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

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RagnarokChu wrote:

We don't need exact numbers, we can assume steam follows the same overall trend of PoE.

Yes, you can assume that. It would just be a terrible assumption to make, but you're free to do so if you like.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Ah, that awful moment of adolescent epiphany when you realise that can and should aren't the same thing...

An important part of redefining progress, indeed.

The correct PoE logic is...

Steam Chart declining = Real PoE Player Population growing rapidly.
Steam Chart Growing = ofc PoE Players Population is growing rapidly you stupid or something?

I think some people consider themselfs as something special not using the steam client.

I can say most longterm players from my friendslist do use the client. So I think the steam numbers are a quite good indicator to show player fluctuation.
At least they show us, that poe can´t hold new players, which obviusly is due to its complexity and difficulty.

In my opinion the difficulty thing is also what lets longterm players quitting the game. For example: a very good skilled and persistant player of my friendslist left on the first day of the awakening during the malachai fight, not returning.
I can speak for me that during the league I asked myself, do you still enjoy the game? And I have to admit that I experienced more frustration than fun during the latest patch.

In my opinion GGG dind´t do a good job with the expansion regarding the difficulty issues. They maybe focus too much on the 24/7 good skilled player. Obviously they dont´t like people getting lvl 100 that fast. But its the wrong path they take here, I think. There will always be an nolifer beating the game fast.

I don´t know whether GGG can survive from the loyal playerbase only. I don´t think so. They need new players, cause those are the ones to buy stash tabs. But this game is very far from being beginner friendly.

Don´t get me wrong I do like the complexity of this game and I think GGG has created an outstanding game with poe. I am just disappointed about the latest development of the game. Especially regarding endgame. Unfortunately the awesome changes with the lockstep and lootfilter do not overweight this disappointment.

I guess I fit into that section of the players that tried out the Awakening, didn't like the changes, and quit the game, waiting for a future patch to get the game into a state that's more comfortable for me.

The balance changes in the Awakening, most notably, the increased difficulty in earlier levels has been a huge detriment to my experience. I've always been a fan of trying out my own builds, rather than the cookie-cutter ones. However, when the game is balanced around making the cookie-cutter builds less effective, an unfortunate side effect is that the unconventional builds that I'd like to try out are near impossible to pull off. When it takes me about 3-4 minutes to kill a magic pack of monsters in normal/cruel, the game feels more like a chore, so I ended up moving on to other games.

At its heart, PoE is a hack-n-slash RPG, which means being able to kill a lot of monsters fast. I don't understand why the difficulty changes directly contradict this basic paradigm.

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Ashwin wrote:

I guess I fit into that section of the players that tried out the Awakening, didn't like the changes, and quit the game, waiting for a future patch to get the game into a state that's more comfortable for me.

The balance changes in the Awakening, most notably, the increased difficulty in earlier levels has been a huge detriment to my experience. I've always been a fan of trying out my own builds, rather than the cookie-cutter ones. However, when the game is balanced around making the cookie-cutter builds less effective, an unfortunate side effect is that the unconventional builds that I'd like to try out are near impossible to pull off. When it takes me about 3-4 minutes to kill a magic pack of monsters in normal/cruel, the game feels more like a chore, so I ended up moving on to other games.

At its heart, PoE is a hack-n-slash RPG, which means being able to kill a lot of monsters fast. I don't understand why the difficulty changes directly contradict this basic paradigm.

You are wrong, judging by the decreasing steam chart, PoE player population is exploding. PoE probably has a daily peak of 8 million concurrent players now... by January 2016 PoE should have around 20 million judging by the decrease in steam chart.

As long as GGG keep new items/expansion's/patches an updates the game carry on to gain new players.......it's a free to play game.

All we need now is a mobile game to co-inside with the full game.

Going by Peak Players on Steam there has been a average 9-10k players on steam

The previous 3 month league before Awakening had around 8, when we had 2-3 months of standard before the launch of 2.0 there was 5k.

Doesn't look that good that POE has only seemed to gain 1k more players on average daily(2K since GGG have said steam/client is 50/50)

That being said it has been doing well with it's core community so I doubt it will affect the game in the long run

The people that think Steam chart mean nothing put their head in the sand.

It mean that less player are playing the game via Steam. Voilà!


Now it with be stupid to think that all the player base is playing with the same intensity 2-3 month after the release.

For myself and my close friends we barely log on everyday now and the Event is too short to be tempting for people like me (2-3 hours/day) to get invested in.

I need a 3-4 month league so i can really build a new caracter and standard become redundant quick because you are stuck in too easy content unless you spend all your currency on maps.

But its still an amazing game!

If daily players is averaging 50/50 of steam verses non-steam players then doubling steam charts numbers should be close to daily average number of players.

Ok, so what we know is:

1. Very few have liked the game play changes (not counting Lockstep and Act 4) since version 1.4 was pushed out.

2. Steam stats would indicate that The Awakening was a failure for most players.

3. GGG has had to take emergency action and do some damage control by increasing high level unique drops and high level map drops.

4. GGG has obfuscated maps by replacing map levels 68 to 82 with tiers 1-15. Making this change means that overall players are unhappy that high level maps don't drop as frequently as they did in version 1.3.x PoE. Sorry GGG, but obfuscation as a means to quell player unhappiness doesn't work (we are not stupid players).

5. Doubling grind time to level 100 as a means to limit level 100 builds is an extremely unpopular decision and indicates that the map grind to a level 100 build is too time consuming for most (time unlimited hardcore fanatical elite players are to be excluded here). This also means that GGG had better quickly come up with more interesting and fun things to do while map grinding our way to level 100. Faster player drop out rates (lower daily players sooner after new league starts) is a clear indicator of player dissatisfaction.