those people also didn't want to adapt to the changing pace of beta, so it's more or less their full decision to leave if they didn't want to give it a few chances.
As someone who has continuously given the new builds a ton of chances and a longtime fan, I can assure you the game itself is much worse off than it was two builds ago, minus the bugfixes, which even then some amounted to heavy nerfs that just hurt gameplay more. Some of these people gave the new builds the same amount of chances I have, and they found the game very lacking.
We contacted over 200 youtubers of various sizes at steam launch time, and followed up with those interested afterwards. I feel like the amount of thought we've put into this might be more than you think. @Klok you've made it abundantly clear that you're unhappy with the current state of the game. Posting in every thread about it isn't much of a contribution.
Didn't realize that you had contacted that much, so I apologize for that, but at the same time, I coulda assumed any number due to lack of anything signifying a decent amount of people contacted.
thousand fanboys/girls would surround pewdiepie like a human shield.. As a little reminder, there already was a famous youtuber who played KAG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTI2kec60d4 KAG lacks the long-time motivation because everytime you play a match; Every fort you produce out of thin air, every construction you destroy and all the lotion of enemie blood you clothe yourself in; is condemned to be forgotten. No story, no unlockable content, creativity, highscores/rankings, nothing to achieve except the goals you set yourself. I suspect steam achievements are going to change that, too late. Stop changing fundamental things, keep on, the king is dead, long live KAG2.
Before I start off my statement: No, I'm not a 15 year old girl on her period, I just wanna get some stuff out there. I remember when long matches were actually fun to stick around and try to win, now its just kind of annoying. Also, there used to be 200 to 250 players when I first got into the game. I really got into kag around the beginning of march. Here we are, six months later and I barely see over 80 players. I know this post seems useless, but I was a really big fan of this game, over 1000 hours altogether. I feel like this game had a touch to it that was marvelous, but I don't get that same fun out of it that I used to. Sorry to sound like some 15 year old girl on her period, but I'm sure some of you guys can relate to this. Although, whatever you guys think of doing to keep it alive, I'm all in.
@Leo in aus there are not enough servers, everyone plays on the CTF here in aus and there is only one server with 20 slots.
I think it just boils down to the game ultimately not having much to do and lacking in any persistence. It's a fun game but gets old quickly.
It is all personal preference. As norill above said, some has been playing for years, and most people that are at least decent have about 300+ hours. I mean, hell, makmoud has 1000+ hours in the Steam Version, and I think starselect has something around there also. I am at 443 hours, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon.
In classic I used to be able to pull this off But in Kag Beta it feels like a luck-based hack 'n slash against other people with no strategy involved.
Look back at what retained players for months/years in KAG Alpha (despite the type of game it is, usually has poor retention), learn from said things and start to add them back. I'd take a close look especially at the things that were removed and had very large negative responses from the community (almost any patch that was 20+ pages), look to trying to bring back the things removed or remove the things added, at least take those things back to the drawing board. Personally I hate the feel of Beta, it sacrified a lot of the heart of what made classic actually fun simply to have some things Beta would have needed otherwise done easier, like the physics engine. I know some things they wanted/needed to move forward weren't possible on the old engine, but straight dropping a lot of the old method honestly lost a lot of things that added a lot of interplay into KAG, it's the difference between having little niches/tricks in the gameplay, like notch jumping and what it meant for timing, especially things like jumpingoff notches down on people, and countering it, adding these things outside of normal physics added a lot of play/counterplay that was downright fun, I also found bomb jumping a lot more fun in the original, even testing the first beta versions it just never felt as good. Maybe it does now but I doubt anything changed very recently.