In my opinion, the number of players is dropping because they get bored of the monotony of the game, and the emergence of other MMOs, offer them new things -like any new game-.

However, I think Albion could maintain and attract larger numbers of players if:

1) They added in-game content more often.
-New mobs -not upgraded subdivisions-, new dungeons -corrupted and solo-, new NPC's, cosmetics -paid-, mounts, new events, and more.

2) A more dedicated and more frequent balancing on weapon issues.
-Balances always position a meta, leaving out and sometimes far behind certain players, disabling them for pvp if not with certain weapons, and therefore, making it easier for them to leave the game.

3) More contact with the community for everything -maybe they need a bigger team-.
-This either to fix bugs, and comment on certain suggestions and / or updates.

The main generator of players is content and interest in solo/small groups.

If someone logs into the game at inconvenient times when his team is not playing... will bounce off albion...

There was/is a CD, but how does it look now if you don't play meta build or prefer cheesing... another bounce.

Faction level frustration by players who abuse mounts... another bounce

Gathering and srd is the only activity if one already has a complete board and is not looking for PVE... another bounce.
Introduced nerfs for nature/healingsickness etc have completely killed world boss hunting solo.

What the game lacks/has lacked is a free choice of solo content and grind.

before there were chests/bosses/static drop etc..
everything has been nerfed/removed.

added hideouts which have already made OW completely obsolete..

edit: For example, I don't play through steam so the data will be bigger.
A lot of old teams are back in the game and the hype is real for nextupdate.

New world released 28th of Sep. We have an a huge new update, and people are taking a break until that comes out also

Game needs more sandbox and less systems. That's all.

• Make the player island something more than it is. (living customizable NPCs that also do work to some degree, more focus on farming than craft buildings and homes, customizable island skin biome, more furniture types and dye tubs like Ultima Online used to have.)
  
• Make hideouts more than they are. (open world underground cities/dens/chambers) Also make them easier for solo players if they want a personal hovel out wherever.
  
• Customization has such a long way to go. Body types, a few skin colors missing, like pale white. More vanity skins. Weapon skins that stick when leaving town.
  

The developers need to go watch an anime called Overlord. And just... go from there. lol

* What the game does NOT need. (a quest system) - all quest systems are a waste of dev time. Flat out. There wasn't a single quest system in any game I cared one bit about. And once you put that into a MMO for some reason it always turns into a thing where you have to force the players especially new players to go do it. And there is no way to get around mad libs writing for the quests. It's always KILL X, BRING Y PARTS, TO B LOCATION. Seeing a quest log in WoW and FF14 nauseates me and fills me with rage.

I just started playing about 9 days ago. I'm already pretty much bored. I'm struggling to logon at the moment. There just doesn't really seem like there's anything to do for any worthwhile progression. Here's my impressions.

- It seems like almost all the content in the game is done with T4-T6 gear. Corrupted Dungeons, Regular Dungeons, Resource Gathering... you can do it all in 1 day of effort. At 9 days, I wanted to try a Mace Spec meta build for Corrupted Dungeons. I had 0 skills in mace or any of the armor. Put on some T3-T4, cleared some T5s in BZ and after like 5 or so I could max out gear what I needed for corrupted dungeons. Took 0 effort at all. There's just no progression and work toward anything of value. Sure, there might be these bigger raids or whatever I see in LFG chat where people need T8 or whatever but I can't imagine the PvE in this game being that engaging. The simplistic controls needed to make the game mobile friendly prevent any complexity to the PvE to make it anything more than just a way to farm currency for PvP.

- Issue I have with PvP is that it's impossible to get into a good open world fight as a new player. All I can do is try to find people fishing and hope I can kill them. That's hardly PvP. Most players I encounter have tremendous gear or numbers advantage. I've joined a few guilds but most people seem content soloing boring dungeons for silver instead of trying to gank. Even still, I don't like the idea that I need to zerg up numbers wise to actually get anywhere. Yesterday, I grouped up with a couple guys to do some open world ganking and literally our first encounter was a group of like 20 players. Getting good fights is tough.

- There's just no progression. Okay, so I can do corrupted dungeons but why? I make more money to get better equipment I guess but the better equipment seems to hardly make a difference. Corrupted dungeons already have a soft-cap. Open world PvP is more a numbers thing anyway. I'm better off PvPing in T6 with 1 extra guy in T6 than PvPing in T8.

- My island is cool but it's way too basic. I'm very limited to what I can do. It's too small. It's so small that people use some guild hall "bug" or whatever to amass lots of guild halls. Why not let us incredibly expand our personal islands instead? What if personal islands could be setup in the BZ but they're hidden. Other players can try to track down your personal island, while you can try to move it. Make it so the best crafting can only be done by personal islands in the BZ creating lots of risk for players looking to craft the best gear. Just an idea.

- There doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to go deep into BZ. It's like you can get all the potential benefit (as a solo player) only a few zones into the BZ.

- Why are solo dungeons, corrupted dungeons, arenas, group dungeons etc... even a thing tbh? It just gives players a safe space when there really shouldn't be one.

- I just find the beginning "progression" way too fast. I have 5 mill silver and I have nothing I care to spend it on. The jumps between tiers also is quite negligeable but the price can be quite high.

- Crafting is just way too simplistic and there isn't information about the exact mechanics of crafting easily assessable in-game from what I can see. I want to know probabilities for quantities etc...

I dunno, overall I just feel like the game has no point. Nothing really worth doing. No progression. Nothing to try and get stronger for. No niche for you to carve out and make yourself different than any people. No specialization/focus/role. The PvP isn't really that fun and neither is the PvE. For a "sandbox" game there really doesn't seem like a whole lot to do. There's no depth to anything. It all feels very superficial. I also think the map seems too small but in total zones and size of the zones. I'd rather see things a little more spread out. Easier to avoid zergs and perhaps chances to find some little corner to be left alone in. When traffic is too high, it discourages solo'ers from doing anything so they go hide in their dungeons which really shouldn't be how the game is played.

I'm not sure if the game is fixable tbh. The desire to make it cross-platform requires a certain level of simplicity but that's holding the game back from ever being anything but a mobile game you can play on your PC. At least, it has the simplicity of one. I realize there's lots more content presumably if you're in a large guild and partake in the Guild vs. Guild stuff but IMO there needs to be a lot more content for solo players that puts them in PvP situations that solo players can win. They need to design PvP metrics in the open world that heavily discourages large groups (zergs) unless it's specifically for large-scale guild vs. guild stuff. Players need access to their own giant castles/islands they can build and customize. Crafting needs to be way more intricate, complex and requires a lot more devotion toward, including owning attacking castles/islands in BZ etc... I'd also like to see the earlier tiers be a lot more expensive and make progression much slower then change the tiers in terms of role rather than simply item power. Example: rather than have plate mail of T1-T8, perhaps plate mail is only a T8 item. It's super tanky, like insanely tanky. 20,000 HP or something but movement is incredibly slow. Someone wearing T8 tank gear could get kited by a number of small players but perhaps the T8 tank has an Aura that's incredibly powerful for Group fights or something. Add some siege weapons? I dunno. The fact that a T4 player in a few hours of playing the game is using mostly the exact same playstyle as a T8 guy minus a few mostly meaningless skills just seems wrong.

Would be nice if the game had standard MMORPG controls, perspective and Korean 3D Fantasy-style graphics. Not the mobile ones. But again, that means it would have to be a whole different game.

Oh, one last thing. Why can't I buy my loadout directly from the market in 1-click? For a simplistic game, the lack of quality of life options is such as this is annoying (maybe I'm missing this somewhere?)

Been playing since 2016 (this is my alt forum acc) and back when the game first released on steam we were lucky to average 500-600 players on that chart.

Keep in mind the vast majority of players use the albion online client not steam, so with that in mind 7-10k on steam is an incredible number in terms of concurrent mmo players. Couple that with mobile and the game easily reaches approximately 100k active users daily. The new update is coming soon and new mmo's releasing will naturally cause a dip in players.

This is the golden age of albion in terms of population, enjoy it while it lasts instead of worrying about numbers on a steam chart

Game grew stale for many. They have taken a long ass time for this next coming update with very few changes in-between. Open world has been broken for many moons now. Also like mentioned above many people (myself included) jumped on New World to check that out while we wait for something fresh in Albion. However I feel many of those same people will come back to Albion to at the very least give it a shot after the next coming update. Albion has been the game I have played the most in my gaming life and for how much the actions of the Devs befuddle me at times I want this game to thrive.

Things many people like myself really dont care about.

We want a good game that plays well and is competitive and intriguing - not another eye candy MMO.

Hey there,

Steamcharts only shows players who play on the Steam version of the game - and that is just a small share of Albion's player base

The drop you see there is largely due to other game releases and the fact that our last major content update was a while ago. The Land's Awakened Update will hopefully see Steam numbers picking up again

I wasn't playing for a while as a steam user, logged in like 2-3 minutes per week for a while, i dont even do it anymore.

There are some of my biggest reasons to drop playing this game:

1- Completely unbalanced game, in every aspect of game there are "meta or gtfo" style. Off meta builds are absurdly weak.
2- Black Zones/Avalon Roads were literally empty. Sometimes I could roam for hours before i can hit a player. (Of course i dont count R3 as roaming place, i dont like 1v50 most of the time)
3- This is related to 2nd point, finding a fair fight is hard. At outlands dying is a lot more punished not because of gear/silver loss, because of regearing, going to the places where you can get a good fight takes a lot of time which is the actual punishment for me.
4- Almost half of the players are playing HCE, which is a boring scripted pve for me. If i wanted a scripted pve, there are tons of great games out there to pve.
5- As solo player, game doesnt appealling much. All you can do is CD and it is tightly coupled with 1st point here. Other contents are almost non existant. I don't like current meta (hit run, who runs/pushes faster wins).
6- Small group content for this game is currently 5v5 hell gates. That is maybe ok. But the thing is, it takes TOO much time to "group up -> prepare -> use map and go 2-3 maps away to enter -> kill lots of mobs before match making find your group an oponnent -> fight for 30-60 seconds -> die (or live)" , if you die, it takes WHOLE a lot of time to start fighting again. I dont even mention outlands or red zone.
7- Big Scale zvz -> what a joke. Be a servant to a greedy mega guild most of the time. wait cluster queue, fill up maps and dont fight, come back. Oops, 2 hours wasted.


Man while i was writing. I got mad.

This game gave me anxiety.

Thanks.

"people are waiting for the new patch"

This game has nothing to keep players, every patch this excuse comes. The novelty of the new patch wears out very quickly.

PvE is boring and not challenging at all (only so much you can do with 6 spells and cater to 300 ping), PvP is boring and its either Zerg Ganking or CD. Even then with all the mega alliance you have to run 20 maps to gank.

Once you hit late game the only refreshing thing to do is leave your current alliance and join another (maybe the next RMT killer hype guild).

Game has grown but the fact is that it doesn't keep players, end game is weak, let's hope that the next update and the next ones will be more focused on end game for the last 2 years you see a big emphasis on early game and mid game with ignoring players who are looking for PVP.
You can see that SBI is strongly focused on getting new players, these end game players mostly don't care about PVE and farming.

ждём новый сезон

Thanks Tseliteiv. I'm pretty much in the same boat, I'm a new player, I've played the same amount of time, and I've reached the same conclusion.

I like the idea of an open world full loot PVP, but I struggle to see what can Albion Online offer to me, as a new player that doesn't have any friends playing the game. The idea of zerg fighting doesn't sound fun at all, and after seeing the same dungeon a dozen times I struggle to understand why log in nowadays, or why to progress and get better gear. Simply, I don't have a reason to play the game, as the sandbox is very limited, instead of letting me make my fun however I want.

I used to play EVE online years ago, and even without a corporation I did make my fun by living in lowsec areas and preying on people doing PVE, stealing their loot and selling it for a profit. That's the type of gameplay I want to get out of a sandbox PVP MMO, but it feels to me I'm restricted to joining a big guild for noobs, doing dungeons over and over, or trying my hand at 1v1 PVP where the risk is getting ganked by a much bigger force, or just by people that have better gear or game knowledge than I have.

Yes, I feel the game needs more sandbox, more reasons to roam the world which isn't zerg vs zerg or running the same dungeons. Sadly, I don't know what this game needs, in practical terms.

Долго терпел все изменения последних лет. Смотрел как обесценивались ресурсы, руны, артефакты. В этот раз они добрались до крафта. Больше тут делать нечего. Ушел в EVE online .

If you liked eve, id say stick with it as i was a similar player but honestly the combat system is just a lot better in albion. otherwise its practically the same game. Solo ganking is pretty tough but ganking with one buddy is very easy and profitable.

I think the game needs more depth. Everything is just too simplistic and quick to pickup. In EVE you can pick a specialization and take months to perfect it. In this game, you pick what you want to do and you do it in a couple hours. Just no sense of "progression" for anything.

Silver is so easy to come by here too that there isn't the same feeling of risk vs. reward as EVE had. In EVE, most people PvPed in expensive equipment. If you died, you maybe could only afford to die 2-3 times. PvPers in my experience always ran pretty slim money wise. Always a few deaths away from bankruptcy. There was that feeling of "you can't die" which gave the PvP a much higher adrenaline rush. In this game, within 1 week, I can farm 1m in an hour if I hit a decent dungeon, 500k/hour on average. I can gear myself up for 200k. Dying is nothing more than an inconvenience. I care more about the lost time having to use the really basic and hard to wield auction house to rebuy my gear than I do fear the actually loss of silver. Since this is how I feel, I know this is how the people I kill feel. There's no real sense of accomplishment for killing the guy. Like on EVE when you kill that shiny expensive ship fully geared out, YOU KNOW THAT HURT. That doesn't seem to happen here as well at all.

The next patch for this game looks interesting. It might encourage more open world fights and reduce the power of zergs in GvG. I'm going to give the next patch a try and see how the PvPing is.

I do find the controls and "feel" of the game and PvP more fun than EVE. I always felt like I was detached from the fight and the game in EVE. Like I wasn't really playing it but just watching the screen. It never really felt engaging.

So steam players are less than 7% of total count?
Comparing steam stats to albiononline.com/en/news/albio…s-popularity-record-level
Also, the steam stats do not show any increase of concurrent players on June 8th like SBI's post does.
Interesting there is no correlation. Very surprising steam players are such a small percentage of players.
Perhaps everyone was mobile players.

Numbers have steadily declined since the update. Most of the small scale content has died, RoA are pretty dead these days as well. Everyone wants in on the Bz action

mmo-population.com/r/albiononline