the fans rejected) with a small roster of civilizations. Very cartoonish. It had real improvements to sieges (actually putting soldiers on walls, getting around walls via siege towers and ladders instead of knocking them down with your sword, etc.), but nobody gave a fuck about it. Having AoE2: Classic Edition and AoE2: Piss Edition was, in hindsight, a bad idea and could only have cannibalized sales.

At this point Age of Empires II is like Chess. It's a game that exists off of its own cultural momentum, an intellectual e-sport that could not die even if it wanted to, because it ascended to godhood with Tetris and Counterstrike.


Basically the Paradox model of sell people bullshit

 

[Waifu Denier]

I know this thread is focused on multiplayer games, but Skyrim is in the same boat. It's a game that still never dies even on console.

Godd Howard told us we could play it forever, as surely he would never lie to us.

 

[NerfEverything]

Some games work. Others don't.

Those that base their funding on cosmetics or are non-profit/in maintaince mode can go on forever. Age of Empires 2 did it for decades before Microsoft realized they could milk it for money and are now oversaturating it with DLCs and balance revisions every couple of months. The last patch added heroes to ranked play based on some non-medieval semi mythical chinese factions that even the chinese players hate and completely ruined a fan favourite map called Black Forrest because the top 0.1% of players found it unfair to their tournament plays. So now its mirror balanced vanilla flavoured generics instead of the spicy randomness of the past. Same thing with a map called Nomad that was a huge fan favourite that got ruined in the past.

Those that constantly have to add new things often suffer from power-creep. Perfect examples of this are card games.
It ruins the game not just because older players have a hard time returning to it with what ever assets they had and thus the need to always stay on top gets exhausting but because the power creep itself changes the dynamic of the game into something else.

In Hearthstone where the norm was that cards didn't have a primary effect now the norm is a secondary if not tertiary effect. It becomes a random effect fiesta rather than anything tactical. One of the main reasons these games have any population after running for so long is the fact that people are stuck in a sunken cost fallacy spiral right down the drain.