Is Path of Exile dead?

PoE Steam Charts peaking at 37K+ on Sunday (most players for the week) is great compared to this time (almost 2 months into the challenge league) in any league pre 3.0 so I'd say PoE is far from dead. Double (at least) the steam numbers to account for all playing with the stand alone client to get closer to total player numbers. Compare current numbers to past leagues where the peak players is under 20K and weekdays are 5K to 10K players at about 2 months in and PoE is doing very well. Whether the influx of new players translates to more mtx sales only GGG knows and will never tell.

Now since the Harbinger Challange League is pretty much a bust from the get-go and increasing the Harbinger difficulty is only a very little more challenging and the idea of having to collect shards that eventually add up to a whole orb is a total crap waste of time then the challenge league is dead. But with such a huge expansion as 3.0 is (even if a ton of maps/tile sets were re-cycled) in such a short development time we all knew that the challenge league would be very short on "challenge" and be very subdued to not steal focus from the major expansion.

Also you need to consider the switch to XBOX. I don't have or want such a money waste, but what are the numbers of XBOX players now? May it is a switch and some PC Players switched to XBOX due to having a completely fresh realm?

July 2012 - still play everyday

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Stone__Cold wrote:

Also you need to consider the switch to XBOX. I don't have or want such a money waste, but what are the numbers of XBOX players now? May it is a switch and some PC Players switched to XBOX due to having a completely fresh realm?

I guess there may be a few PC PoE players that are nuts to want to play xBox version just to see it on a 50"+ large screen tv but going from a mouse/keyboard to a game controller is crazy stupid and awkward pointer controls so I doubt very few PC players would make the switch.

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Arrowneous wrote:

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Stone__Cold wrote:

Also you need to consider the switch to XBOX. I don't have or want such a money waste, but what are the numbers of XBOX players now? May it is a switch and some PC Players switched to XBOX due to having a completely fresh realm?

I guess there may be a few PC PoE players that are nuts to want to play xBox version just to see it on a 50"+ large screen tv but going from a mouse/keyboard to a game controller is crazy stupid and awkward pointer controls so I doubt very few PC players would make the switch.

I tried it on Xbox few days ago with a friend and it's not that bad actualy, i wouldn't switch god no never, but it's not that horrible or at least far better than my expectations.

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DoubleU wrote:

July 2012 - still play everyday

Same for me. Totally burned by original D3, entered the closed beta lottery, and surprise surprise I got an email from GGG in early December 2012 saying I had won a CB key so I started playing PoE then and through everything from PoE:The Desync Years To Ascendancy and power creep (but I'll never clear shaped Strand in under 2 mins.) to highs (I got a 6L chest to drop in the wild in Legacy League) and lows (damn my 83 % increased move speed exile is unplayable in Solaris Temple due to the leaper creatures crazy bad desyncing deaths... literally had to abandon that fast move build) I'm still here in 3.0 and mostly happy with the total of PoE. Just need less lag (always plaguing everyone's QoP), DX11 not crashing my Crimson video driver, and a way to buy from an AFK seller to really make my PoE day. But I'm still here playing PoE after hurricane Irma totally destroyed my yard (I still have a half dozen 60 to 70 foot trees down that need to be sawed up and removed... down from the dozen and a half from 2 weeks ago) so PoE is far from dead for me.

Nah far from dead but I am hoping they move things in a better direction next league / major patch, most leagues or patches are a +0 for how interested i am but this ones probably been a -2 (for reference breach was a +2 I just wanted to find more breaches!)

im here sinse open beta 2013, so yh, seems to be alive.

Yep. Somewhere around. Not every day, not even every week, but still here.

they made a big mistake imo and that was over nerfing such a large thing as es, the core defense of casters which are the most popular build archetype, and in doing so essentially killing 50% of builds, and then also releasing a filler league that has virtually no reward or challenge.

Now the idea of nerfing is not bad, we need the nerfs, but what we actually want I think is nerfs that bring balance, because balance offers us choice. What they did was over nerf which takes away choice and switches us from one over optimal forced choice into another over optimal forced choice, they pretend to sell paints and a canvas, and most people are here for paints and a canvas, and then time and time again the force 2 crayons and a colour by numbers predrawn piece of paper down our throat.

Filler league, again thats fine because you accompany a big expansion with the filler type leagues and then the smaller updates with big exciting leagues, as the expansion has the new content to make up for the league. However the league is not only not very engaging, it is completely unrewarding. The expansion is also a questing expansion, fine, but what keeps people is endgame so you cant have a non existant filler league that brings basically nothing to endgame when the expansion you release along side brings nothing to endgame.



I love the guys at GGG, they put in a ton of work and im sure its horrible to hear us bash on them like this. Theyre not superheros capable of knocking the ball out of the park every single minute of every day they work, no one is. That said, some of this stuff like build diversity we were telling them during the beta. I know I was, I made lengthy posts, I dont like making those posts, I dont like bashing peoples work and being negative, I love these guys who work at GGG and it pains me to be that critical because I know people like Rory and Qarl and their team have done so much amazing work and are top top people, and I know that their hands surely must be in some of this stuff, but I could see plain as day how wrong some of what they were doing was, and I wasnt alone, 100s of people were posting the same thing and they did not listen, and honestly I believe they are still not listening, that they still do not take seriously what we are telling them about nerfing shit out of the game and forcing limited metas down our throats in a game that lives and dies on offer options and allowing US to choose, not you guys at GGG. Fuck the builds you want me to play, Im not here to follow some template you set out. I want to make the choices myself and when you nerf half my options out of the game entirely and dont offer me anything new then I have less reason to play your game than I did 10 minutes before you released your new patch. Its quite simple I dunno why this plainly obvious concept escapes their balance team. If you then give me a league where I feel like the mechanics of the league are giving me 0 reward that I care about, that feels rewarding, and offers no challenge that is engaging.....

In terms of keeping me playing GGG are lucky that I decided I needed couple of new super expansive weapons for the handful of standard characters I have that survived the nerfs, because that is the only reason I played harbinger for more than a week, got the supporter pack etc.

Last time I logged in there was 1 person from my guild online, everyone has abandoned the game. But lets be real, if you look at steam charts theres twice as many people playing right now compared to this point in any previous league they have ever released. In terms of is this game dead? No, its more alive right now than its ever been. But they would do well to remember that todays noob is tomorrows empty veteran guild list.

Balance your game, as in actual balance, not destroy whats popular so no one plays it any more and force everyone to play this other unbalanced load of shit. You want a revolving meta? Do it with SKILL GEMS, not fundamental mechanics like defenses that form the core of 1000s of build options. Those need to be actually balanced.