Trendspotting: POE Playerbase almost halved on Steam alone since the release of Awakening

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Aim_Deep wrote:

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eXecut1on wrote:

Lack of progression and GG Items being exclusive to uber rich players. There is a limited number of viable builds without having mirrored weapons. You play these builds (if you like them), get tired of them and quit or you farm and sell stuff for 2000+ hours to get a mirrored weapon and good gear to make unviable skills viable. The majority of people are in the 1st category. To unlock the full potential of this game you'd need to have at least 300-400ex.
Also this game is the most noob-friendly game I have ever seen so there is no real influx of new players which also leads to this extreme decrease in the player base. If GGG isn't going to change anything about this, PoE is doomed to be dead when the next A+ ARPG is released.

lol thats absurd. fox tactics beat uber with 4L arc no less couple patch ago. There are dozens of budget builds that do uber in 5L right now. To unlock potential L2P or just follow one of mathils or other streamers guides or something if u cant do that. No shame in it. I did my first couple builds here until I learned the ropes and could venture out on my own.

This game is fairly complicated. The synergies of skills and unique and the bosses you have to fight and maybe some ppl dont like that complexity and want everything handed to them (like d3). This game is not for them. But for those who like it we are not going anywhere even if i'm pissed about map drops. I can always reroll (cheaply too)

What i dont get about people saying Uber being so gated... Uber is NOT gated by gear or build at all... The only thing Uber is gated by is getting into Uber! Once you do Atziri enough you WILL get an Uber set and the ONLY DPS/Gear check in the whole of Uber is her Healing phase! At minimum you need to be able to kill all the adds without them healing her! The rest of her fight is 100% mechanical! From there Defenses doesnt even matter and Mathil can easily prove that! Ive seen that dude down Uber on a 3.4-3.6K life EVASION build! The better you are at dodgeing everything the less defense you actually need to take in there! One of Mathils Strats is to go in with bare minimum defenses (or just enough for certain things like her Spear) and every single point of DPS he can in his clears in most cases! Even the trio with the Bleeds and heavy Phys damage can be kited down! If you actually go do normal Atziri runs enough Uber gets to a point where its not that much harder you just definutly need some more defense going in then you do in the Apex just for the trash alone! But to my knowledge you could just about go in there with any skill or setup and down her! Some are obviously gonna out perform others but if you do the fights enough it becomes a matter of how long the fights are gonna last! And typically the longer the fights last the harder they are!
The longer the fights last the more mechanics you have to negotiate! And mechanics like her Split Phase are some of the hardest so the less you have to deal with that particular part the easier it is!

And as for this Post itself... The only way im gonna be able to take the Steam Charts seriously with regards to POE is if i also have the charts of the players playing on the stand alone client from this site as well to compare! Without those i dont think we really get to see the honest play trends!
Just because i would imagine less people even play on Steam to begin with since the game released on steam WAY after it released on it own! Meaning i would think more players play from the standalone client anyway! Or am i missing something? I just dont feel like i can really draw a good conclusion from the steam chats without the standalone charts as well because we are only looking at less than half the player base at best to begin with wouldnt you think? Or maybe i just think it would be super interesting and more accurate to compare the two!

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Barivius wrote:

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

Are we looking at the same steam chart? Did you just pick that out of a hat?

Wait so the fact that after the hype has died, we have more steam players than the release of forsaken masters is concerning?

This is fabulous.

Rectistics is the mathematical discipline of pulling numbers out of one's rectum.

There is a closely-related discipline, analgebra, which is often cited in an attempt to support the original hypothesis. =^[.]^=

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Barivius wrote:

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

Are we looking at the same steam chart? Did you just pick that out of a hat?

Wait so the fact that after the hype has died, we have more steam players than the release of forsaken masters is concerning?

This is fabulous.

Dont worry. You are doing fine.

Except you are reading it wrong. The drop is much harder this time around.

Let's limit leagues duration to 1.5 month next time ( only 1M leagues ) ^^ More efficient

Same procedure as every year.



New Patch/new league -> new players/old players return

... a few days in -> half the players are back to their normal life ... tradechat has less channels, spam is slower / my friendlist has max. 10% players on / steamcharts are poop ...

rinse and repeat


PoE was PoE, is Poe and will be PoE in the future. If you like the game now, you like it tomorrow... if you think it's not fun to play... it won't be fun in the future... PoE never changes like GGG isn't able to change.

Why am I still here? I am addicted... sometimes it's fun, sometimes I hate playing PoE... but I am always addicted. And last but not least... there is no, really NO alternative.

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

You're projecting your pet peeves with the game onto the whole population. Most people don't care about 74+ maps or the "crafting scandal". Most people don't even know about the latter.

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Heli0nix wrote:

Let's limit leagues duration to 1.5 month next time ( only 1M leagues ) ^^ More efficient

1-2 months is plenty long, agreed.

Who taught you to interpret charts xD?

You only obvious conclusion so far would be the exact opposite. That the player base doubled since the release of awakening. I mean... just look at the numbers.

The pattern of a sudden spike in player base, that slowly declines as the league progresses is normal. Its like that for every league.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

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eXecut1on wrote:

Lack of progression and GG Items being exclusive to uber rich players. There is a limited number of viable builds without having mirrored weapons. You play these builds (if you like them), get tired of them and quit or you farm and sell stuff for 2000+ hours to get a mirrored weapon and good gear to make unviable skills viable. The majority of people are in the 1st category. To unlock the full potential of this game you'd need to have at least 300-400ex.
Also this game is the most noob-friendly game I have ever seen so there is no real influx of new players which also leads to this extreme decrease in the player base. If GGG isn't going to change anything about this, PoE is doomed to be dead when the next A+ ARPG is released.

lol thats absurd. fox tactics beat uber with 4L arc no less couple patch ago. There are dozens of budget builds that do uber in 5L right now. To unlock potential L2P or just follow one of mathils or other streamers guides or something if u cant do that. No shame in it. I did my first couple builds here until I learned the ropes and could venture out on my own.

This game is fairly complicated. The synergies of skills and unique and the bosses you have to fight and maybe some ppl dont like that complexity and want everything handed to them (like d3). This game is not for them. But for those who like it we are not going anywhere even if i'm pissed about map drops. I can always reroll (cheaply too)

You didn't understand my point. I wasn't even talking about Atziri, where did you come up with this? I am talking about 90%+ of the skills being useless for endgame without mirrored gear therefore being forced into playing meta builds.

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kcstar wrote:

Same procedure as every year.



New Patch/new league -> new players/old players return

... a few days in -> half the players are back to their normal life ... tradechat has less channels, spam is slower / my friendlist has max. 10% players on / steamcharts are poop ...

rinse and repeat

And here is the biggest part of the problem with this pattern and i am very surprised that no one mentioned it yet.

People are buying artificially bloated marketing hypes maybe once or a second time or let it even be a third time but i am 100% certain that there won't be a fourth time anymore, and the exception of players who are still willing to play whatever they'll get is totally marginal in comparison to the whole theoretical playerbase.

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kcstar wrote:

And last but not least... there is no, really NO alternative.

... for you :)