4 months is too long for a league and its clear by looking at playercount

I disagree. 4 months is about the perfect time for a seasonal live-service game like this. Playercount two months in says absolutely nothing.

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hogancz#3944 wrote:

I would also welcome going back to 12 week leagues.
People who say they want leagues longer are tiny minority, based on player count stats on steam.

Yes exactly, most POE players last just a few weeks and by the end of month 2 the league is completely dead

3 months is plenty

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

The shorter the league, the less time GGG has to spend on making the next one, resulting in simpler and shallower mechanics.

Sorry, I don't think we need more Breach clones.

Completely incorrect considering that since we've entered into the 4 month cycle we've had extremely simple leagues and instead of 1 big expansion per year it was 1 big expansion in 3 years due to POE2

We had our largest and most complex leagues during the 3 month cycle
All of the 4 month leagues were extremely simple

Reminder that PoE2 exists and the "PoE1 won't be affected" rhetoric is what was actually false.

Disagree with the topic starter.

What is really missing - is mid league update of the balance.

Developers has a great possibility to look on the dead skills, and just adjust their numbers mid league.

If they would simply play with the numbers - no really new skills, but balances - will give a huge boost to economy(new rares to craft, 10C unique can convert to 10D uniques).

This can easily prolong the league for 2 more months for the guys, who just have fun.

To clarify - no nerfs, only buffs.

They have their own statistics, or just look on Poe.ninja, take 10 lowest used active skills, and think for an hour - how you can increase their interactions or add some additional line in it.

2 will shoot as new meta - noone already cares, only fun, no crying :)

So play something else for a while?

I don't even mean PoE2. The intended player cycle of PoE has always been "everyone plays for 3-4 weeks, then they come back in a few months to play again when there's new stuff."

Other games exist, and a lot of them are pretty damn good. Making any one single thing 100% of your hobbies isn't healthy anyway.

A 4–5 month cycle feels just about right. It provides enough time for the developers to roll out meaningful patches for both games. Previously, we were on a 3-month cycle, but that was back when there was only one title to focus on. Now, with two games in the mix, it’s actually impressive that they’re aiming for a 4-month cadence and still managing to push updates for both, rather than extending the wait in favor of higher-quality patches.

It seems like they're gradually finding their rhythm in managing both titles with the team they have. They're definitely heading in the right direction.

Big release every two month for such little company is insane. And the proof of it - previous 3.25 patch that lasts more than a year. It's obously happened not because GGG wanted it, but because their resources is limited.

Even big companies like Blizzard, Valve (Dota2) makes huge updates once in half year. For little companies it's good if they make huge update once in a year. And you want huge update once in 1.5 month (because of two games)???

I imagine how unpleasant to work as developer in company where manager comes to you every two month and say "hey, we have a deadline, is it ready? Is it ready? When you will done it?"

And i don't see any reason in short leagues from player perspective too. Do you really think that if you shorten league for 3 month, you get all 178k people back? And if you continue with such cycle - all this people will play in PoE forever? No matter how many new content the game have, people anyway get bored by one game from time to time and go to other games for some period.