RoA 2 longevity

It's getting to be that time in every niche indie games life cycle where the player base is on the decline. The initial hype for release and first patch is over. Most of the new/casual players have been filtered or soon will be. The next month or two the player base is going to settle into the people who really enjoy this game and play it frequently. I can already tell that the average skill level of people I queue against is on the rise. I think releasing new characters will definitely prop up the player count but only momentarily. I don't think the game will ever be dead but in 3-6 months the game is definitely gonna hit sub 500 peak player count. I don't think there's anything that can be done about it and I accept that it's just the nature of this kind of game to have a smaller community. I just feel for the new players who wanted to git gud. As the player base declines finding opponents with equal skill or breaking into the game becomes a real challenge. I guess I just wish we could always maintain a few thousand players so you can queue whenever and find someone of equal skill or someone playing duos/FFA at any time. Would be nice.

Thanks for reading my rant about a game I really like.

Edit; I didn't expect this post to blow up but I'm glad to see so many passionate players here in the community. I do want to make it clear that I'm not trying to be a doomer. I don't think this game is going to die. I understand that there is a more comitted player base than similar titles. As some have pointed out Rivals 1 is still going strong with a 500 player peak. I only base my predicitions on anecdotal experiences with similar games. A lot of those games actually do die out with sub 50 player counts. I don't think RoA2 will however. I share the same sentiment with some of you in hopes that this game will bridge the smash community together. In the same vein I fear it may fragment the community further. I can't predict what will happen, but I feel it's worth speculating on. My real concern is with the increased barrier of entry for new players. As the skill gap inreases and the queue times lengthen breaking into this game will become increasingly difficult. Especially for people interested in different game modes from standard 1v1. I also wanted to say to some blaming the devs for not releasing a fully finished product. I believe it's incredibly unfair to expect a small studio to have a game 100% cooked and flushed out on release. Game dev is expensive and time consuming. The game is in a fantastic state for what it is and I only feel excitement for what's to come.

Happy to see you all here for the journey :)