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

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BestUsernameEver wrote:

Thoughts?

Aaaaaahhhhhhhh, the game is DYING, abandon ship NAO everyone!!!!!!



/s

But seriously, i stopped taking this seriously at "Steam charts".

Eh i played all leagues here ( since domination ) and never saw one who feel so empty after not even a month.
That's not only about steam's chart ^^

But yeah there are some reasons outside of the game depending in wich hemisphere most userbase is a lot may be simply in holidays or driving a car on the moon.

Most of the people I know who play PoE don't even have it tied to their Steam accounts.

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Ushela wrote:

Most of the people I know who play PoE don't even have it tied to their Steam accounts.

I sure as hell don't, and I wouldn't be on Steam at all if I hadn't had to have it to update Skyrim. =>[.]<=

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laycast wrote:

This is one of the most unsatisfying content updates ever. The only fantastic things they introduced was to the engine of the game, such as the lockstep changes, and the loot filter.

Questing system is extremely unrewarding.
Balance of skill tree and unique item drop rate is bad.
Map changes are trash.
General monster balance is bad.

It really feels like the game is being pulled into 2 directions. One direction is a "hardcore" grind fest (lowered unique drop rate, lowered map drop rate, so many things you have to sink currency into). The other one is somewhat casual with a lot of short cuts (gem vendor, condensed acts)

I quit playing two weeks into the league. Overall this release feels like a beta, but i'll check back next leagues

+1, played for 2 weeks, then it became like a day here and there, now i dont bother anymore. This is the first time i feel like PoE is not interesting anymore, usually i was just bored for playing too much or other reasons.

Act 4 feels like a marathon, where you run FOREVER in a straight line basically, only visiting the best zone quickly(dried lake). And it is all for 2 quests, skill book, and Malachai.

Regarding the Malachai fight, i think there is still too much stuff going on in cruel. Like when you have to kill piety, he still throws a barrage of shit at you, and piety attacks you, and these bloody things allover. It is not even hard imo, it is just that, when i have to use 50% of the time just to dodge 2-3 attacks that are always happening, makes the fight take a long time. I think the dmg dealt from everything in that fight is totally fine though!

I still dont understand how act 4 was meant as an alternative to maps, when monsters in a4m has twice the health and dmg compared to 68-70 maps, why would ANYONE go in there, except for maybe boss farming later.(ignoring aqueduct and dried lake farming).

Even though i "quit" PoE for now, i would probably like to check out the next league, as long as i dont get too hooked on Fallout 4 :)

Not really surprising.

"most" people play games to have fun and don't want a game that's too involved. (See D3's model).

People grind for money every day...most don't want to play a game where you have to do the same thing.

POE, first and foremost, has always been about preserving it's economy.

Lot of people just want shit to drop so they can use it for a while and try different builds. This is more of a niche game.

POE = Economy > Fun.

Always has been always will be.

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laycast wrote:

I've been playing for over 3 years. This is one of the most unsatisfying content updates ever. The only fantastic things they introduced was to the engine of the game, such as the lockstep changes, and the loot filter.

New skills are terribly boring.
Questing system is extremely unrewarding.
Balance of skill tree and unique item drop rate is bad.
With the addition of jewels, and divination cards, there are now more things we have to trade for. The trade system is just as bad as ever.
Map changes are trash.
General monster balance is bad.

It really feels like the game is being pulled into 2 directions. One direction is a "hardcore" grind fest (lowered unique drop rate, lowered map drop rate, so many things you have to sink currency into). The other one is somewhat casual with a lot of short cuts (gem vendor, condensed acts)

I quit playing two weeks into the league. Overall this release feels like a beta, but i'll check back next leagues

• New skills

Just 2 examples:

1. WildStrike @70+ clears maps faster than any other meele skill. [Dyadus/dreamfeather/ThreeDragons GG] And its 10x more fun to play than Cyclone or Sweep.
2. Fortify made almost every Meele build viable + insane DPS/DEF increase if you pick up the tree nodes.
etc etc

• What kind of quest rewards do you expect? Who plays games like PoE/D2 for quest rewards?

• Procurement takes 5 min to update every single day and trading takes 10-15 sec. Compared to a annoying AH where you need to spend ages to set everying up it is a lot less time consuming atm.

• I had 4 stash tabs full of uniques after 4 days, the drop rate is just fine. Even T1 Uniques drop more often than before.

• Map changes are fine, playing with 2 friends and we have 6 stash tabs full of maps (all self found). People bitch about 74+ Drop rate but dont even know how to build a decent base before actually farming 74+'s. I just delete most maps since you usually get 2-4 counter drops every single time even in higher Maps.

- I do understand that some people prefer to play solo all day but once you get 20+ 74's there is no way you wont be able to get a decent 75 base and keep going for higher maps unless you roll useless mods/quant. Domination @74+ maps gives a shit ton of map drops and lets be honest 10C is nothing even when you play self-found.

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Tr3Angel wrote:

• Map changes are fine, playing with 2 friends and we have 6 stash tabs full of maps (all self found). People bitch about 74+ Drop rate but dont even know how to build a decent base before actually farming 74+'s. I just delete most maps since you usually get 2-4 counter drops every single time even in higher Maps.

- I do understand that some people prefer to play solo all day but once you get 20+ 74's there is no way you wont be able to get a decent 75 base and keep going for higher maps unless you roll useless mods/quant. Domination @74+ maps gives a shit ton of map drops and lets be honest 10C is nothing even when you play self-found.

I think you underestimate the variance involved in a heavily rng based system. When you're splitting odds over 6 players, getting a viable/sustainable map pool is easier than solo. I am kinda new to PoE - but i've run into a brick wall getting enough 74 maps, which is mainly due to variance, on the other hand ive had 3 drillnecks drop and 5 exalts in my one month playtime, so i'm doing well in other areas. The bottomline is, that if you have enough manpower to farm 6 times as much 72/73 maps as I can alone, odds are in favour of six people getting a healthier 74+ map pool than me on my own. RNG gives fuck all what it drops and when it drops, and can only be evened out by huge volume.

Gating map drops in a similar fashion as uniques behind obscure RNG mechanics is detrimental to the game in the longterm, imo. I also frown upon the logic having drops capped at +2 max, but apparently its fine to get a 68 map drop from a 75 map boss. It's not really that big of a deal to me, because i can buy stuff, but im sure a lot of people will have had way worse variance than i have across the board and probably have no 'money' to buy a bunch of maps.

tl;dr Variance can be pretty hardcore, when you farm with six guys you are balancing out a lot of badrun compared to people trying to setup a map pool alone (when variance can be pretty brutal), RNG gating maps is detrimental to the game longterm.

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Not really surprising.

"most" people play games to have fun and don't want a game that's too involved. (See D3's model).

People grind for money every day...most don't want to play a game where you have to do the same thing.

POE, first and foremost, has always been about preserving it's economy.

Lot of people just want shit to drop so they can use it for a while and try different builds. This is more of a niche game.

POE = Economy > Fun.

Always has been always will be.

I'd love to see a D3 player concurrency chart from the beginning of a season and then one month later. I'd bet my left kidney it looks pretty much exactly like PoE's.

Drop rates are pretty awesome in this game. You guys dont know bad drops like original inferno where you just couldnt progress period beyond act 2 inferno. Only way to do it was a) group with a good group with synergy. b) abuse something quickly patched like energy armor bug c) buy loot from A's.

PoE you can beat game self found. You can even make low tier maps. With masters its better than ever.