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

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Xavderion wrote:

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

You're projecting your pet peeves with the game onto the whole population. Most people don't care about 74+ maps or the "crafting scandal". Most people don't even know about the latter.

I lol-ed

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Xavderion wrote:

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

You're projecting your pet peeves with the game onto the whole population. Most people don't care about 74+ maps or the "crafting scandal". Most people don't even know about the latter.

But the people most likely to be supporters do.

I'm confused, is or is not GGG catering to dedicated players? Because if they aren't, this game would be way more casual-friendly than it is. But if they are, then issues like map drops and economy really do matter.

Who whines on the PoE forums? Dedicated players. The same people who GGG relies on for support. I don't understand their logic if they're OK with jettisoning a significant chunk of us while continuing to rely on a smaller and smaller core of fanatics for revenue. Is PoE just a game made for a few hundred devotees, or is it a game for me too? If it's not for me, just tell me and I will leave - feeling my almost 2k hours were a disappointing waste. And I will tell my friends not to play this game because they don't want anyone new joining.

I know I seem hyperbolic, but I've honestly seen the argument on various threads that GGG just needs a small group of devoted supporters and everything's fine. That's an extremely sad and fragile state for any game to be in, not to mention elitist and esoteric - no new players allowed. It's also false advertising. You might as well have ads for PoE saying "don't play. We neither want nor need your support."

Obviously I doubt GGG actually sees things that way, and I have a hunch the only ones arguing this strategy are comfortable knowing they are in that core group. Some members of the community call casuals entitled - hell, they even call people like me with many hours invested in the game entitled because we want to spend less time trading and micromanaging a map pool - but the truly entitled players are those who believe the game exists solely for them, all others be damned.

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demon9675 wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

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Zhatan wrote:

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

You're projecting your pet peeves with the game onto the whole population. Most people don't care about 74+ maps or the "crafting scandal". Most people don't even know about the latter.

But the people most likely to be supporters do.

I'm confused, is or is not GGG catering to dedicated players? Because if they aren't, this game would be way more casual-friendly than it is. But if they are, then issues like map drops and economy really do matter.

Who whines on the PoE forums? Dedicated players. The same people who GGG relies on for support. I don't understand their logic if they're OK with jettisoning a significant chunk of us while continuing to rely on a smaller and smaller core of fanatics for revenue. Is PoE just a game made for a few hundred devotees, or is it a game for me too? If it's not for me, just tell me and I will leave - feeling my almost 2k hours were a disappointing waste. And I will tell my friends not to play this game because they don't want anyone new joining.

I know I seem hyperbolic, but I've honestly seen the argument on various threads that GGG just needs a small group of devoted supporters and everything's fine. That's an extremely sad and fragile state for any game to be in, not to mention elitist and esoteric - no new players allowed. It's also false advertising. You might as well have ads for PoE saying "don't play. We neither want nor need your support."

Obviously I doubt GGG actually sees things that way, and I have a hunch the only ones arguing this strategy are comfortable knowing they are in that core group. Some members of the community call casuals entitled - hell, they even call people like me with many hours invested in the game entitled because we want to spend less time trading and micromanaging a map pool - but the truly entitled players are those who believe the game exists solely for them, all others be damned.

Playing any video game for 2k hours is a complete waste of time to begin with, I have no idea why people expect infinite fulling times in a limited medium of fun. Do you read a book 500 times in a row and enjoy every single bit of it like the last time?

GGG is catering to make the game better overall. Obviously they aren't cratering to casual people since the game is still holds into the core ideals. Yet it is much much easier then it was 2 years ago with master crafting, multi drop rate buffs, reworked skill tree, gems not being so shitty early game where you can't level with anything but fire trap ect. But neither causal people, hardcore people or "dedicated players" are happy.

Also what does it matter what a small portion of people think? GGG saw map drops suck and buffed them. If it was not enough or need change continue to voice your opinion.

Not everyone is on steam. (I'm not) Now if POE was only connected to steam then those stats would mean more than what they really do.

Free games will always have a huge spike/fall *rinse repeat*
Chances are that most people on Steam will prolly get on POE because of the free title, play for a bit then go to the next one (IMHO steam is an ADHD kids wet dream)

Yea guys, a sharp decrease on steam chart is a clear indication of the ever growing population in PoE.

If a steam game spikes up and spikes back down, it means it's not giving good first impressions. Poe has a too high of a learning curve. Simple as that.

Lol, another one of these. If you bothered to look at the rest of the steam graphs you would see that a giant upflux of players and then a slow drop off is standard practice for us. Most games in general in fact.

Well most of you seems to be not too long here.
The feel of the game completely changed, there are a lot of uppers but also a lot of downers added to the core.
2.0 at first was a bomb with all the incoming changes, but after some weeks you see the old flaws on every end.

Let´s start with the not soo big problems and lets drive to the very big problems, shall we?


+
broken oneshot mechanics atm
leads to broken balance
fast leveling is now very very weird, the zones are a complete mess
broken build diversity in hc
more rmt then ever before (got the last weeks several times asked directly, and not hidden in any way, to sell via paypal
there seems to be no surveillance for this
mana use is now just awkward - you get punished for using skills in a hacknslay
one chest to rule them all
one skill to rule them all
logout macros possible..
buffs and nerfs in a game where your char should be OP as f*** - nobody cant remember WHY we played hacknslay games for thousands of hours - surely not to "just survive" :)
too economy driven (see above why you cant be op as f***)
same mistake as diablo 3 - your gear is your strength, not your char => too economy driven


++
3rd party tools needed for progress
3rd party tools are a great danger for computer and account security - still encouraging to use them
broken client with a lot of unusual disconnects and crashes since 2.0
bad performance even on new high segment amd cards
logout macros needed (wtf it is called hardcore and that is what we are)
there is no immersion nor is it thrilling. it i just not true that the game would become boring if it gets balanced, but you should always have control about your incoming death, and you should only die if the player fails to take the right decisions. that actually would make the game even more thrilling
instead "press mousebutton5" because there could be a killing blow incoming - really?
hc is now crowded with that mentality - thanks a lot for encouraging and ruining a lot of ppl and their playstyle
+33% of playerbase are flippers or trying to scam the s*** out of newbs
bad traders try to copy the flippers and completely overprice many necessary items for builds, so no one can play them
a lot of online time needed to be successful farm/selling gear to the lower foodchain


+++
one site to rule them all
you can make 50 times the currency, in the same time, just using a search mask
you don´t need a char for it, 3d**** and 100 bucks is enough
everybody knows, still nobody seems to care about that
things got easier while they clearly should not
a lot of missing challenges
tempest is the most boring league since release closed beta
no new ideas, only moa stuff for the whiney "we want moaaa" fraction so the client is just overcrowded and still not working, even on lowest settings for many users.



We lost about 60%! of our clan activity, which is very unusual, since we are only 33 members and a very active farm group.
But nobody wants to play tempest and none of my members would ever play softcore, because that is even more boring and pointless.
So they just leave bored and it seem like they are not alone.


Maybe there you have your answers.
I am playing since act1 was online (no vaal back than), but even i come now to a point where i cant stand the game any longer in this condition.
Sure i will invest more currency for ggg to make it even possible to change the game, but atm i cant feel the game anymore.
let´s see and wait

I so agree with the economy problem and item flippers. But hey, without an ingame marketplace/ah and with "the big dropchance gap between okay-loot and epic-loot" and the mapping-system that prevents poor players and newbs from getting high ilvl items, it feels kinda intended.

And yes item flipping does pay, big time. So does 'scamming' newbs and lots of other dirty, but legal tricks.

Example of awakening 'scam':
"Hey guys, I'm clearing out my stash. Join my game and I'll give you skill gems for really cheap."

Of course aimed at people who don't know you can buy them from vendors. Stuff like that. Also notice the words "give" and "cheap". It's basically another term for "sell"

But there are bigger scams. Like underpricing items that you will never sell.

A lot of prominent MMORPGs are guilty of this as well.

They do drastic game changes that alter or even ruin many character builds.

On a game like Path of Exile: where building a character requires a lot of time and effort that can be extremely punishing.

As an example: my highest level character was destroyed by this expansion. He used to perform magnificently. Now he's just fodder for the mobs and a good way for me to get pissed off when I want to die and lose hours and hours of hard work getting experience.

That's the problem with this expansion. It has obliterated the hard work of a lot of players. One free re-spec was not enough compensation. I have dumped over 50 regrets and many exalts getting new gear to try and save my character. All have been in vain.

Luckily I was able to salvage an older character of mine (again by using many regrets) and have found a build that works in the new system. Had that not been the case however: I could easily see myself walking away as well. So I can understand the mass exodus you speak of on Steam.

My point and the bottom line is that when developers make sweeping changes to their game I would prefer they accommodate their players in a more significant fashion so the transition process is less expensive and frustrating.