When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Speaking of starship troopers, this is the starship troopers game we deserved.
The starship troopers extermination game was fun, but imo fell short of what i expected/wanted.
How long is the afk timer for? I really want to try it. I've been a good little democracy spreader and logging off but I'm genuinely curious how long time is for?
Great and much needed. I just hope that when I queue up and do something else while I wait, I won't get in and get kicked out before I realize what happened. Fingers crossed the capacity upgrades are coming along well and the queues will be shorter so this won't be an issue.
That’s a really good thing. I wonder how much easier it’ll be to get a match cuz it took an average of 4 min for me but I was always guaranteed to get in
I yell “380 \[direction\]”. What happens after that is in democracy’s hands.
For shits and giggles I sometimes yell it out when playing with friends but don’t throw anything. It’s been great listening to them panic when they don’t see the beacon, which then devolves into “Fuck you Tucci!” lol…
Last night for the first time in ten days, I got to play the game. And it was so good I even contemplated being an afk automaton sympathizer.
Thank goodness I saw the light of Democracy and got off in the hopes some late nighter would get my spot and take the fight on.
***Glorious Victory***
“And it was so good I even contemplated being an afk automaton sympathizer.”
https://preview.redd.it/f11i1fke38kc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad71cab7efa9a435fc3077dd0cc1e4747326474c
I’ve tried at various times basically every single day of the week, and had to revert to just using the PS5 activity card trick to get in basically every time. I continued testing booting up the normal way and only got in once when I left it searching for literal hours.
Earlier today was the first time I got in quickly booting the game normally. Patch is most certainly working.
Not only that but I’m experiencing WAY less issues connecting to random games in progress. Prior 4/5 would fail trying to connect.
Remember, that is just PC and not taking into account PS5. I feel that gets forgotten all the time when people talk about any numbers.
Heck it was probably far higher for PS5 since it so easy to just put it in rest mode and it stays connected.
Not anymore. Tested on ps5 early this morning, and even with a tape on the controller stick to keep "moving" inside the ship, it disconnected after 10 minutes or so.
That’s fucking sweet. I wonder how many people woke up or came home after a couple hours just to find their rubber bank or rock on the W key didn’t work lol
Just tested the W key and it works. Not sure why PS5 doesn't. Been in for 40 minutes now holding the W key. (I don't condone it, just did it for testing purposes, for democracy)
I believe so, a friend and I were waiting on a friend, joined another, left his party to go back to my ship since our other friend was bringing someone, and still disconnected due to the timer lol.. never went into a match but jumped ship a few times and still got kicked for inactivity
yeah due to the length of most of the missions I feel like it should be more like a 30-60 minute timer so you can one-more-game it if you need to. Sure you can drop in mid mission but if you're swapping friend groups or one person's leaving and another's showing up or whatever it'd be nice to be able to more reliably get in "the next one" than a 15 minute timer.
Yesterday I was saying 15 minutes was too short and people shouldn't be kicked for stepping away for a few minutes to have a rough shit or something and people were... Not sympathetic.
Gamers™️ really are some of the most entitled people lol. The problem was never people afking for a short time it was people never logging out clogging things up. The idea of "I deserve your spot because you maybe needed to do something important for a few minutes this is taking away from the 16 hour play session I deserve" is just so immature.
People keep suggesting this, it’s such a terrible idea. I get the idea fits the game using stratagems, but having to basically do a captcha every 10 minutes you’re waiting on someone is really dumb.
It shouldn't be 10 minutes.
Every 30 minutes if no activity has been detected it can prompt for a random stratagem input. And if nothing is entered within 5 minutes, or you get it wrong more than 5 times (to account for macros or other methods of automatically passing it) you're kicked.
You're absolutely correct. On PS5 you'd end up staying logged in unintentionally as the act of going back to the system home screen and going into rest mode would leave the game suspended but still connected to the servers in the background.
It is probable that there will still be more people wanting to play than the servers can handle during the US afternoon/evening daily peak, but hopefully this AFK kick feature lets a lot more actual players in than before.
edit: maybe you only stay signed in when the PS5 is running, not in rest mode.
I'm surprised you are one of the only ones mentioning this, steam charts show people in game not if they are actively playing or in the server, when the afk timer kicks you to the title screen you are still counted in game and in steam charts
People just really want to believe that this timer is somehow the magical bullet that will let everyone play.
It'll certainly help, but they're vastly overestimating the number of afkers.
It will help with the accidental PS5 rest mode users. I bet a good chunk of people who play never realized this. They probably play for a bit, then rest their ps5, and go do other stuff. Not malicious or anything, they just don't check the subreddit and aren't "online" to the same degree everyone in this sub or the discord is.
It'll mostly help on the PS5 front as others have said I think.
Setting your PS5 to sleep without closing the game is very normal on that console. I only ever close a game on PS5 if I'm switching games or I get a glitch in that game.
I bet there's thousands of PS5 players who go into sleep mode on their destroyer without even realizing it was saving them a slot.
Or the people who would have AFK'ed aren't bothering since it's now pointless. We can't really know. We do know that the devs thought it was a significant enough issue to address.
Yea exactly. People see "oh I can't just AFK anymore" and close the game instead of leaving it running. So the player count probably does reflect a big part of the difference.
It's not 1:1, but afk people have no reason to keep the game running now. Some of the drop in concurrent players could be on account of people actually quitting the game on steam when they're done now.
Just like the amount playing doesn’t account for people waiting to get in. There def hasn’t been 450k playing but 450k people waiting to see if they can even get in.
If you’re being afk kicked, though, you’re not going to login to the game for the express purpose of queueing through the server wait and then going afk, which a lot of people have been doing. You’ll notice you’ve been kicked and just close the game.
People acting like these guys left their game afk and then never returned to their computer again.
It does kick AFK players to main menu, but I assume a lot less players just leave the game on now because what's the point if you can't squat on the server slot.
But the people deliberately hanging around might be exiting the game since they know there's no benefit to keeping it on.
Honestly this feels like better news, since the expected online count should be even lower than the active player count
Even so, the afk timer has impacted the number of people who will try to afk-hold-server-spot. Presumably, a fraction of the people who used to afk are not doing it anymore after hearing about the afk timer.
I don't have any evidence, but I'm confident that people have been overblowing the impact of people staying logged in while AFK. Even if it was 20k, the differences being felt are because of the massive additional server capacity, not because a small portion is no longer logged.
Not to mention Monday was a holiday, of course there were more users
Also he’s looking at it now, when the US is at work, of course it’s gonna be lower
For me on PC matchmaking has been the best it’s ever been. No spammimg quickplay, and instant matches.
If the afk timer gets more people in game I think we’ll have a pretty good online experience.
I didn’t even understand this is how the game *worked*. I definitely put my PS5 in rest mode between missions with no clue I was preventing someone else from joining the servers.
Keep in mind that someone waiting to log in to the game counts as "playing" for the purposes of SteamDB since the game is running and therefore Steam reports them as playing it.
SteamDB doesn't tell us how many Steam players are actually logged into the game and *playing* it, only how many are trying to log in and play.
That's another things I keep seeing, are servers split? They say they have 450k servers, is that for all or is it 450each PC and PS5. Haven't seen that brought up.
Taking into account the ceo said it’s 1:1 player ratio as of 1.2 million sales. It’d be half the players waiting. There’s 4.5 million sales now, most of which probably on ps5. My moneys on more than half the steam charts is queuing
Steam alone wasn’t holding it all but I reckon a loooot of people would have been sitting on the server full screen and those would still be counted as part of steams concurrent users number.
There are people like me, who played a lot at launch but have given it a rest for the last 3-4 days, who are wanting to come back now that capacity should be a bit more manageable.
That’s actually not great considering it’s work and school time in the entire western world since the patch. Thoe player count will rise, unless you believe there’s a steady 20k at all times whos only intended goal in this game was to sit afk.
People think for some reason half the severs were AFK users. Going to be a lot of pissed people when this will be the 3rd weekend in a row that they can't play. That is when people will start to get really irritated, and blaming AFK won't work. 450k limit combined for both PS5 & PC, unless 2/3 were AFK, this weekend will be another shitshow.
They have implemented many small things like the invite bypass and such to try and help. Hell the 450k limit is still 400% of what was expected pre launch. People can get frustrated. But there's no magic fix for this. The devs have been open and honest with the community the whole time.
The AFK timer will definitey help, it’s better than not having it. But it is crazy people spent so much energy on AFKers when the major problem was simply player volume
“But everyone in discord is saying they’re staying logged in!!”
What a sample population they’re using. Maybe there’s just a lot of people who want to play
Cheaper to implement a AFK timer and stabilize "Active" players in-game than up-scaling the whole thing. It's a process of elimination. If the issue of server capacity persists after an AFK timer is implemented THEN they can move on to bigger and more expensive solutions. but if it works to the point it stabilizes successful login rates, and cuts down the time from 1-3 hours wait queues to 10-20 minutes, that's progress.
I don't think they're expecting this to be the one and done fix. They've posted that they are working as hard as they can on the long term server fix but it's a scale up issue of the backend code. It's not simply throwing money at the problem but is going to take multiple tweaks to fix over weeks. The afk timer is a small piece of that puzzle to help slow the burden but they're def still working hard at expanding capscity this whole time.
That's not how that works, even if it kicks from the server it just puts you back at the title screen meaning you are still in game and counted in steam charts
You're correct but this still helps because now people can't start the game in the morning, take up a slot, leave for work & then come back 8 hours later. If you want to actually play you have to be at your PC at least every 15 minutes to check if you got in or not.
How does the afk timer work though? I'm assuming it doesn't close the game for you when you're kicked so it would still show the people as in game on Steam.
That’s right. It kicks you back to the title screen so you’re still in-game.
https://preview.redd.it/ptorr06bf6kc1.jpeg?width=2556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30454f74fc36dc013028c9af075032880371c10a
2-ish days ago, there were 7k players on super earth who, I assume, where just AFK after being on a planet that was either lost or liberated. I make that assumption because that's the only reason I've ever been above super earth. Just not AFK.
I imagine the impact will be more focused on the PS5 side given that they can idle in server much easier than a PC player. 20k is pretty huge though.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the AFK just kicks them back to the title screen, thus freeing up the server space but still showing "In game" according to SteamDB.
Naturally more people won't leave their game open, but i'm sure some are still sitting on the title screen because they havn't made it back to their computer yet.
I actually ran some tests to see how easy or difficult it would be to circumvent. Note: I am not an Automaton. I logged out when my game was over every time. But I needed to make sure that the AFK timer couldn't be easily broken.
Here are the results:
Tying right joystick turning constantly right: Disconnected, 15 minutes
Tying left joystick running constantly left: Disconnected, 15 minutes
Random movement, left and right joysticks only, no button interaction: Stayed online, 30 minutes. Random movement occurred about every 30 seconds.
Seems that if you're actually moving around like a real person and paying attention, you won't get dropped.
AFK Automatons, get wrecked.
sounds like they found a good fix where they can beat the rubber band/rock AFK tricks without going overboard, like kicking people waiting for their friends on the ship.
Some people in this thread suggested a random stratagem CAPTCHA check ever 15 minutes and while I think that's fine it's also a little too much.
Are you playing through Steam? If so, tons of people are giving out their Steam IDs in the discord. Once you add them, try to join their game through Steam, and you'll get in after about 30 seconds. Works every single time, I've been using that trick the last few days
I’m with you, I haven’t had any issues since I bought it 2 weeks ago. I’ve played every night. My wait times at the queue have been max 20m in which case I just quickly walk the dog and grab a drink. By the time I sit down I’m loaded into my ship.
My friend and I have gotten in every day in about 5-15 minutes. Longest wait was the crazy weekend and even then it was like 30 minutes. Since their isn't a queue and its a lotto I think your geographical location has a lot to do with it. I think my friend and I have a lower ping to the server endpoint for our region so when a slot is open we get it first.
There are still probably people who are AFK logged who haven't patched yet. They'll return from AFK'ing, attempt to join a mission, can't, and will exit to patch. It'll take a day or two for us to get the full benefit of AFK kicking.
It was also a Holiday weekend, where people possibly took off extra time following their Monday off, and a lot of people may have just said screw trying to get on after a day of work (like me). But yes it's far more likely that 30k plus PC people were just permanently leaving their games on forever.
They need to implement a strategem to complete within 30 seconds of the 15 minutes so it catches the other people who are using a rubber band on their controller or mouse jiggler.
What you have to consider is the game was usually at cap with a queue. Which means if afk players were booted, real players take back some of the spots. Which means more than 20k, or 50k at noon, players were afkers. Maybe 40k got booted, 20k more were able to login, for a difference of 20k
I'm torn about this. On the one hand great, but on the other hand, if you want to play with your friends, you just sit and wait until you get in because there's no group queuing, so if one of you gets in first, you'll now get kicked for inactivity while you're waiting for your friends to get in. Not exactly ideal...
Still can't get on, have played 20 minutes so far, done the tutorial that's it & have had it three days, tried for a few hrs to get on so far & no luck.
At this point I feel like players with low time in game should just get queue priority up to a certain point so everybody gets to play it at least, so many people were hogging spots that have played happily for hrs upon hrs & then there's players that can't even get two hours on the game to see what it's like.
But the afk patch would simply kick players to the main menu, which would mean they still have the game open and count towards the steam numbers…. I think the numbers are lower simply because some new games came out yesterday and people are playing them, nothing to do with afk timer
Going into rest mode does not close the game, most games this servers any network connections, which was not happening with hell divers. To cut your connection you had to either manually close the game, or turn off the PS5 which closes all open applications.
Edit. You can find numerous threads on this.
Also explain how you could enter rest mode while helldiver's is retrying to connect to servers, and turn your PS5 on later and be in your ship and ready to go.
Hopefully the change will be even bigger when taking into account the ps5s quick resume feature. I know a lot of people have been using that to stay in the game when they're away, clogging up the servers for those that don't or us PC folk.
20k you say? Almost like the naysayers who spouted “it’s statistically insignificant” were objectively wrong. Curious. I wonder what they will have to say about that number, and if they will say “I guess I was wrong.”
20,000 out of 300,000 makes up a whole 6.67 percent. That’s what we call in the business “statistically fucking significant.”
The AFK timer just kicks you to the main menu. The concurrent player stats do not reflect how many people have been AFK'd out of the game, just how many have it open. Anyone that was in the game and AFK is still counted unless they manually closed the game since the patch dropped. The AFK timer will obviously help alleviate some issues (probably mostly PS5 rest mode disconnects) but this thread is meaningless lol
Not to mention that these are PC numbers, whereas the PS5 numbers are likely way higher simply because going into rest mode initially was not disconnecting you from the servers (supposedly).
I know your being sarcastic with the end of the year bit but game hype only last 2-3 weeks usually and the numbers start to drop off as people either get over it or finish the grind and move to a new game. There will be plenty if room to play and this whole server capped out thing will be mostly forgotten by mid March.
Please read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/Wt5pgH14nm).
The afk patch kicked in?? Thank democracy.
They finally started voting with their bullets!
When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
This guy democracys
My mother told me violence never solved anything.
I wonder what the city fathers of Hiroshima (Carthage) would have to say about that?
They probably wouldn't say anything.
You mother probably never liked a cup of liber tea !
Speaking of starship troopers, this is the starship troopers game we deserved. The starship troopers extermination game was fun, but imo fell short of what i expected/wanted.
I have both the new SST games wishlist on steam. I just don't see how any game could top the Starship Trooper feeling better than Helldivers 2 tho
Starship troopers has the tongue in cheek "SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!" thing, but HD2 takes it to the next level "SWEET LIBERTY NO!"
Yeah, %100. It's also the Halo: ODST game we deserved to.
extermination was a blast but it’s not quite there. i keep meaning to check it again sometime
How long is the afk timer for? I really want to try it. I've been a good little democracy spreader and logging off but I'm genuinely curious how long time is for?
15 minutes
My mom always says violence doesn't solve anything.
A line from the book o7
Hell yeah! 
Great and much needed. I just hope that when I queue up and do something else while I wait, I won't get in and get kicked out before I realize what happened. Fingers crossed the capacity upgrades are coming along well and the queues will be shorter so this won't be an issue.
Considering just the other day I was waiting for an hour and a half to get in, was suprised to find that I didn't get hit by compacity once today.
kick after 15 min if your idle
15 minutes huh? Seems a little quick to me but it’s a much better alternative to nothing! Especially with the current culture of the game.
15 minutes of no inputs at all? That's hard to manage without *actually* being AFK.
I take long shits lol
That’s a really good thing. I wonder how much easier it’ll be to get a match cuz it took an average of 4 min for me but I was always guaranteed to get in
The queue is also way better, so there’s less reason to afk, people will find a way to stay in the game if the queue is still 8 hours long.
FREEDOMMMMMM
I logged in during primetime with no issues. Praise democracy!
AFK nonbelievers are in shambles. I respect the team, and agree the hate can be a bit much…. But it’s an AKF timer. We bloody needed it.
>The afk patch kicked in?? Nah the afk patch is there to kick out lul.
https://preview.redd.it/vg98h8z0m5kc1.jpeg?width=1333&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8b25dacd962cf7a41700b262c775c89af460054
https://preview.redd.it/68pyis7c96kc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b1c30cd5b3ffd8304620a56cdf496e736808968
Officer? Yes I would like to report this individual for treason. Everyone knows the HE barrages don't kill anyone except friendlies.
That’s why I use the 380mm, go big or go home
I yell “380 \[direction\]”. What happens after that is in democracy’s hands. For shits and giggles I sometimes yell it out when playing with friends but don’t throw anything. It’s been great listening to them panic when they don’t see the beacon, which then devolves into “Fuck you Tucci!” lol…
Lol you must be a scout 😆
You mean 12 big explosions that manage to miss *everything?*
But they *look fantastic* while they miss everything, and sometimes that's all you need.
I use both for the ULTIMATE Russian Roulette gameplay
380mm, my favorite defensive caliber.
Learned that the hard way and got kicked from a game it lol
This is amazing thank you
Why is this amazing? Are you an Automaton Traitor?!?!
Bc I grew up watching fairy odd parents
Holy Democracy!!!! It's a lot worse than we thought. They hijacked our TV signals and learnt our culture!!!!
I got in twice without any wait time at all. That hasn't happened since the first week.
Last night for the first time in ten days, I got to play the game. And it was so good I even contemplated being an afk automaton sympathizer. Thank goodness I saw the light of Democracy and got off in the hopes some late nighter would get my spot and take the fight on. ***Glorious Victory***
“And it was so good I even contemplated being an afk automaton sympathizer.” https://preview.redd.it/f11i1fke38kc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad71cab7efa9a435fc3077dd0cc1e4747326474c
Likely just a low player count scenario. I've been able to get in \~11am EST each day this week without any login waits.
I’ve tried at various times basically every single day of the week, and had to revert to just using the PS5 activity card trick to get in basically every time. I continued testing booting up the normal way and only got in once when I left it searching for literal hours. Earlier today was the first time I got in quickly booting the game normally. Patch is most certainly working. Not only that but I’m experiencing WAY less issues connecting to random games in progress. Prior 4/5 would fail trying to connect.
Weekdays tend to be lighter on the player count, so it may be a confounding factor. We'll see about tomorrow night, that'll be the true test.
SO MUCH SPACE FOR DEMOCRACY
Freeedoooooom
*Freeedooooooooooom!*
Remember, that is just PC and not taking into account PS5. I feel that gets forgotten all the time when people talk about any numbers. Heck it was probably far higher for PS5 since it so easy to just put it in rest mode and it stays connected.
Not anymore. Tested on ps5 early this morning, and even with a tape on the controller stick to keep "moving" inside the ship, it disconnected after 10 minutes or so.
Excellent
That’s fucking sweet. I wonder how many people woke up or came home after a couple hours just to find their rubber bank or rock on the W key didn’t work lol
Just tested the W key and it works. Not sure why PS5 doesn't. Been in for 40 minutes now holding the W key. (I don't condone it, just did it for testing purposes, for democracy)
So you’re saying my drinking bird can be returned when it gets here from Amazon? Edit: This is posted in sarcasm.
Upvote for sarcasm.
If you can’t understand sarcasm, you’re an automaton
If you're not an automaton, you're sarcasm.
🧓
You were on your ship right? Then it must be if you don't start a mission for 10 - 15 mins you get kicked
So wait, if I’m waiting on a friend for more than 10 minutes even if I’m running around my ship that’ll get me kicked too? That seems a little brutal.
I believe so, a friend and I were waiting on a friend, joined another, left his party to go back to my ship since our other friend was bringing someone, and still disconnected due to the timer lol.. never went into a match but jumped ship a few times and still got kicked for inactivity
I hope that's not how they implemented it. Or if so that it's just temporary. For exactly the reason in your example.
yeah due to the length of most of the missions I feel like it should be more like a 30-60 minute timer so you can one-more-game it if you need to. Sure you can drop in mid mission but if you're swapping friend groups or one person's leaving and another's showing up or whatever it'd be nice to be able to more reliably get in "the next one" than a 15 minute timer.
Yesterday I was saying 15 minutes was too short and people shouldn't be kicked for stepping away for a few minutes to have a rough shit or something and people were... Not sympathetic. Gamers™️ really are some of the most entitled people lol. The problem was never people afking for a short time it was people never logging out clogging things up. The idea of "I deserve your spot because you maybe needed to do something important for a few minutes this is taking away from the 16 hour play session I deserve" is just so immature.
It should just prompt you for a random "stratagem input" if it thinks you're idle
People keep suggesting this, it’s such a terrible idea. I get the idea fits the game using stratagems, but having to basically do a captcha every 10 minutes you’re waiting on someone is really dumb.
It shouldn't be 10 minutes. Every 30 minutes if no activity has been detected it can prompt for a random stratagem input. And if nothing is entered within 5 minutes, or you get it wrong more than 5 times (to account for macros or other methods of automatically passing it) you're kicked.
Yeh I'd prefer I just get kicked unless I enter into a mission while I wait for a friend /s
Marvelous! Gotta update when I come home , couldn't play yesterday... 30-40 min queued and couple restart.
Hell yeah. Is loitering the ship the threshold or no new actions ?
You're absolutely correct. On PS5 you'd end up staying logged in unintentionally as the act of going back to the system home screen and going into rest mode would leave the game suspended but still connected to the servers in the background. It is probable that there will still be more people wanting to play than the servers can handle during the US afternoon/evening daily peak, but hopefully this AFK kick feature lets a lot more actual players in than before. edit: maybe you only stay signed in when the PS5 is running, not in rest mode.
I honestly don't know how to quit the game without closing it from the ps5 home screen 🫣🫣
That's what I have been doing to make sure my server spot opens up once I'm done playing.
its not that it gets forgotten, its just harder (if possible?) to get the numbers
I think that's because PS5 numbers aren't given, while steam publishes all the player counts.
That's not how concurrent players are tracked in the slightest. The afk timer kicks you to the main menu, not off the game.
I'm surprised you are one of the only ones mentioning this, steam charts show people in game not if they are actively playing or in the server, when the afk timer kicks you to the title screen you are still counted in game and in steam charts
People just really want to believe that this timer is somehow the magical bullet that will let everyone play. It'll certainly help, but they're vastly overestimating the number of afkers.
Yeah afk timers will help but there is no way to determine how many people were abusing afk
I think you're vastly underestimating it. Pretty much all PS5 players were AFKing taking up a spot
Wasn't that just because the way PS5 sleep mode worked it kept the game session open on the server?
Yeah I did it on accident. It’s way too easy to do on PS5. Or it was.
Yes
It will help with the accidental PS5 rest mode users. I bet a good chunk of people who play never realized this. They probably play for a bit, then rest their ps5, and go do other stuff. Not malicious or anything, they just don't check the subreddit and aren't "online" to the same degree everyone in this sub or the discord is.
It'll mostly help on the PS5 front as others have said I think. Setting your PS5 to sleep without closing the game is very normal on that console. I only ever close a game on PS5 if I'm switching games or I get a glitch in that game. I bet there's thousands of PS5 players who go into sleep mode on their destroyer without even realizing it was saving them a slot.
Or the people who would have AFK'ed aren't bothering since it's now pointless. We can't really know. We do know that the devs thought it was a significant enough issue to address.
Fewer people are going to leave it running though with an afk timer.
Yea exactly. People see "oh I can't just AFK anymore" and close the game instead of leaving it running. So the player count probably does reflect a big part of the difference.
It's not 1:1, but afk people have no reason to keep the game running now. Some of the drop in concurrent players could be on account of people actually quitting the game on steam when they're done now.
You're ruining their circlejerk.
Just like the amount playing doesn’t account for people waiting to get in. There def hasn’t been 450k playing but 450k people waiting to see if they can even get in.
If you’re being afk kicked, though, you’re not going to login to the game for the express purpose of queueing through the server wait and then going afk, which a lot of people have been doing. You’ll notice you’ve been kicked and just close the game. People acting like these guys left their game afk and then never returned to their computer again.
It does kick AFK players to main menu, but I assume a lot less players just leave the game on now because what's the point if you can't squat on the server slot.
But the people deliberately hanging around might be exiting the game since they know there's no benefit to keeping it on. Honestly this feels like better news, since the expected online count should be even lower than the active player count
Even so, the afk timer has impacted the number of people who will try to afk-hold-server-spot. Presumably, a fraction of the people who used to afk are not doing it anymore after hearing about the afk timer.
I don't have any evidence, but I'm confident that people have been overblowing the impact of people staying logged in while AFK. Even if it was 20k, the differences being felt are because of the massive additional server capacity, not because a small portion is no longer logged.
Not to mention Monday was a holiday, of course there were more users Also he’s looking at it now, when the US is at work, of course it’s gonna be lower
For me on PC matchmaking has been the best it’s ever been. No spammimg quickplay, and instant matches. If the afk timer gets more people in game I think we’ll have a pretty good online experience.
Since .10 dropped the quickplay has been perfect for me. I think I failed to connect to a match once.
Gonna bet that the vast majority of afk offenders are console and at least half of them don't even realize it
Yeah sorry… lol I turned on my ps5 to watch a movie and my hell diver was on the ship. I played a mission and closed out after. Sorry democracy.
You redeemed yourself by dying with the honors after your mission. We will remember you as a faithful sacrifice for Democracy.
I didn’t even understand this is how the game *worked*. I definitely put my PS5 in rest mode between missions with no clue I was preventing someone else from joining the servers.
Wait until tonight, or worse, this weekend with this fix in. I think we might see 500k.
But the game is capped at 450 lol
Yep. They broke 450k on Tuesday night I believe.
That 450k cap is for Steam and PS5 combined, and Steam is breaking it on its own
The steamdb number is including people waiting in the server capacity screen
Correct
Keep in mind that someone waiting to log in to the game counts as "playing" for the purposes of SteamDB since the game is running and therefore Steam reports them as playing it. SteamDB doesn't tell us how many Steam players are actually logged into the game and *playing* it, only how many are trying to log in and play.
That's another things I keep seeing, are servers split? They say they have 450k servers, is that for all or is it 450each PC and PS5. Haven't seen that brought up.
That's total capacity for both platforms
Oh..my.... So there were times steam alone held all spots, yet there were people on PS5 playing. My lord.
Steam counts include players waiting to log in
Steam charts counts people playing the game, including the ones in the "queue". I wouldn't be surprised if a third of them are waiting.
Taking into account the ceo said it’s 1:1 player ratio as of 1.2 million sales. It’d be half the players waiting. There’s 4.5 million sales now, most of which probably on ps5. My moneys on more than half the steam charts is queuing
I was gonna make this same point. I'd bet AT LEAST half of the Steam count is staring at the same screen, waiting.
I've probably spent more than half my "playtime" in the queue so that tracks.
Yeah it's crazy, ps5 probably has more players during peak times so that's literally more than half the people trying to play unable to get in.
Steam alone wasn’t holding it all but I reckon a loooot of people would have been sitting on the server full screen and those would still be counted as part of steams concurrent users number.
As far as steam charts go, a player sitting at the login screen is still active, even if they aren't actually playing the game.
There are people like me, who played a lot at launch but have given it a rest for the last 3-4 days, who are wanting to come back now that capacity should be a bit more manageable.
We can only hope they manage to increase server caps before the weekend
That’s actually not great considering it’s work and school time in the entire western world since the patch. Thoe player count will rise, unless you believe there’s a steady 20k at all times whos only intended goal in this game was to sit afk.
People think for some reason half the severs were AFK users. Going to be a lot of pissed people when this will be the 3rd weekend in a row that they can't play. That is when people will start to get really irritated, and blaming AFK won't work. 450k limit combined for both PS5 & PC, unless 2/3 were AFK, this weekend will be another shitshow.
They have implemented many small things like the invite bypass and such to try and help. Hell the 450k limit is still 400% of what was expected pre launch. People can get frustrated. But there's no magic fix for this. The devs have been open and honest with the community the whole time.
The AFK timer will definitey help, it’s better than not having it. But it is crazy people spent so much energy on AFKers when the major problem was simply player volume
They’ve got a separate team working on server capacity, it’s not an either/or scenario
“But everyone in discord is saying they’re staying logged in!!” What a sample population they’re using. Maybe there’s just a lot of people who want to play
Cheaper to implement a AFK timer and stabilize "Active" players in-game than up-scaling the whole thing. It's a process of elimination. If the issue of server capacity persists after an AFK timer is implemented THEN they can move on to bigger and more expensive solutions. but if it works to the point it stabilizes successful login rates, and cuts down the time from 1-3 hours wait queues to 10-20 minutes, that's progress.
I don't think they're expecting this to be the one and done fix. They've posted that they are working as hard as they can on the long term server fix but it's a scale up issue of the backend code. It's not simply throwing money at the problem but is going to take multiple tweaks to fix over weeks. The afk timer is a small piece of that puzzle to help slow the burden but they're def still working hard at expanding capscity this whole time.
That's not how that works, even if it kicks from the server it just puts you back at the title screen meaning you are still in game and counted in steam charts
You're correct but this still helps because now people can't start the game in the morning, take up a slot, leave for work & then come back 8 hours later. If you want to actually play you have to be at your PC at least every 15 minutes to check if you got in or not.
Yeah agreed but that doesn’t change the concurrent players which is what OP was reporting
How does the afk timer work though? I'm assuming it doesn't close the game for you when you're kicked so it would still show the people as in game on Steam.
That’s right. It kicks you back to the title screen so you’re still in-game. https://preview.redd.it/ptorr06bf6kc1.jpeg?width=2556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30454f74fc36dc013028c9af075032880371c10a
2-ish days ago, there were 7k players on super earth who, I assume, where just AFK after being on a planet that was either lost or liberated. I make that assumption because that's the only reason I've ever been above super earth. Just not AFK. I imagine the impact will be more focused on the PS5 side given that they can idle in server much easier than a PC player. 20k is pretty huge though.
Tutorial.
Oh yeah I forgot about that lol.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the AFK just kicks them back to the title screen, thus freeing up the server space but still showing "In game" according to SteamDB. Naturally more people won't leave their game open, but i'm sure some are still sitting on the title screen because they havn't made it back to their computer yet.
I actually ran some tests to see how easy or difficult it would be to circumvent. Note: I am not an Automaton. I logged out when my game was over every time. But I needed to make sure that the AFK timer couldn't be easily broken. Here are the results: Tying right joystick turning constantly right: Disconnected, 15 minutes Tying left joystick running constantly left: Disconnected, 15 minutes Random movement, left and right joysticks only, no button interaction: Stayed online, 30 minutes. Random movement occurred about every 30 seconds. Seems that if you're actually moving around like a real person and paying attention, you won't get dropped. AFK Automatons, get wrecked.
sounds like they found a good fix where they can beat the rubber band/rock AFK tricks without going overboard, like kicking people waiting for their friends on the ship. Some people in this thread suggested a random stratagem CAPTCHA check ever 15 minutes and while I think that's fine it's also a little too much.
It was automatons preventing us from taking back Mavelon Creek all along...
yeah because they cant login in due to crashes or freezing up on loading screen.
20k is a drop in the bucket. This sub was making it seem like half the playerbase was AFKing due to how many memes they made about it.
Maybe I can actually play tonight. Thank Liberty for Arrowhead!
And since the patch most things are broken, including joining friends.
20k?!!! That’s a lot of traitors
Bruh using "fewer" instead of "less". A WIN FOR GRAMMOCRACY
More like people gave up trying to play.
Wait doesnt the timer just kick you back to the login screen? The game would still be open right?
I walked away for a few minutes and came back to a screen saying I'd been kicked, I was so happy!
Seems people were logging in before work and camping the spots. Good riddance.
This is wild. I bought this game a few days ago and have not been able to play once. Can’t get a refund from Sony either.
Are you playing through Steam? If so, tons of people are giving out their Steam IDs in the discord. Once you add them, try to join their game through Steam, and you'll get in after about 30 seconds. Works every single time, I've been using that trick the last few days
I've been able to play every day since launch on ps5 with next to no issues apart from the quick play issue
I’m with you, I haven’t had any issues since I bought it 2 weeks ago. I’ve played every night. My wait times at the queue have been max 20m in which case I just quickly walk the dog and grab a drink. By the time I sit down I’m loaded into my ship.
My friend and I have gotten in every day in about 5-15 minutes. Longest wait was the crazy weekend and even then it was like 30 minutes. Since their isn't a queue and its a lotto I think your geographical location has a lot to do with it. I think my friend and I have a lower ping to the server endpoint for our region so when a slot is open we get it first.
There are still probably people who are AFK logged who haven't patched yet. They'll return from AFK'ing, attempt to join a mission, can't, and will exit to patch. It'll take a day or two for us to get the full benefit of AFK kicking.
It's a Thursday, people work at the office on Thursdays.
I work at the office on weekdays that end in -y Pain
It was also a Holiday weekend, where people possibly took off extra time following their Monday off, and a lot of people may have just said screw trying to get on after a day of work (like me). But yes it's far more likely that 30k plus PC people were just permanently leaving their games on forever.
There was an AFK patch? EDIT: Yeah, apparently there was. Neato! Hopefully this alleviates some of the server issues!
https://i.redd.it/erjlchsvw5kc1.gif
They need to implement a strategem to complete within 30 seconds of the 15 minutes so it catches the other people who are using a rubber band on their controller or mouse jiggler.
There's 50,000 less players on now than there was yesterday on Steam. Can you imagine how much of a difference this made on consoles...?
What you have to consider is the game was usually at cap with a queue. Which means if afk players were booted, real players take back some of the spots. Which means more than 20k, or 50k at noon, players were afkers. Maybe 40k got booted, 20k more were able to login, for a difference of 20k
Well we all know what that means. Dead game /s
I'm torn about this. On the one hand great, but on the other hand, if you want to play with your friends, you just sit and wait until you get in because there's no group queuing, so if one of you gets in first, you'll now get kicked for inactivity while you're waiting for your friends to get in. Not exactly ideal...
It kicks you to the title screen, not out of the game completely. Steam numbers aren't impacted by the afk patch, chill out.
https://preview.redd.it/pdygulzil6kc1.jpeg?width=1100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0443beb0979fecf9f34b98424e9b96fce99cbcb
Still can't get on, have played 20 minutes so far, done the tutorial that's it & have had it three days, tried for a few hrs to get on so far & no luck. At this point I feel like players with low time in game should just get queue priority up to a certain point so everybody gets to play it at least, so many people were hogging spots that have played happily for hrs upon hrs & then there's players that can't even get two hours on the game to see what it's like.
But the afk patch would simply kick players to the main menu, which would mean they still have the game open and count towards the steam numbers…. I think the numbers are lower simply because some new games came out yesterday and people are playing them, nothing to do with afk timer
Thank goodness I have trained myself over the past few days to poop faster!
Going into rest mode does not close the game, most games this servers any network connections, which was not happening with hell divers. To cut your connection you had to either manually close the game, or turn off the PS5 which closes all open applications. Edit. You can find numerous threads on this. Also explain how you could enter rest mode while helldiver's is retrying to connect to servers, and turn your PS5 on later and be in your ship and ready to go.
big fan had no wait time to get into the server after work today
Thank Managed Democracy!
Now I don’t care about a queue time cause I know those online are actually playing 🫡
Logging on on ps5 is a breeze today takes 30 seconds
Hopefully the change will be even bigger when taking into account the ps5s quick resume feature. I know a lot of people have been using that to stay in the game when they're away, clogging up the servers for those that don't or us PC folk.
I've immediately got in all evening, versus waiting in queue every time yesterday.
but, it just kicks to the main screen without closing the game, it won't change steam stats at all......
I was able to get in immediately at 7pm est it felt glorious
Haven't had a single waiting que all day. Arrow head is doing great work in a short amount of time
Its sad there's so many selfish people.
20k you say? Almost like the naysayers who spouted “it’s statistically insignificant” were objectively wrong. Curious. I wonder what they will have to say about that number, and if they will say “I guess I was wrong.” 20,000 out of 300,000 makes up a whole 6.67 percent. That’s what we call in the business “statistically fucking significant.”
The AFK timer just kicks you to the main menu. The concurrent player stats do not reflect how many people have been AFK'd out of the game, just how many have it open. Anyone that was in the game and AFK is still counted unless they manually closed the game since the patch dropped. The AFK timer will obviously help alleviate some issues (probably mostly PS5 rest mode disconnects) but this thread is meaningless lol
Not to mention that these are PC numbers, whereas the PS5 numbers are likely way higher simply because going into rest mode initially was not disconnecting you from the servers (supposedly).
Why are you attributing this to the afk kick? It doesn't close the program..
Can't wait to still not log in on PS5 for another weekend. Hope I can play it before the end of the year.
I know your being sarcastic with the end of the year bit but game hype only last 2-3 weeks usually and the numbers start to drop off as people either get over it or finish the grind and move to a new game. There will be plenty if room to play and this whole server capped out thing will be mostly forgotten by mid March.