PoE players number dropping like a brick on Steam

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locobilbo wrote:

I presume OP is the same kind of guy as you find wearing sandwich boards with 'the end is nigh' written on them.

Controversy is easy, but Comedy is hard! (Two thumbs up)!!!

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鬼殺し wrote:

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ChanBalam wrote:

Well, my takeaway from this thread is that 鬼殺し now has 14 challenges complete and that he has enough support banners to make color coded selections and add to the attractiveness of his posts. Such things only enhance his deft word play.

And I actually had Wolcen up on the other screen (new patch, new toys!) when I decided to napalm the thread. I think it might actually be my first 'steamcharts means the game is dead' thread participation. I usually just roll my eyes and move on but something just sort of snapped. I think it was the ridiculous leap in logic from the OP's criticisms (which, as I said, aren't at all invalid) to 'this is why the steam numbers are dropping!'...yeah, no. I feel as though people who think steamchart numbers accurately reflect the health of a game that started with a stand-alone client years before it had steam presence are borderline conspiracy-theorist level ignorant. I have steam. I use it for quite a few games. Mostly those that go on sale. And there's the crux: PoE is free. It'll never 'go on sale'. I see absolutely no need to use Steam to play it.

I see nothing wrong with using steam to play it, but since for me it is beyond the basic reason to use steam in the first place (bargain b2p games), I am super fucking baffled by people who think PoE's performance on steam is some sort of 'complete picture' regarding the game's health.

I play on Steam. [shrug]

I do wonder how many folks do play overall and guess it it a lot. Race days alone produce a 15,000 name ladder. IIRC a few weeks back Steam numbers were 75,000+. It must be lower now. I've never heard what percent Stem makes of the total player base or what even constitutes the player base. If I play once a week for a few hours does that count? what if at launch of a league I played 3 hours a day for 7 days straight and now I play 3 hours just on weekends. Am I still in the player base? And god forbid if I go traveling for three weeks; would I lose my place in the player base?

We each have our own perspective on what PoE means to us and to what degree we see ourselves as part of the player community. Or the forum community for that matter. I'm sure that GGG has its own measures for what the player base is and when they call it quits on player. Forum posters are such a small part of the player community that opinions expressed here are hardly more than rounding errors on the player count figures.

If you want to predict the game's decline you need to look at different things: key staff leaving, longer times between similar sized updates and new leagues, deterioration of server functionality, maybe streamer decline, fewer posts on redit by GGG staff, etc. In other words the first symptoms will show in the company and not in the game.

Whether or not someone likes the the way the game is progressing is immaterial.

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Nephalim wrote:

Let's be real. 3.0 was a cash grab for new players with little or no thought put into actually making the end game - which most players spend 98% of their time in, any better than it was in 2.6.

Why put so much money and time into content players will spend barely 10 hours on and as a result have awful retention past the first 3 weeks because the league sucks and end game is still the same as it was 6 months ago.

Who still is excited or cares about the 6 rubbish acts they added most of which were directly copy pasted from existing maps - oasis is the worst offender here. Where is the build diversity after they removed ES from the game? Where is the meaningful gameplay that did not already exist in 2.6? Where are those performance enhancements people have been waiting for years for? People should treat 3.0 like they treated GGG's ridiculous attempt to nerf power charges and specialize frenzy charges to attacks only.

Content aside, performance has never been worse for me. They undid half a year of optimizations for water and lighting effects no one asked for. It blows my mind how little 3.0 added for player like myself.

You know this may shock you, but some of us actually like playing through the story. And its funny seeing people bitch about 3.0 after they complained about having to repeat the difficulties all these years. And its not like GGG wasn't clear what this expansion was about, not sure why people expected the end game to change.

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general2906 wrote:

That's what happens when:

1. ... You publish recycled content while advertising "six new acts"
2. ... All the quests from the only actually new content (Act 5) are auto-completed (LOL!!??)
3. ... Your new league and new economy are kinda... sad (SHARDS!!??)
4. ... You fail properly optimize your game after so many years
5. ... You believe that console port will save your game.


It has been extremely fun for a few years though. I guess all good things must come to an end. Cant help but feeling kinda... cheated by GGG.

How in the world do you feel cheated? You never had to give GGG money once. Weird logic.

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Nephalim wrote:

Let's be real. 3.0 was a cash grab for new players with little or no thought put into actually making the end game - which most players spend 98% of their time in, any better than it was in 2.6.

Why put so much money and time into content players will spend barely 10 hours on and as a result have awful retention past the first 3 weeks because the league sucks and end game is still the same as it was 6 months ago.

Who still is excited or cares about the 6 rubbish acts they added most of which were directly copy pasted from existing maps - oasis is the worst offender here. Where is the build diversity after they removed ES from the game? Where is the meaningful gameplay that did not already exist in 2.6? Where are those performance enhancements people have been waiting for years for? People should treat 3.0 like they treated GGG's ridiculous attempt to nerf power charges and specialize frenzy charges to attacks only.

Content aside, performance has never been worse for me. They undid half a year of optimizations for water and lighting effects no one asked for. It blows my mind how little 3.0 added for player like myself.

Although the initial steam was bollocks.

+1 on that assessment from Nephalim. 3.0 added nothing, the opposite as it took things away, for me too.

My personal thoughts on what we are seeing:

1) Players that have been around for a long time (since the beginning or close to it) are getting bored faster. You can only build MoM+Life so many times before you get tired.

2) A new large influx of players are subsidizing the old players that lost interest. So overall we have a lot more players then ever...but most are new players (or less experienced ones).

3) The life meta has forced a lot of players into play styles they don't enjoy as much so although they did play the new league, experienced players aren't trying to create something different. This boredom also may be creeping into lack of crafting activities.


TL;DR: There are a LOT more new players playing the game. Old players are fairly burnt out on a stale life meta so are either barely playing or not playing much at all. Effectively this is a "new players" league vs an "old players" league.

Destiny 2 is out. I imagine a lot of gamers that have consoles are playing that at the moment. This game has always had drops after about a month into a league. Doesn't mean people aren't still logging on. they just aren't logging on for 12 hours a day every day right now. Beginning on next league will show a spike once again.

Player numbers have dropped 1+ month into a league? Tell us something we don't know.

I, for one, have played every day so far and am still having a great time even though I don't care for the league mechanics all that much. Game is in a great state.

I really think that mini Flashback implemented into middle of challenge league would help and fix it.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1997679 Thats suggestion.