Instant logout is ruining every part of this game

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suszterpatt wrote:

...Well, call me naive, but I still think we can make GGG see reason...

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suszterpatt wrote:

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Xavathos wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

To be fair, creating new content is very important for the survival of a f2p game. But player retention is equally important, and it seems like GGG don't realize that the reason player retention is so poor in PoE is because in the long run, the game is just not all that fun to play for various reasons. The oneshot meta and its effect on build diversity being one of the bigger reasons.

Can we make them realize? Fuck if I know, but I ain't going down without a fight.

What makes you think player retention is so poor in PoE? Before you make such a statement, I'd like to see the source, stats, data. From what I understand, there were more players on PoE servers at the 3.0 launch than EVER before. People do keep coming back, because of a such content updates.

You need to look no further than Steam's usage statistics. Here, allow me, in clickable diagram form:



For comparison, here's the same 3-month breakdown for 3 other F2P games: Dota 2, Warframe, and Neverwinter. See if you can spot the difference between the shape of these graphs and the PoE graph:

Spoiler

So yeah, I'll say it again. PoE has a lousy retention rate. Yes, player count always skyrockets when a new league or expansion is released. But look at how sharply it trends down afterwards. It went from 10-15k before 3.0 to almost 100k at 3.0 launch, and now we're back to around 25k. That's a 75% dropoff in just two months. Now sure, that's concurrent players, not unique players. It doesn't necessarily mean that all those people quit playing (though many of them undoubtedly did), but it does mean that they're not playing for as long as they used to. And the less time they spend online, the less money they're gonna spend. Attracting a lot of new players is nice, but if you can't keep them around, they'll take their custom elsewhere.

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Xavathos wrote:

It's really very simple. With both legacy gear or instant logouts, it's either yes or no. It's there, or it's not. If GGG wants it to be this way for whatever reason they deem worthy, then we'll have two choices again, yes or no. Play or quit.

I touched on this above, but no. It's not "play or quit". It's "play every day for 5 hours", or "play every other day for an hour", or "play on weekends for 30 mins", etc.

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Xavathos wrote:

Like you said, it's been mentioned time and time again. They know about it and they haven't let us in on their opinion on it yet. (unless you count the "yes and no" between Chris and Qarl years back) Until they do, we'll just have to live with it and as time passes, the chance of change is dwindling.

Well, call me naive, but I still think we can make GGG see reason. If anything, the fact that we have years of history behind us should give us additional perspective and evidence that some things just aren't working the way they expected.

In fact, wouldn't it be kind of arrogant of anyone to think that every design choice they made years ago will have stood the test of time forever?

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Xavathos wrote:

I'd personally rather take a RIP to the face than alt F4 out of any game, even on HC, but that's just what I play games for. I don't find the path of least resistance, because I play to be challenged. Same reason I wouldn't steal candy from a baby.

I'm with you on that. One of the reasons I play softcore is because I enjoy a challenge more than I enjoy "winning". And if I was playing a different, better balanced game than the instalog crowd is playing, I would have no problems. But sadly, we all play the same game, and the existence of instant logouts poisons my experience via the metagame it spawns.

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suszterpatt wrote:

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Xavathos wrote:

I'd personally rather take a RIP to the face than alt F4 out of any game, even on HC, but that's just what I play games for. I don't find the path of least resistance, because I play to be challenged. Same reason I wouldn't steal candy from a baby.

I'm with you on that. One of the reasons I play softcore is because I enjoy a challenge more than I enjoy "winning". And if I was playing a different, better balanced game than the instalog crowd is playing, I would have no problems. But sadly, we all play the same game, and the existence of instant logouts poisons my experience via the metagame it spawns.

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Xavathos wrote:

Okay... but all this is just Steam stats. Path of Exile exists not only on Steam. In fact, I'm pretty sure most players DON'T use Steam to play PoE. Most of my friendlist for example, log in through the client, not Steam. They wouldn't show up on your stats at all.

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Xavathos wrote:

Only GGG has the evidence that we would need to support such a claim. The game seems to be in a good place right now, despite the fact it has flaws. I mean, have you ever seen a perfect game before?

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suszterpatt wrote:

How long before they will play the game again and maybe spend some more money? Not until the next expansion, at best. There's a lot of room for improvement there, and to me it seems pretty obvious that it should be GGG's primary focus.

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suszterpatt wrote:

Well, call me naive, but I still think we can make GGG see reason. If anything, the fact that we have years of history behind us should give us additional perspective and evidence that some things just aren't working the way they expected.

In fact, wouldn't it be kind of arrogant of anyone to think that every design choice they made years ago will have stood the test of time forever?

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Perq wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

Well, call me naive, but I still think we can make GGG see reason. If anything, the fact that we have years of history behind us should give us additional perspective and evidence that some things just aren't working the way they expected.

In fact, wouldn't it be kind of arrogant of anyone to think that every design choice they made years ago will have stood the test of time forever?

They opposed other ideas with same attitude before - lockstep ruining the hardcore mechanics because too laggy, item allocation because hardcore cutthroat (but dare to write their name on forums and you're banned - cutthroat much). And still they have changed that.

/snarky_on
Just give them another few years, I'm sure they will do it just right after the trade improvements. kek'bur
/snarky_off

And yes, this only Steam-charts argument is pretty dumb. :P This is enough to say that trends will be similar. I can't quite imagine a reason they shouldn't be.

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Perq wrote:

Argument is, I never said you are. :P But feel free to be offended.

Well yes, you try to make some assumptions based on data you gathered. If there is some kind of survey about given topic you don't go around saying it is invalid because you didn't ask EVERYONE, did you?! Of course they didn't.

If there is a reason to think that the retention might be different in group of non-Steam players when compared to Steam players, there would be a need to gather that data and then reach a conclusion.
But there seem to be no reason for that (unless you have one, and honestly I expected you to give us one), therefore meaning you can get some understanding with only SteamCharts data.

And no, it isn't the same as the absolute number of players. We're talking about trend here, which means we don't even need to know how many players play on which platform.