Popularity of Vainglory

Hi I’m Geodoc this is a post comparing Vainglory to other mobile MOBAs like Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends. This is the first post that I am making so please don’t be too harsh. I used Google Trends to compare their popularity in the last 12 months. Keep this in mind, this only gives a rough representation of the popularity of the search and not downloads or game time. I also used some countries in each region to give a representation also. I’m sorry if I missed out your country but I can’t include all countries.

Worldwide


It seems that AoV is more popular than Vg in most times, but Vg is more popular than AoV during Vg worlds and 5v5 unveiling. MLBB sits at the bottom in comparison to AoV and Vg.

NA


In the US, Vg is the most popular in comparison to ApV and MLBB.

In Canada, it is generally same as US but only with AoV getting slightly popular recently.

EU


In the UK it is the same with Vg being the most popular and AoV and MLBB being less popular than Vg.

In France, it is just the same also.

The same goes to Germany.

SEA


In Malaysia, the trend is varying with AoV being more popular than Vg in the start and with Vg getting more popular than AoV during Vg worlds and 5v5 unveiling. MLBB being the least searched. This is surprising seeing that many people I see in Malaysia play MLBB and AoV (I actually can’t tell the difference) and I don’t see Vg being played much, reasons may be that people who play different games may play in different places and also that this is just the search popularity.

The trend in Singapore seems to be similar to other countries with Vg being more popular than AoV and MLBB.

In Philippines it is retarded similar with Vg being most popular but with MLBB being more popular than AoV.

It’s also similar in Indonesia.

In Australia Vg is the most popular then comes AoV andwith MLBB being least popular.

EA


In Japana the trend seems to be similar to the other countries.

The same goes to South Korea.

SA


In Brazil, it is rather similar with Vg being most popular followed by MLBB then AoV

CN


This is an interesting one. Unlike most countries shown earlier, AoV is pretty much more popular than Vg wothonly a few short moments that Vg is more popular. MLBB being at the bottom of the chart.

In conclusion, Vg is generally more popular than MLBB and AoV in most countries shown. Then how is AoV more popular than Vg shown in the worldwide chart? My guess is that the reason is China, the chart only shows the ratio of the searches not the amounts, so with China’s large population it is shown that AoV is generally more popular than Vg worldwide.

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This is interesting. I see a lot of people sayin Vainglory is dying now, but take a look at this; it’s still way up there. I didn’t really expect this tbh, considering the amount of advertising MLBB and AoV does compared to Vainglory. I suppose it just shows VG really is the better game.

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But google trends doesn’t show download behavior etc. It is a metric on what is searched for most often only. Nothing else…

That said nice effort and a great first post.

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I know I myself was surprised by the results I got

Thanks. I know that it doesn’t show the full popularity but one of the reasons people search for something is that they are interested. So google trend kinda gives a rough idea.

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It’s still beyond me why their advertising is so terrible

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a dying game wont be in top 100 free of appstore…
but yes vg is less popular compared to mlbb or aov

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it’s not about the better game actually since vg is not for casual player unlike aov and mlbb.

aov and mlbb is more “pick and play” anytime anywhere

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No worries, you are correct and did a great job. In this context, Google is providing you with a better number than downloads. Downloads aren’t as important as play hours, because many downloads are stagnant. But play hours don’t equate directly to IAP performance, so more meta measures are needed. IE a trending stat.

That’s why a google trend number is so useful. It quantifies manual string queries, which demonstrates the actual dynamic interest in a phrase, which includes searches for data, media, images, etc. That’s a better measure of real time popularity versus a number of fans/likes/downloads etc.

I checked on some kind of api site that checks players on galaxy phones. I have learned there are 30.5k VG players, 37k AoV players, and a WHOPPING 880k ML: Bing Bong players on galaxy devices alone. I think the only reason ML is so high up there is due to the “Legends” in the name and those cringey ads that were spammed a while before.

Arena of Valor is not a game in China, it’s called Honor of Kings isn’t it? Honor of Kings is the highest grossing mobile game in the world.

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Good point that a lot of people are overlooking …

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Well, there’s no reason VG can’t be for casual players too; just because it’s a high skill cap game doesn’t mean you can play it at low levels just for fun too. In fact, isn’t that exactly what SEMC designed brawl modes for; casual gameplay?

Yep, and then they introduced Talents, which disadvantaged casual players because more serious players accumulate higher level talents over time and wreck them. Then they made Blitz a “ranked” mode, which further discouraged casual players.

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5v5 was a humongous failure. Probably the only mobile moba game that VG trumps in popularity is Heroes Evolved.

Mobile Legends is the most popular followed by AoV (which supposedly is more popular than ML in China)

the issue here is, ALL other mobile mobas are actually made for this and are way better at it than vg.
you can actually play the aov main game mode with a casual mindset and without reading and understanding more than very basic stuff and if you played another moba before, you can just pick it up and play a 5v5 game in 12-18 min.
vg requires you to understand what a hero does, what the talents do and what you have to build with and against some talents using an unkown 3v3 map. otherwise you will have a hard time finding fun in the game and there are tons of games on the app store that give you the casual gameplay you want with less stuff around it.

Funny to hear any moba for casual players

yes, but aov is exactly that. you played one lol game against bots? you are ready to play aov at mid tiers without really reading through anything.
and every mobile moba seems to want those casual players. thats where the money seems to be.

but chinese themselves dont use google. it is banned lol.

Tbh the fact that blitz is ranked is a little stupid. When I play blitz, I go glass cannon or some troll build I don’t really care whether I win or not, I just play to have fun. My brother on the other hand is all serious about it (“What are you building!? I’m gonna drop below 2000 rank because of you!”) which really annoys me.

As for Talents; they’re fun, but They don’t necessarily provide you with that much of an advantage. I can consistently win without using them, and often I choose not to just because of the negatives they add as well (e.g. None of Joule’s talents are worth it)

I dare to say that VG is dying, because I find so many troubles playing this game for the latest update 3.0 and 3.1. Besides, most of my friends in vg contact are offline for months. They said that 5v5 is bad and unrecommended to play for now and many problem following it, so they left vg. The weird thing for me is why there should be two different ranked match now, this is so ridiculos. The heroes are not fit with Sovereign Rise and the roles still confusing. Im playing this game for 3 years and 3v3 is still the best. At first, on Dec 2017 5v5 was very hyped but now its getting worse. I wont play vg maybe until the next 2 or 3 updates untill everything fine especially the server lag. I dont care anymore with my tier.

On the contrary, MLBB is really fun moba just to kill my boredome, desperate and salty felling about VG. MLBB has varies heroes with unique abilities. The good thing is it has so much abundant players which really super fast when in matchmaking screen. The bad is the hero price is too expensive. I still adapt about its analog control but im getting better with it. Now im so attracted and addicted to its ranked match.

Meanwhile, AOV has a good marketing to be advertised in everywhere since Tencent has it (CMIIW). IMO, AoV only has the best user interface with its goldish darkish hue but the heroes’s design, abilities and voice are really bad. It also has a too much gloomy dark cold dry unfresh design for the map. Lol.

So that is just my opinion.

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