I’ll start with a few:
- Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5). Only 53.8% of players earned the “Lovers” trophy, awarded for clearing the prologue at the No-Tell Motel, and only 77.3% of players earned the “Fool” trophy for clearing the preceding lifepath part of the prologue. Which means that ~20% of the people that played the game never made it out of the character creator, and another ~20% of the people that played the game went out into the open world, faffed around for a while, and then decided they were sufficiently entertained & then went back to playing FIFA.
- Bonds of the Sky (PS4/Vita). You might have heard of Cyberpunk, but I doubt you’ve heard of this game, which is a low-budget Dragon Quest clone. It’s not one of those “pay us 3 dollars/euros/pounds games and we’ll give you an easy platinum” shovelware games that the PS4 had in abundance at one point in time, and yet, the platinum trophy has an insane 59% acquisition rate. (By contrast, Horizon Zero Dawn, a much more popular game with a trivial platinum trophy, has only a 5.4% acquisition rate for its platinum.) The few people that played this game must’ve really loved it.
- Bloodborne (PS4). Only 44.6% of players beat the first boss, Father Gascoigne, but 25.9% of players beat the boss that triggers the endgame to start. So FromSoftware lost half their players in the game’s first area (or the character creator again), but of the roughly half that made it out, roughly half of that half went on to finish the game. Talk about polarizing opinions.
- Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning (PS4). How common is it for players to rage-quit in the character creator in any given game, I wonder? Because only 69.1% of the people that played the game collected the “Reborn” trophy for clearing the prologue. I don’t get it; a 90% rate would make more sense, but even that would imply that 10% of their players started the game once, decided “oh hell no,” and then went back to playing FIFA.
What are others’ observations? All platforms with achievements/trophies are valid.
Actual Sunlight. It has one achievement, “Actual Sunlight”, whose description is “Thank you.” It’s awarded at the end of the game. 37.8% of players have the achievement.
It’s a short RPG Maker game about depression that probably resonates a bit too much with a bit too much of it’s base. It’s bleak, and inane, and all the other sorts of ways that life generally sucks, especially for lonely, introverted, geeky 30-somethings. And the ending of the game is
spoiler
choosing suicide.
I wouldn’t be shocked if a good half or more of players can’t bring themselves to drag through it, and some number further just shut the game down and quit when they reach
spoiler
the prompt: “Go to the roof of the building and jump off?” and both options are Yes.
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Half Life 2: Despite Zombie Chopper only having 6.9% of steam players actually get it, including myself, it’s arguably the more famous of the Half Life 2 achievements.
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Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a puzzle game where the player is presented with an empty room and a button, and pressing it unlocks more knobs and switches and levers that they have to figure out how to press to unlock endings. When it comes to the achievement for simply pressing the button, only 96.6% of all players have gotten it. That means a shocking 3.4% looked at the button and decided to just not press it and then didn’t continue playing the game.
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The Talos Principle: About 20% of players have gotten the achievement for getting the “canon” ending of the game, but only 6.1% of players got the achievement for going up to where the canon ending takes place, changing their mind, and walking back down.
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Myst (2021): In the 2021 remake a shocking 32% of players made it through Selenitic, but only 4.6% got the “Never Lost” achievement. This is a bit of a big leap in logic, I’ll admit, but I’m willing to bet that means only 4% of players actually know how to solve the mazerunner puzzle. It’s a puzzle you must solve to complete Selenitic. Without going into it too much, you control a train going through a maze of rails and at each junction you can spin to go to a set of different rails. Each cardinal direction corresponds to a series of 4 sounds you were supposed to have memorized from the previous age (level), the Mechanical age. If 2 sounds happen, then you have to go in the direction between those sounds. If you play the game in the non-randomized state then you can just look up a walkthrough of this puzzle, which is what most people did in the 90s and what most people still do because guaranteeing good sound quality for everyone is still difficult. Most new players might even play with the sound off just because they don’t know about this.
Path of Exile on PS5 (I don’t have access to PC/xbox).
According to the trophies, only 8.8% of players complete Part 1, with 4.4% completing Part 2. For context, Part 1 would take a new player maybe 20 hours, with Part 2 being a tiny bit shorter. Imo the most likely reason for this is new players bricking their characters. PoE is extremely complicated and if you don’t know what you’re doing you’ll build and gear your toon so wrong that you’ll get to a point where you can’t progress and you don’t have any way of fixing it.
2.3% of players reach level 80, with 0.9% reaching level 90. Context: After completing the campaign you’ll be around level 70, getting to 80 isn’t difficult, long or hard. Level 90 requires a slight investment of time and effort.
If you’ve never played PoE before these stats might seem low, but for people that have played it I’m sure it makes a lot of sense! It does to me anyway.
there must be a small number of players that torrented it then bought it after they played and things like that
I’ve got an unhealthy amount of hours and money (games, DLC) invested in various Paradox games because I once pirated EU3 on a whim.
My Steam Library now contains CK2 with most gameplay DLC, CK3 with most gameplay DLC, EU4 with all gameplay and content DLC, Stellaris with most gameplay/content DLC, HoI4 with most gameplay DLC, Sengoku, and other Paradox games that aren’t grand strategy like Magicka 1&2.
And both my hours in CK2 and EU4 are in the 4 digit realm, though admittedly that includes times where I played in bed, fell asleep and the respective game kept running.
I’m not surprised at all to see a soulslike being polarising. Some people absolutely love them, but I think you find out pretty quickly if they’re not for you!
I remember trying dark souls once in like 2014 and calling it quits after like 1.5 hours. People love them and I wouldn’t ever want to take that away from them, but for me the game’s design was just so hostile toward the player.
I posted another comment about having pretty much this exact experience myself!
People hate this opinion but I felt like the controls and animations were horrible. Feels like trying to control a fighting game through an excel spreadsheet to me. Maybe that’s something that’s improved in the series since then, but I was always baffled when people told me the action was good
I used to dislike dark souls. Recently I tried it again - I struggled but I finally got the hang of it!
I think the hardest is to know what to do. I figured out I was struggling because I kept going in zones I was not expected to go yet.
Also it’s such a big shift compared to what I was used to. You have to wait for the right opportunity to attack rather than going in there and relying on reflexes.
I tried it for a few hours and my review was “not telling you how to play the game doesn’t make it hard, it makes it badly designed”. I get that a lot of people like that, but I was just not having fun as I wandered around confused to be killed again.
Yeah exactly. Here follows some spoiler for those who have never played Dark Souls
spoiler
Once you escape from the asylum you can get to the catacombs right away. I did that and got my ass kicked so I figured I was not supposed to get there first.
So I went up towards the upper Bell. Which I did ring. But then afterwards it looked so clear to me, especially as you unlock the shortcut to Firelink : yes ! The other bell must be down in the catacombs! So I headed there.
I struggled a lot to handle all the monsters. I kept going until the valley where you face skeletons on wheels and the black Knight. I figured “no something isn’t right, I don’t think the game is supposed to be that hard. There are tips on the ground about using a divine weapon but I don’t even know how to get one.”. I read a post online and figured I went the wrong way… Once again
Once I fixed that and went the right way things got significantly easier. I heard how some players literally got down to the catacombs from the get go and somehow managed to get to the boss door only to be met by a yellow fog that can’t be passed, and how they struggled to get back to firelink without getting killed…
The bottom line is that I think you need to have someone telling you where not to go to really enjoy Dark souls. Because its not obvious whether you die because of your incompetence or just because you were not supposed to be there right now. I wouldn’t say its bad design though - but it’s not for everyone for sure
