Hmm. I don’t know. To be honest I see it as more of an hours-based assessment. What I mean by that is that the total amount of hours played should account towards your opinion or “worth”. By that I mean that someone who plays the game for 10 hours and never touches it again isn’t as valid as someone who plays it for 2000. After all, converting those few-time players into avid fans is the goal. I suppose we should be focusing on getting the average play time of all players up, and while your strategy of wowing new players at the beginning is good as a start, but it does not sustain/guarantee replayability, which is the focus. Obviously there will always be people who just play the game once or twice and don’t come back, that is inevitable. But, if we can win over just a few of them into becoming avid fans, I would consider that a victory."not worth it. mods do this already and better. the new features are mostly obnoxiously overdone as well." doesn't sound like a tech support issue to me.
Like, if you think the average Steam user is some casual player who only wants a bit of swordplay and an overmap to run around on? Sure, I agree. If you want to go further and say that they also don't recognize quality games, you lost me there, but it is at least understandable. But WB blew it out of the water with not even a quarter of the features, even accounting for the terrible release.
That's why I think the new player experience (i.e. someone who doesn't know a damned thing, just picking it up and playing casually) is more important than complexity or depth.
@MadVader Thats something I hadn’t quite thought of. I suppose that, if I understand you correctly, could be a good argument against the “why do you want the game to improve if modders can fix it” meme: we need players to enjoy the game, get acclimated into it/the community, and seek out mods after they have enjoyed it and want more. People don’t just download full conversion mods right when they buy the game, most don’t even know they exist. However, if they ditch the game because it sucks, they won’t have the opportunity to experience them.