Current State of PoE - Summary

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dspair wrote:

I don't get it. Yes, steam charts do show that player base is decreasing. What achievements have to do with anything? >85% of players quit the game before beating the normal difficulty, how that proves that people use standalone client more and more instead of steam?

Again, how convenient that GGG removed the "/online" command, now GGG defence force™ can sleep at night, dreaming about increasing player base on standalone client.

Quotes from Chris:

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The ratio of steam to non-steam players can change over time based on environmental factors. At release it was about 50/50, due to heavy promotion on their front page. There are a lot more people playing on our platform than on Steam currently.

and

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Online concurrency varies between 15k (at totally off-peak times while America/Europe are asleep) to up to around 50-60k at peak times or big releases.

The second quote means Steam:non-Steam ratio is around 30:70 at the moment, which means more Steam players than non-Steam players quit the game, which means the Steam chart isn't representative of the whole player base.

inb4 'lol u deluded fanboi chris is obviously lying'

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Nightmare90 wrote:

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dspair wrote:

I don't get it. Yes, steam charts do show that player base is decreasing. What achievements have to do with anything? >85% of players quit the game before beating the normal difficulty, how that proves that people use standalone client more and more instead of steam?

Again, how convenient that GGG removed the "/online" command, now GGG defence force™ can sleep at night, dreaming about increasing player base on standalone client.

Blizzard Drone™ much? :P

It is explained in the quote. We want to see the actual stable playerbase instead of the jumpy steam population, trying out every new patch in any advertised F2P game. Steam Achievements are a measure of time investment and therefore can reflect the loyal customers. Once there we can guess that Native Client data looks similar, although they do not include Russian or Asian numbers (which might be a big piece of the cake).

We can also better see active playerbase retention without colliding with simple marketing effects like a huge new player flush due to expansion advertisements and the natural loss of said new players due to disinterest. As you see there are good reasons to weight the variables using steam achievements.

At the end the active playerbase pays the maintenance bills whereas the flush of new players including stash tab sales might boost short time profit and development. The weighted sample looks not as frightening as the unweighted but it still shows retention. However as a business man, I would only consider stable customer bases as present numbers on finances for future development. Probably fault on me, I know. ;-)

We know that the stable customer base is at most about 3000 at a time without valuing in time zones/concurrency and the native client user base, which is naturally higher than the steam client user base (daily/weekly average way higher). As this is a F2P game, we also know that only a small percentage of this user base is finally a paying customer, however skewed towards the big whale kinda guys paying way higher amounts than the small fish. Natural purchase justification processes will keep it this way. We also know that GGG currently is holding a 30+ employee office in this situation.

The high amount of content GGG is delivering fast in this situation is astonishing and I can see people being fascinated about it. However as pointed out, daily/weekly concurrency is way higher (steam shows at least 7000 users) not including native client numbers which will be higher because of the east asian/russian playerbase. The working system is not a miracle and it reflects the solid polish of this product compared to alternative products.

Does all this look depressing/dangerous to you? If yes, then you are probably conservative about purchase models and I kinda understand this. However it is a working model and you'd be surprised about the amount of F2P games out there with a way lower active player base being able to maintain their game.


I hope this post made you understand my relaxed position a bit. <3

You sound like a smart well informed guy. May I add you ingame?

playerbase is easiest to judge by chat traffic and poe.xyz items. it looks bad. inb4 whiteknights 'but not everybody use it' - so you say that traders/not-traders ratio changed recently? [citation needed]!

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sidtherat wrote:

playerbase is easiest to judge by chat traffic and poe.xyz items. it looks bad. inb4 whiteknights 'but not everybody use it' - so you say that traders/not-traders ratio changed recently? [citation needed]!

If you play casually, you may trade casually and won't use a forum shop.
Personal observation of guild members and myself.

Tell us more about your info on trader/non-trader ratio.
I am sure you must have solid data to share. :P

inb4 "y don't u show ur data"
Well, I do not theorize.

I agree RNG is a huge problem. If I Could actually find something good I would be much happier.

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Weed wrote:

I agree RNG is a huge problem. If I Could actually find something good I would be much happier.

I think that's the biggest flaw in the whole "If it's really rare, it feels better when you find it." attitude of the devs. To an extent, that's true, but only if there's a payoff. For many, that payoff never comes, and they move on. And honestly, when you do get a payoff, it still doesn't feel that great, because it's never worth the investment.

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b15h09 wrote:

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Weed wrote:

I agree RNG is a huge problem. If I Could actually find something good I would be much happier.

I think that's the biggest flaw in the whole "If it's really rare, it feels better when you find it." attitude of the devs. To an extent, that's true, but only if there's a payoff. For many, that payoff never comes, and they move on. And honestly, when you do get a payoff, it still doesn't feel that great, because it's never worth the investment.

When you play self found in PoE, there is a certain point at which you realize that a good drop is not around the corner. This is an extremely bad mind set to put your players in, as it severely reduces their motivation, and eventualy causes people to quit.

In order to make a game like this fun and addictive there needs to be achievable rewards. I'm not saying we need drop rates as high as D3, but we need to feel like we are getting something for our time.

Consider this: D2 was amazing for its time, but it is severely outdated now, so why do people still play it? Because its a slot machine that pays out just enough to keep you pulling that lever.

So, your post as this forum's author is so thoughtful that I won't hate you for it. Why? You directly insulted the core community (I know reddit-ers are self-serving and act superior... GGG can just move this whole community to Reddit and nerf the main site if they think its format is that superior). This is unacceptable. Because their is negativity in the community does not mean this is a highly negative group. Have you now made a self-fulfilling prophecy? This post from me might feel like it. Not to mention, many of the good players I know who criticize this game the hardest love it and will express all they love about it. And some people heavily criticize the things they love. Try watching a video on creating CGI effects on Youtube... you'll see love can come through thorough criticism.

GGG's communication with the community relative to the community-friendly image they try to portray is out of sync. You said it yourself... we want to hear the reasoning for nerfs or know if they are even fully aware of the bots/currency/difficulty/in-game information/etc issues.

Also, I do understand how many slush comments they have to go through... but that is also a function of a forum reader from GGG having selective eyes. I've read seemingly-stupid troll comments before and stopped to think about them only to find out that the person has a profound idea for improving the game. If you have a turbo filter on because you think this is the wild west and we can't live up to Reddit... you do a profound disservice to those of us who promote your official site.

To be kind after this bitter pill: I LOVE LOVE LOVE your idea of items of a certain level having minimum requirements. It pisses me off when I finally run 78 maps to drop the same old crap and to get things like a unique vine circlet. It's a waste of time and such items are just destined to be vendored and they JADE ME AS A PLAYER... when I hear the sound of a unique dropping I don't even get excited anymore... I just prepare for disappointment. It has been like that for 2 months now for me.

Very well written post Dyn. I enjoyed reading it and appreciate the amount of effort and time it must have taken to put it together.

I am curious though... why did you "deliberately" leave desync off? I mean, I understand what desync really is and that it will never go away but even Chris has admitted there are things being worked on to reduce its impact so why leave it off? Just curious.

This is one of the better feedback posts I have seen as of late. In a while, to be honest. While I do not agree with some of it, I can understand the point of view. There are a few things that I will mention just because, as is with anything, the more it is seen, the more it is noticed.

More explanation regarding nerfs and/or general changes is definitely beneficial to all. I do not think anyone will argue this. A quick summary on a change is never a bad idea.

The option to disable notifications every time some knucklehead on my friends lists decides to change status, characters, or accounts would be a godsend. I personally do not give a shit if somebody is taking a breather for a smoke, re-rolling yet another char, or trying to sell some overpriced item. I do, however, need to see my mana levels, inventory, etc...

Any voting system of any kind is never a good idea. Not online anyway. There are too many ways to pad a certain option. Multiple accounts on a free to play game is one of the major ones. IP addresses and emails lost meaning a long time ago.

I recognize the want (not NEED) to be able to associate a single name with a single account. I do not, however, think including the username is the proper answer. Though, I would agree with letting everyone choose a nickname of sorts to prefix their character name with.

There is an easy way to ensure the want for this is taken notice. If people start doing so themselves, eventually we will either see that it is popular and worth adding, or just a complaint of a very vocal few. I would have no objection to having "SToT_" before each of my character's names. In fact, I may just do so myself.

However, "SqueakyToyOfTerror_WTFNoPantsBBQMidgets" would be an annoyance to even myself.

Nicknames, not account names.

As per desync, I would have left it out as well. For several reasons:

(A) The horse can be beaten no further. GGG and the players are very much aware. No point in continuing it.

(B) Desync will never be rid of entirely. It can be masked, it can be reduced, but it will not be rid of.

(C) "Fixing" desync is a major change. Other polish/QoL matters listed are much easier. Seeing many of these things changed in a short period would make living with long term things such as desync and trading a bit more bearable.

Stongboxes were a great addition, in my opinion. However, I do feel that avoiding the "Ambush" is too easy. It needs work, but I can not wait to see future race seasons with the presence of these boxes. Everyone having a bit more control over RNG should make things a bit more interesting.

I love the addition of Invasion bosses as well. and yes, some tweaking has been done. But there are specific bosses that still need much love. Bladeback Guardian, Cintiq, etc... Oh, and that damned summoner. The summoner is not a matter of difficulty as much as it is performance. Especially if you are already on a summoner yourself and your screen is already littered with entities/corpses.

If I really thought about it, I could sit and go at this all night, as I am sure most can. But I will leave here for now.

The OP was a good read. Nice to see a post thought out for a change. As well as a member with an open enough mind to have actually changed their view slightly.