Is Death Stranding worth picking up on PC this late in the game? Does it still have a decent player population? From the way I understand it, the stuff you do in the game world has an impact on other players (like building a bridge to make an area easier to reach, for example). Are there still things to do?
Makes sense, thanks. So then that leaves me with my remaining question: are there enough players left to maintain things? Or is it kind of a "hopeless cause" scenario now, cause things are decaying faster than people can maintain them, due to a lower player count?
It's possible, though arduous, to maintain it all solo. The game fragments who sees what so even at peak you generally only saw things built by a small subsection of the playerbase, so no one ended up presented with just everything already done and nothing to do.
Steam is only showing daily peaks of about 1000, but that's still more than enough for a healthy mix of established and unbuilt infrastructure, I'd expect.
edit: And actually the all-time peak on Steam for the Director's cut was only about 6000. So the 1000 daily peak now is definitely fine.
You only ever see a small portion of what others built. They get copied into your world so you can remove them without affecting others. Constructions also degrade over time, but I think only while you're playing.
It's on you to build things linking them up. You might get a few bits of road, or a few pylons or the odd vehicle lying about, and then need to put another pylon on a mountain to link them together.
It's kind of cool, but certainly not a game for everyone. It's very Kojima.