Kheldragar wrote:
Actually there's only about 600,000 users because of the thousand multi accounts everyone has.
Its interesting that so many have multi accounts because isnt it illegal to have those?
But now to topic. In my opinion osu! will never get to as popular like LoL, Dota 2 or CS:GO. Why? Because it isn't so interesting to watch in esports or in stream like those games.
What I actually try to say by that? Well nowadays biggest free advertisement for games is Streamers (especially Twitch) and Esport.
SC2 used to be big Esports and it had also much of players because of it. But since games started to be repetitive. (Same build orders, same tactics etc.) people started to get bored of it and started to also stop playing a game. And yes I know that SC2 is difficult game where 1on1 is most balanced game mode. 1on1 is too challenging/difficult for most people and it's reason why many players stopped playing the game.
Also Path of Exile got much of free advertisement when Kripparian used to play it. But why this can't happen to osu! ? Because osu! doesn't look so interesting for most of people.
If you compare Path of Exile and osu! for as example: in
PoE you are exile which have left to island which is full of undead. You start to explore that island. As same time you play you learn more about world around you. Also there is over hundred of skills in that game which are visually impressive. Even though that game have it's own flaws like out of sync. But looking at the stream watchers might never notice that before they download and try the game. They only see "cool game".
What does our lovely game
osu! have (there was no sarcasm in that sentence). For stream watchers they only hear music playing and see us clicking circles. Normally game looks either really easy for them or really hard for them. But most of cases it doesn't look so interesting for normal stream watcher. Why? Because it isn't "cool". There isn't fighting, there isn't exploring, there isn't story behind it.
Even though I know that those things are only minor if you play game a lot (story is interesting when you play game first time, exploring is only fun when you haven't explored game fully already, fighting in game is fun when you are not fed of it already [in PvE game]). Still those things are which hook players in to game.
Those was things of casual PvE games like in: Diablo, PoE, GW2 and such.
What about competitive games then? Since osu! is actually competitive game. At this moment
I think most popular competitive games are: League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone and CS:GO. In that order. I have also heard that Heroes of the Storm might some day come popular. If we don't count
Hearthstone all those four are team games. When you go and try to play those games you can't play it solo. You have to play with team. With randoms or with your friends. It seems that team games are currently "in". Maybe because they are more interesting to watch. Or maybe because it's not so stressful to play team games than games like SC2 where there isn't no-one else to blame when you loose than yourself. (In 1on1 of course.)
And before you say that
Hearthstone is 1on1 game and it have been very popular in Twitch for long time already I have my theory for it also. Someone said that players nowadays like to "unlock" things in games. Well if that is true there no wonder that Hearthstone is popular. You have many cards to get/unlock in that game. And also loosing in that game isn't so stressful than in SC2 for example. I have read articles and reviews from that game. And word which they like to use for that game is "fun". "This game is fun when you win and even when you loose". Personally I can't agree with that but if people think like that it's biggest reason why they might play that game so much.
Because when you win or loose that game you can't know is it because you just had better deck against to his deck. Or was it because you top decked better than your opponent. Or was it pure luck. Or was you actually just better player.
Moldran said once that he just doesn't like the fact that when you win the match you just can't know that did you won the game because of luck or skill. Also that game is easy to get in to. You have much time to think your moves and you don't have to be that fast.
And then there is this last fact. HS is just more fun to watch for most people than osu! (even though I can't agree with that myself).
Since I have now said what I wanted to say (with wall of text) what is my actual opinion how popular will osu! get. osu! will get more popular but some day there will come wall against us because at least at this moment there is much of popular songs which some players will not like. I have friends which hate japanese/anime/asian songs and rather don't play those. Well osu! have much of them. It's majority of beatmap pool of this game. We also have western songs but near as much. It's not problem to me but it might be problem to others. Is it something which scares some players out of the game? I don't know that personally but I would not be suprised for it.
I have not said much of osu! pros in this post. Only cons. osu! is best possible rhytm game at this moment. It have nice community which makes beatmaps every day to this game so we will never run of content to play. If I'm not wrong at this moment we have almost 40 000 ranked beatmaps to play. So there should be something for everyone. We also have best leaderboards ever made to any game. And this game is highly modable. This is maybe best game to take advance of your muscle memory.
If you look at this:
What Makes Games Good you can see that it includes six different things:
Challenge, Feel, Freedom, Place, Promise and Fantasy. What of those osu have? I'm sure we have different opinions of it but I would say: Challenge, Feel, Freedom and Promise. Everyone knows osu! is challenging game. Feel is more complicated but I would say that if beatmap is really well done and it syncs well with music it gives me right to say that osu! also includes this feel. In osu! you have amazing freedom to do things. You can be part of community and develop game making beatmaps and skins. You can play all beatmaps in osu! or just one. This game have great promise of future. Well not maybe millions of active players of same time but this game evolves whole time!
So I would say this game is not for everyone. If you want to play game where you challenge your personal skills every day which doesn't involve any RNG (if we don't count really small lag between your client and server) then this is the game for you.