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

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morbo wrote:

Imo it's alarming that the playerbase behaves exactly as any other temp.league / expansion, despite 2.0 bringing so much more in content and improvements than any other update so far.

You don't even need to look at steam charts, just check trade chat and the mechanism that puts you autmatically into a chat number: in first two weeks it was 100+, after a month it's 1 - 20.

It is as far from alarming as Manchester United are from winning a major title this season.

Completely standard behaviour for a free to play game.

I don't get what is hard to understand.

A lot of people try out the new content and then move on.

It's the nature of an ARPG. You have people that enjoy grinding endgame content. You have people that go through the acts and when they're done, they move on to another game.

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

Completely standard behaviour for a free to play game.

Why? What has FTP to do with it? PoE is a specific game for a specific crowd which (should) like grinding. PoE has in theory a lot to offer and is (again in theory) targeted at longterm players.

Maybe it's this weird GGG design, where on one side they try to slow down players as much as possible, on the other they offer easy shortcuts. The first crowd gets annoyed and quits, the second gets bored and quits.

Why «on Steam alone»? Steam numbers are bound to be more volatile and hype-led than the total player base... it's a platform designed for users to be «unfaithful».

Awakening is the worst PoE content patch so far

Almost none of the new Spells are viable, the new gem system killed an entire economy of the game and Build diversity is as low as it ever was.

Just check the top 500 of the ladder, its consist of PA, Cyclone, incinerate and Flametotem. A few SRS here and there too.

Go the the class build forums and look at the guide lists and then click on the old 1.2/1.3 lists. Its not even half as much in awakening.

Adding to this the server problems in the beginning and Chris Wilsons answer "Its ur ISP" probably scared off alot of people.

I also find that poe forums activity is in the all time low...

We just started a new expansion last month, new thread should be created and there should a high "turnover" but nada

:(

It's a cyclical game. It always was, it always will be. How many more years will pass until people understand?

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Just check the top 500 of the ladder, its consist of PA, Cyclone, incinerate and Flametotem. A few SRS here and there too.

Leagues has always been like that. Nothing to do with new content.
Remember when atziri released the number of RF guys running in top 500 ? or in rampage the number of Tornado shot guys ? Or even in domination with blender duelist ?

All league have their favourites and about FT thats not really new the fact is it's just more op than before due to jewels balance ( inexisting at this point ).

SRS was already one of the most played build so far.

I'm just astonished to don't see much Arc running it's still very viable and really easier to manage gears etc than before ( thanks to jewels ).

Class build forum 2.0 is empty not due to actual content but due to players following only builds from streamers. And at this point it's not that different than before aswell :)

Maybe 20% of PoE userbase try to build is own tree ( i added a 0 my first tought was around 2% ).

It's been a month since the release of Path of Exile: The Awakening, a month since the start of the new leagues.


Every league, this drop happens. People tend to come for new leagues, then drop out over time. This game is not designed for everyone - thus, it'll generate hype, people will realize it's not targeted at them, and quit.

Also, give it time for builds. There's always been flavor-of-the-months - and I'm certain once people spend more time messing around with things, they'll find new builds.

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Xavderion wrote:

It's a cyclical game. It always was, it always will be. How many more years will pass until people understand?

This.

Its pretty normal for there to be a large loss of players after a hyped release. A better comparison would be the number of players 2 or 3 weeks after this release compared to 2 or 3 weeks after forsaken masters' release.